LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

March 12/16

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletin16/english.march12.16.htm

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Bible Quotations For Today
Jesus sighed and said to the deaf man, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 07/31-37:"Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’"

Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters
Letter to the Colossians 03/23-25//04,01-07: "Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven. Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, so that I may reveal it clearly, as I should. Conduct yourselves wisely towards outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone. Tychicus will tell you all the news about me; he is a beloved brother, a faithful minister, and a fellow-servant in the Lord."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 12/16

Lebanon must not repeat its experience with Palestinian refugees/Nayla Tueni/Al Arabiya/March 11/16
How a new website is helping Lebanese women avoid sexual harassment/Florence Massena/Al-Monitor/March 11/16
The not-so-cold war between Amal and Hezbollah/Myra Abdallah/Now Lebanon/March 11/16
Secrets behind Israel’s historic withdrawal from Lebanon/Ronen Bergman/Ynetnews/March 11/16
The Middle East Is Unraveling—and Obama Offers Words/Hisham Melhem/The Atlantic/11 March/16
Will Obama Try to Blackmail Israel/Shoshana Bryen/Gatestone Institute/March 11/16
UN report: Iran executes nearly 1,000 people in 2015/Barbara Slavin/Al-Monitor/March 11/16
Why some Shiites are refusing to join the fight against the Islamic State/Adnan Abu Zeed//Al-Monitor/March 11/16
Saudi Journalist, Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh: Iran – Not Israel – Is The Gulf States' No. 1 Enemy/MEMRI/March 11/16
The Obama ‘Middle Eastern’ Doctrine/Abdullah Hamidaddin/Al Arabiya/March 11/16
Only Bernie Sanders can stop Donald Trump/Abdallah Schleifer/Al Arabiya/March 11/16
The Muslim world is going backwards – and the West isn’t to blame/Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Al Arabiya/March 11/16

Titles For Latest Lebanese Related News published on March 12/16

Arab League brands Hezbollah ‘terror’ group
Arab League Labels Hizbullah 'Terrorist' amid Lebanon, Iraq Reservations
U.S. Ambassador-designate Vows to Consolidate Partnership with Lebanon, Slams Hizbullah
Garbage Bag-Sized Ambitions
Arslan: We Won't Accept 'Solid Waste Landfill' in Choueifat
Lebanon’s speaker indicates presidency deal almost ready
Lebanon must not repeat its experience with Palestinian refugees
Names of Lebanese Engineers in IS Leaked Documents
U.S. Ambassador-designate Vows to Consolidate Partnership with Lebanon, Slams Hizbullah
Report: Army Arrests Suspected Terrorists, Raises Alertness to Counter Sleeper Cells
Mashnouq Optimistic as Waste Crisis Committee Seems on Right Track
Kuwait Embassy: Premature to Know Motives behind Murder of 2 Nationals
ISF Arrests Suspected Killers of Kuwaiti Citizens
Waste Panel Reaches Agreement on Landfills, Cabinet to Meet Saturday Morning
Hariri Says Won't 'Secure Votes' for Aoun, Optimistic on Election of President on March 23
How a new website is helping Lebanese women avoid sexual harassment
The not-so-cold war between Amal and Hezbollah

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 12/16

Iraqi Girl Dies after IS Chemical Attack
Main Syrian opposition will attend peace talks
Germany: Files listing ISIS fighters are authentic
Key powers mulling possibility of federal division of Syria
Kerry heads to Saudi, France for Syria and regional talks
Arab League picks Egyptian chief at critical time
Justice Must Be Done for Syria War Crimes, Says U.N. Prosecutor
Five Civilians Killed in Regime Raids on Syria's Aleppo
Coalition Bombs IS Chemical Sites after Snaring 'Emir'
Lavrov Urges U.N. Envoy to Include Kurds in Syria Talks
Fifth Year of War 'Worst yet' for Syrians, Say NGOs
U.N.-Observed Polls in Syria 18 Months from March 14
Glimmer of Hope as Syria War Enters Sixth Year
Israel Raids Palestinian TV Station
North Korean Leader Orders Further Nuclear Tests
Iranian General Hassan Ali Shamsabadi was killed in Syria
Policy of “terror containment” puts soldiers behind sandbags in Israeli cities
Obama ‘proud for not bombing Syrian regime’
 

Links From Jihad Watch Site for March 12/16
NPR touts Muhammad’s example as means to counter “extremism”
Jonathan Power and the “Expressio Unius…”
David Wood video: Fact-checking “10 Lies You Were Told about Islam”
UK university Islamic Society head planned drive-by murder of soldiers
UK: Bid to ban Muslims from replacing UK laws with Sharia courts
The Islamic jihad against Christendom started before anyone ever heard of a Crusade
Muslim poses making Islamic State sign with AK-47, family says it was a joke
Minnesota: Youth sports, jobs, mental health groups get cash to fight terror
The Same God Question – Part 4: Eschatology and the End of Days
Obama compares the Islamic State to the Joker from Batman
Muslim US Air Force veteran convicted of attempting to join Islamic State
Obama: I’m more worried about climate change than the Islamic State

Arab League brands Hezbollah ‘terror’ group
By Staff writer Al Arabiya English Friday, 11 March 2016
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/2016/03/11/Arab-League-declares-Lebanon-s-Hezbollah-terror-group.html

Arab League Labels Hizbullah 'Terrorist' amid Lebanon, Iraq Reservations

Naharnet/Agence France Presse/March 11/16/Arab League foreign ministers on Friday declared Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hezbollah a “terrorist” group, after Sunni-dominated Gulf monarchies adopted the same stance.Nearly all members of the pan-Arab body supported the decision, but not Lebanon and Iraq which expressed "reservations", the bloc said in a statement read out at a news conference by Bahraini diplomat Wahid Mubarak Sayar.Algeria supported the move, but with reservations, according to the Bahraini diplomat.(With AFP) Arab League Labels Hizbullah 'Terrorist' amid Lebanon, Iraq Reservations. Arab League foreign ministers on Friday declared Hizbullah a "terrorist" group, days after Arab interior ministers and the Gulf Cooperation Council issued similar resolutions. Nearly all members of the pan-Arab body supported the decision, but not Lebanon and Iraq which expressed "reservations", the bloc said in a statement read out at a news conference by Bahraini diplomat Wahid Mubarak Sayar. Earlier in the day, the Saudi delegation briefly withdrew from discussions to protest against Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's refusal to label Hizbullah as terrorist. “Hizbullah enjoys wide representation in Lebanon and it is a main component in the country,” Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil announced after the meeting in Cairo. “We voiced reservations because the resolution was not in line with the Arab anti-terror treaty,” he added. The minister also noted that Lebanon supported “the resolution on the situations in Syria because it came in line with the latest U.N. Security Council resolution.”The Arab League's move follows a similar one by the Saudi-led GCC, which has designated Hizbullah as terrorist over alleged "terrorist acts and incitement in Syria, Yemen and in Iraq." Hezbollah criticized the GCC resolution as "irresponsible and hostile." Saudi Arabia has also accused Hizbullah of supporting Iran-backed rebels in Yemen -- against whom Riyadh has led a bombing campaign since March 2015. Hizbullah said the GCC decision "won't prevent us from condemning the crimes of Saudi Arabia in Yemen, the kingdom's financing and support of terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, or its collaboration with (Israel)." Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said that Riyadh had no right to collectively punish Lebanon after Riyadh announced last month that it was halting around $4 billion in military aid to the Lebanese army and security forces, and after it warned its citizens against traveling to Lebanon. Iran -- Hizbullah's principal backer -- has warned that its Gulf Arab rivals were jeopardizing Lebanon's stability by blacklisting the group. Saudi Arabia has linked its measures to Lebanon's refusal to join the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in condemning attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran last month, and alleged Hizbullah "terrorist acts against Arab and Muslim nations."

