LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
July 14/16
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletin16/english.july14.16.htm
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Bible Quotations For Today
Woe to you Pharisees! For you build
the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 11/47-51/:"Woe to you! For
you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. So you are
witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and
you build their tombs. Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, "I will send them
prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute",so that this
generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the
foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who
perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be
charged against this generation.
Ephesus Silversmith's Revolt
against Paul & the Disciples who taught that Gods made with hands are not Gods
Acts of the Apostles 19/23-29/35-40L:"About that time no little disturbance
broke out concerning the Way. A man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made
silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the artisans. These he
gathered together, with the workers of the same trade, and said, ‘Men, you know
that we get our wealth from this business. You also see and hear that not only
in Ephesus but in almost the whole of Asia this Paul has persuaded and drawn
away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made with hands are not
gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into
disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be scorned,
and she will be deprived of her majesty that brought all Asia and the world to
worship her.’When they heard this, they were enraged and shouted, ‘Great is
Artemis of the Ephesians!’The city was filled with the confusion; and people
rushed together to the theatre, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus,
Macedonians who were Paul’s travelling-companions.But when the town clerk had
quietened the crowd, he said, ‘Citizens of Ephesus, who is there that does not
know that the city of the Ephesians is the temple-keeper of the great Artemis
and of the statue that fell from heaven? Since these things cannot be denied,
you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash. You have brought these men here who
are neither temple-robbers nor blasphemers of our goddess.If therefore Demetrius
and the artisans with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open,
and there are proconsuls; let them bring charges there against one another. If
there is anything further you want to know, it must be settled in the regular
assembly. For we are in danger of being charged with rioting today, since there
is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.’"
Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 13-14/16
Assessing the covert war between the
IDF and Hezbollah/Yaakov Lappin/Jerusalem Post/July 13/16
'Hezbollah hasn't been stopped'/Itamar Eichner|/Ynetnews/July 13/16
Israel’s UN Ambassador Warns: Hezbollah Has 120,000 Hidden Missiles — More Than
All of NATO/Lea Speyer/algemeiner/July 13/16
Where does Britain’s new prime minister stand on the Middle East/Alex Rowell/Now
Lebanon/July 13/16
When Muslims Kill Muslims, They Can Still Act in the Name of Islam/Raymond
Ibrahim/PJ Media/July 13/16
Brexit Disrupts Nonchalant European Union Meddling/Malcolm Lowe/Gatestone
Institute/July 13/16
Netanyahu distracts public, buys time with Egypt talks/Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/July
13/16
Why Iraq needs the Popular Mobilization Units in fight against IS/Muhannad
Al-Ghazi/Al-Monitor/July 13/16
One year later, Rouhani still selling nuclear deal to Iranians/Arash Karami/Al-Monitor/July
13/16
Are Turkey’s efforts to combat foreign fighters too late/Metin Gurcan/Al-Monitor/July
13/16
How Germany-Turkey discord could damage NATO alliance/Cengiz Çandar/Al-Monitor/July
13/16
How religion is being used to manipulate Egyptians/Mohammed Nosseir/Al Arabiya/July
13/16
Naturalizing Syrians in Turkey/Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/July 13/16
‘Brexit means Brexit,’ but being British is also about compromise/Peter
Harrison/Al Arabiya/July 13/16
Before the Dutch disease infects the Gulf/Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/July 13/16
Striking a balance between social and traditional media/Diana Moukalledl/Al
Arabiya/July 13/16
Saudi Media Campaign Supports Iranian Opposition, Demands Toppling Of Iranian
Regime/MEMRI/July 13/16
Titles For Latest Lebanese Related News published on
July 13-14/16
Assessing the covert war
between the IDF and Hezbollah
'Hezbollah hasn't been stopped'
Israel’s UN Ambassador Warns: Hezbollah Has 120,000 Hidden Missiles — More Than
All of NATO
Lack of Quorum Forces New Postponement of Presidential Vote
Syrian Refugees Suspected of 'Ties to Terrorist Groups' Held in Zgharta
Hizbullah Stresses Support for Aoun as Ayrault Says Lebanese Must 'Exchange
Reassurances'
Ayrault Didn't Propose Any 'Presidential Initiative' during Lebanon Visit
Army Shells Militants in Outskirts of Arsal, Ras Baalbek, al-Qaa
Syrian Held for Collaborating with Syria-Based 'Terrorist Groups'
Army raid Hosnieh following gunfire
Interior Minister investigates assault against Syrian refugees in Amcheit
Basbous demands stringent measures implementing traffic law
Army: Detainee forwarded before court for belonging to ISIS
Civil Defence confirms control of Beirut Merry forest fire
ISF raids residence of Kartaba shooter
Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For
Miscellaneous Reports And News published on
July 13-14/16
UN: Without two-state solution, Middle East faces 'perpetual violence'
IDF bulldozers with tanks enter Golan
Iran summons French envoy over Paris rally
Air strikes kill 11, including children, in Syria’s Idlib
Russian jets strike Syrian refugee camp near Jordan
Turkey hints at normalization of ties with Syria
Cairo agrees to most of Moscow’s demands on aviation safety
Egypt orders Muslim preachers to deliver identical weekly sermons
Unprecedented spike’ in Egypt forced disappearances
Saudi Arabia says guard killed by land mine on Yemen border
Saudi envoy in Iraq asked Baghdad for armored vehicles but still waiting
Iraqi forces tighten noose around ISIS militants in Mosul
Kurdish militant commander fighting Iran calls for Saudi assistance
ISIS suicide bomber kills four at Iraq checkpoint
Iraq calls for demonstrations reprieve over security concerns
France shuts missions in Turkey until further notice
Israel border police kill Palestinian in West Bank
Bahrain arrests suspects linked to Iran in bombing that killed woman
Arab nations seek to block Quartet report at UN
Iran regime hangs nine collectively
U.S. General: Iran regime hasn't changed its behavior a year after nuclear deal
Links From Jihad Watch Site for
July 13-14/16
Islamic State reportedly preparing for loss of caliphate, group
focusing on jihad abroad
Islamic State jihadists’ laptops filled with porn
Brave Yazidi female battalion battles to wipe out the Islamic State
Robert Spencer in the Washington Times: Six shocking details from the Iran nuke
deal
Imam of Moscow’s Yardyam Mosque detained on suspicion of involvement in jihad
terrorism
Audio: Robert Spencer on Kevin McCullough Live on Black Lives Matter, the global
jihad, and the Iran threat
Federal Government Authorizes Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to Censor
“Anti-Islam” Speech; Lawsuit Filed
Robert Spencer in PJ Media: Why Iran Might WANT To Get Nuked After Nuking Israel
Navy images show Iranian boats aggressively approach Navy warships, one carrying
top U.S. General
Video: Robert Spencer on Newsmax TV on The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran
Steps to Successfully Counter Jihad
Idaho family of child raped by Muslim migrants treated like
“criminals” by police and media
July 13-14/16
Analysis: Assessing the covert war
between the IDF and Hezbollah
Yaakov Lappin/Jerusalem
Post/July 13/16
A decade after the second Lebanon War, Israel and Hezbollah have kept their guns silent, and the northern border has experienced an unprecedented period of mostly incident-free years. Hezbollah rebuilt southern Beirut and Lebanon and restocked its weapons depots, while the IDF began training and arming itself for the next potential phase of hostilities. Yet under the surface, it seems, a covert struggle could be raging right now between them, with neither side interested in escalating the ‘low-flame’ affair into an open conflict.
In April this year, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu broke with past protocol and made an extraordinary statement
while touring the Golan Heights with senior IDF officers: Israel has launched
dozens of strikes in Syria, Netanyahu said, thus acknowledging openly – for the
first time – that Israel has performed a number of covert Israeli operations
aimed at stopping the cross-border trafficking of weapons to Iranian- backed
Hezbollah in Lebanon. “We act when we need to act, including here across the
border, with dozens of strikes meant to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining
game-changing weaponry,” Netanyahu said, shedding official light on an
ongoing covert confrontation dubbed as “the war between wars” by defense
officials. The prime minister has not publicly broached the subject since, but
that does not rule out that operations have ceased.
Behind the scenes, according to international media reports, the effort is led
by Military Intelligence, which deploys vast resources to track the Iranian
weapons manufacturing industries and international trafficking networks that
often steer such arms to Hezbollah’s weapons depots, scattered across civilian
areas in southern and northern Lebanon, and southern Beirut. Sometimes the
weapons are produced in Syrian regime-owned production plants, which use North
Korean and Iranian missile blueprints to construct the arms. Dozens of
GPS-guided missiles, such as the Fateh-110 missiles already possessed by
Hezbollah, are believed to be lying in Hezbollah’s storage and launch
facilities, and Israel, it is safe to assume, does not want Hezbollah to mass
stockpile such arms. Advanced surface-to-air missiles and radar-guided anti-ship
missiles are also weapons Jerusalem has no interest in seeing reach its arch
enemy in Lebanon. The “war between wars” could, in theory, prevent Hezbollah
from receiving high-quality weapons. Such missiles could enable Hezbollah to aim
for specific targets, like an airbase or port. It is assumed that when
information comes in – whether by satellite, drone, signals intelligence, or
other means – that a game-changing weapon is making its way to a Hezbollah depot
in Lebanon, the Israeli defense establishment must make a decision.
Allowing the weapons to reach their destination would negatively affect Israel’s
starting position at the start of any future conflict with Hezbollah. Using an
air strike to stop the shipment, however, could escalate into an unplanned war,
if it triggers a reckless retaliation by Hezbollah and response from Israel.
Former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon often spelled out the scenarios that
would, in theory at least, be sufficient to trigger a covert Israeli strike. For
example, in November 2015 Ya’alon pledged that Israel would respond with “zero
tolerance” to weapons-trafficking or the distribution of chemical weapons to
terrorists. Ya’alon spoke just three days after international media reports
claimed Israeli aircraft carried out air strikes in Syrian airspace, reportedly
attacking Hezbollah targets in the Qalamoun mountain region near the Lebanese
border in an attempt to intercept a weapons convoy to Lebanon.
It was the first reported attack attributed to Israel since Russia became
involved in the air war in Syria. “Those who cross the redlines will be hit,”
Ya’alon cautioned.
This under-the-radar affair may also involve the mysterious killings of senior
Hezbollah commanders who become involved in setting up terrorist bases in Syria
that threaten Israel. In May, a senior Hezbollah operative, Mustafa Badredinne,
was killed in Syria. No one knows who carried out the assassination.
Hezbollah said Syrian rebels, whom Badreeddine had been fighting, carried out
the attack. Had it blamed Israel, the Shi’ite terrorist army would likely have
followed through with a strike on an Israeli target. The incident – regardless
of who is behind it – touches on a wider point, which is that if a covert
Israeli strike program does exist, it likely carries both risks and benefits to
national security. Successful reported Israeli strikes on weapons-trafficking
convoys, or assassinations of terrorists, if they are occurring on a regular
basis, underline how far Israeli intelligence has come in the past decade in
understanding how Hezbollah works. Yet while Hezbollah – botched down in bloody
sectarian warfare in Syria, and aware of Israel’s massive firepower potential –
seeks to avoid open war with Israel, the same can could also be said about
Israel, which for its part appears to be partly deterred by Hezbollah. In such a
case, deterrence looks like a two-way street. Covert strikes, large-scale
intelligence gathering, and cyber attacks (by Hezbollah, with Iranian backing,
against Israel), seem to be tactics in this secretive struggle.
Just as Israeli leaders have warned about
the widespread destruction a third Lebanon war would bring, Hezbollah has been
issuing warnings of its own, and these are being heard clearly in Israel.
Hezbollah appears to have been signaling that its patience is wearing thin, and
that it is prepared to take risks to establish an “equilibrium of deterrence”
between it and Israel. Through public statements, Hezbollah and its allies in
Lebanon have, in recent months, made clear that any further strikes on weapons
convoys moving between Syria and Lebanon, or against Hezbollah members in Syria
or Lebanon, would result in retaliation in the Mount Dov region. Hezbollah has
made good on such threats in the past. In January 2015, a reported Israeli air
strike targeted a convoy of Hezbollah and Iranian operatives who were
constructing a terror base in the Syrian Golan region, near the Israeli border.
One of those killed was Jihad Mughniyeh, son of Hezbollah’s notorious operation
chief, Imad Mughniyeh, who was himself assassinated in 2008 by a Damascus car
bomb. Hezbollah responded to the 2015 incident forcefully, firing a volley of
Kornet guided missiles at the IDF in Mount Dov, killing a soldier and commander
in their D-Max vehicle. The attack was launched from five kilometers away in
Lebanon.
Then a year later, in January, Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar was killed in an
air strike on his Damascus location. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah threatened
to respond against Israel, and days later, Hezbollah set off a large bomb on the
western section of Mount Dov on the Israel-Lebanon border, targeting two armored
military vehicles that were clearing a road in the area. The IDF responded with
cross-border artillery fire at targets in Lebanon. And with that, the incident
came to a close. If Hezbollah’s threats of zero tolerance to alleged Israeli
future strikes is credible, then those in Israel making the final call on
whether to launch or abort operations will likely have to think even more
carefully before giving the green light.
'Hezbollah hasn't been stopped'
Itamar Eichner|/Ynetnews/July
13/16
At a UN Security Council meeting discussing 10 years since resolution 1701 ended
the Second Lebanon War, Danny Dannon provides evidence of Hezbollah re-arming
and fortifying its positions in civilian centers across southern Lebanon.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Dannon presented IDF intelligence, including
an aerial photograph of the Lebanese village of Chaqra, to demonstrate how south
Lebanon has been turned into a Hezbollah terror stronghold to the UN Security
Council. He also presented disturbing new evidence of Hezbollah's massive
weapons arsenal. The material was presented as part of a UN Security Council
discussion on the security situation in the Middle East 10 years after the
Second Lebanon War and UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1701 which ended
it. A key component of UNSCR 1701 is having the United Nations Interim Force in
Lebanon (UNFIL) assist the Lebanese government in securing its borders against
the entry of weapons to groups which are not part of the Lebanese security
forces, groups such as such as Hezbollah.
In practice, this hasn't happened.
According to the Ambassador, Hezbollah has a larger missile stockpile than all
of the European NATO countries combined. He added that Hezbollah had only 7,000
missiles at the end of the Second Lebanon War when resolution 1701 came into
effect. Today, the terror group now has more than 120,000 missiles pointed at
various population centers around Israel. While presenting a photo of Hezbollah
infrastructure in the Lebanese village of Chakra, Ambassador Dannon said "the
village of Chakra in southern Lebanon has turned into a terror stronghold. One
out of every three buildings has been appropriated by Hezbollah, and includes
rocket launching positions, weapons storage facilities, and more.""Hezbollah
hasn't been stopped," Dannon said, adding, "They chose to establish their firing
positions next to schools and other public buildings, thereby endangering the
innocent civilian population. It is the responsibility of the UN security
council to get Hezbollah out of south Lebanon."
Israel’s UN Ambassador Warns:
Hezbollah Has 120,000 Hidden Missiles — More Than All of NATO
Lea Speyer/algemeiner/July 13/16
Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah has
amassed a larger arsenal of hidden rockets and missiles than all European NATO
allies combined, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations warned on Tuesday.
During a special UN Security Council session on the Middle East — and the
current situation in Lebanon, a decade after the end of the second war in the
country between Israel and Hezbollah — Danny Danon said that the radical Shi’ite
group has 120,000 rockets and missiles, and that “more missiles are hidden
underground in 10,000 square kilometers [of Lebanon] than the above-ground 4
million square kilometers” of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries.
Citing the latest Israeli intelligence assessments, Danon said Hezbollah — which
he called one of the “main causes of instability” in the region — has enhanced
its military capabilities over the last 10 years. When Resolution 1701, which
marked the end of the Second Lebanon War, was adopted, the ambassador said,
Hezbollah was in possession of 7,000 rockets. Today, many times that number are
aimed at Israeli population centers.
In addition, Danon stated, vast areas of southern Lebanon have been transformed
by Hezbollah into “terror outposts.”
Presenting aerial satellite imagery as proof, Danon told the Security Council,
“The village of Shaqra has been turned into a Hezbollah stronghold with one out
of three buildings used for terror activities, including rocket launchers and
arms depots. Hezbollah has placed these positions next to schools and other
public institutions putting innocent civilians in great danger.”
All of this, Danon said, demonstrates that Hezbollah is “committing double war
crimes.”
“They are attacking civilians, and using Lebanese civilians as human shields,”
he said. “We demand the removal of Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon.”
The Israeli ambassador also slammed Iran for its role in supporting terrorism in
the Middle East, calling the Islamic Republic Hezbollah’s “lifeline.”
“It is clear that behind the Ayatollah’s smile campaign, Iran remains a driving
force of terror in the Middle East,” Danon said.
Danon also made clear that should Hezbollah “make the same mistake” it made 10
years ago, Israel will be ready to defend its citizens in the most “forceful”
way possible.