U.S. Ambassador-designate Vows to Consolidate Partnership with Lebanon, Slams Hizbullah
Naharnet/March 11/16/U.S. Ambassador-designate Elizabeth Richard has vowed to strengthen Washington's partnership with Beirut and the army while pledging to limit Hizbullah's role by helping Lebanese authorities exercise full sovereignty throughout the country. “Respect for religious freedom and confessional tolerance lie at the very core of Lebanese identity. We must do all we can to help Lebanon continue to uphold these principles,” Richard told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday. She said U.S. partnership with Lebanese state institutions is essential to help Lebanon address three major challenges – the role of Hizbullah, the political crisis, and the spillover effects of the Syrian war, including the refugee crisis. The diplomat told the committee that she was looking forward to “working with Lebanon’s voices for moderation and progress to support Lebanon’s quest for full sovereignty and independence.” Hizbullah is “a terrorist organization that puts its own interests and those of its foreign backers ahead of the Lebanese people,” said Richard. She slammed the party for fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad against the will of the Lebanese people, saying its “activities in Syria create serious security challenges for Lebanon.” “My mission will be to do everything I can to support Lebanon to exercise full sovereignty throughout the country and to help build up the Lebanese military, its sole legitimate defender,” she said. The diplomat stressed that the Obama administration's “goal is to dismantle Hizbullah’s international financial network while supporting Lebanese institutions and the Lebanese people.” She vowed to work with the Lebanese financial sector to enhance Washington's anti-money laundering and terrorism finance cooperation.
Addressing the rising threat of extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front, she said U.S. “partnership with Lebanon’s security forces has played a critical role in preserving Lebanon’s security against such threats.”She vowed to do her best to build upon the strong ties between Washington and the Lebanese army and security forces. Richard said U.S. military assistance to Lebanon - more than $150 million in fiscal year 2015 - makes a difference on the ground. “The Lebanese army has turned the tide against the IS on the border with Syria.” She called on the Lebanese to elect a president, saying the “people deserve a government that can deliver basic services, promote economic prosperity, and address the country’s most pressing security challenges.”The diplomat said it was the responsibility of the Lebanese to choose a head of state and have a fully functioning government and parliament. On the Syrian refugee crisis, the diplomat told the committee that the U.S. contribution to Lebanon reached over $1.1 billion since the start of the crisis in Syria in March 2011. “If confirmed, I will work hard to help Lebanon address this enormous humanitarian challenge,” she said.

Garbage Bag-Sized Ambitions
Ahmad El-Assaad/March 10/16/The garbage scandal we’ve been living with for months has tossed away all crucial political issues in the bin of negligence and oblivion, which are what brought the country to this situation, to begin with. None of the Lebanese people, unfortunately, care anymore about the presidency, nor about electing a President for the Republic. The vacuum in the Baabda Presidential Palace has become a normal thing that requires no special attention. None of the Lebanese people are noticing that their men are fighting in Syria either, in a land other than their own, for a goal other than their cause, in a war that is not theirs to fight. The Lebanese people only care about staying in their jobs, about their institutions not shutting down because of the economic recession, which would leave them without an income to support them. Those folkloric gatherings, known as the National Dialogue, turned into a silly Mexican soap opera, no longer interest the Lebanese people. All of the problems facing Lebanon today should be extra motivation for all the Lebanese people, in order to change the political status quo. All around the world, sound politics are the basis of a sound society, economy and environment. But the pitiable times we, in Lebanon, are living in, reflects the inferiority of the ruling political class, all colors included. It is absolutely impossible to solve any problems pertaining to livelihood or the environment, unless this political class is changed.

Arslan: We Won't Accept 'Solid Waste Landfill' in Choueifat
Naharnet/March 11/16/Lebanese Democratic Party leader MP Talal Arslan declared Friday that the town of Choueifat will not agree to the establishment of any “solid waste” landfill within its boundaries. “There is a big difference between a landfill for (all types of) garbage and one for non-recyclable and non-treatable waste,” Arslan pointed out in a tweet. “We will not agree to the setting up of any solid waste landfill within the boundaries of the town of Choueifat,” Arslan declared, hinting that a landfill that exclusively accepts non-recyclable and non-treatable waste would be tolerated. Sukleen, the firm handling waste management in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, has been criticized for straining the capacity of the Naameh site through land-filling recyclable and treatable garbage. The closure of the Naameh landfill in July last year was behind the unprecedented waste management crisis in the country. However, there was some optimism on Friday that a ministerial committee tasked with resolving the crisis would reach a solution to prevent the collapse of Prime Minister Tammam Salam's government. Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq told al-Mustaqbal daily that the committee “would hopefully today (Friday) resolve the garbage problem of Beirut which will be distributed to all areas.”He said the solution would come due to the efforts exerted by al-Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri. According to al-Mustaqbal, the ministerial committee's members agreed on Thursday to reactivate the Bourj Hammoud and Costa Brava dumps and to transport only the accumulated waste to the Naameh landfill.On Wednesday, Arslan's envoy to the ministerial panel said the MP and Choueifat's residents had “agreed to one suggestion out of three that were proposed to us.”“An agreement has been reached over two landfill sites amid an attempt to find a third site,” LBCI reported Wednesday, noting that “efforts are ongoing to find an alternative to the Costa Brava landfill and MP Talal Arslan has suggested utilizing a land lot in Choueifat.”Rubbish has piled up on streets, beaches, mountain forests and river beds across Lebanon since the July closure of the Naameh landfill, triggering health and environmental concerns as well as street protests involving violent confrontations. A plan to export the waste to Russia failed last month amid corruption allegations, and the government decided to resort to decentralization. The establishment of landfills in certain areas is still however facing obstruction by local officials and residents.

Lebanon’s speaker indicates presidency deal almost ready
Reuters, Beirut Friday, 11 March 2016/The influential speaker of Lebanon’s parliament signaled on Friday that a deal to elect a president was almost ready, raising hopes that a presidential vacuum which has paralyzed the political system for nearly two years could soon be filled. Lebanese newspaper An-nahar cited Speaker Nabih Berri saying in an interview that the presidency had “truly ripened” and it was time to “pick it”. His comments were published after former Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri, who is backed by Saudi Arabia, said he was confident parliament would elect a president on March 23 or at the next session in April, according to LBC TV station.
 

Lebanon must not repeat its experience with Palestinian refugees
Nayla Tueni/Al Arabiya/March 11/16
In an op-ed published last month, Yezid Sayigh, senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, discussed smarter assistance for Syrian refugees. This appeared following the international donor conference, which was held in London earlier that month and which pledged more than $11 billion to assist Syrian refugees and the internally displaced people in 2016-2020.
Sayigh noted that the “EU-Turkey joint action plan on refugees agreed on November 2015 has not yielded significant results,” and said that “the underfunding of past United Nations appeals for Syria has risen proportionally - from 30 percent of pledges in 2012 to 43 percent in 2015.” He added that “the international donor community must break away from its default fire-fighting mode to thinking strategically about long-term trends, needs, and responses.”Such insights confirm our fear of a “new resettlement” similar to what happened when the Palestinians were displaced in 1948. Back then, United Nations institutions aided them; however, this was insufficient and Palestinians’ temporary residences turned into camps of poverty, misery, terrorism and chaos. As a result, the residents of these camps suffered the most as they've become the victims of this environment.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is currently failing in its duties towards Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who are frequently protesting the shortage of aid and are voicing fear that this aid will stop altogether. This scenario worries them as it leaves them to confront their fates alone in a country that is incapable of providing for its own citizens. This injustice has turned into hostility between the Palestinian people and their host, i.e. Lebanon and its people. It is no longer possible to provide good integration as a lot more is required than mere eloquent speeches which do not provide a better livelihood situation or hospitalization or other necessary aid.
System’s incapability
The problem with the Syrian refugees in Lebanon may escalate like what happened with the Palestinian refugees. The Lebanese people’s fears are thus increasing due to the government, or perhaps the entire system’s incapability, to deal with urgent matters. The number of Syrian refugees has reached 2 million when the country’s population itself is 4 million. This is a huge number which impacts any small country on the economic and social levels. UNRWA is currently failing in its duties towards Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who are frequently protesting the shortage of aid and are voicing fear that this aid will stop altogether. In addition, the security situation is not well-monitored and the society may be infiltrated by terrorists from ISIS or other groups or by intelligence members of the Syrian regime, which has always sought to harm Lebanon’s security, stability and sovereignty.If the underfunding of United Nations toward Syrian refugees has reached 43 percent, this means that the international community does not meet its full obligations. The situation may become more difficult if oil prices continue to drop or settle at their current price. This is in addition to the many wars and battles across the world. All of this negatively affects economies and countries’ capabilities to provide help. We still don’t know how much of the $11 billion - which the international donor conference in London pledged to provide for Syrian refugees - will be allocated for Lebanon. However, it is certain that it will be a small amount considering the Syrian refugees’ growing needs. What is also certain is that we are in trouble. This is a crisis that will not end unless there is a solution for the Syrian refugees to return home as otherwise we are ahead of a situation that resembles our situation with the Palestinians.

Names of Lebanese Engineers in IS Leaked Documents
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/Tens of thousands of documents that were leaked Wednesday containing the names, addresses, phone numbers and family contacts of Islamic State militants included the names of two Lebanese engineers who planned to carry out suicide attacks, LBCI reported on Friday. Engineer graduates Abou Khattab al-Tamimi (1988) from the Bekaa area of Bouwerij and Abou Shadi al-Lebnani (1982) from the town of Qaraoun were listed among the names of 122 IS suicide attackers. Syrian opposition news website Zaman al-Wasl published the documents that included the identities of 122 suicide attackers listed in the documents of the IS under the title Moujahid Documents. On Wednesday, documents containing the names, addresses, phone numbers and family contacts of jihadis who joined the Islamic State group have been given to the UK's Sky News. Sky reported that a disillusioned former member had handed over the documents on a memory stick that had been stolen from the head of the group's internal security police. The documents are forms that IS recruits had to fill out in order to be accepted into the organization, and contain information on nationals from 51 countries. Some of the documents reportedly contain the information of previously unknown jihadis in northern Europe, the United States and Canada, as well as North Africa and the Middle East. Copies of the documents broadcast by Sky News showed that recruits would have to answer 23 questions including on their blood type, mother's maiden name, "level of sharia understanding" and previous experience. Some of the names in the documents are of fighters who have been already identified, such as Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, a former rapper from west London who once posted an image of himself on Twitter holding a severed head. Another named is Junaid Hussain, a cyber-operative for IS from the British city of Birmingham, and 21-year-old Reyaad Khan who appeared in a recruitment video, both killed last year. The documents were obtained from a man who uses the name Abu Hamed, a former Free Syrian Army member who joined IS. He stole the memory stick of documents and handed them over in Turkey to a journalist, explaining that he left because Islamic rules had collapsed inside the group. Hamed claimed the group had given up on its headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa and was moving into the desert, and that former soldiers from the Iraqi Baath party of executed dictator Saddam Hussein had taken over. There have been previous leaks of documents from IS, which have shown the group to be extremely bureaucratic, with rules covering every aspect of life. But if verified the cache of members' identities would be the most significant leak so far relating to the group, which brutally carved out regions of control in Iraq and civil war-torn Syria before expanding to North Africa and further around the world.

U.S. Ambassador-designate Vows to Consolidate Partnership with Lebanon, Slams Hizbullah
Naharnet/March 11/16/U.S. Ambassador-designate Elizabeth Richard has vowed to strengthen Washington's partnership with Beirut and the army while pledging to limit Hizbullah's role by helping Lebanese authorities exercise full sovereignty throughout the country. “Respect for religious freedom and confessional tolerance lie at the very core of Lebanese identity. We must do all we can to help Lebanon continue to uphold these principles,” Richard told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday. She said U.S. partnership with Lebanese state institutions is essential to help Lebanon address three major challenges – the role of Hizbullah, the political crisis, and the spillover effects of the Syrian war, including the refugee crisis. The diplomat told the committee that she was looking forward to “working with Lebanon’s voices for moderation and progress to support Lebanon’s quest for full sovereignty and independence.” Hizbullah is “a terrorist organization that puts its own interests and those of its foreign backers ahead of the Lebanese people,” said Richard. She slammed the party for fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad against the will of the Lebanese people, saying its “activities in Syria create serious security challenges for Lebanon.”“My mission will be to do everything I can to support Lebanon to exercise full sovereignty throughout the country and to help build up the Lebanese military, its sole legitimate defender,” she said. The diplomat stressed that the Obama administration's “goal is to dismantle Hizbullah’s international financial network while supporting Lebanese institutions and the Lebanese people.” She vowed to work with the Lebanese financial sector to enhance Washington's anti-money laundering and terrorism finance cooperation. Addressing the rising threat of extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front, she said U.S. “partnership with Lebanon’s security forces has played a critical role in preserving Lebanon’s security against such threats.”She vowed to do her best to build upon the strong ties between Washington and the Lebanese army and security forces. Richard said U.S. military assistance to Lebanon - more than $150 million in fiscal year 2015 - makes a difference on the ground. “The Lebanese army has turned the tide against the IS on the border with Syria.” She called on the Lebanese to elect a president, saying the “people deserve a government that can deliver basic services, promote economic prosperity, and address the country’s most pressing security challenges.”The diplomat said it was the responsibility of the Lebanese to choose a head of state and have a fully functioning government and parliament. On the Syrian refugee crisis, the diplomat told the committee that the U.S. contribution to Lebanon reached over $1.1 billion since the start of the crisis in Syria in March 2011. “If confirmed, I will work hard to help Lebanon address this enormous humanitarian challenge,” she said.