July marks 10 years since the Second Lebanon War, a 34-day military conflict
between Israel and Hezbollah. In August 2006, the Security Council passed
Resolution 1701 — which was approved by the Israeli and Lebanese governments —
that called, in part, for the disarming of Hezbollah.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/07/12/israels-un-ambassador-to-security-council-hezbollah-has-120000-hidden-missiles-more-than-all-of-nato-possesses/
Lack of Quorum Forces New
Postponement of Presidential Vote
Naharnet/July 13/16/Speaker Nabih Berri on Wednesday adjourned a presidential
election session to August 8 due to lack of quorum. “The political decision
blocking the election of a president is still ongoing and history will pin the
blame on those who are obstructing this vote,” March 14 independent MP Butros
Harb told reporters after the fruitless 42nd session.At least 37 MPs had arrived
at the parliament building to take part in the session, according to the
National News Agency. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of
Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, MP Michel Aoun's Change and
Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the electoral
sessions, demanding a prior agreement on the president. Lebanon has been without
a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah,
MP Michel Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been
boycotting the electoral sessions, demanding a prior agreement outside
parliament. Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri, who is close to
Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement
chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with
reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. The
supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than
Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his
bigger influence in the Christian community.
Syrian Refugees Suspected of 'Ties
to Terrorist Groups' Held in Zgharta
Naharnet/July 13/16/The army raided on Wednesday morning Syrian refugee
encampments in the northern areas of Zgharta, Mizyara, Iaal and Kfarzina,
state-run National News Agency reported. Troops arrested 13 Syrians for entering
Lebanon illegally and some of them are suspected of having "ties to terrorist
organizations," NNA said. The country has been on high alert since the
unprecedented suicide bombings that hit the Christian border town of al-Qaa in
late June. Scores of people have been arrested in a major crackdown on Syrian
refugee encampments and gatherings that followed the attacks. Al-Qaa's blasts
occurred after the arrest of several Islamic State-linked cells plotting
bombings in the country and amid a flurry of media reports about possible
attacks during the holy month of Ramadan.
Hizbullah Stresses Support for Aoun
as Ayrault Says Lebanese Must 'Exchange Reassurances'
Naharnet/July 13/16/Hizbullah officials did not hesitate during their meeting
with French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to stress the party's continued
support for Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun's presidential bid,
media reports said on Wednesday. The 70-minute meeting on Tuesday between the
French visitor and Hizbullah's MP Ali Fayyad and International Relations Officer
Ammar al-Moussawi mainly tackled the stalled presidential vote but also touched
on the Syrian refugee crisis and UN Security Council Resolution 1701, sources
close to the conferees told An Nahar newspaper. “Hizbullah clarified its stance
on the presidential elections and explained why it is clinging to the nomination
of General Michel Aoun,” the sources said. “The meeting was characterized with
cordiality, frankness and openness and Ayrault sought to explore the party's
stance while stressing the need for the Lebanese to agree on holding the
presidential vote as soon as possible,” the sources added. Ayrault also noted
that Paris' latest contacts with Tehran were aimed at “creating an atmosphere
that facilitates the stalled presidential election.”He also urged the Lebanese
to “take the initiative and 'Lebanonize' the juncture.”The Hizbullah-affiliated
al-Ahed website meanwhile reported that “Hizbullah's delegation reiterated to
the French minister the party's support for Change and Reform bloc chief MP
Michel Aoun's presidential nomination.”The delegation told Ayrault that Aoun is
“the candidate whose election would benefit Lebanon and be a step towards
achieving stability in the country,” al-Ahed said. But the French FM, according
to media reports, did not comment on Hizbullah's support for Aoun, stressing the
need that the Lebanese “exchange reassurances, especially regarding the
presidential issue.”Asked about these remarks, informed sources told al-Joumhouria
newspaper that Ayrault's statement confirms what had been revealed recently by a
French diplomat. “Ex-PM Saad Hariri said he would accept the election of Aoun as
president if he receives reassurances from Hizbullah, but he was told that he
can take the guarantees from Aoun,” the French diplomat reportedly said, adding
that “Hariri rejected the suggestion and insisted on demanding reassurances from
Hizbullah.”Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel
Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some
of their allies have been boycotting the electoral sessions at parliament,
stripping them of the needed quorum. After a Paris meeting in late 2015 with
Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh, Hariri -- who is close to Saudi
Arabia -- launched an initiative to nominate the Marada leader for the
presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main
Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. The supporters of Aoun's presidential
bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the
size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian
community.
Ayrault Didn't Propose Any 'Presidential
Initiative' during Lebanon Visit
Naharnet/July 13/16/French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault did not carry with
him any “presidential initiative” to Lebanon during his official two-day visit,
media reports said on Wednesday. “As expected, the French minister did not carry
any initiative,” An Nahar newspaper quoted concurring ministerial and
parliamentary sources as saying. “Help yourselves so that we help you,” Ayrault
told most of the officials and leaders whom he met on Monday and Tuesday,
stressing the need for the election of a president, the sources said. The French
“do not have a plan in this regard, despite their latest contacts with Saudi
Arabia and Iran,” An Nahar quoted a senior unnamed official as saying. Ayrault
also told those he met that he has not received any signals from Iran regarding
the stalled presidential vote in Lebanon, the daily said. During the visit, the
French minister urged all Lebanese parties to engage in dialogue to “find a
solution.”“This is a call for everyone to shoulder their responsibilities in
order to find a solution through dialogue,” he said during a dinner banquet on
Monday evening. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel
Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, MP Michel Aoun's Change and Reform
bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the electoral sessions at
parliament, stripping them of the needed quorum. After a Paris meeting in late
2015 with Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh , al-Mustaqbal Movement
leader ex-PM Saad Hariri -- who is close to Saudi Arabia -- launched an
initiative to nominate the Marada leader for the presidency but his proposal was
met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as
Hizbullah. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more
eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary
bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.
Army Shells Militants in Outskirts
of Arsal, Ras Baalbek, al-Qaa
Naharnet/July 13/16/The army fired heavy artillery Wednesday at the posts of the
militant groups in the outskirts of the Bekaa border town of Arsal after
detecting suspicious movements near their positions, state-run National News
Agency reported. It later said that the army had been firing heavy artillery and
multiple rocket launchers since morning at the posts of the militants in the
outskirts of the nearby towns of Ras Baalbek and al-Qaa and that the bombardment
intensified in the afternoon. MTV had earlier reported that the jihadist Islamic
State group suffered casualties after the army fired artillery at IS posts and
movements in the outskirts of Ras Baalbek and al-Qaa. The army has been on high
alert since the unprecedented suicide bombings that hit the Christian border
town of al-Qaa in late June. Militants from the IS and the Qaida-linked al-Nusra
Front are entrenched in rugged areas along the undemarcated Lebanese-Syrian
border and the army regularly shells their posts while Hizbullah and the Syrian
army have engaged in clashes with them on the Syrian side of the border. The two
groups briefly overran the town of Arsal in August 2014 before being ousted by
the army after days of deadly battles. The retreating militants abducted more
than 30 troops and policemen of whom four have been executed and nine remain in
the captivity of the IS group.
Syrian Held for Collaborating with
Syria-Based 'Terrorist Groups'
Naharnet/July 13/16/A Syrian man has been arrested on charges of communicating
and collaborating with Syria-based terrorist groups, General Security announced
on Wednesday.“As part of its surveillance operations and follow-up on the
activities of terrorist groups and their sleeper cells, the General Directorate
of General Security has apprehended a Syrian national for his communication with
terrorist groups,” it said in a statement. “During interrogation, he confessed
to having ties and contacts with terrorist groups and that he was involved in
the activities of providing and transferring arms, ammunition and funds in
Lebanon with the aim of smuggling them into Syria,” General Security added.
“Efforts are underway to arrest the rest of the culprits,” it said. The country
has been on high alert since the unprecedented suicide bombings that hit the
Christian border town of al-Qaa in late June. Scores of people have been
arrested in a major crackdown on Syrian refugee encampments and gatherings that
followed the attacks. Al-Qaa's blasts occurred after the arrest of several
Islamic State-linked cells plotting bombings in the country and amid a flurry of
media reports about possible attacks during the holy month of Ramadan.
Army raid Hosnieh following gunfire
Wed 13 Jul 2016/NNA - A personal dispute erupted between two locals in the Akkar
town of Hosnieh, and soon developed into fire trade, prompting the army to
intervene and effectuate raids in look for shooters, National News Agency
correspondent reported on Wednesday.
Interior Minister
investigates assault against Syrian refugees in Amcheit
Wed 13 Jul 2016/NNA -
Interior and Municipalities Minister, Nouhad Mashnouk, on Wednesday launched an
investigation into a number of stories that have been spread through social
media networks about a number of assaults by municipality police targeting
Syrian refugees in some Lebanese regions, the Minister's information bureau said
in a statement. The Minister duly tasked Mount Lebanon region Commander,
Brigadier Jihad Howayek, to immediately investigate the matter and contacted the
concerned municipality to make sure such incidents will not be repeated. The
Minister also extended a letter to Amcheit municipality head asking him to halt
similar transgressions, warning as well from the mal-use of authority by
municipality police. Mashnouk will be issuing a general statement within the
coming few hours prohibiting and warning municipality police from all sorts of
transgressions under the threat of legal prosecution.
Basbous demands stringent
measures implementing traffic law
Wed 13 Jul 2016/NNA - Internal Security Chief, Major General Ibrahim Basbous,
held a meeting on Wednesday in the presence of security officials during which
he demanded stringent security measures implementing the traffic law all across
Lebanon in an attempt spare more lives from being wasted in road accidents.
Army: Detainee forwarded
before court for belonging to ISIS
Wed 13 Jul 2016/NNA - Army Intelligence forwarded detainee Mohammad Hassan
Haidar before the competent court for belonging to ISIS and planning to attack
army outposts, a communiqué by the Lebanese army indicated on Wednesday.
Civil Defence confirms
control of Beirut Merry forest fire
Wed 13 Jul 2016/NNA - A statement issued by the Civil Defence confirmed on
Wednesday that Beit Merry forest fire is fully under control after extensive
efforts to extinguish the unruly tongues of fire from 1:00 p.m. till 8:00 p.m.
ISF raids residence of
Kartaba shooter
Wed 13 Jul 2016/NNA - The Internal Security Forces raided the residence of
Lebanese national, Gh.Sh.B (born in 1984) after opening fire in Kartaba on the
night of July 10-11, 2016, a statement by the ISF said on Wednesday. A number of
different guns were confiscated from the residence of the arrestee, the ISF
statement added.
Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 12-13/16
UN: Without two-state solution,
Middle East faces 'perpetual violence'
Reuters/Ynetnews/|Published:
13.07.16
UNSCO Nickolay Mladenov said in an interview that two-state solution was more
remote than ever; its alternative is 'perpetual violence'; he assesses little
chance of a quick return to peace talks.A two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more remote than ever, with the risk of
generations of violence and radicalism unless leaders act, United Nations
Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov said on
Wednesday. In his first public comments since the publication on July 1 of a
report by the Quartet of Middle East mediators, Mladenov said the situation was
approaching a point of no return. "(The two-state solution) is perhaps the
furthest away it's ever been, and in fact it is really worse than that—it is
slipping away as we speak," he told Reuters in an interview, citing Israeli
settlement building and Palestinian violence and incitement as among the most
troubling obstacles. "It's time for the international community and the
leadership on both sides to wake up.""The only alternative (to a two-state
solution) that I see is perpetual violence here in Israel and Palestine and
entangling this conflict into the broader problems of the region," he said,
adding it would be akin to "writing a blank check to violence and radicalism"
for generations to come. Since October, Palestinian street attacks have killed
at least 33 Israelis and two visiting Americans. Israel has killed at least 202
Palestinians, 137 of whom it said were assailants. Others were killed during
clashes and protests. In the West Bank on Wednesday, Israeli forces shot dead a
Palestinian who the military said drove a car at high speed at troops during a
raid on a weapons-making workshop. Some members of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's right-wing government openly dismiss the idea of a Palestinian
state, suggesting Israel should annex what is known as Area C of the West Bank,
which makes up over 60 percent of the territory and is where nearly all Israel's
settlements are located. Some others, including President Reuven Rivlin, talk
broadly of a one-state solution, with Israelis and Palestinians living
side-by-side, with equal rights, in a single country, although it is not clear
how Israel would be able to remain both Jewish and democratic in such a set-up.
"Close to day-dreaming"
Mladenov, a former Bulgarian foreign minister who was previously head of the UN
mission in Iraq, said such ideas were a distraction that would harm Israelis and
Palestinians. With much of the Middle East in turmoil, the international
community finds itself pulled in multiple directions, and Mladenov acknowledged
there was a degree of fatigue over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has
consumed diplomats' attention and energy for nearly 70 years.But Mladenov said
it was critical to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian issue so as to avoid a further
deterioration in security across the wider region. "You cannot disengage from it
because it will continue to deteriorate, and it will obviously become entangled
with the rest of the region at some point in the future, which will be extremely
dangerous for everybody," he said. Beyond an end to violence,
settlement-building and land seizures, the first objective should be a return to
direct negotiations, he said.But the prospects are dim, with the last peace
talks held in 2014. The Egyptians, the French and the Quartet—made up of the
United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia—are working to
bring them the sides together but so far without success. "At this stage to say
they will come back to negotiate tomorrow would be close to day-dreaming... The
collapse of trust has been really dramatic," said Mladenov.
IDF bulldozers with tanks enter Golan
DMZDEBKAfile Exclusive Report July 13, 2016, Israeli military bulldozers backed by tanks have crossed into the demilitarized zone dividing the Israeli and Syrian Golan borders. They are building a line of fortifications and anti-tank trenches 300-500 meters inside the DMZ. This is the first time in the six-year Syrian war that the IDF has openly operated on the Syrian side of the border. The force has not so far run into opposition- or indeed any word of protest - or even mention - by Assad regime officials in Damascus. The sole reference to Israeli military movements in the DMZ has come from a small Syrian rebel group which described them. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the IDF operation was still going forward Wednesday, July 12, on a patch of terrain facing the Israeli Golan village of Ein Zivan, on the one hand, and the Syrian town of Quneitra, on the other. The enclave splitting the Golan between Syria and Israel is defined in the 1974 armistice agreements as a demilitarized zone under the military control of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) and Syrian civilian administration. It is bounded by two strips of land around 10km deep where each side is permitted to maintain diluted military strength. No ground-to-air missiles may be deployed inside a 25km radius from the DMZ. It was agreed that Syrian nationals forced by the October 1973 war and its aftermath to leave their homes would be able to return. Ruined Quneitra was later handed back to Syria against a commitment by its government to repopulate the town and ban terrorist activity and infiltrations of Israel from the Golan sector. Both commitments were given orally to the US government. However, the Syrian war as it unfolded in the last two years turned the deal on its head. The UN observers abandoned their posts, leaving behind a void that was partly filled by Syrian troops and a motley assortment of rebel groups. But the DMZ was left mostly unoccupied as both Israel and Syria tried to preserve at least the semblance of the deal intact. However, Assad’s allies Iran and Hizballah have repeatedly attempted to plant a forward military and terrorist presence opposite Israel’s Golan defense lines - with avowed hostile intent. The silence from Damascus on Israel’s military steps on the Golan may be no more than a respite as the Syrian ruler waits for Tehran’s endorsement of joint Syrian-Iranian-Hizballah counteraction. Our sources add that IDF military steps on the ground were accompanied by unusual Israeli Air Force movements over Syria and Lebanon, and elevated preparedness on the 10th anniversary this week of the Lebanon war fought between Hizballah and Israel. It was noted that Hizballah refrained from celebrating the occasion and omitted its customary boasts of a “great victory” – thereby intensifying the sense in Israeli military circles that Iran’s Lebanese proxy may be cooking up a surprise operation.
Iran summons French envoy over Paris
rally
Staff writer, Al Arabiya
English Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Iran’s Foreign Ministry has summoned the French
ambassador over a Paris rally held last weekend by an exiled Iranian opposition
group, the Associated Press reported. The National Council of Resistance of Iran
(NCRI), the parent coalition of the opposition People’s Mujahedeen Organization
of Iran (PMOI), has organized the “Free Iran” rally during last weekend in Paris
with the participation of dozens of thousands of Iranian dissidents. In the
rally, the group denounced the government in Tehran and called for its toppling.
Head of the French-based NCRI, Maryam Rajavi, said Tehran is concealing its
“failure” by supporting “massacres” committed by the Syrian regime during an
indoor rally in Paris. She said “those resisting Wilayat al-Faqih regime are
increasing and spreading their influence.”Wilayat al-Faqih, meaning the
‘Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist’ is Iran’s current system of clerical rule.
The event was attended by my international figures including US diplomats,
European and Arab officials and figures, which showed the "strong global
support" to Iranian opposition's demands, according to Rajavi.
Air strikes kill 11,
including children, in Syria’s Idlib
AFP, Beirut Wednesday, 13 July 2016/At least 11 civilians, including three
children, were killed in air strikes on a rebel-held town in Syria’s
northwestern Idlib province on Wednesday, a monitor said. The Britain-based
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said it was unclear if the strikes
on the town of Ariha in Idlib province were carried out by Syrian government or
Russian war planes. The town is controlled by the Army of Conquest, a rebel
alliance of mainly Islamist groups including ISIS affiliate Al-Nusra Front that
holds almost all of Idlib province. Video uploaded by activists purportedly
showed the aftermath of the strikes, with residents and civil defense workers
picking though debris looking for survivors. Idlib has regularly been targeted
by both Syrian government air strikes and raids carried out by its Russian ally.
A longtime backer of the government in Damascus, Moscow stepped up its support
for President Bashar al-Assad on September 30, when it began an air campaign
aimed at bolstering regime positions. Elsewhere in the country, the Observatory
said at least eight people were killed on Wednesday in the town of Rastan in
central Homs province. Five of them died in air strikes on the town’s market
place, which also wounded dozens of people. Another three were killed in
shelling earlier Wednesday.
Russian jets strike Syrian
refugee camp near Jordan
Suleiman Al-Khalidi, Reuters Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Jets believed to be Russian
on Tuesday struck a refugee camp along Jordan's north-eastern border with Syria,
killing at least 12 people and injuring scores in the first such Russian strike
near the Jordanian border, rebels said. Several jets flying at high altitudes
struck at noon a makeshift camp where a few hundred, mostly women and children,
are stranded in a no-man's-land on the Syrian side of the border, they said. The
Russian Defense Ministry was not immediately available for comment. Said Seif
al-Qalamoni, a rebel spokesman in a brigade that belongs to the Western-backed
Free Syrian Army (FSA), said the raids were close to the Hadalat refugee camp,
one of two large camps in the area. A senior Western diplomat confirmed the
incident and said initial information was that several Russian jets conducted
the raids. If confirmed, these would be the closest aerial strikes by Moscow
along the Jordanian border since the start of the Kremlin's major aerial bombing
campaign last September in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against
insurgents battling to topple his rule. Staunch US ally Jordan has stepped up
coordination with Moscow to ensure its military campaign in southern Syria does
not target moderate rebel groups aligned on the so-called Southern Front that a
coalition of Western and Arab countries support. Their backing is part of a
strategy of ensuring opposition-held southern Syria does not fall into the hands
of radical jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda's Nusra and ISIS. At least 40
people, mostly women and children, were injured in the strike. Jordanian army
troops on the border helped rush the injured to hospitals inside the country, a
Jordanian source said. Among the casualties were fighters from Asoud al Sharqiya,
a rebel group that is fighting ISIS militants and part of a group of moderate
rebels financed and equipped by a Western-backed military operations room based
in Amman, another rebel source said. The camp mostly housed these fighters'
families. The desolate strip, close to where the borders of Iraq, Syria and
Jordan meet, has two major camps with a population of at least 60,000 people who
have been stranded there since fleeing central and eastern Syria. Jordanian
authorities bar their entry into the country on security grounds. The kingdom
declared its border area a closed military zone after a suicide bomber, believed
to be an Islamic State militant, last month drove from the Syrian side near one
of the two camps and rammed the vehicle into a Jordanian military base, killing
seven border guards. The refugees have been running out of food since the
Jordanian army sealed the area, international relief workers and refugees said
last month.
US-backed rebels based in the Syrian border town of al-Tanf, further north-east,
periodically clash with Islamic State militants who have a presence in the vast
sparsely populated south-eastern Syria desert. The rebel base in al-Tanf was hit
twice last month by Russian air strikes, even after the US military used
emergency channels to ask Moscow to stop after the first strike, US officials
said.
Turkey hints at normalization
of ties with Syria
AP, Istanbul Wednesday, 13
July 2016/Turkey’s prime minister suggested on Wednesday his country wants to
normalize ties with Syria in what would mark an about-turn in policy amid a
broad diplomatic offensive. Binali Yildirim said in a televised address
Wednesday that Turkey is expanding its circle of friends, adding: “I am sure
that we will return (our) ties with Syria to normal. We need it.” The statement
follows the restoration of diplomatic ties with Russia and Israel. Ankara cut
ties with Syrian President Bashar Assad after a popular uprising erupted in
2011. The Turkish government has consistently cast the departure of Assad, who
enjoys the backing of Iran and Russia, as necessary for a successful political
resolution to the conflict in Syria. Turkey, which borders Syria, is now is home
2.75 million Syrian refugees. It has served as a base to political
representatives of the Syrian opposition and various rebel groups seeking to
unseat Assad. Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that
the path to Turkish citizenship would be open to Syrians who meet several
criteria including having no links to terror groups. Turkey’s war on terrorism
is primarily focused on Kurdish militants - which Ankara considers a threat in
both the Syrian and Turkish context - as well as ISIS.
Cairo agrees to most of
Moscow’s demands on aviation safety
Staff writer, Al Arabiya English Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Egypt has fulfilled 85
per cent of the Russian demands with regard to aviation safety in order to
resume flights, said Ali Abdel Aal, Egyptian parliament Speaker, on Wednesday.
According to Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, Abdel Aal said this at the meeting with
Valentina Matvienko, Speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament. Abdel Aal
added that Egypt was now expecting from the Russian side to reciprocate. “It
would be a great sign, if flights between Moscow and Cairo resumed,” he said. He
also informed that Egypt's prosecutor general is expected to visit Moscow in the
end of July to discuss aviation security issues in the Arab country. Egyptian
tourism has suffered after a number of countries, including Russia and the
United Kingdom, suspended flights to Egypt following the Airbus A321 crash on
October 31, killing 224 people. The Russian air carrier Kogalymavia crashed in
the Sinai Peninsula while heading to St. Petersburg from the Egyptian resort
city of Sharm el-Sheikh. Russia's probe panel officially classified the plane
crash as a terrorist attack. On Tuesday, Egypt’s state statistics body CAPMAS
said The number of tourists who visited Egypt in May dropped by 51.7 per cent
compared to the same month during the previous year. May saw 432,000 tourists,
down from around 895,000 tourists in May 2015. The decrease has largely been due
to a 61 per cent drop in incoming Russian tourists.
Egypt orders Muslim preachers
to deliver identical weekly sermons
Reuters, Cairo Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Egyptian authorities said on Tuesday
Muslim clerics would be required to read out identical pre-written weekly
sermons as part of the government’s campaign against extremism, drawing angry
criticism from some preachers.
The ministry of religious endowments has since 2014 been providing imams with
topics for their sermons at Friday prayers but the latest move confines
preachers across the country to reading from the same script. “No one disagreed
during the meeting (of officials on Tuesday) and all the undersecretaries
received the new instructions on pre-written unified sermons without incident,”
said the ministry’s First Undersecretary for Qalyubiya province Sabry Dowaidar.
“The minister (Mohamed Gomaa) said he would start with himself and deliver the
pre-written sermon (in a mosque) next Friday.”An undersecretary from a different
province who requested anonymity said the sermons would be written by ministry
officials and senior clerics from Al-Azhar, the 1,000-year-old center of Islamic
learning in Cairo. Members of parliament on the House Committee on Religious
Affairs would contribute too, as would sociologists and psychologists. Officials
say the move will force preachers to stick to a suitable time limit and ensure
they do not “lose their train of thought.”
Opposition
Several preachers voiced anger at the move, saying it would prevent talented
preachers from shining and that different communities had different issues of
interest that needed to be discussed in the mosque. “Everywhere in Egypt, every
city or village, has different circumstances. A certain village might have a
robbery problem and so the sermon should talk about thievery. Another place
might have widespread murder and that is what should be discussed,” said
Abdelsalam Mahmoud, an imam at a mosque in the southern city of Luxor. President
Abdelfattah al-Sisi, who came to power after leading the military overthrow of
an Islamist president, has made “reforming religious discourse” and combating
extremism a priority. He sees militant Islamism as an existential threat. In
2013 the religious endowments ministry fired 55,000 preachers not authorised by
Al-Azhar, shortly after the military ousted the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed
Mursi from the presidency, following mass protests against his rule. The
preachers were accused of inciting violence and spreading extremist views and
supporting the Brotherhood, the world’s oldest Islamist movement. The government
does not differentiate between groups like the Brotherhood, which says it is
peaceful, and ISIS which is mounting an insurgency in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula
and has killed hundreds of soldiers and police.
Unprecedented spike’ in Egypt
forced disappearances
AFP Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Egypt’s police have been implicated in an
“unprecedented spike” in enforced disappearances since early 2015 aimed at
quashing dissent, Amnesty International said in a report Wednesday. “Enforced
disappearance has become a key instrument of state policy in Egypt. Anyone who
dares to speak out is at risk,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s Middle East and
North Africa director. The London-based human rights group said abuses had
surged since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in 2013 and
unleashed a crackdown on Islamist and secular dissidents. Children were among
those being kept at undisclosed locations for up to several months at a time “to
intimidate opponents and wipe out peaceful dissent,” the report said. The report
documents 17 cases, including five children, who had disappeared for periods of
“between several days to seven months,” according to the statement. One of them,
Mazen Mohamed Abdallah, who was 14 in September, had been subjected to
“horrendous abuse” including “being repeatedly raped with a wooden stick in
order to extract a false ‘confession’,” Amnesty said. Another child of the same
age when arrested in January, Aser Mohamed, “was beaten, given electric shocks
all over his body and suspended from his limbs in order to extract a false
‘confession’,” said the rights watchdog. Egyptian authorities have denied they
practice torture, but say there have been isolated incidents of abuse and those
responsible have been prosecuted. The National Council for Human Rights, the
country’s official rights watchdog, said on July 3 it had raised 266 cases of
enforced disappearances with the interior ministry between April 2015 and end of
March. Many of them have since been accounted for.
Saudi Arabia says guard
killed by land mine on Yemen border
The Associated Press, Riyadh Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Saudi Arabia's Interior
Ministry says a border guard has been killed by a land mine near the kingdom's
frontier with war-ravaged Yemen. An Interior Ministry statement issued late on
Tuesday says the guard died in the Saudi province of Jazan, along the
mountainous border the kingdom shares with Yemen. The statement did not say who
laid the land mine. However, such bombings have been routine since a Saudi-led
coalition began a war in March 2015 against Yemen's Shiite militias known as
Houthis.
Saudi envoy in Iraq asked
Baghdad for armored vehicles but still waiting
Staff writer, Al Arabiya English Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Saudi ambassador to
Iraq has asked Baghdad for more protection, including the provision of armored
vehicles, after receiving threats but so far his embassy has not been given any,
the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Wednesday. “We requested the Iraqi
authorities to take all procedures to ensure protection,” Thamer al-Sabhan told
Ashraq Al-Awsat, after what he described as threats coming from political
quarters linked to Iran but he did not give any names. Sabhan also rejected an
allegation that he visited Saudi prisoners who were ISIS militants and that he
had promised they would be released. “This is false” information, he said. There
are about 70 Saudis in Iraqi prisons, he said, adding “it is our duty [to visit
Saudi prisoners] and know their situation as per international agreements.”“Not
all Saudis are linked to terrorism, and whoever is proved to be participating in
such acts -- not permissible by the Kingdom -- must be given a fair trial. They
[prisoners] have human rights, just like Iraq has the right in implementing its
laws,” he added.
Iraqi forces tighten noose
around ISIS militants in Mosul
Reuters, Baghdad Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Iraqi government forces advancing on
the ISIS-held city of Mosul retook a village from the militants on Tuesday and
linked up along the Tigris river with army units pushing from a separate
direction, Defence Minister Khalid al-Obeidi said. The territorial gain, which
followed the recapture of a key air base nearby at the weekend, further isolated
Mosul in preparation for a government assault to recover Iraq's second largest
city 60 km to the north. "Forces from the 9th Armored Division and the
counter-terrorism service liberated Ajhala village north of Qayara base," Obeidi
said on Twitter. "Our heroes arrived at the riverbank and made contact with
Nineveh Liberation Operation units," he added, referring to troops who had set
out from Makhmour, 25 km east of the Tigris, in March. The newly retaken
territory still needs to be secured since ISIS insurgents remain holed up in
several towns behind the government's front line, a military spokesman said.
Backed by air support from a US-led military coalition, government forces on
Saturday regained Qayara air base, which is to be turned into a logistics hub
for the main assault on Mosul. On Monday, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter
announced the dispatch of 560 additional soldiers to Iraq, most of whom will
work from Qayara to assist the Iraqi thrust towards Mosul. Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi has pledged to retake the city, the largest still held by ISIS, by
year-end, but there is still debate in Washington about the timing of any move.
Suicide bombings like the one in Baghdad on July 3 that killed nearly 300
people, one of the largest attacks since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam
Hussein 13 years ago, suggest the group could remain a long-term threat. ISIS
claimed another car bomb on Wednesday in Baghdad's northern outskirts that left
nine people dead, according to medical and security sources. On Wednesday,
Abadi's government urged the postponing of demonstrations called for by powerful
Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr later this week to pressure political
leaders to implement long-promised reforms. A statement from Abadi warned the
protests could land the country in "chaos ... and end up serving the goals of
the enemy and its terrorism". Sadr, whose supporters twice stormed Baghdad's
heavily fortified Green Zone earlier this year, called for a reprieve from
protests during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week.
Kurdish militant commander fighting Iran
calls for Saudi assistance
Now Lebanon/July 13/16/BEIRUT – A top Kurdish insurgent commander in Iran has entreated Riyadh to
assist the restive minority community, days after Saudi Arabia’s former
intelligence chief addressed an Iranian opposition party and voiced his support
for overthrowing the clerical regime.Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) deputy chief
Hussein Yazdanpana—the leader of the faction’s armed wing—called on “the
international community, [especially] Saudi Arabia, to help the Kurds in Iran,”
in comments carried Tuesday by ARA News. “We, the Kurds, can put an end to
Iran’s interference in the region,” the militant commander said, days after his
group claimed credit for an ambush that injured an Iranian parliamentarian and
governor near the Iraqi border, the latest attack against the ruling authorities
in the restive region. “We can transfer the fight to their backyard so the
Iranian enemy will be preoccupied with internal issues and stop meddling in the
affairs of countries in the region,” Yazdanpana added. The Kurdish insurgent
leader’s call follows an address Saturday by Prince Turki al-Faisal in which the
former Saudi General Intelligence director told a conference of the Iranian
Mojahedin-e-Khalq opposition party that he wants “the downfall of the Iranian
regime.” Top Iranian officials reacted angrily to the speech, saying that Prince
Turki’s comments in Paris showed that his country was supporting terrorism in
Iran. On June 20, a highly-influential Iranian security official implicitly
accused Riyadh of backing Kurdish militants near the country’s border with Iraq.
Mohsen Rezaee, the secretary of the powerful Expediency Discernment Council,
claimed that Saudi Arabia dispatched “two terror cells” to Iranian Kurdistan,
but boasted that its members “were all killed.”Rezaee’s comments came in
reference to a mid-June clash with group of fighters from the Democratic Party
of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), which for its part denied that it had any contacts
with Saudi Arabia, although an official in the group said it was “open to talk”
with Riyadh.
Unrest grows in Kurdish Iran
Yazdanpana’s fiery comments come amid a dramatic rise in violence in western
Iran’s Kurdish populated regions, which has seen the PDKI and other armed groups
stage a number of attacks in recent weeks. In the latest incident on July 10, an
Iranian parliamentarian and local governor escaped with their lives after gunmen
opened fire on their convoy as it traveled near the Dalahu area near Iran’s
border with Iraq. The PAK claimed credit for the attack, which came on the heels
of fierce clashes in late June between fighters of another Kurdish insurgent
group, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), and Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Mahabad area of northwest Iran, the site of a
self-declared independent Kurdish republic in 1946. The PDKI also engaged in
fighting with the IRGC in nearby town of Oshnavieh (Shno in the Kurdish
language) on June 16, claiming that it killed dozens of Iranian troops, while
Tehran admitted that five of its soldiers died in clashes that killed “terrorist
groups” trying to infiltrate the country. The PDKI—a left-wing Kurdish
nationalist group formed in 1945—announced on February 26 that it was restarting
its “armed resistance against the Islamic Republic of Iran” and claimed an
attack against a Basij base in the village of Majid Khan. The group waged a
deadly insurgency against Iranian authorities from 1989 to 1996, after which it
maintained a peaceful policy until it purportedly engaged Iranian troops in the
fall of 2015. The PAK, for its part, announced in late April that it too was
resuming its armed operations in Iran. NOW's English news desk editor Albin
Szakola (@AlbinSzakola) wrote this report. Amin Nasr translated Arabic-language
material.
Kurdistan Freedom Party military commander Hussein Yazdanpana. (image via
sdusyria.org)We, the Kurds, can put an end to Iran’s interference in the region.