Report: Army Arrests Suspected Terrorists, Raises Alertness to Counter Sleeper Cells
Naharnet/March 11/16/The Lebanese Army Intelligence has arrested eight suspects who have entered Lebanon from the Syrian town of Zabadani to carry out terrorist activities, As Safir daily reported on Friday. The newspaper said that the arrests took place on Thursday in parallel with a preemptive strike launched by the military against jihadists from the Islamic State group on the outskirts of Ras Baalbek in eastern Lebanon. One soldier and five extremists were killed in the fighting. As Safir said that troops have also increased their level of alertness after reports that Abou Malek al-Talli, the emir of al-Nusra Front in Syria's Qalamoun area near the Lebanese border, is seeking to reactive dormant cells in northern Lebanon, mainly in the city of Tripoli. Soldiers have closed ranks and the army leadership raised their defense readiness to the maximum level to ward off any possible attack. The military took the measures not only in northern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, but also in Beirut, the capital's southern suburbs and areas abutting some Palestinian refugee camps, As Safir added.

Mashnouq Optimistic as Waste Crisis Committee Seems on Right Track
Naharnet/March 11/16/There was some optimism on Friday that a ministerial committee tasked with resolving the waste crisis would reach a solution to prevent the collapse of Prime Minister Tammam Salam's government. Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq told al-Mustaqbal daily that the committee “would hopefully today (Friday) resolve the garbage problem of Beirut which will be distributed to all areas.”He said the solution would come due to the efforts exerted by al-Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri. In remarks to al-Joumhouria newspaper, al-Mashnouq also said that all parties, including Speaker Nabih Berri, Progressive Socialist Party chief Walid Jumblat, Hizbullah, Free Patriotic Movement and Tashnag Party, “are serious in their work.” According to al-Mustaqbal, the ministerial committee's members agreed on Thursday to reactivate the Bourj Hammoud and Costa Brava dumps and to transport only the accumulated waste to the Naameh landfill. They are expected to agree on Friday on the cost of such operations and set the final location of a landfill where the waste of Shouf and Aley districts would be dumped, said the report. As for the waste of Beirut, it would be distributed to the Sidon incinerator, Bourj Hammoud and Costa Brava, added al-Mustaqbal. Salam warned last week that "there is no need for the government to stay" if it can't resolve the crisis. The country's waste problem emerged when the Naameh landfill closed in July. The trash is being dumped in makeshift areas, in forests and near river banks.

Kuwait Embassy: Premature to Know Motives behind Murder of 2 Nationals
Naharnet/March 11/16/Kuwait's Embassy said late Thursday that it was premature to identify the killers and know the motives behind the murder of two Kuwaiti nationals in the area of Kahale near Beirut. Ambassador Abdul Al al-Qinai said in a statement that the Lebanese authorities had informed the embassy that the two Kuwaitis, who were reported missing by their families, were found dead with gunshot wounds on their bodies inside a room of a restaurant they owned. Some media reports had said the two were shot dead as others reported that they were hit on the head with sharp objects. The reports also said two women who lived near the restaurant were arrested by police. The diplomat extended condolences to the relatives of the victims and reiterated the foreign ministry's warning to Kuwaitis not to travel to Lebanon. The killing came amid high tension between Hizbullah and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Two weeks before the murder, Kuwait along with the other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, warned its citizens not to travel to Lebanon and urged those already there to leave.

ISF Arrests Suspected Killers of Kuwaiti Citizens
Naharnet/March 11/16/The Internal Security Forces on Friday announced the arrest of two Syrian individuals suspected of murdering two Kuwaiti citizens in the Kahale region. “A special operation by the Intelligence Branch has resulted in the arrest of two individuals suspected of having committed the crime of murdering two Kuwaiti citizens,” the ISF announced on Twitter. It identified the suspects as the Syrians A. H., 41, and S. M., 39, saying they have "confessed to committing the crime with a metallic hammer with the aim of robbery." LBCI television meanwhile reported that one of the arrested suspects is the janitor of the building where the Kuwaitis were killed. The dead bodies of the two Kuwaitis were found Thursday in the building that they own in the area of Kahale, just outside Beirut. State-run National News Agency identified the two men as Hussein Nassar, 58, and Nabil Yaaqoub al-Gharib, 56. According to MTV, the two men had intended to travel to their country on Thursday. The incident comes amid high tensions between Lebanon and the Gulf countries and Kuwait is one of the Gulf Cooperation Council states that have advised their citizens to leave Lebanon.
 

Waste Panel Reaches Agreement on Landfills, Cabinet to Meet Saturday Morning
Naharnet/March 11/16/A ministerial panel tasked with resolving the country's long-running waste crisis appeared to have reached an agreement on Friday evening that involves the setting up of garbage landfills in several regions. A cabinet session will be held Saturday at 11:00 am to discuss the panel's solution, state-run National News Agency reported. “All parties have agreed on the solution to the garbage crisis,” LBCI television said. “The crisis is heading for a solution after MP Talal Arslan agreed to the establishment of a landfill in the Costa Brava area,” Industry Minister Hussein al-Hajj Hassan of Hizbullah told reporters after the panel's meeting. Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq for his part announced that “99% of the garbage crisis has been resolved.” “All landfills have become ready for the solution despite some obstacles and people's health is more important than anything else,” Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb said. But Arslan quickly poured cold water on the ministers' upbeat announcements. “We regret that the government's fate has become linked to sea reclamation (in the Costa Brava area) and I won't comment on the ministerial panel's decision before consulting, together with (Progressive Socialist Party chief) Walid Beik (Jumblat), with our people in Choueifat,” Arslan said via Twitter. He had earlier announced that “there is a big difference between a landfill for (all types of) garbage and one for non-recyclable and non-treatable waste.” Mashnouq had told al-Mustaqbal daily that the committee “would hopefully today (Friday) resolve the garbage problem of Beirut, which will be distributed to all areas.”He said the solution would come due to the efforts exerted by al-Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri. In remarks to al-Joumhouria newspaper, Mashnouq also said that all parties -- including Jumblat, Speaker Nabih Berri, Hizbullah, Free Patriotic Movement and Tashnag Party -- “are serious in their work.” According to al-Mustaqbal, the ministerial committee's members agreed on Thursday to reactivate the Bourj Hammoud and Costa Brava dumps and to transport only the accumulated waste to the Naameh landfill. They were expected to agree Friday on the cost of such operations and to set the final location of a landfill where the waste of Shouf and Aley districts would be dumped, said the report. As for the waste of Beirut, it would be distributed to the Sidon incinerator, Bourj Hammoud and Costa Brava, added al-Mustaqbal. Prime Minister Tammam Salam warned last week that "there is no need for the government to stay" if it can't resolve the crisis. Sukleen, the firm handling waste management in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, has been criticized for straining the capacity of the Naameh site through land-filling recyclable and treatable garbage. The closure of the Naameh landfill in July last year was behind the unprecedented waste management crisis in the country. Rubbish has piled up on streets, beaches, mountain forests and river beds across Lebanon since the July closure of Naameh, triggering health and environmental concerns as well as street protests involving violent confrontations. A plan to export the waste to Russia failed last month amid corruption allegations, and the government decided to resort to decentralization. The establishment of landfills in certain areas is still however facing obstruction by local officials and residents.