ISIS suicide bomber
kills four at Iraq checkpoint
AFP, Baghdad Wednesday, 13 July 2016/A suicide bomber detonated an
explosives-rigged vehicle at a checkpoint near Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at
least four people, officials said, an attack claimed by ISIS. The bombing at a
checkpoint leading to the Husseiniyah area, northeast of the capital, also
wounded 21 people, the officials said. ISIS issued a statement saying an Iraqi
carried out a suicide bombing targeting a checkpoint, but gave the location of
the attack as Shaab, an area adjoining Husseiniyah.The blast is the latest in a
series of deadly attacks in and around Baghdad, including a bombing in a crowded
shopping district on July 3 that killed 292 people, one of the deadliest ever to
hit Iraq. A few days later, militants attacked a Shiite shrine in Balad, north
of Baghdad, killing 40 people, and on Tuesday, a suicide bomber struck a market
near the capital, killing at least seven people. ISIS overran large areas north
and west of Baghdad in 2014, but has since lost significant ground to Iraqi
forces backed by US-led air strikes, training and other assistance. The Sunni
extremist group has responded to the battlefield setbacks by striking civilians,
particularly Shiites, and experts have warned there may be more bombings as the
militants continue to lose ground.
Iraq calls for demonstrations
reprieve over security concerns
AFP, Baghdad Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Iraq’s government called Tuesday for a
reprieve in protests, saying demonstrations would distract security forces,
disrupt plans to push ISIS back and ultimately aid the extremists. The appeal
was issued a day after powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a
“massive” protest on Friday in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square to push for “true and
real reform”. “The cabinet calls on the sons of our people to carry their
historic responsibilities in supporting the armed forces, and postpone the
protests,” said Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office. Protesters should stay
home “to spare the country falling into chaos and the increase of challenges and
the distraction of the security effort,” it said in a statement. It said related
problems would “disrupt liberation plans and lead to serving the goals of the
enemy and his terrorism”. Abadi made a similar call in May during the country’s
operation to retake the city of Fallujah from ISIS, which overran large areas
north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but it was ignored. Instead, thousands of
demonstrators turned out and attempted to head to Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone
area, and security forces sought to disperse them with tear gas. Sadr has called
for a government of technocrats to replace the current party-affiliated
ministers - a measure earlier proposed by Abadi - and has organized
demonstrations calling for that change. His supporters have breached the Green
Zone, where the government is headquartered, multiple times during Friday
protests. The cleric ordered a halt to demonstrations during the holy Muslim
fasting month of Ramadan, saying they would resume after its completion. Abadi
first called for a cabinet including technocrats in February, but has faced
significant opposition from powerful political forces that rely on control of
ministries for patronage and funds. Some of Abadi’s cabinet nominees were
approved in April, but in a blow to the premier, a court later scrapped the
session, from which some lawmakers who sought to disrupt it were barred from
attending.
France shuts missions in
Turkey until further notice
AFP, Ankara Wednesday, 13 July 2016/France on Wednesday said it had closed its
embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara and its consulate in Istanbul until
further notice for security reasons, after cancelling events to mark the July 14
Bastille Day holiday. “The Embassy of France in Ankara, as well as the Consulate
General in Istanbul will be closed from Wednesday July 13, 1:00 pm until further
notice,” the embassy said in a statement after scrapping the July 14 receptions
at the missions on security grounds. It did not give any further details on how
the closure would be implemented. France’s consulate in Istanbul, its embassy in
Ankara and its mission in the Aegean city of Izmir were all to have held
celebrations marking the July 14 Bastille Day. French consul to Istanbul Muriel
Domenach wrote on Twitter the events in all three cities had been cancelled “for
security reasons” and France was in touch with the Turkish authorities. Earlier,
the Istanbul consulate had sent an email message to French citizens in Turkey
saying there had been “concurring information of a serious threat against the
organization of the July 14 celebrations in Turkey”. It said the decision had
been taken in coordination with the Turkish authorities.
High security
Turkey is on a high security alert following the June 28 attack on Istanbul’s
main airport which was blamed on ISIS and killed 47 people. Thirty-seven
suspects have been placed under arrest over suspicion of involvement in the
attacks. Of these, 15 are Turks and 22 foreigners, according to official media.
Authorities have said a number of citizens of ex-Soviet republics are among the
suspects, raising concerns over the threat to Turkey from Islamist militancy in
the Central Asia and the Northern Caucasus. But of seven suspects arrested
earlier this week, three are Algerian, two Tunisian and two Egyptian, the
state-run Anadolu Agency said. The bombing at Ataturk International Airport in
Istanbul followed a spate of attacks across the country this year blamed on ISIS
and Kurdish militants. Several foreign missions in Turkey, including the
embassies and consulates of Germany and the United States, have closed for short
periods this year due to a security threat.
Israel border police kill
Palestinian in West Bank
AFP, Jerusalem Wednesday, 13 July 2016/An Israeli border policeman shot dead one
Palestinian and wounded another in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday when they
drove towards officers, an army spokeswoman said. The officers had been carrying
out a search operation in Al-Ram, northeast of Jerusalem, during which they
uncovered an arms workshop, when they spotted the vehicle coming towards them,
the spokeswoman said. One of the border policemen, who "felt in danger", opened
fire, she added. A third Palestinian in the vehicle was arrested. Israeli
security forces have launched a major crackdown on underground arms workshops in
the West Bank, closing 16 since the start of the year, a senior army officer
said on Tuesday. A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories
since October last year has killed at least 215 Palestinians, 34 Israelis, two
Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese. Most of the Palestinians killed were
carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli
authorities. Others were shot dead during protests and clashes, while some were
killed by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.
Bahrain arrests suspects
linked to Iran in bombing that killed woman
Staff writer, Al Arabiya English Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Bahrain has arrested
two suspects on charges of planting a bomb that killed a Bahraini woman last
month and of having links with Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The two men were
said to have received training and support from Iran, a statement from the
Bahrain News Agency read. Authorities also identified a third suspect in the
blast but said he had fled to Iran. According to the statement, the first
suspect received military training on the manufacture and use of weapons and
explosives by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. [The second] traveled to Iran
and received military training in the assembly of explosives, planting of bombs
and the use of weapons (RPG and Kalashnikovs).” The blast occurred on a road as
the woman passed in her car in the village of East Eker, south of the capital
Manama, on June 30. Shrapnel from the bomb penetrated her head causing her to
crash her car into an iron barrier in the middle of the road. Three of her
children who were with her in the car were injured. A second civilian car,
nearby shops and both public and private property were also damaged as a result
of the blast.
Arab nations seek to block
Quartet report at UN
AFP, United Nations Wednesday, 13 July 2016/Arab nations are calling on the UN
Security Council not to endorse a report aimed at reviving the Middle East peace
process that the Palestinians see as biased in favor of Israel, the Palestinian
envoy said Tuesday. The report by the Middle East quartet - the European Union,
Russia, the United Nations and the United States - calls on Israel to halt
settlement expansion and the Palestinians to stop inciting violence. Arab
diplomats agreed during a recent meeting to try to block any move by the council
to adopt a US-drafted statement backing the long-awaited report’s
recommendations, Riyad Mansour told reporters. Egypt, which represents the Arab
group on the council, was told “not to allow a statement to be adopted welcoming
and endorsing the recommendations,” Mansour said as the council met to discuss
the report. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the council to throw its
weight behind the quartet’s findings despite strong resistance from Israel and
the Palestinians. Israel has rejected the quartet’s criticism of settlement
construction while the Palestinians argue that the report failed to single out
Israeli policies as the leading cause of the violence.The report’s findings and
recommendations are supposed to serve as the basis for reviving the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process that has been comatose since a US initiative
collapsed in April 2014. The Palestinian envoy suggested that recommendations
concerning Israeli settlements were watered down in the final draft of the
report by a “very powerful” member of the quartet, in a reference to the United
States. Mansour said this was done to undermine a French initiative to hold an
international peace conference later this year and to ensure that “the end
result would be Israel is gaining and nothing will happen.”The Palestinians want
the Security Council to “take note” of the report and welcome French and
Egyptian initiatives to revive peace talks but it must not endorse it, said the
envoy.
Iran regime hangs nine collectively
Wednesday, 13 July 2016/NCRI - Iran's fundamentalist regime hanged nine
prisoners collectively on Wednesday in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, north-west of
Tehran. Three of the executed prisoners were identified as Seyyed Mohammad
Taheri, Amir Khadem Rezaiyan and Saeid Ahmadi. The victims had been transferred
to solitary confinement in the days prior to their execution. More than 270
Members of the European Parliament signed a joint statement on Iran last month,
calling on the European Union to “condition” its relations with Tehran to an
improvement of human rights.
The MEPs who were from all the EU Member States and from all political groups in
the Parliament said they are concerned about the rising number of executions in
Iran after Hassan Rouhani took office as President three years ago. Amnesty
International in its April 6 annual Death Penalty report covering the 2015
period wrote: "Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to at
least 743 the year before." "Iran alone accounted for 82% of all executions
recorded" in the Middle East and North Africa, the human rights group said.
There have been more than 2,400 executions during Hassan Rouhani’s tenure as
President. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation
in Iran in March announced that the number of executions in Iran in 2015 was
greater than any year in the last 25 years. Rouhani has explicitly endorsed the
executions as examples of “God’s commandments” and “laws of the parliament that
belong to the people.
U.S. General: Iran regime
hasn't changed its behavior a year after nuclear deal
Wednesday, 13 July 2016/NCRI/Two days before the anniversary of the landmark
nuclear agreement reached between the Iranian regime and six world powers led by
the United States, a top U.S. military commander says Tehran has not changed its
behavior, as five Iranian patrol boats took turns shadowing a U.S. Navy warship
he was visiting in the Persian Gulf. Army General Joseph Votel, who leads U.S.
Central Command, said while the deal has frozen the Iranian regime’s nuclear
weapons program for a time, the activities of the regime's Revolutionary Guard
forces still concern him in the Persian Gulf and beyond. Among those activities:
capturing 10 U.S. Navy sailors at gunpoint when their vessels drifted into
Iranian territorial waters in January. “Their general activities that we see out
here in the Gulf have not changed as a result of the [nuclear agreement]... and
really as we’ve seen much more broadly around the region,” Votel said. He spoke
to a small group of reporters during a visit aboard USS New Orleans (LPD-18) in
the Persian Gulf as the amphibious ship transited the Strait of Hormuz,
FoxNews.com reported on Tuesday. The 684-foot warship was leaving the Persian
Gulf with a crew of 1,100 including 650 Marines, following nearly five months of
operations during a planned seven-month deployment. Votel said the Iranian
regime should be taken to task for capturing the Navy sailors before releasing
them a day later. “I think they should be held accountable for the way they
conducted themselves,” Votel said, but he added that it was not up to him to
determine what that punishment should be.Had the roles been reversed, the
outcome would have been very different, Votel said. “If we came across a
[disabled] ship, a small vessel in the area, we would try to assist it, we
certainly wouldn’t board it against their will.”A U.S. Navy investigation
recently determined that Tehran violated international law for its actions in
subduing the American crew. During the general’s visit to USS New Orleans, five
Iranian patrol craft approached the ship. The Iranian vessels included one
Houdong-class missile boat, identified by U.S. Navy sailors as P313-6 Shams,
capable of launching four anti-ship missiles or firing its two 30 mm cannons.
Three other Iranian patrol boats had .50 cal machine guns mounted as well as two
rows of multiple rocket launchers.The missile boat sailed within 500 yards of
the U.S. ship.Lt. Forrest Griggs, an operations officer, said one of the Iranian
patrol boats raced up and cut its engines near the USS New Orleans' escort ship,
USS Stout, a guided-missile destroyer."I would prefer they not cut in front of
our vessels," he said. Similar Iranian warships launched unguided rockets 1,500
yards from the American aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in December --
also during a transit of the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. Navy ships cross the strait
250 times a year. 90 percent of those transits are “characterized as safe,”
According to Cmdr. Bill Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet,
responsible for maritime operations in the Persian Gulf. It’s those other 10
percent of Iranian interactions with U.S. Navy warships that have Votel
concerned. “In a relatively compressed space here, there is great opportunity
for miscalculation,” the general said. “Our people don’t always have a lot of
time to deal with those interactions, what we have probably learned here today
is that it’s measured in minutes.” Urban says the U.S. Navy has rendered
assistance to four Iranian-flagged vessels in the last two months, 11 since
2012. Appearing before the Senate Armed Service Committee in March, Votel told
lawmakers the United States should “expose” the Iranian regime for the
destabilizing role it was playing in the Middle East. When asked about those
comments Monday aboard USS New Orleans, Votel said: “Iran has to be held
accountable for the type of influence they are trying to create, whether it is
instability in Yemen, whether it is their backing of the Syrian regime, who
attacks their own people who drops barrel bombs on them... [and] causing
significant refugee problems.” The Iranian regime tried illegally to obtain
nuclear equipment in the months after the nuclear agreement was reached last
year, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing German intelligence officials. In
January, the U.S. and European Union lifted some sanctions against Tehran as
part of the deal. When asked if the Iranian regime had been held accountable for
taking the U.S. Navy sailors hostage, Votel said, “I don’t think so.”
Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 12-13/16
Where does Britain’s new prime
minister stand on the Middle East?
Alex Rowell/Now
Lebanon/July 13/16
Former Home Secretary Theresa May arrives at Downing Street Wednesday as a
mostly unknown quantity on foreign policy
British Home Secretary Theresa May walking to attend a cabinet meeting at 10
Downing Street in central London on June 27, 2016
It may be many decades now since Britain was the vast empire on which the sun
never set (and, as someone would later add, the blood never dried), but Her
Majesty’s chastened government today still retains something of an outsize
influence on global affairs, thanks to its permanent seat on the UN Security
Council, its economy (the world’s fifth-largest, at least until Brexit hammered
the pound), its army and its ‘special relationship’ with the superpower that
succeeded it on the other side of the Atlantic.
As such, the change of residents at 10 Downing Street today has at least the
potential to make some difference to lives around the world; perhaps nowhere
more so than in the Middle East, where Britain does billions of dollars in
business – and has waged at least three distinct military campaigns in the past
decade (including one, against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, that remains underway).
As David Cameron’s former Home Secretary Theresa May replaces him as prime
minister and head of the Conservative party, NOW poses the question of what her
Middle East foreign policy views or vision may be.
The short answer is she doesn’t really have any. Throughout her 19-year
political career, her focus has been more or less exclusively domestic –
fitting, perhaps, for the longest-serving home secretary (Britain’s equivalent
of an interior minister) in over half a century. Often described as
non-ideological, her few public pronouncements on international affairs have not
articulated any cohesive or undergirding philosophy. In the reams of profiles
hastily put together by the British press since her promotion was guaranteed
Monday, practically nothing has been said about her foreign policy orientation.
“She shows no special signs of interest in the [Middle East] region,” said Kyle
Orton, Research Fellow at the London-based Henry Jackson Society (and occasional
NOW contributor).
Which is not to say she’s been absent altogether from foreign policy
decision-making. In fact, as an MP May voted consistently in favor of every
military endeavor proposed since 2003, including that year’s invasion of Iraq;
the 2011 Libya intervention; strikes in 2013 against the Syrian regime for its
use of chemical weapons (which failed to win overall parliamentary approval);
and the 2014 and 2015 air campaigns against ISIS in Iraq and Syria,
respectively. To what extent these votes were based on robust interventionist
convictions, as opposed to simple loyalty to the party line, however, is
unclear.
“I think […] it's not a particular commitment” to military intervention, Orton
told NOW. “She just didn't feel strongly enough either way to defy the whips.”
Still, in a speech at last year’s Conservative party conference, May may have
given a rare glimpse into her personal thinking on Syria. Calling it “a civil
war that exceeds even the other conflicts of the Middle East in its barbarism,
brutality and bloodshed,” she said, “Bashar al Assad’s forces are committing war
crimes on an industrial scale, deliberately targeting civilians and poisoning
their own citizens with chemical weapons,” while ISIS “is engaged in a program
of ethnic cleansing, mass murder of enemy soldiers, systematized rape and sexual
violence, kidnappings and murder.”
“The other players in this appalling civil war,” she continued, “include
Hezbollah, Al Nusra Front – a jihadist group affiliated to Al Qaeda – and
several other jihadist militias [who] in turn are often backed by powerful
foreign sponsors,” naming Iran and Russia, “whose warplanes are engaged in
airstrikes against civilians and anti-government fighters,” as the prime backers
of the Assad regime.
True to official policy, though, May no longer advocated military action against
Assad, saying, “it is too simplistic to say that there is a single intervention
which will bring a sudden end to the fighting.” Instead, “the states that
sponsor the different armies and militias” should be brought “around the
negotiating table,” with airstrikes reserved exclusively for the “terrorists” of
ISIS.
“Terrorism,” indeed, may be the one foreign policy front on which May can claim
some bona fide expertise. The few physical encounters she’s had with the Middle
East have been largely concerned with militant jihadism – much like her tenure
as home secretary, during which she nominally headed MI5, among other security
agencies. In 2012, she flew to Jordan to negotiate the deportation from Britain
of high-profile Jordanian Salafist Abu Qatada al-Filastini. And in 2015, she
visited Tunisia days after a jihadist attack on a tourist resort in Sousse
killed 30 Britons.
Elsewhere, the instincts of the candidate dubbed the “safe pair of hands” are
likely to see her maintain ties with Britain’s existing allies in the Gulf and
Israel. In 2014 she signed a confidential, still-opaque security cooperation
agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef during an
unannounced visit to the Kingdom. She also visited Qatar the same year, where
she reportedly discussed trade and security with officials including Sheikh
Abdallah bin Khalifa al-Thani. Israeli newspapers from Haaretz to the Jerusalem
Post have already hailed her as a “friend of Israel,” pointing to her 2014 visit
to the country after which she pledged to “always defend Israel’s right to
defend itself” (while also – again, following the Foreign Office script –
adding, “there will be no lasting peace or justice in the region until the
Palestinian people are able to enjoy full civil rights”).
All in all, foreign policy doesn’t look to be an area where Prime Minister May
will make her mark. Still, foreign leaders should perhaps think twice before
testing her. While Conservative party veteran Kenneth Clarke disparaged her last
week as someone who “doesn’t know much about foreign affairs,” he also described
her as “a bloody difficult woman” to deal with.To which an unruffled May
responded: “The next person to find that out will be [European Commission
President] Jean-Claude Juncker.”
When Muslims Kill Muslims, They Can
Still Act in the Name of Islam
Raymond Ibrahim/PJ Media/July 13/16
https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2016/07/11/when-muslims-kill-muslims-they-can-still-act-in-the-name-of-islam/?singlepage=true
In light of the recent terrorist attacks in Muslim nations, the argument is
again being made that, say what they will, the terrorists are obviously not
acting in the name of Islam—a religion which bans the indiscriminate slaughter
of fellow Muslims.
Yet is it that simple? Since the Medieval era, Islamic clerics have justified
the killing of other Muslims—intentionally, for they’re not “real” Muslims
(e.g., Shias), or unintentionally, as collateral damage (who become “martyrs”
and receive Islam’s highest paradisiacal rewards)—in the name of jihad.
Dhaka bakery
Even so, it’s clear that, whenever they can, the jihadis do make an effort to
preserve the lives of Muslims. This was the case in the recent terror attack in
Muslim-majority Bangladesh. On July 1, 2016, six Islamic militants shouting
Islam’s ancient war cry opened fire on a bakery in Dhaka, the nation’s capital.
The assailants entered the Bakery with crude bombs, machetes, pistols, and took
several dozen hostages. In the end, 28 people were killed, but not as
indiscriminately as would seem. According to one survivor, speaking on condition
of anonymity:
They burst [into] the restaurant firing their weapons and I could hear them
shouting Allahu Akbar. They took me and two of my colleagues and forced us to
sit on chairs, with our heads down on the table. They asked me whether I was a
Muslim. As I said yes, they said they wouldn’t harm or kill any Muslims. They
will only kill the non-Muslims. All the time I prayed to Allah, keeping my head
down. Several times I vomited…. They said they had no intention of hurting us as
we were Muslims.
Similarly, Rezaul Karim, the father of Hasnat Karim, one of the hostages who
spent 10 hours with the gunmen and lived to tell about it, relayed his son’s
experience: “The gunmen were doing a background check on religion by asking
everyone to recite from the Quran. Those who could recite a verse or two were
spared. The others were tortured.”
In fact, the Muslim hostages were treated well and exhorted to uphold their
Islam: “They (gunmen) did not behave rough with the Bangladesh nationals [i.e.,
Muslims],” Reazul said, based on his eyewitness son’s testimony: “Rather they
provided [Ramadan] night meals for all Bangladeshis.”
According to the other rescued hostage speaking on condition of anonymity:
Late in the night, they asked us whether we were fasting as it’s Ramadan. We
said yes and they brought some food for us so we could eat before daybreak….
When they realised that troops might storm the building, they came to our room
one last time and told us not to tarnish the name of Islam, be a good Muslim and
uphold the pride of Islam.
Not only are these experiences telling, but separating Muslims from non-Muslims
during a jihadi attack is hardly limited to this one incident.
Around 2:30 a.m. on January 3, 2015, masked men burst into a housing complex in
Sirte, Libya. They went room to room checking ID cards, separated Muslims from
Christians, handcuffed the latter and rode off with 13 of them. According to
Hanna Aziz, a Christian who was concealed in his room when the others were
seized, “While checking IDs, Muslims were left aside while Christians were
grabbed…. I heard my friends screaming but they were quickly shushed at
gunpoint. After that, we heard nothing.”
These 13 Christians would later appear on video, along with another eight
Christians abducted elsewhere, being beheaded on the shores of Libya by ISIS for
refusing to renounce Christ and embrace Muhammad.
In October 2012 in Nigeria, Boko Haram Islamic jihadis stormed the Federal
Polytechnic College, “separated the Christian students from the Muslim students,
addressed each victim by name, questioned them, and then proceeded to shoot them
or slit their throat” massacring about 30 Christians.
On November 20, 2015, Islamic jihadis seized 170 hostages and killed 20 others
in a mass shooting at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, the capital city of
Mali. Once again, “Some people were freed by the attackers after showing they
could recite verses from the Koran.”
On April 2, 2015 in Kenya, gunmen from the Somali Islamic group, Al Shabaab—“the
youth”—stormed Garissa University, singled out Christian students, and murdered
them, some beheaded. A total of 147 people were massacred, almost all of whom
were Christian.
Joel Ayora, who survived the attack, said gunmen burst into a Christian service,
seized worshippers, and then “proceeded to the hostels, shooting anybody they
came across except their fellows, the Muslims.” Collins Wetangula said gunmen
were opening doors and inquiring if the people inside were Muslims or
Christians: “If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot. With each blast
of the gun I thought I was going to die.”
Because Kenya is a Christian-majority nation that still has a significant Muslim
minority (about 12 percent), it furnishes many examples of Islamic terrorists,
mostly from neighboring Somalia’s Al Shabaab group, sorting between Muslims and
Christians before initiating the carnage:
In 2014, approximately 50 militants from Al Shabaab went on a killing spree in
Mpeketoni, a predominantly Christian town on Kenya’s coast. They chanted “Allahu
Akbar,” killed whoever could not recite verses from the Koran, and went
door-to-door asking residents their religion, killing those who answered “Christian.”More
than 57 people were killed, including six children of church pastors.
“During a lull in the firing,” of the 2013 attack on a Nairobi mall, that left
67 dead, “the gunmen spoke in Swahili for Muslims to identify themselves and
leave.” According to a survivor, “an Indian man came forward and they said,
‘What is the name of Muhammad’s mother?‘ When he couldn’t answer they just shot
him.”During an early morning raid on quarry workers sleeping in their worksite tents
near the city of Mandera, along the Somali border, Christians and Muslims were
separated before the Christians, thirty-six of them, were beheaded or shot dead.
Al Shabaab attacked a bus and massacred 28 of its Christian passengers, while
identifying and leaving unharmed Muslims.
After abducting a group of traders near the island of Lamu, Al Shabaab militants
released three of them, because they were Muslims, but beheaded the fourth, a
Christian.
The phenomenon of Islamic jihadis making an effort to identify and separate
Muslims intermingled with non-Muslims before beginning the slaughter is
widespread (above examples come from Arab, East Asian, and sub-Saharan African
nations) and a clear reminder of who is the true and intended target of jihadi
terror—“infidels”—even if surrounding Muslims must sometimes make the ultimate
sacrifice and become unwilling martyrs of the jihad.
Brexit Disrupts Nonchalant
European Union Meddling
Malcolm Lowe/Gatestone Institute/July 13/16
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8443/brexit-eu-meddling
In respect of the Palestinian problem, the European political elites have only
the means to destabilize the status quo without installing an alternative. But
Israel's leaders can take heart. Any declarations made at French President
François Hollande's conference will be unenforceable, because the EU on its own
lacks the means and because its energies must now focus on stopping its own
disintegration.
The underlying reasons for Brexit and for EU disintegration in general have
still not been widely understood. Brexit was not merely a vote of no confidence
in the EU but also in the UK establishment. Similar gaps between establishment
and electorate now exist in several other major European states. In some cases,
however, governments are united with their electorates in detesting the EU
dictatorship in Brussels.
June 23 vote by the United Kingdom electorate to leave the European Union should
be seen in the context of two other recent European events. Three days earlier,
on June 20, the EU's Foreign Ministers Council decided to solve the Palestinian
problem by Christmas with its endorsement of French President François
Hollande's "peace initiative." Three days after the vote, on June 26, the second
election in Spain within a few months failed once again to produce a viable
majority for any government. Worse still, the steadily rising popularity of
nationalist parties in France, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands suggests
that political paralysis in other EU countries is on the way.
In short, the ambitions of the ruling political cliques of Europe to solve the
problems of the world are being undermined by their own neglected electorates,
which are increasingly furious at the failure of those cliques to solve the
problems of Europe itself. Four years ago, we wrote about Europe's Imminent
Revolution. Two years ago, about the attempt and failure of those cliques to
turn the EU into a make-believe copy of the United States. Today, that
revolution is creeping ahead month by month.
Before threatening Israel's security and local supremacy, the EU foreign
ministers could have recalled the results of their previous nonchalant meddling
in the area. We were all rightly horrified by the threat of Muammar Gaddafi to
hunt down his enemies "street by street, house by house," as he began by
shooting hundreds in his capital, in February 2011. Hollande's predecessor,
Nicolas Sarkozy, rallied European leaders -- first and foremost the UK's David
Cameron -- to do something about it. President Obama turned up to give a speech,
something that he is good at. More importantly, Obama supplied warplanes from
the NATO base in Naples. The idea was to enable victory for the Libyan rebel
forces by paralyzing Gaddafi's own air force and bombing his land forces.
Victory was achieved. But the rebels were united only in their hatred of
Gaddafi. So Libya has descended into a chaos that could have been prevented only
by a massive long-term presence of European land forces, which Europe -- after
repeated cuts in army strength -- does not have. Now it is the local franchise
of the Islamic State, among others, that is hunting down enemies house by house.
Europe was incapable of achieving anything in Libya without the United States,
and incapable of replacing a detestable regime with a superior alternative. The
lesson could have been learned from Iraq. Here, a massive American military
presence accompanied a constitutional revolution and the beginnings of
parliamentary rule. But the whole costly achievement collapsed when Obama
decided to remove even the residual military presence needed to perpetuate it.
In respect of the Palestinian problem, too, the European political elites have
only the means to destabilize the status quo without installing an alternative.
But Israel's leaders can take heart. At Hollande's conference in December, the
UK will be half in and half out, if present at all. Neither Obama nor his by
then elected successor will turn up to make a speech. Any declarations made at
Hollande's conference will be unenforceable because the EU on its own lacks the
means and because its energies must now focus on stopping its own
disintegration.
Of the authors of the Libyan adventure, David Cameron resigned after the vote
for Brexit. Obama will shortly leave after what may charitably be called a mixed
record in foreign affairs. Sarkozy's aspiration to be reelected and succeed the
unpopular Hollande, whose approval rate is now just 12%, has been challenge by a
recent French court decision.
Sarkozy was trying to sue Mediapart, a French investigative agency, for
publishing a letter of 2007 from Gaddafi's intelligence chief about an
"agreement in principle to support the campaign for the candidate for the
presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy, for a sum equivalent to Euro 50
million." (The maximum individual contribution permitted in French law is 1500
euros.) The judges investigating the corruption case against Sarkozy have ruled
that the letter is genuine. The suspicion, then, is that Sarkozy's campaign to
eliminate Gaddafi was at least partly motivated by the need to eliminate the
supplier of a bribe.
The underlying reasons for Brexit and for EU disintegration in general have
still not been widely understood. Brexit was not merely a vote of no confidence
in the EU but also in the UK establishment. Out of 650 members in the House of
Commons, only around 150 -- nearly all Conservatives -- are estimated to have
voted for Brexit. Against Brexit was also a clear majority of leading figures in
commerce, academia and the churches. Similar gaps between establishment and
electorate now exist in several other major European states. In some cases,
however, governments are united with their electorates in detesting the EU
dictatorship in Brussels.
That glaring discrepancy between the UK establishment and the electorate
explains the establishment's quick acceptance of Brexit, for fear of becoming
totally discredited. A contributory reason was the broad consensus on both sides
of the debate that the operative style of EU institutions is deeply flawed and
often detrimental to UK interests. The concessions obtained by Cameron from the
EU before the vote were widely regarded as derisory. Moreover, the President of
the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, had loudly proclaimed that he could
obtain a vote to cancel those concessions. The real issue, therefore, was
whether a Remain vote could help to reform the EU, in cooperation with other
member states, or whether the EU was fundamentally unreformable. The UK
electorate decided for the latter view and the establishment is committed to
implementing it.
The glaring discrepancy between the UK establishment and the electorate explains
the establishment's quick acceptance of Brexit, for fear of becoming totally
discredited. Pictured above: Theresa May launches her campaign for leader of the
UK Conservative party on July 11, 2016, saying "Brexit means Brexit."
The two earlier articles mentioned above first spotted the phenomenon of
European disintegration and then explained it. Today, the intervening events
have made the explanation all the simpler. Basically, the European political
elites were correctly convinced, long ago, that considerable European
integration was desirable, but their very successes in this area made them
grossly overestimate what could and should be done further.
Up to a decade ago, it seemed that a similar pattern was becoming established in
one EU country after another: the parliament was dominated by a large
center-right party and a large center-left party that alternated in power from
one election to another. The parallel to the United States seemed obvious, but
the parallel was illusory, as we shall show.
Emboldened, the political parties concerned made the fatal mistake of trying to
combine for the purpose of elections to the EU Parliament. Thus emerged a
pan-European center-right pseudo-party, the "European People's Party" (EPP),
whose origins go back to a get-together of Christian Democrat parties in 1976.
And a pan-European center-left pseudo-party, the "Party of European Socialists"
(PES), founded in 1992 as an alliance between old-style Social Democrat parties
and the former so-called Eurocommunist parties. The latter first emerged during
the decline and discreditation of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, then
changed their names after its disappearance in December 1991. Thus, the core of
Italy's current Democratic Party derives from the Italian Communist Party (PCI),
the major opposition party of post-war Italy.
Curiously but inevitably, the more those parties tried to unite, the more they
lost support in their own countries of origin. Thus the Dutch Christian
Democrats (CDA) are today a minor party of the right and the Panhellenic
Socialist Movement (PASOK) barely crosses the threshold of 5% needed for entry
into the Greek Parliament. (Incongruously, the last PASOK Prime Minister of
Greece, George Papandreou, continues to be President of the Socialist
International.) The reason for this development, however, is not far to seek.
Nationalism, it was forgotten, is an essential component of center-right
sentiment. So a center-right party that prefers an international interest at the
expense of the national interest of its own country loses credibility among its
own core supporters; it becomes vulnerable to the rise of far-right upstart
parties. Examples of this process in the EU are now so evident as not to need
enumeration.
The attraction of socialism, it was forgotten, is that its core supporters
expect increases in government social spending at the expense of financial
stability. This becomes more difficult, the more a country is constrained by
participation in a shared international framework. It becomes impossible to
maintain once a country joins a common currency, since the usual remedy for
socialist overspending is devaluation of the national currency. This is why
PASOK has been eclipsed in Greece by the far-left SYRIZA, why the Spanish
franchise of the PES (the PSOE) has lost severely to the upstart Podemos, and
why support for its Dutch franchise (the PvdA) is now down to about the same as
for each of two other left-wing parties.
It is also why in Britain, where the electoral system obstructs the rise of new
parties, Jeremy Corbyn was voted leader by the Labour Party membership to the
horror of the party establishment. Corbyn himself was a pronounced Euroskeptic
until recently and only half-heartedly spoke in public for Remain, creating
suspicions that he secretly voted for Leave.
A far-right party, like the Freedom Party (OFP) of Austria, has an easy sales
pitch. Not so the far-left ones: after they come to power, it quickly and
painfully becomes evident that they have no more ability than their derided
Social Democrat predecessors to defy the constraints imposed by membership in
the Eurozone.
Thus SYRIZA came to power in Greece and won a referendum to end austerity. The
result was that all Greeks found that their bank accounts were virtually frozen:
they were allowed to withdraw only sixty Euros a day. SYRIZA then split. The
larger faction won the resulting general election and accepted the harsh
conditions that the referendum had rejected. The paradoxical result in Greece is
that the current government is a coalition of an upstart far-left party, SYRIZA,
and an upstart nationalist party (the Independent Hellenes) that lies to the
right of New Democracy (the Greek franchise of the EPP).