Hariri Says Won't 'Secure Votes' for Aoun, Optimistic on Election of President on March 23
Naharnet/March 11/16/Al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri stressed Thursday that he will not seek to “secure votes” for the election of Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun as president, as he expressed optimism on the election of a president in the next two sessions. “Let no one ask me to secure votes for the election of Michel Aoun as president, despite my appreciation of him, and if he can secure the votes I will head to parliament tomorrow,” said Hariri in an interview with LBCI television. “Despite the reconciliation between Aoun and (Lebanese Forces leader Samir) Geagea , I'm committed to (Marada Movement chief MP) Suleiman Franjieh's nomination. Should Aoun secure enough votes, I will go to parliament and congratulate him,” Hariri said. “I spoke with General Aoun but he was not accepted by my allies. I then discussed Franjieh's nomination with them and they did not show much opposition. My concern is putting an end to vacuum, because it is a disaster for Lebanon,” the ex-PM added. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and the FPM, Hizbullah and some of their allies have been boycotting the electoral sessions. Hariri launched late in 2015 a proposal to nominate Franjieh for the presidency but his suggestion was rejected by the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. The Hizbullah-led March 8 camp, as well as March 14's Lebanese Forces, have argued that Aoun is more eligible than Franjieh to become president given the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community. “I have made a presidential initiative due to the ongoing crises at level of decision-making in all state institutions,” Hariri told LBCI. He warned that vacuum in Lebanon “led to the May 7 (2008) clashes” and “vacuum only leads to problems and difficulties.” Hariri noted that his nomination of Franjieh “aims to extend the hand to the other camp.”“With all due respect to (Hizbullah chief) Sayyed (Hassan) Nasrallah, we have our presence in this country and we have nominated a figure who belongs to his camp but we cannot execute Hizbullah's instructions,” the former premier added. “We must not lose hope in the presidential issue and today there are real candidates whom we can elect,” Hariri went on to say, noting that he is “reassured that a president will be elected in the next session or in the session that would follow.”
The ex-PM also revealed that he told FPM chief Jebran Bassil during their meeting last week that he is “committed to Franjieh's nomination.”Turning to the tensions between Hizbullah and Saudi Arabia, Hariri underlined that “it is a terrorist act when Hizbullah goes to Yemen, Bahrain, the UAE and Saudi Arabia and when it jeopardizes Saudi security and Gulf security.”“When Hizbullah fights to defend Lebanon it is an act of resistance, but what is it doing in Syria, Iraq and Yemen? Where is the interest of the Lebanese in all of what's happening?” he wondered. “I tell Sayyed Nasrallah that I have returned to Lebanon and I call on him to return to Lebanon as well. He must take Lebanon's interests into consideration before the interest of any other country. Lebanon needs a president and stability,” Hariri went on to say. “We support Hizbullah when it fights Israeli occupation but we are against any military act outside Lebanon,” he emphasized.

How a new website is helping Lebanese women avoid sexual harassment
Florence Massena/Al-Monitor/March 11/16
Cat-calling, men masturbating in public, and being inappropriately touched and insulted are part of daily life for some women in Lebanon. Such is their experience based on testimonies published on HarasserTracker.org, a website launched at the end of February by three young Lebanese entrepreneurs
Nay el-Rahi and Myra el-Mir in Lebanon, and Sandra Hassan, based in France, have been involved in defending women's rights through professional and personal work with associations such as Kafa, a feminist nongovernmental organization focusing on gender-based violence, and Nasawiya, a feminist collective that ceased operating at the end of 2014. The launch of HarassMap in Egypt in 2010 was the three women's main inspiration for their initiative, the first of its kind in Lebanon. “The website is a tool to primarily track and document harassment in Lebanon,” Rahi, who is in charge of content, explained to Al-Monitor. “We would like to document what's happening in the streets of Lebanon in order to use it as data to lobby certain political entities for some changes, like lighting, the sidewalks, etc., over concern for the general safety of people.”
Another goal is to redefine perceptions of sexual harassment and get to the point where it can be discussed in the public sphere without shame. “We hear a lot about people trying to define what is and what isn't, in their opinion, sexual harassment,” Rahi said. “Like when people say, ‘He was trying to hit on you! It's a compliment! Why don't you chill?’ — it is a habit of blaming the victims and defining things for them.”
This desire to raise the issue of sexual harassment in public stems in part from personal experience. Rahi commented, “As a woman living in the city, it's very hard not to feel the need to do something about harassment, you feel it every day, as well as this weird common agreement between people to normalize it, not to react to it.”Sexual harassment is indeed a common reality for many women on the street in Lebanon. Amnesty International reported in February on Syrian women refugees' fears of being sexually harassed, and this seems to be a similar concern among Western and Lebanese women, such as Jay (not her real name) from Beirut. Jay told Al-Monitor, “I remember, I was 16 years old, walking down the street once, and this man followed me home, ‘complimenting’ my uterus, vagina, boobs, ass, etc. So I stopped and made sure he saw my Swiss knife and that I was not afraid to use it. Another story is a bit shocking. I had an urgent meeting and stopped a service [collective taxi] heading to Ashrafieh. The driver was an old man, and the cab was full, so I had to sit in front, which I never do, but he looked harmless. After all the passengers had got out; he complimented my perfume, so I thanked him politely, and then he rubbed his hand all over my thigh. I managed to tell him my thoughts before opening the door and jumping onto the highway.”
Similar experiences with service drivers are common in the testimonies of women, like one by Elizabeth (a pseudonym), a young North American woman who spent almost two years in Lebanon. She admitted, “[I was] terrified at first to take a service, because a lot of drivers harassed me, touched my legs, and I had to jump out once because he was touching my thigh.” She also had the experience of a man in his car asking for directions as she was walking and then revealing to her that he was masturbating while talking to her. In addition, she has had men cat-calling her and taking pictures of her legs.
In the face of such aggression, the creators of HarassTracker say their larger agenda is connected to violence against women with the hope it can lead to improving the legal framework to address it. “You can never convict someone of harassment unless you provide proof, so the burden falls on the victim,” Rahi said. “It is difficult to find a witness. Often the witness is an accomplice or refuses to talk or doesn't even see it as harassment. When people ask why a lot of women are not active in the public sphere, this is the answer. It's a real issue.”
In fact, none of the women interviewed by Al-Monitor has ever complained to the police. Jay argued, “In this country, a woman is considered as half a man. People won't trust what I say. I have no rights.”
Another young woman, Nour (also a pseudonym), told Al-Monitor, “There are not enough laws to protect women against sexual harassment. A lot of girls are victims of it by their own family members and never talk about it. Kids should be made aware of this issue at school from the beginning, and the laws have to change.”
Articles 503 and 507 of the Lebanese penal code, inherited from the French mandate in 1943, penalize forcing another person to have sexual intercourse or perform an indecent act outside marriage. These, however, are the only references to sexual harassment and are not explictly expressed as such, and carry the obligation of presenting a witness. Associations and institutions like Kafa and the Lebanese Council to Resist Violence Against Women provide care and counseling to women confronted by violence, including providing safehouses in cases of marital violence, but are not able to sufficiently assist them on a legal level. Nour confided how she had experienced shame after being touched by a stranger in a service when she was 19. She remembered, “I told no one what happened that day, not even my parents. I was feeling so shameful. Later on, I understood that the shame was not mine to feel, but his. It was not my fault.” Allowing women to express what happened to them anonymously is one of the purposes of HarassTracker as well as applying words to the act of harassment. “It is empowering to say that happened and that was sexual harassment,” Mir, the website's designer, told Al-Monitor. “Even if there is a doubt, nuances, you can at least make other people understand. At least we can change things a bit to make people start talking. People don't go to our website only to denounce a harassment, they visit too. So it's always positive, even though it's not going to make the situation evolve right away,” said Mir.