In other EU countries, however, the typical development has been the opposite:
the erstwhile competing franchises of the EPP and the PES are in coalition
against the motley upstart breakaway parties, since neither of the two gets an
absolute majority in parliament any more. That is, their former raison d'être as
competing alternatives has been abandoned in the need to survive in power at
all. The paralysis in Spain comes from the fact that the two local franchises
there are descended from the two sides in the murderous Civil War of 1936-1939.
Joint government is still hardly imaginable especially for the losing
socialists, who continued to suffer persecution long after the war.
Likewise, in the elections to the EU Parliament in May 2014, the EPP and the PES
won only 221 and 191 seats respectively out of 751, each far short of a
majority. So they clubbed together to make the top candidate of the EPP,
Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the EU Commission and to retain the top
candidate of the PES, Martin Schulz, as President of the Parliament. The
incredible response of Juncker to Brexit has been to demand even tighter
integration: he wants to force into the Eurozone the eight EU member states
(other than the UK) that still have independent currencies. He also reiterated
his proposal, originally made last March, to unite the armed forces of all
states (with the UK gone) into a European army. For this he has the support of
Schulz's home party, the German SPD. That is, they want more and more of what
the European electorates want less and less.
Especially in Eastern Europe, there are now also governments that resent the
relentless centralizing urges of the EU establishment. In Hungary, for example,
the government has rejected the demand of the EU Commission to absorb a quota of
the immigrants currently streaming into Europe; it has scheduled a referendum on
the matter for October 2. On the same day, Austria will hold a revote for the
presidency, which the Freedom Party may narrowly win after narrowly losing the
first time around.
These governments are among the new friends of Israel described in a recent
Reuters article, titled "Diplomatic ties help Israel defang international
criticism." As it notes:
"Whereas a few years ago Israel mostly had to rely on Germany, Britain and the
Czech Republic to defend its interests in the EU, now it can count Italy,
Greece, Cyprus, Austria, Hungary and a handful of others among potential
allies."
These allies have no desire to penalize Israel on behalf of increasingly tedious
Palestinians. On the contrary:
"Like Turkey, which last week agreed to restore diplomatic ties with Israel
after a six-year hiatus, they see a future of expanding business, trade and
energy ties."
By "energy ties" is meant Israel's recently discovered vast fields of natural
gas, the phenomenon that we earlier dubbed "Israel as a Gulf State." That is:
just as governments care little for the human rights record of, say, Qatar in
their eagerness to acquire its natural gas, so also the self-righteous moaning
of the Palestinian Authority does not deter those governments from going for
what Israel has to offer. As the Reuters article quotes a European ambassador:
"There's just no appetite to go toe-to-toe with Israel and deliver a really
harsh indictment. No one sees the upside to it."
Israel's government is not, of course, gloating over the discontent spreading in
the EU. But it surely appreciates some of the side effects.
**Malcolm Lowe is a Welsh scholar specialized in the New Testament and
interfaith relations.
© 2016 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.
Netanyahu distracts public, buys
time with Egypt talks
Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/July 13/16
The secret was kept throughout the entire weekend. Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu dropped the bomb at the start of his Cabinet meeting July 10: After a
nine-year absence, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry was visiting Israel.
In the past, the visit of an Arab foreign minister to Jerusalem was not such a
big deal. Under the current circumstances, however, including a long lack of
communication between Israel and the Palestinians, a bitter political struggle
and a wave of terrorism, the news from Jerusalem spread quickly across the
Middle East. That same day, shortly after 9 p.m., Attorney General Avichai
Mandelblit released a terse announcement that Israel’s law enforcement agencies
are looking into Netanyahu. While there is not yet an official investigation,
chances are that it will come. This announcement was also a potentially
explosive one with repercussions that could reach far beyond the Middle East.
While this news was being announced, Netanyahu was meeting with Shoukry at his
Jerusalem residence. They watched soccer, specifically the European Cup's final
match between France and Portugal. It was the second meeting that Sunday between
Shoukry and Netanyahu, who spent a long time working together in the afternoon.
There is a connection between this surprising visit and the potential police
investigation. Netanyahu is fully aware that law enforcement agencies in Israel
have collected information that could develop into an investigation against him.
He is therefore trying to dominate the agenda and show leadership. In December
2003, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his Disengagement Plan, there
were those who claimed that police investigations into his activities were the
main motivator for his decision to evacuate settlements in Gaza and northern
Samaria. At the time, political commentator Amnon Abramovich said that the media
should protect Sharon and treat him with “kid gloves” precisely because he was
making such a historic move.
Following the Egyptian foreign minister’s visit, Bloomberg published a report
citing a “former senior Israeli official” as saying that Israel has conducted
several attacks on armed Islamic State [IS] militants in the Sinai Peninsula,
using the air force’s unmanned aircraft. This was done with Egypt’s knowledge
and coordination. The announcement caused a major commotion in the corridors of
power in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and could yet cause a similar commotion in
Egypt and around the Arab world, which is not keen on Israeli-Arab security
cooperation. An accusatory finger was pointed at former Defense Minister Moshe
Ya’alon, who is set to take a brief sabbatical at the Washington Institute
starting in August. Israeli sources say the news was released to embarrass
Netanyahu and damage his honeymoon with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
One source close to Ya’alon denied it vigorously. “Ya’alon has nothing to do
with this report,” he told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “He knows how
damaging reports like this can be to Israel’s strategic interests.”
According to the same source, the leak came from Netanyahu's direction, in an
effort to divert media attention to topics other than the potential police
investigation into his own affairs.
Be that as it may, there are many other interests that bring Egypt and Israel
together in a single boat. For one thing, Netanyahu is terrified of the possible
intersection between the French peace initiative and the window between the US
election and the date President Barack Obama leaves the White House. Netanyahu
is deeply concerned that the French initiative will be approved by the UN
Security Council without being vetoed by the United States, or that the Security
Council could pass any other resolution that could unequivocally determine that
the settlements are illegitimate. Either could set a huge and potentially deadly
snowball rolling. The best way to reduce the chances of this happening is an
alternative diplomatic initiative, which will create an atmosphere of
negotiations and improve the mood in the region. This improvement would extend
from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, through Amman and Cairo, all the way
to Brussels, Paris, Berlin and London. This is where Sisi enters the picture. He
also needs something to bolster his leadership and restore Egypt’s status in the
region. With or without Israeli aerial assistance, almost every week, the
Egyptians sustain heavy losses in their fight against IS in Sinai. Most of their
revenge has been focused on the Gaza Strip, which remains sealed and under siege
on its southern border. The Egyptians now need a shakeup of some sort to burst
through this dead end.
The “Egyptian initiative” began to take shape secretly a few months ago. It
involved Netanyahu, King Abdullah of Jordan, Middle East envoy and former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and opposition leader Isaac Herzog. Netanyahu
made a commitment to deliver three things:
a declaration that he supports negotiations on the basis of the 2002 Arab Peace
Initiative, with modifications
a renewal of his commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and the
Palestinians
a bundle of confidence-building measures in the field including significant
steps to improve the situation of the Palestinians in measurable ways. The
problem is that there was a strategic snafu along the way. Instead of Herzog
becoming foreign minister, the head of right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor
Liberman, took the post. By way of comparison, it was like Donald Trump entering
the White House instead of Bernie Sanders. After Liberman’s appointment,
Netanyahu made an urgent call to Sisi, promising him that nothing has changed
and that all he needed was a little more time. It now looks like that time is
over. The French initiative is applying pressure on him, the clock is ticking
and the police are looking into his affairs. Something must be done. But the
situation right now is hardly simple. Egypt is offering to host a summit between
Netanyahu and Sisi in Cairo, to be followed by an open channel of talks there
between Israel and the Palestinians. Those talks would revolve around a
tantalizingly large bundle of significant benefits and confidence-building
measures by Israel, to be followed by the chance of a meeting between Netanyahu
and Abbas and perhaps even a regional summit. There is still one problem left.
At this point, Netanyahu lacks a coalition to approve any measure he might take.
Even confidence-building measures will almost certainly encounter fierce
opposition from Education Minister Naftali Bennett and his HaBayit HaYehudi, as
well as quite a few Likud ministers. In these circumstances, it could actually
be Liberman who helps Netanyahu overcome this obstacle. All that remains for
Netanyahu to do is to show leadership and try to initiate some move or another,
even a limited one. The alternative is much worse.
Why Iraq needs the Popular
Mobilization Units in fight against IS
Muhannad Al-Ghazi/Al-Monitor/July 13/16
Despite reports that members of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are
torturing and committing other atrocities against Sunnis, the forces appear to
be indispensable in battling the Islamic State (IS) and are likely to be
involved in future fighting.
The PMU took part in operations to recapture Tikrit in March 2015 and Fallujah
in June 2016 and helped achieve great successes against IS. The forces have
become a key element in the fight against IS and are ready to fully participate
in liberating Mosul, according to Hadi al-Ameri, leader of the Badr
Organization, a PMU faction.
PMU abuses
Every time the Iraqi security forces achieve victory with PMU participation,
there are reports of abuses by the mostly Shiite PMU, followed by demands that
the group be excluded from operations to liberate Sunni areas.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office announced June 5 that a fact-finding
committee had been formed to investigate the allegations. Human Rights Watch
said in a June 9 report that it “has received credible allegations of summary
executions, beatings of unarmed men, forced disappearances and mutilation of
corpses by government forces over the two weeks of fighting, mostly on the
outskirts of the city.”The Anbar provincial council has confirmed PMU abuses
during and after the Fallujah battles. Anbar Governor Suhaib al-Rawi announced
during a June 12 press conference the results of an investigation into the
massacre of the mostly Sunni al-Mahamda tribe in Saqlawiyah, a village north of
Fallujah. He said 49 refugees were killed after surrendering and more than 640
people were missing. Rawi said a PMU faction that he did not specifically name
had subjected the surviving detainees —who were saved when federal police
intervened — to torture. PMU commanders denied the charges and blamed what
happened on individuals, adding that abusers will be referred to special courts.
PMU role in the battles
When the Fallujah operations started May 22, political and military leaders said
there would be no need for the PMU to enter and liberate the city's center
because that area would be handled by federal police and Anbar's police,
counterterrorism office and emergency service units. The leaders said the PMU
role would be limited to liberating villages and areas surrounding Fallujah.
Gen. Talib Shagati, commander of the Iraqi Joint Special Operations Command,
told Al-Sumaria News, “The PMU leaders declared that they will not enter
Fallujah." At first, that claim seemed to hold true. The PMU spearheaded the
liberation of the surrounding villages. PMU security spokesman Youssef Kallabi
said June 4, “The PMU, after managing to take control over the Saqlawiyah city
center, are tasked with preserving control over the liberated territory and will
not take part in the operations to enter the Fallujah city center, which the
counterterrorism office will be tasked with.”Yet despite those repeated
assurances, fierce IS resistance forced Abadi to rely on the PMU to penetrate
the center of Fallujah. Thus, the PMU ended up being involved in the battle for
Fallujah's center in two ways. First, on June 21, six brigades of the Badr
Organization consisting of 10,000 fighters fought under the banner of the
federal police wearing police uniforms. This explains why the federal police
appeared to play such a significant role. The combined forces had the upper hand
and hastened the liberation process, Al-Monitor learned in a phone interview
with a federal police official who spoke on condition of anonymity. However, the
Iraqi National Alliance, a Sunni parliamentary coalition, accused the federal
police of not complying with the prime minister's orders and of intentionally
coordinating with the PMU to enter the heart of Fallujah.
Second, on June 17, Abadi announced the liberation of the city with the
exception of some slums. Yet Iraqi forces withstood severe attacks by IS
snipers, suicide bombers and car bombs, according to the official IS Amaq News
Agency. The attacks embarrassed Abadi and forced him to resort to the PMU to
enter from the northern axis. These forces managed to take control of the
railroad and liberate al-Mukhtar, a village north of Fallujah. Thus, these
forces became the demarcation line with Fallujah’s northern areas, increasing
the pressure on these areas and helping to liberate them. The PMU and federal
police came in from the north, and the Golden Division and the federal police,
backed by the PMU, covered the south. Now, even though the battle for Fallujah
is over, the PMU are refusing to withdraw from the city and its outskirts. PMU
deputy head Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis said June 28, “The PMU in Fallujah will remain
where they currently are and will not leave their positions. They will maintain
control of the land.” He added, “The Iraqi forces needed and are still in need
of the assistance and support of the PMU, which represents backup" for them.
Based on all these events and the critical role the PMU has assumed, its
participation in the upcoming battles, particularly the battle for Mosul, seems
inevitable.
One year later, Rouhani still
selling nuclear deal to Iranians
Arash Karami/Al-Monitor/July 13/16
One year after agreement on the comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and the
six world powers and six months after its implementation, many Iranians are
still not feeling the economic benefits of the lifting of sanctions. With
presidential elections less than a year away, officials from the administration
of President Hassan Rouhani are in the uncomfortable position of having to
continue to sell the benefits of the deal to an Iranian public that is
increasingly distrustful of US intentions to hold up its end of the agreement.
Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, a top nuclear negotiator who now heads
the staff overseeing implementation of the nuclear deal, sat down with Iranian
television July 11 to update the public on the status of the deal. Ongoing US
sanctions on Iran that prohibit international investors from using the dollar
for transactions with it are one of the main obstacles keeping Iran from taking
advantage of the nuclear deal and international sanctions relief. These banking
sanctions have created reservations among many foreign companies eager to do
business with Iran. Aragchi explained that they are primary sanctions — that is,
ones unrelated to the nuclear deal.
Aragchi said that although the central bank of Iran had told Iranian nuclear
negotiators that this was an important issue that needed to be addressed, the
Americans did not agree to lift the banking sanctions. Aragchi also remarked
that if Iran were to negotiate on these sanctions, it would have to offer
additional concessions. Citing US court rulings confiscating billions of dollars
belonging to Iran, Aragchi said Iran would prefer to remain outside the US
dollar system.
Aragchi also explained that Iran’s oil exports have increased dramatically as
the result of the nuclear deal, but he urged patience in seeing other benefits.
“The economy will not return to its original place overnight,” he said. “No one
expects our oil sales to go from 1 million [barrels of oil] to 2.5 million
overnight. Our customers have left and have found other people.”According to
Aragchi, Iran is currently selling 2 million barrels of oil a day, 500,000
barrels below previous levels. “This will take time,” he cautioned, comparing it
to reconstruction after the Iran-Iraq War, which required months and years.
Not everyone was satisfied with Aragchi’s explanations. The conservative Raja
News website referred to the interview as “Aragchi’s 75-minute tiring and
repetitive justifications.” Conservative analyst Foad Izadi criticized the fact
that the nuclear negotiators responsible for signing the deal are also the
people responsible for overseeing its implementation, claiming that it is
natural that they would try to justify any shortcomings. Fars News contrasted
Aragchi’s statement that the deal never envisioned that all the sanctions would
be removed to comments made by Rouhani that all sanctions would be lifted. A
number of websites also translated an article by Reuters describing attempts by
American lawmakers to continue to attempt to derail the nuclear deal by passing
legislation against Iran.Even the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of
Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, who is responsible for the technical aspects of
implementing the nuclear deal and was chief technical negotiator, has been
publicly critical of the banking issue and has traded gibes with the president,
much to the delight of conservative media. Despite the slow progress and
constant criticism by conservative media, Reformist media have been upbeat about
the one-year anniversary. An article in the Etemaad Newspaper compared domestic
critics of the deal to “warmongers in America and Israel.” It stated that a
“realistic assessment of the nuclear deal” would help in having a more accurate
understanding of it. It further said that no one had claimed that Iran’s enemies
would retreat on every front, and indeed, some of the countries party to the
nuclear deal are enemies of Iran, so sabotage is to be expected. It also noted,
however, that no one can deny that Iran’s right to enrich uranium was recognized
and that sanctions were removed as a result of the deal.
Are Turkey’s efforts to
combat foreign fighters too late?
Metin Gurcan/Al-Monitor/July 13/16
Turkey has a long history of dealing with terror and has accumulated a wealth of
experience coping with its complexities. But the June 28 attack against Istanbul
Ataturk Airport that killed 45 people signaled that Turkey is now facing a new
type of assault. These attacks come from extremist Salafi ideology groups with a
loose network of links to the Islamic State (IS). They aim to take hostages and
use armed assaults and suicide bombings to target areas where foreigners
congregate, such as airports, hotels and shopping and tourism centers. Such
attacks have taken place before in Mumbai, India; Nairobi, Kenya; Jakarta,
Indonesia; and most recently Dacca, Bangladesh. Ankara is now busy thinking of
ways to deal with these types of incursions. But instead of developing a
comprehensive and integrated strategy of coping with religiously motivated
radicalism, Turkey is approaching the issue solely from the perspective of
anti-criminal security and combating terror acts. Security sources told
Al-Monitor after the June 28 airport attack that they believe Ankara is finally
recognizing the seriousness of the issue. But when asked whether Ankara is too
late, the sources remained mute.
The new security package Ankara is putting together has two primary goals: to
minimize the mobility of Salafi foreign terrorist fighters already in Turkey and
to hunt them down.