The not-so-cold war between Amal and Hezbollah
Myra Abdallah/Now Lebanon/March 11/16
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/03/11/myra-abdallah-the-not-so-cold-war-between-amal-and-hezbollah/

One documentary aired on the pro-Hezbollah Al-Mayadeen television station was enough to reveal the tension and mistrust that exists between Hezbollah and Amal Movement supporters
Last month, Al-Mayadeen began broadcasting a seven-part documentary: “The invasion: Incursion of Lebanon”, documenting Hezbollah’s resistance against the Israeli forces. The program incited a wave of opposition from Amal Movement supporters because, according to them, it was the Amal Movement that founded the resistance and was highly involved in its early operations. However, the documentary attributes all victories to Hezbollah.
This rivalry between the two parties regarding the Shiite community’s legacy is not new. In fact, the relationship between the Amal Movement and Hezbollah always had its ups and downs. Hezbollah was created in 1982 as a guerilla resistance force in reaction to the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon and quickly became the competitor of the Amal Movement – created in 1974 - within the Shiite community on the political level. Ever since, the popular bases of the two major Shiite parties have had more periods of disagreement than agreement. However, in recent decades, notably during the 2005 Cedar Revolution and the 2006 Lebanese-Israeli War, the leadership of the Amal Movement and Hezbollah tried to communicate the same political view, forming a major part of the March 8 coalition. This convergence lasted until Hezbollah decided to intervene in the war in Syria alongside Bashar Al-Assad’s regime whereas Amal Movement refused to officially participate as a combatant force in the conflict. The political plans of the two parties started to gradually diverge afterwards, leading to the most recent disagreement over who should be the Shiite community’s preferred presidential candidate.
“There are many conflicts between Amal Movement and Hezbollah regarding major decisions. In addition to the divergent views on participation in the conflict in Syria, Nabih Berri, for instance, never agreed on [Michel] Aoun as a presidential candidate,” said Annahar analyst Ibrahim Bayram. “Since the beginning, Berri’s view was more moderate and his preferred presidential candidate was Jean Obeid. When [Sleiman] Frangieh was nominated by [Saad] Hariri, Berri supported the nomination and was one of the people who made this arrangement happen, thwarting Aoun’s candidacy.”
Despite continuous efforts from officials in both political parties to ease tensions among their political base, the recent clashes between Nabih Berri and Hezbollah’s General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah had a severe impact on the already unstable relations between their supporters. Residents of Chiyah – an area of Beirut’s southern suburbs controlled by the Amal Movement – told NOW that the situation has become very fragile and dangerous lately, with violent incidents occurring more frequently. “There was an armed clash yesterday between Hezbollah supporters and Amal Movement supporters,” said one Shiyah resident, who lives walking distance from Assad al-Assad Street. “Also last week, we were informed that a Hezbollah supporter shot at an Amal Movement security official at the [party’s] Shiyah office. As a result, the latter ordered the deployment of armed Amal Movement supporters in the area, specifically covering the streets that extend from the internal facade of Mar Mikhael Church towards Moawad Street.”
Other residents whom NOW spoke to said that the clashes started when Hezbollah supporters raised the picture of Nabih Berri during You Stink protests, accusing him of corruption. The situation became more serious after the Burj al-Barajneh double-suicide bombings in November 2015 when Hezbollah replaced Amal Movement’s flags with flags from the Party of God around the site of the explosions. “The relationship between Hezbollah and Amal Movement can be described as a temporary marriage,” one political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity told NOW. “The strength of Hezbollah relies on the fact that the party should have no competitors, especially within the Shiite community. However, in order to be powerful, Hezbollah must hold tight to the unity of the Shiite community, therefore it gave a role to Nabih Berri and Amal Movement in the Lebanese political scene. When the adventures of Hezbollah became numerous, especially post intervention in Syria, Berri began attempting to intimidate and blackmail Hezbollah within the Shiite community.”
Amal Movement supporters – who claim precedence as the original Shiite political party and resistance – grew increasingly wary of the influence Hezbollah has gained and its regular attempts to control the Shiite community. Berri’s efforts and the role he plays as head of Lebanese parliament succeeded in easing the tension between his supporters and their Shiite competitors until recently, when clashes between them became too obvious to remain concealed.
“Despite all the efforts to calm people down, the Shiite community is currently divided,” an Amal Movement official told NOW. “Amal’s leadership is really concerned that hatred between Hezbollah supporters and Amal supporters is back.” The Amal official also told NOW that, for the past five years, the party has avoided being in a position of enmity with other political parties. For instance, even though the movement supports the Syrian regime, it made the decision of not fighting alongside Assad’s forces.
“Hezbollah claims they control Lebanon in an attempt to eliminate us. We have a remarkable presence in Beirut. We are in Basta, Khandaq al-Ghamiq, Ain al-Mreisseh, Ramlet al-Bayda, Hamra and Zqaq al-Blat. What do they have? Their project is not controlling Lebanon anymore. Their current project is to hijack the [Shiite] community, but they won’t be able to do it,” he said.
**Myra Abdallah tweets @myraabdallah

Iraqi Girl Dies after IS Chemical Attack
Naharnet /Agence France Presse/March 11/16/A three-year-old Iraqi girl wounded in a chemical attack by the Islamic State group died in hospital Friday, medical sources and officials said. "She died of respiratory complications and kidney failure... caused by the mustard agent used by Daesh (IS) in Taza," said Masrour Aswad, of the Iraqi Commission for Human Rights. Fatima Samir was among the dozens of people hospitalized after a chemical attack carried out Wednesday on the town of Taza, just south of the city of Kirkuk. Burhan Abdallah, the head of Kirkuk health directorate, said four people in serious condition were transferred to Baghdad. Aswad said the rockets fired on Taza from the nearby IS-held town of Bashir contained mustard agent. Other security officials said chlorine may have been used. Intelligence officials have collected samples that are still being analyzed. IS has used both chemical agents in the past, a tactic which has caused few casualties and whose impact so far has been more psychological than military. Abu Ridha al-Najjar, a leader in the Turkmen branch of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary umbrella group that includes Iraq's mostly Shiite militias, said the attack had sown fear. "International NGOs should come to the region to see the effects of such shelling and its consequences on the civilian population, including after the attack," he said. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the U.S.-led coalition against IS had carried out air strikes on the jihadist group's chemical weapons sites. It said the targets were identified following the capture in Iraq last month of a man presented as the group's top chemical expert.
 

Main Syrian opposition will attend peace talks
By AP Beirut Friday, 11 March 2016/Syria’s main, Western-backed opposition groups said Friday they will attend the UN-sponsored indirect peace talks with the Damascus government in Geneva, starting in two days’ time, amid renewed efforts by the international community to end the deadly, five-year conflict. The civil war has killed over 250,000 people and displaced millions of Syrians from their homes. In the latest violence, Syrian state media reported that ISIS killed Syrian poet Mohammad Bashir al-Ani and his son, Eyas, in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, which is contested between the government and the militant group. The opposition groups, assembled under an umbrella known as the High Negotiations Committee, said in a statement that their participation in the Geneva talks starting Monday comes in response to “sincere” international efforts to end Syria’s war. The decision to go came after violence dropped following a truce brokered by Russia and the United States. That cease-fire went into effect on Feb. 27, and the government and militants allowed dozens of trucks carrying aid to enter besieged areas. The HNC said it still seeks a full lifting of siege on rebel-held areas, as well as the release of hundreds of detainees including women and children. The opposition team in Geneva will press for a transitional governing body with full executive powers and a pluralist regime in which President Bashar Assad and his associates will have no role, the HNC statement said. It also insisted on Syria's unity and the restructuring of the country’s security agencies.But the umbrella’s chief, Riad Hijab, played down expectations ahead of the Geneva talks. “We are not going to test the intentions of the (Syrian) regime,” he said. “We know what crimes they are committing.”Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem is scheduled to hold a news conference on Saturday but it was not clear if he is going to announce when the government's team will head to Geneva. In Turkey, HNC member George Sabra said the opposition is convinced the Syrian government and its chief backers Russia and Iran “still aim for a military solution” to the crisis. “Honestly, our confidence for these negotiations to stop the suffering for Syria or the Syrian people to succeed is weak,” Sabra said. The first round of Geneva talks collapsed on Feb. 3 during a wide government offensive against insurgents. In several areas in northern Syria, hundreds of people came out on the streets after Friday prayers, carrying the opposition’s flag and calling for the downfall of Assad’s government, according to opposition monitoring groups the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees. Al-Nusra militants grab at the microphone held by poet Hani Allahlah during a protest in Maarat al Noaman. The Observatory’s chief Rami Abdurrahman said that in the northern towns of Maaret al-Numan and Salqin, supporters of al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria - known as the Nusra Front - mingled in among the protesters, brandishing al-Qaeda’s black flag and forcing the protesters to disperse. It was the second time in a week that Nusra Front members had broken up a rally in the region, apparently in an effort to intimidate activists from organizing pro-opposition demonstrating in the future. Syria’s civil war has devastated the country and given space for the emergence of radical militant groups such as the ISIS and the Nusra Front. Those groups and other militant factions are not part of the cease-fire or international negotiations. In its report about the killing of the poet, al-Ani, the SANA news agency said late Thursday that he and his son were taken from their home in Deir el-Zour two months ago to an unknown destination. The 56-year-old al-Ani was one of the most prominent poets in eastern Syria. The following video captures the moment a demonstration in Syria was taken over by what appear to be members of the Al-Nusra Front

Germany: Files listing ISIS fighters are authentic
The Associated Press, Berlin Friday, 11 March 2016/Thousands of files have surfaced with personal data on members of ISIS - documents that might help authorities track down and prosecute foreign fighters who returned home after joining the extremists, or identify those who recruited them in the first place.
Germany’s federal criminal police said Thursday they are in possession of the files and believe they are authentic. The announcement came after Britain’s Sky News reported it had obtained 22,000 ISIS files that detail the real names of fighters for the group, where they were from, their telephone numbers and even names of those who sponsored and recruited them. In a joint report, Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Munich and broadcasters WDR and NDR reported independently Monday they had obtained “many dozens” of pages of such documents itself. “This is a huge data base - there are more than something like 22,000 names, so this is very, very important,” said Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck, a research analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center. She said the files would “definitely” help international security services, including those in Arab countries, to confirm the identities of those who have already left to fight for ISIS, to discover the identities of new fighters, and to help them in identifying those who return home from Syria and Iraq. Sky said the files, obtained at the border between Turkey and Syria, were passed to them on a memory stick stolen from the head of the extremist group’s internal security police by a former fighter who had grown disillusioned with the group. Sueddeutsche Zeitung and the German broadcasters reported they also had obtained the files on the Turkey-Syria border, where they said ISIS files and videos were widely available from anti-ISIS Kurdish fighters and members of ISIS itself. The documents highlight the bureaucratic work of the highly secretive extremist group that has spread fear through its brutal killings and deadly attacks in its self-declared caliphate of Syria and Iraq, as well as in places like France, Turkey, Lebanon, Yemen and Libya. The information could help the US-led coalition that is fighting the militant group by aiding in a crackdown on the extremists’ foreign fighter networks, said US Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the coalition. He said that while he was not able to verify the documents, he hoped that “if there is a media outlet that has these names and numbers, I hope they publish them.”That would help bring attention to the problem of foreign fighters joining ISIS and also would help authorities to crack down on the problem, he said. “This would allow the law enforcement apparatus across the world to become much more engaged and begin to help do what we can to stem this flow of foreign fighters - so we’re hopeful that its accurate and if so we certainly plan to do everything we can to help,” he said. Both Sky and Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported the documents were forms with 23 questions to be filled out by recruits when they were inducted into ISIS. Sky said they included nationals from at least 51 countries, including the US and Britain.

Key powers mulling possibility of federal division of Syria
Reuters, United Nations Friday, 11 March 2016/Major powers close to UN-brokered peace talks on Syria are discussing the possibility of a federal division of the war-torn country that would maintain its unity as a single state while granting broad autonomy to regional authorities, diplomats said. The resumption of Geneva peace talks is coinciding with the fifth anniversary of a conflict that began with protests against President Bashar al-Assad before descending into a multi-sided civil war that has drawn in foreign governments and allowed the growth of ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq. Fighting in Syria has slowed considerably since a fragile “cessation of hostilities agreement” brokered by the United States and Russia came into force almost two weeks ago. But an actual peace deal and proper ceasefire remain elusive. As the United Nations’ peace mediator Staffan de Mistura prepares to meet with delegations from the Syrian government and opposition, one of the ideas receiving serious attention at the moment is a possible federal division of Syria. Neither the opposition nor government has confirmed its participation in the latest round of peace talks in Switzerland. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a UN Security Council diplomat said some major Western powers, not only Russia, have also been considering the possibility of a federal structure for Syria and have passed on ideas to de Mistura. “While insisting on retaining the territorial integrity of Syria, so continuing to keep it as a single country, of course there are all sorts of different models of a federal structure that would, in some models, have a very, very loose center and a lot of autonomy for different regions,” the diplomat said. He offered no details about the models of a federal division of authority that could be applied to Syria. Another council diplomat confirmed the remarks.
Opposition dislikes federalism
The biggest sticking point in the peace talks remains the fate of Assad, who Western and Gulf Arab governments insist must go at the end of a transition period envisioned under a roadmap hammered out in Vienna last year by major powers. Assad’s backers Russia and Iran say Syrians themselves must decide. After five years of civil war that has killed 250,000 people and driven some 11 million from their homes, Syria’s territory is already effectively split between various parties, including the government and its allies, Western-backed Kurds, opposition groups and ISIS militants. This week, Syria’s Saudi Arabian-backed opposition rejected a suggestion by Russia, which like Iran supports Assad’s government and has intervened militarily on its side, that the peace talks could agree a federal structure for the country. “Any mention of this federalism or something which might present a direction for dividing Syria is not acceptable at all. We have agreed we will expand non-central government in a future Syria, but not any kind of federalism or division,” Syrian opposition coordinator Riad Hijab said. But the idea of federalism for Syria has not been ruled out. In an interview with Al Jazeera on Thursday, de Mistura said “all Syrians have rejected division (of Syria) and federalism can be discussed at the negotiations.”In a September interview Assad did not rule out the idea of federalism when asked about it, but said any change must be a result of dialogue among Syrians and a referendum to introduce the necessary changes to the constitution.
“From our side, when the Syrian people are ready to move in a certain direction, we will naturally agree to this,” he said at the time. The co-leader of Syrian Kurdish PYD party, which exercises wide influence over Kurdish areas of Syria, has made clear the PYD was open to the idea. “What you call it isn’t important,” PYD’s Saleh Muslim told Reuters on Tuesday. “We have said over and over again that we want a decentralized Syria - call it administrations, call it federalism - everything is possible.”The next round of Syria peace talks is not expected to run beyond March 24. After that round ends, there is expected to be a break of a week or 10 days before they resume.