Here, an important distinction must be made: IS in Turkey no longer relies on
local networks such as the ones used for the Ankara train station attack Oct. 10
that killed 107 people, the July 2015 Suruc suicide bombing that killed 34 young
peace activists and the attack at a political rally at Diyarbakir on June 5,
2015, that killed five people. IS is aware that Turkish security agencies have
improved their surveillance and tracking of its networks in Turkey, so the group
has shifted to foreign terrorist fighters. "This explains why IS now prefers to
use fighters coming from Central Asia and the Caucasus. IS has noted the
tolerance shown by Turkish security agencies and also by the Turkish public to
those fighters," a security source told Al-Monitor. "Until the airport attack,
nobody in Turkey paid much attention to what an Uzbek or a Chechen was doing in
Turkey, as long as he was fighting against [the regime of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad] or the YPG [People's Protection Units] in Syria. We were
actually looking the other way. Not anymore." Now the activities of Central
Asian and Caucasian jihadi fighters are watched as closely as the operations of
the Kurdish YPG. So what are the measures Ankara is taking to restrict the
mobility of these fighters and hunt them down? In the past five years, about
4,000 people have been deported from Turkey because of their links to terrorism.
Moreover, according to Abdulkadir Selvi of the daily Hurriyet, about 49,000
people from 100 countries have been banned from entering Turkey. Meanwhile,
serious steps are also being taken to boost the capacity of the Migration
Management Directorate of the Ministry of Interior with new equipment, personnel
and legislative support. The objective is to provide the directorate with more
transportation and accommodation facilities to enable it to cooperate with the
security and intelligence services and speed up deportation of illegal migrants.
Another major project is to regulate and control the accommodations of
foreigners. In Turkey, especially in Istanbul, there are tens of thousands of
furnished apartments rented out by the day. Foreign terrorist fighters in Turkey
generally prefer to stay in these apartments.
The local administrator of Istanbul's Iskenderpasa neighborhood, where the
airport attackers had stayed, said: "Today there are about 2,500 unregistered
apartments in my district. Every day, 30-40 people come to complain that there
are foreigners living in their buildings and nobody knows who these people
are."According to new directives to be issued by the Ministry of Interior, real
estate agents will now be required to report to police the names of new tenants.
A new software system will be made available to coordinate communications
between the real estate agents, landlords, the local administrator and the
police. In interviews with Iskenderpasa residents, Al-Monitor noted that many
had no idea how to report suspicious foreigners they see in their area. Some
residents say they actually reported their suspicions to police but no action
was taken.
Ankara is also trying to overcome the frequent mistakes made in foreign names
used on domestic bus and air travel tickets. More than 3 million foreigners are
frequently traveling inside Turkey, often with misspelled or incomplete names on
tickets issued by bus and air travel companies. This makes police investigations
after an incident extremely difficult. Ankara is trying to devise a system that
will result in full, accurate names on passenger manifests. One security
official said there is even a proposal to use biometric passport photos. This
could be relatively easy with air travel, since only a small number of companies
would be involved. But at least 1,000 travel companies operate in Turkey’s
widespread bus transportation market and nobody has yet figured out how their
generally small offices could deal with biometric requirements.
"Since the October 2015 attack in Ankara, security services show absolutely no
tolerance for extremist Salafi bodies and networks. That forced IS to
practically end its use of Turkish IS militants. Jihadi terrorists from Central
Asia and Caucasia were the soft underbelly of Turkey," a security official told
Al-Monitor. Another security official confirmed that Turkey is working hard to
limit foreign terrorists' mobility and to apprehend them, but that it is a
complicated affair. "We know that IS militants, especially foreigners among
them, are seriously under pressure in Syria and Iraq. They are now in reverse
migration, trying to return to Turkey with their families."At first, Turkey was
not affected by jihadi migration to Syria and Iraq, but it is now becoming the
first country to be seriously threatened by this reverse migration. Ankara has
belatedly realized that it is the nearest "Western" target for IS. While
everyone seems to be debating whether 2016 will be the end of IS in Syria,
Turkey is just starting to deal with its struggle against IS and foreign
fighters.
How Germany-Turkey discord
could damage NATO alliance
Cengiz Çandar/Al-Monitor/July 13/16
Anybody who thinks Turkey needs Europe more than ever to extricate itself out of
its diplomatic isolation would be misguided. If there is one unequivocal
consequence of Turkey’s recent dual reconciliation with Russia and Israel, it is
enhanced self-confidence to stand up to the European Union.
The shortcut to standing up to the European Union does not lead to Brussels but
rather to Berlin. As long as the “strong lady” of Europe professed a visible
soft spot in her dealings with Turkey due to her need for a deal to stem the
refugee flow across the Aegean, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan behaved
relatively mercilessly toward Germany and through it, toward the EU when he felt
it was necessary to alleviate the sentiments of his nationalist constituency at
home or to deter the Europeans from pursuing any sort of policies that he thinks
may impair Turkey’s interests.
Erdogan did not have much leverage with the Europeans. However, he now believes
that he does, particularly after reconciling with Israel and primarily with
Russia. His room for maneuver in foreign policy has expanded considerably.
Feeling emboldened during the recent NATO summit in Warsaw, he challenged the
demand of the German parliament to send a delegation to visit German military
personnel deployed at Incirlik Air Base for the coalition effort against the
Islamic State. The controversy of a German parliamentary delegation visiting
German military personnel at Incirlik has been looming for some time. German
Defense Ministry Undersecretary Ralf Brauksiepe was denied a visit to Incirlik
by Turkish authorities. The explanation offered by Turkish Foreign Minister
Mevlut Cavusoglu was cynical. “Military and technical delegations could come to
Incirlik. But we do not see visits to Incirlik by nonmilitary personnel,
especially politicians, as appropriate,” he said. In response, German Defense
Minister Ursula von der Leyen put up a challenge and said she would go to
Incirlik and see the German military personnel.
The issue was taken up at the highest level between Erdogan and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel during the recent NATO summit. Erdogan set a condition
for such a visit that no European political leader could accept: He asked Merkel
to state that the recent Bundestag resolution on the Armenian Genocide of 1915
does not reflect the view of the German government she heads. Even if she might
not agree with the German parliament’s decision, she could not do it. In no
democratic European country could the executive declare itself totally
insensitive to the legislative branch. For Erdogan, who believes in a strong
executive, what he asked seems very reasonable. However, such a cleavage does
not exist in Western European political culture. Naturally, no compromise on the
issue resulted from the meeting of two leaders. Merkel tried to keep her head
high and played down the disagreement. She spoke to the German ZDF television
channel and said, “Disagreements cannot be overcome in one meeting.”Such an
explanation seems far from mitigating the discontent of the German politicians
who had expected she could resolve the Incirlik issue with Erdogan. However, her
inability to do so is bringing further pressure from the German legislators to
the extent that Germans began to consider withdrawing the German military
personnel from Incirlik altogether. According to the German official news source
Deutsche Welle, Andreas Scheuer, secretary-general of the Christian Social Union
in Bavaria, which is the sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union,
told the German daily Tagesspiegel, “The soldiers and the bases of an army of a
parliament can be visited always and wherever they are by parliamentarians.
Because of his attitude, Erdogan will cause the withdrawal of the German
military (from Incirlik).”
The notion of a military subservient to the legislative organ, in this case the
German Bundestag, is alien to Turkish thinking. A spokesman of Merkel’s
coalition partner the Social Democratic Party, Niels Annen, also told
Tagesspiegel that Merkel should get the commitment of Erdogan in order to gain
the access of German parliamentarians to the base in southern Turkey. In
addition, a former chief of staff of the German military, Harald Kujat, told the
daily Ruhr Nachrichten that Ankara’s position was “unacceptable.” Incirlik Air
Base has a squadron of German Tornado aircraft and 240 German military personnel
deployed to contribute to the coalition against IS.
The German military presence at Incirlik, despite its modest numbers, is
significant in terms of asserting Germany’s determination to emerge from 70
years of postwar restraint to play a greater military role on the world stage.
Merkel recently promised to increase military spending from 1.2% of GDP to close
to the NATO preference for 2%. She believes that Germany should step up because
of the threats facing Europe. This writer, who participated in a closed
roundtable conference in London on July 11, was privy to information presented
by a high-ranking British official who had just returned from the NATO Summit in
Warsaw that the alliance discussed at length the threat emanating from the
“South” — meaning the south of Turkey, implying mainly the Islamic State (IS) or
jihadi threat. In terms of confronting such threats, the deployment of AWACS
warning and control aircraft to Incirlik Air Base is being planned. The AWACS
aircraft would be manned by German military personnel and would monitor Iraqi
and Syrian airspace on behalf of the alliance. Therefore, the Turkish-German
friction on the issue of letting German parliamentarians visit Incirlik, if it
remains unresolved, could have serious ramifications when it comes to NATO's
plans to combat IS. Equally, it could have a bearing on the place of Turkey in
the Western alliance during the upcoming period. How and when they might be
resolved is far from certain, but Erdogan seemingly is assured of two things:
The turmoil Europe finds itself in following the Brexit vote in the UK is
supplying new leverage to the Turkish president in his dealings with the EU,
particularly with its leading country, Germany . He feels emboldened with the
dual reconciliation between Turkey and Russia and Turkey and Israel.
He also regards it as leverage he could use not only vis-a-vis Europe but also —
if need be — the United States.
How religion is
being used to manipulate Egyptians
Mohammed Nosseir/Al Arabiya/July 13/16
Religions are meant to play a spiritual role in people’s lives; yet their power
is being harnessed in the service of the Egyptian state, providing it with an
additional “maneuvering tool” to frame and manipulate citizens. With the aim of
supporting the state in its mission to control the society, large numbers of
citizens (defined as religious figures) are, unfortunately, advocating for
irreligious behavior. The Egyptian state claims to be working on promoting a
“devout society”, but actually it is expanding and strengthening the role played
by religion in ordinary people’s lives in order to eventually use it as a tool
to control society. Religion in Egypt is no different from politics, business,
media, or any other domain; they all function as diverse arms and processes
servicing the state’s policies. Obviously, this comes at the cost of distancing
Egyptians from observing and abiding by the true values of their respective
religions. The Egyptian state essentially controls the entire dynamics of the
two dominant religions in Egypt i.e., Islam and Christianity. Overall, Muslim
and Christian religious institutions operate freely in the handling of their
internal issues. However, when either institution comes into conflict with the
state’s ruling mechanism, the Egyptian state clearly has the upper hand in
deciding the issue; both institutions must comply with the state’s decisions
fully – even if its position goes against the core principles of either
religion. The Egyptian state regulates the mosques. It privileges preachers who
are loyal to the state by allowing them to dominate the larger mosques and the
Egyptian media and to preach freely – as long as they support the state and
praise the ruler. Whereas preachers who don’t abide by the “rules of the game”
are barred from preaching and distanced from their followers. Penalizing
Egyptians who eat in public during Ramadan is not meant to force Muslim society
into becoming more righteous by imposing the fast; the point is to demonstrate
to the entire Egyptian society that the state continues to maintain its iron
grip. The Egyptian state claims to be working on promoting a “devout society”,
but actually it is expanding and strengthening the role played by religion in
ordinary people’s lives in order to eventually use it as a tool to control
society
Message to the minorities
The Egyptian state tends to be lenient in its application of criminal law
provisions when Muslim extremists attack the homes and businesses of the
Christian minority. This is not due to any state discrimination against
Christians; sadly, by pleasing large numbers of illiterate Muslims at the
expense of the minority, the state aims to inflate the power of the “majority”,
giving it a sense of superiority in society. By surrounding churches with cement
blocks, the state is sending a message to Egyptian Copts: that they are under
constant threat from extremists and terrorists and should thus value the
protection provided them by the state – and tone down their demands regarding
the building of new churches.By rights, the well-known Egyptian scholars
recently convicted for expressing relatively more liberal opinions on a number
of debatable Islamic issues should be perceived as catalysts attempting to
confront extremists by modernizing the basic understanding of Islam.
Nonetheless, the state works on prosecuting them – because they ventured into an
area that falls under its full control, where liberal newcomers are not welcome.
In short, the state does not want religious issues to be subject to citizens’
debates and initiatives.
Western scholars who study Islam often point to certain articles that stimulate
and incite Muslims against non-Muslims. They are viewing these articles outside
of their proper context; what matters here is that the vast majority of Muslims
are not able to understand and digest such articles, which are manipulated by
the state (either by inciting or by suppressing Muslims) in order to serve its
own purpose. For example, some Islamic religious articles served to stimulate
Egyptians against Israel in wartime while others were intended to encourage
reconciliation with the enemy after the peace treaty was signed. The Egyptian
state does not want to leave the interpretation of religions to ordinary
illiterate Egyptians! Misguided by erroneous religious interpretations, millions
of illiterate Egyptians could easily be driven to commit crimes.
On the other hand, manipulating religion to serve the state’s policies and to
flatter the ruler is prompting millions of Egyptians to develop their own
understanding of religion, one that is equally far-removed from the true values
of their faith. Regrettably, non-abidance by either religious values or the rule
of law has bred an immature and intolerant society.
Naturalizing Syrians in
Turkey
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/July 13/16
When Turkey’s prime minister promised to grant citizenship to Syrian refugees,
each person analyzed this from his or her own angle. His Turkish rivals opposed
the move, considering it an attempt to enhance his situation in the upcoming
elections by including these Syrians to vote for him. They launched a social
media campaign against granting citizenship to foreigners. Some Syrians are
afraid because they consider it a hint by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
that he has given up on their cause and intends to reconcile with the Syrian
regime. Others view the move as more propaganda that he will not implement. It
is difficult to judge before measures to execute it begin, and before the first
Syrian attains Turkish citizenship. In the current circumstances, the idea is
very interesting and worthy of discussion. What we understand from preliminary
information is that the plan is limited to those who are financially well-off,
estimated at 300,000, though I think this number is exaggerated.
Economic benefits
If the plan is real and not just propaganda, it is a smart and practical move
that will benefit Turkey’s economy, even though it may cause political problems.
It will also alleviate the suffering of some refugees. I do not think the
proposed number will alter Turkey’s electoral balance, as no more than 100,000
Turkish-Syrians will be eligible to vote. Absorbing hundreds of thousands of
refugees may ease their plight, but it will not end the tragedy that the Syrian
people are going through Erdogan will not politically benefit from this right
away, because the plan will take time to implement due to long bureaucratic
procedures in official Turkish institutions. Last year, he promised to grant
Syrian refugees work permits, but only 5,000 out of 2 million were given one. Of
course granting citizenship is more complicated and sensitive, and years may
pass before it is executed in such great numbers.
The figure of 300,000 does not compare to the 1 million refugees that Germany
has received and promised residency to, which will eventually lead to
nationality. Nevertheless, if Erdogan fulfils his promise it will be an
important achievement regardless of the criticisms.
The United States is an example of a country that has benefited greatly from
migrants. In some cases, it eased restraints and granted work permits, which
later allowed for citizenship. It did so with categories of people that it
believed would benefit the economy, such as Indians, whose numbers have greatly
increased since the 1990s. Today, they constitute an important category in
different sectors, and are distinguished for their hard work and keenness to
learn and professionally excel. In the past decade, Britain pressured Iraq to
take back refugees, but asked it to exclude doctors because there is a severe
lack of them and a huge need for them in Britain. Absorbing hundreds of
thousands of refugees may ease their plight, but it will not end the tragedy
that the Syrian people are going through. No matter how many people the Turks
and the Europeans grant citizenship to and provide jobs for, the number of
refugees will just keep rising. Half of Syria’s population has been displaced
inside or outside the country.Their situation is not like that of the
Palestinians, whose suffering is more complicated and difficult as their
homeland was seized and they may not return to it. What is happening in Syria is
a power struggle, and it will end one day. No matter what the end looks like or
how long it takes, its people will be able to return, just like the Iraqis,
Afghans, Somalis, Yemenis and other peoples who have been plagued by chaos and
war.
This article was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on July 13, 2016.
‘Brexit means Brexit,’ but
being British is also about compromise
Peter Harrison/Al Arabiya/July 13/16
British democracy has always been based on compromise – it is rare that a large
majority vote for the party in power. Yet despite this the country still carries
on – albeit reluctantly. Currently there’s something very different happening in
Britain. Since the outcome of the Brexit referendum was announced last month,
millions of Britons have called for a revote. In the last week an online
petition carrying 4 million signatures calling for a second referendum was
presented to the UK government. While Cameron has ruled out a second referendum,
MPs will nonetheless debate the call, although it is unlikely to have the power
to change anything. The government – not least Cameron – argued that the British
public voted overwhelmingly in favor of the UK leaving the European Union. In
truth less than 52 percent voted for Brexit. But those who want to remain in the
EU argue that the electorate was misled by campaigners, and that with such a
slim majority it is too big a step to make. This week 1,000 UK barristers wrote
a letter to Cameron urging him to seek a parliamentary approval to trigger
article 50 – the action that begins the country’s exit from the EU – based on
their informed legal opinion that the referendum was advisory and not binding.
If a general election were called, it’s impossible to see where those opposed to
the Brexit would (or indeed can) turn . They argue that because the result was
only narrowly in favor of Brexit, the misrepresentations told to the electorate
surrounding investment in the health service and immigration “played a decisive
or contributory factor in the result”. The senior lawyers go on to argue that
the “referendum did not set a threshold necessary to leave the EU, commonly
adopted in polls of national importance”, that is 60 percent of those voting.
The result, the lawyers presume, was therefore only advisory. And they reminded
the government that the outcome – whatever it might be – would impact a
generation who were too young to vote.Since June 24 when the Leave campaign won,
millions of people opposed to the Brexit have started protesting, marching on
parliament, signing more petitions, calling for legal action.
Come what May
Whatever the outcome, Britain finds itself in a sticky situation. The two main
political parties have been in turmoil since June 24 – although as I write this,
the majority Conservative Party have already selected Theresa May as their new
leader. But May now has to take the country through the process that could
ultimately see the country leaving the EU. There’s no guarantee her position
will be safe as prime minister, given the growing opposition to a Brexit.
Despite Cameron’s resignation as PM there is no requirement for a general
election until 2020, by which time Britain could have been removed from the EU
and changed beyond all recognition. There is already a growing call for this
general election to be brought forward – given that Theresa May was not the
leader of the Conservatives when they were elected as the majority government in
2015. And that the first referendum was arguably only done because it was a
manifesto pledge to get Cameron elected. May was not leader of the party when
she was reelected in 2015 and it was not her pledge, so one could suggest she
doesn’t need to satisfy the 4 million 2nd referendum demanders in anyway, and so
is sticking with the Brexit is Brexit line.
If a general election were called, it’s impossible to see where those opposed to
the Brexit would (or indeed can) turn. Currently the official opposition Labour
Party is at crisis point, its own members admitting that the party is at risk of
splitting. Meanwhile the British pound has plummeted to lows last seen more than
three decades ago – great news for those of us sending money home – terrible for
anyone exporting from within the country. A large chunk (but no means a
majority) of Britain’s funding comes in the shape of grants from the EU, which
would no doubt stop if the country leaves. There has been much written about the
rural communities that overwhelmingly supported the country’s exit from Europe –
yet stand to lose the most if the Brexit happens. Which brings me back to the
call for a second referendum. It’s difficult to see how Britain can recover from
the current situation it finds itself in. The nation feels more divided than I
have ever known – whatever the outcome of the UK’s position in the EU, at least
half the population is going to be angered. How far that anger goes, remains to
be seen – but I fear that my dear old Blighty – that nation of compromise – is
headed for an even rougher ride before the dust settles. As such, PM May faces a
tremendous challenge where she is literally in a “damned if you do, damned if
you don’t” situation and this is why the only way out is remembering that while
a slim majority did vote for Brexit, being British has always been about
compromise and an acceptable compromise is what is needed now.
Before the Dutch disease
infects the Gulf
Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/July 13/16
Although The Netherlands is small, it was categorized in May 2011 as the world’s
happiest country, according to data from the International Cooperation
Organization. UNICEF ranked The Netherlands as the best country in the world for
children to grow up in.This happiness has undoubtedly influenced its economic
success. It is one of the 10 largest export economies, and the 18th-largest
economy in the world. The Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, the country’s economic
capital, is one of the oldest in the world. There are important global
organizations in The Netherlands, such as the Organization for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court
of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. They
are headquartered in The Hague, the political capital. The Dutch are
open-minded, welcome most foreigners and celebrate differences. Although they
are proud of their identity and language, they speak fluent English, the most
famous global language. If The Netherlands had not risen from the slumber of
consumption, it would not have become one of the largest economies in the world
today. It is a significant lesson. The Dutch can be classified as non-religious.
Despite the negative connotations of this that may cross Arab readers’ minds,
religion in The Netherlands and in most of Europe is a very sensitive topic that
is preferably not discussed without asking permission from those with whom you
are conversing. Of the country’s population of 17 million, 13 percent are
Muslim, most of them Moroccan immigrants. A Moroccan diplomat told me that there
are roughly as many Moroccan immigrants in The Netherlands as there are in
Belgium, yet most Moroccans in the former have fared much better than most of
those in the latter because the environments regarding immigration are
different, and because success is encouraged in The Netherlands.
Economic struggle
Dutch success was not sudden, as the country passed through an economic phase
called “the Dutch disease.” Between 1900 and 1950, petroleum was discovered in
the North Sea, resulting in the Dutch people becoming lazy and complacent. They
favored extravagant spending, and paid the price for their unproductivity as oil
and gas began to deplete and unemployment rose. People realized that disability
benefits were better than unemployment benefits. The national currency exchange
rate increased, as did the price of local goods, so they could not compete
against imports, which became cheaper. As a result, production decreased and
imports rose. If The Netherlands had not risen from the slumber of consumption,
it would not have become one of the largest economies in the world today. It is
a significant lesson.
This article was first published in al-Bayan on July 13, 2016.
Striking a balance between
social and traditional media
Diana Moukalledl/Al Arabiya/July 13/16
Is what journalists and media figures write on Facebook, Twitter and other
social networking sites subject to the standards of writing an article,
commentary or news piece in a traditional media outlet? This has been discussed
and argued over for years. We are all trying to come up with an answer according
to our experiences and surroundings. We often follow up on how a certain comment
on Facebook stirs political and media uproar, or how a certain tweet costs the
tweeter his or her job, or subjects him or her to a libel campaign that is
sometimes harsher than the original tweet.What we write in these spaces creates
much debate, and sometimes costs us a friend or a job. Stances are thus either
careful and fawning or brave and defiant.
Insults vs information
The problem is the huge overlap between what is private and public, and the
expansion of space for insults and hatred at the expense of meaningful ideas.
Unfortunately, verbal arguments sometimes drag us into angry debates. The
problem is the huge overlap between what is private and public, and the
expansion of space for insults and hatred at the expense of meaningful ideas.
The problem on social networking sites is how many users are inclined to resort
to libel rather than try to achieve real change. It is through these sites that
people violate others’ privacy, but these same sites allow people to express
themselves, so relations and stances get mixed up. How are we supposed to
distinguish the writing style on Twitter and Facebook from that of traditional
journalism? The thoughts we express on social media are free from political and
funding restraints. However, they sometimes lead to reactions that lead to
fights that can be brutal, especially over politics, religion and personal
freedoms. Some comments can be very rude and incite violence. Social networking
sites influence social, political and personal life – this is not an opinion but
a fact.
This article was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on July. 11, 2016
Saudi Media Campaign Supports
Iranian Opposition, Demands Toppling Of Iranian Regime
MEMRI/July 13/16/Special Dispatch No.6524
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/9323.htm
In recent days, a massive Saudi media campaign in support of the Iranian
opposition has been underway. The campaign was launched right after former Saudi
intelligence minister and ambassador to the U.S. Emir Turki Al-Faisal attended
the July 9, 2016 Paris conference of the National Council of Resistance of Iran,
an umbrella organization of five Iranian opposition groups in exile, the largest
one being Mojahedin-e-Khalq.
Addressing the conference, Al-Faisal harshly criticized the Iranian regime, and
expressed explicit support for the opposition's demand to topple the Iranian
regime – the first time a Saudi official has expressed such support. Al-Faisal
further emphasized that the Iranian people cannot go on suffering from the
regime's policy of oppressing and humiliating its opponents and minorities
within the country, particularly its Arabs, Sunnis, and Kurds.
Al-Faisal's speech received widespread positive coverage in the Saudi press, and
this coverage was accompanied by increased expressions of anti-Iran sentiment
and of support for the opposition in that country. Several articles in the Saudi
press,[1] including editorials, launched withering attacks on Iran and called
for toppling its regime. The articles claimed that the Iranian regime had
adopted a policy of racial repression and discrimination within Iran and was
even exporting this policy to several Arab countries via Iranian support for
various terrorist organizations operating within these countries. The articles
encouraged the Iranian opposition to work at bringing down the Iranian regime, a
course of action defined as "the optimal way" for restoring peace and security
to the entire region. Articles in a similar vein were published in the Kuwaiti
and Bahraini press.[2] .
Numerous articles praised the Iranian opposition and its resistance to the
regime;[3] also published were cartoons, images, and posters attacking the
Iranian regime.[4]
It should be noted that on social media, Saudi intellectuals, for example, the
author and journalist Turki Al-Hamad and Muhammad A'al Al-Sheikh, who tweeted on
their Twitter accounts that Turki Al-Faisal's participation in the Paris Iranian
opposition congress was a mistake. Al-Hamad even argued that by his
participation, Al-Faisal may have provided justification for Iranian
intervention in the neighboring countries.[5]
Following are examples from the Saudi anti-Iranian regime media campaign:
Turki Al-Faisal At National Council Of Resistance Of Iran Conference: "I Too
Want To Topple" The Iranian Regime
In his statements at the National Council of Resistance of Iran conference in
Paris, Emir Turki Al-Faisal harshly criticized the Iranian regime for oppressing
its people. He said that ever since the days of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the
founder of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iranian regime had worked to
export the Islamic Revolution to the Arab and Islamic countries, in an attempt
to control them by means of interfering in their internal affairs and
establishing sectarian terrorist organizations on the pretext of defending "the
oppressed" in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. He also accused Iran of aiding
armed sectarian groups, as well as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah,
and Al-Qaeda, in order to foment chaos in the region. Stressing that this
Iranian policy has caused devastation, spread sectarianism, and led to bloodshed
in Iran and the Middle East, he added that it has, first and foremost, impacted
Iran's own citizens. In response to audience chants of "The people wants to
topple the regime" – a common slogan during the Arab Spring – Al-Faisal said: "I
too want to topple the regime."[6]
Editorials: Toppling The Iranian Regime Is The Best Way To Achieve Global Peace
And Security; Al-Youm: Iranians Call To Topple Regime, Many Countries Around The
World Agree
Following Turki Al-Faisal's statements, many articles condemning the Iranian
regime and supporting its removal were published. The official Saudi daily Al-Youm's
July 11 editorial criticized the Iranian regime's policy of exporting the
Islamic Revolution to the countries in the region, leading to their destruction,
and argued that toppling the regime was the best way to ensure peace and
security in those countries that are subject to Iranian interference.[7] The
editorial stated: "Exporting the Iranian Khomeinist revolution to the world has
led only to the destruction of all nations that experimented, and are still
experimenting, with the dictates and principles of this revolution of
devastation... Removing the regime of the Rule of the Jurisprudent from Iran,
the region, and the world in general is the best way to spread security, peace,
and tranquility in many communities that experienced the Iranian regime's
interference in their affairs. The Iranian people [itself] is still calling for
toppling the regime of the Rule of the Jurisprudent, and many countries around
the world agree [with this call], in light of the crimes, horrors, and terrorist
actions it carries out...
"The oppression that was and still is being carried out by the Iranian regime
against the Ahwazi people and in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Lebanon, as well
as its open support for the Lebanese terrorist organization Hizbullah and its
total support for destructive and terrorist actions around the world, confirms
[the statement] that toppling the regime of the Rule of the Jurisprudent is the
best way to achieve security and peace in many regions and countries around the
world.
"Since the days of Khomeini, the Iranian regime has tried to force its authority
on the Islamic countries and to spread the principle of exporting the revolution
to the Arab and Islamic countries. However, this aggressive attempt has only led
to the sowing of widespread conflict [in these countries], and to their
destruction – sparking wars there and undermining the stability and security of
[their] communities. The blatant Iranian interference in the affairs of the
other has caused conflicts, riots, and wars."[8]
Senior Saudi Writer: Arab Representation At The Paris Session – A Message To The
Iranian People To Stop Showing Restraint Towards The Regime
Ayman Al-Hamad, an editorial writer for the official Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, also
criticized what he called the Iranian regime's racist policy towards non-Persian
minorities, and described how it attempts to apply this policy in other Arab
countries, leading to their destruction, which benefitted Israel. He wrote: "The
Iranian regime in Tehran has turned its back on its sons, who have criticized
its policy and rule... Those who oppose the concept of the Rule of the
Jurisprudent and its authority is against the revolution that brought the
slogans of liberty, victory for the Iranian man, and the struggle against
corruption. The fall of the Shah regime gave rise to an extremist theocratic
segment that utilized all forms of barbaric behavior, constitutionally
legitimized sectarianism, and championed the Persian race...
"The Iranian regime... attempted to export its crisis in religious guise, by
undermining regional security and stability, supporting armed factions in the
Arab and Muslim countries by egging them on and aiding them with weapons and
training under revolutionary or religious slogans, and later by carrying out
terrorist acts [using these same armed proxies]. Today we find in the Arab
countries those who are tempted by the slogans of the Iranian clerics who are
attempting, by means of these slogans, to win over the Shi'ites, to play upon
their religious sentiment, to try to undermine their sense of nationalism, and
to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of their leaders. This comes while the regime
in Tehran is not concealing its racism against the Arab Shi'ites in Iran – the
events in Al-Ahwaz being the best evidence of this regime's racism – and is
showering praise on the Palestinian issue, which it sees as its ticket [into]
other Arab [countries]...
"It is Iran and its militias that have served the Israeli occupation, through
their hostile actions towards the Arab countries, particularly after the Arab
Spring. [Iran's] support for the Syrian regime's [actions] against its own
people led to the destruction of Syria. This is also true for Iraq. These two
countries began dealing with the threat of division, which led to the two
greatest Arab armies leaving the Arab balance of power because of Iran's policy,
enabling Israel to sleep soundly. The Iranian opposition summit that was held
two days ago [July 9] included large-scale Arab and international
representation, reflecting the aversion to the existing regime in Tehran and to
its actions against its people and its Arab and Muslim neighbors. This Arab,
Islamic, and international representation is a message to the Iranian homeland
not to continue to show restraint as it witnesses the economic destruction of
its cultured, capable, and lofty country, and the expulsion of its people – all
for the sake of the empty words of its ayatollahs."[9]
Al-Sharq: "Peoples Can Withstand Any Regime, But At Some Point Things Go Too
Far"
The July 11 editorial of the official Saudi daily Al-Sharq argued that the
Iranian regime was not working in the interests of its people, and that it was
not seeking regional stability because it would ultimately lead to a change that
it did not desire, since the peoples always win in the end:
"Peoples can withstand any regime, but at some point things go too far, and in
the case of the Iranian people, this point was reached many years [ago]... The
Iranian regime does not seek stability in the region, and does not want its
people benefiting from the country's resources via development programs and
services; rather, it wants illogical and useless adventures aimed at harming
peaceful peoples and interfering in their affairs in a way that is unacceptable
to the entire world. The rulers in Tehran should note the fact of a turning
point, which could lead them to a situation they do not desire, as peoples
always emerge victorious."[10]
Endnotes:
[1] See, for example, the following July 12, 2016 articles: "We Also Want to
Topple the Ayatollah Regime" by Khalid Al-Sharida, Al-Youm (Saudi Arabia), and
"Emir [Turki Al-Faisal] – We Also Want to Topple the Regime" by Faisal Al-'Asaf,
Al-Hayat (London),
[2] See, for example, the July 12, 2016 articles by 'Abdallah Al-Hadlaq in the
official Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan titled "Liberating Iran and Its People from the
Ayatollahs' Terror" and the article by Faisal Al-Shaikh in the official Bahraini
daily Al-Watan titled "Toppling the Rule of the Jurisprudent."
[3] For example, July 11, 2016 articles in the official Saudi dailies 'Okaz and
Al-Riyadh described the Iranian regime's persecution and oppression of ethnic
minorities in the country, such as the Ahwazi Arabs, Kurds, and Baluchis. 'Okaz
even featured an interview with an exiled Ahwazi human rights activist, who said
that there has been a recent increase in voices inside Iran speaking out against
the regime's oppression at home and its interference in the affairs of other
countries. See: 'Okaz (Saudi Arabia), July 11, 2016; Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia),
July 11, 2016. The Saudi press published similar reports in 2014. See also MEMRI
Special Dispatch No. 5904, Saudi Media Campaign Denounces 'Ethnic Minority
Oppression' In Iran, December 15, 2014.
[4] 'Okaz (Saudi Arabia), July 11, 2016; Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), July 11,
2016.
[5] Twitter.com/TurkiHAlhamad, July 9, 2016; Twitter.com/alshaikhmhmd, July 9,
2016.
[6] Al-Iqtisadiyya (Saudi Arabia), July 9, 2016.
[7] It should be mentioned that the following day, July 12, Al-Youm featured
another editorial with a similar message titled "Together to Support the Iranian
People and Defeat the Rule of the Jurisprudent."
[8] Al-Youm (Saudi Arabia), July 11, 2016.
[9] Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), July 11, 2016.
[10] Al-Sharq (Saudi Arabia), July 11, 2016.