Kerry heads to Saudi, France for Syria and regional talks
The Associated Press, Washington Friday, 11 March 2016/US Secretary of State John Kerry is heading to Saudi Arabia and France this week for discussions with top Saudi and European officials about conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Libya. The State Department says Kerry will leave late Thursday for the Saudi city of Hafar al Batin on its northeastern border with Iraq and Kuwait, where 20 countries just concluded a three-week counterterrorism military exercise. From there, Kerry will travel to Paris for talks on Sunday with the new French foreign minister as well as his counterparts from Britain, Germany and Italy and the EU foreign policy chief. In addition to the Syria, Yemen and Libya conflicts, Kerry is also expected to discuss the migrant crisis facing Europe.

Arab League picks Egyptian chief at critical time
The Associated Press, Cairo Friday, 11 March 2016/The Arab League’s 22 members picked a veteran Egyptian diplomat to head the body in a late-night session on Thursday. Ahmed Aboul-Gheit was the only contender for the post. The appointment came at a critical time for the Middle East, with Syria marking the fifth anniversary of its devastating civil war, regional proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran on full display, and the battle against ISIS raging in several Arab countries. Egypt’s Aboul-Gheit, a former ambassador to the United Nations and veteran diplomat under autocrat Hosni Mubarak, had been widely expected to win approval from the league members. It is a long-held protocol that Egypt, as host of the Arab League, traditionally nominates the chief. The league has been almost exclusively led by Egyptians. Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa announced the decision after some last-minute wrangling over the appointment, saying Aboul-Gheit would “serve a five-year term effective July 1” as secretary-general. Diplomats said earlier that Qatar and Sudan had opposed the choice of Aboul-Gheit, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia lobbying them to accept the choice. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief journalists. The secretary-general can be elected by obtaining a minimum two-thirds majority of member states, but the group prefers to have unanimous agreement. Divisions have weakened the Arab League since the 2011 uprisings that toppled three longtime autocratic rulers but also sparked three civil wars. But despite its waning influence, a strong leadership might help shore up a Saudi-led Sunni front against Iran at a time of ongoing military involvement by the Saudis and other Gulf Arab countries in Yemen and Syria. Past league chairmen have included pan-Arab nationalists such as Amr Moussa and the outgoing head, Nabil Elaraby. Aboul-Gheit appears to mark a shift as he is known to be a pragmatic diplomat with strong enmity for political Islam factions like the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. Aboul-Gheit was the last foreign minister under Mubarak, who was toppled in Egypt’s 2011 uprising. He was replaced after Mubarak’s ouster and kept a low profile while many of Mubarak loyalists were sent to courts for trials in corruption-linked cases.
 

Justice Must Be Done for Syria War Crimes, Says U.N. Prosecutor
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/The chief prosecutor for the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal said Friday that those behind atrocities in Syria must eventually be held to account, as the conflict prepares to enter its sixth year. "As an international prosecutor and somebody who believes in justice... it is obvious that sooner or later accountability will be needed for the crimes committed in Syria," Serge Brammertz told AFP. "There are already more victims in a longer conflict than the wars in the former Yugoslavia for which an entire tribunal was set up and has been in existence for more than 20 years," Brammertz said in an interview at his headquarters in The Hague. Protests against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad erupted on March 15, 2011, triggering a devastating civil war which has killed more than a quarter of a million people and uprooted over half its population of around 23 million. Brammertz acknowledged that collecting evidence as part of any trials would be "a very, very difficult exercise" given the lack of access to the sites. A U.N. report last month condemned rampant war crimes in Syria, insisting accountability for the horrors be part of a peace process. There have been appeals to the U.N. Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes investigations. But a bid in May 2014 to ask the ICC to look into war crimes in Syria was vetoed by Russia and China at the U.N. Security Council. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was set up in 1993 -- as the conflict was still raging -- to prosecute those most responsible for the bloodshed. More than 140,000 people died and more than four million others were displaced in the wars that wracked the Balkans after the break-up of the former Soviet bloc country in 1991, according to NGOs. The U.N. tribunal is set to hand down a verdict later this month in the case against wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is accused of committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. ICTY chief prosecutor Brammertz would not be drawn on the specifics of a Syria tribunal, but he stressed it should be "based on an integrated approach where you have national ownership with international involvement". There would need to be "an international solution, because I don't think any country after such a violent conflict can find a solution in its own legal structures."

Five Civilians Killed in Regime Raids on Syria's Aleppo
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/Syrian regime air strikes killed at least five civilians in a rebel-held neighborhood of Aleppo city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said calling it a "serious violation".The raids follow a lull in strikes brought by an unprecedented ceasefire that has largely held since coming into force on February 27. "At least five civilians were killed in Syrian air force raids on the Salhin neighborhood," according to Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. "Friday's toll is the highest in Aleppo city since the ceasefire came into force and it is the most serious violation in the city since the truce came into effect," Abdel Rahman said. He said 10 people were also wounded in the air strikes but warned that the toll could still rise as there were people trapped under the rubble. An AFP correspondent in the city said the raids struck a mosque in Salhin. On Thursday, a child was killed in regime bombardment of the rebel-held neighborhood of Myassar, also in Aleppo city, said the Britain-based Observatory which monitors the Syria conflict. More than 270,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict first broke out in March 2011.

Coalition Bombs IS Chemical Sites after Snaring 'Emir'
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/The U.S.-led coalition has carried out the first air strikes on Islamic State chemical weapons sites, the Pentagon said Thursday, acting on information from a senior operative described as the extremists' top chemical expert. The successful "multiple" bombings came as a result of detailed intelligence from Sulayman Dawud al-Bakkar, also known as Abu Dawud, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said, confirming Dawud's capture by U.S. special forces in Iraq last month. The snaring of Dawud, who was transferred Thursday into Iraqi custody after interrogation, appears to be a major boon in the fight against the IS group in Iraq and Syria, and Cook said it had yielded almost immediate results as well as critical information for the future. Cook described Dawud as "ISIL's emir of chemical and traditional weapons manufacturing." "His capture removed a key ISIL leader from the battlefield and provided the coalition with important information about ISIL's chemical weapons capabilities," Cook said, using an alternative acronym for the IS extremists. "Through Dawud, the coalition learned details about ISIL's chemical weapon facilities and production, as well as the people involved.
"The information has resulted in multiple coalition air strikes that have disrupted and degraded ISIL's ability to produce chemical weapons and will continue to inform our operations in the future."U.S. media said that Dawud formerly worked for Saddam Hussein's regime. The chemical weapons expert was picked up by U.S. forces that the Pentagon only recently deployed to Iraq to conduct raids against the Islamic State group. The strikes on the chemical facilities -- it was not immediately known exactly where and when the raids took place -- had carefully "factored in" the risk to the civilian population, Cook added. The New York Times, citing officials, said that the U.S.-led air campaign targeted a weapons production plant in Mosul, Iraq and another against a "tactical unit" near Mosul believed to be linked to the program. In February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan for the first time openly accused the Islamic State group of using chemical weapons, including mustard gas, in Iraq and Syria.
'Gross violations'
The U.S. military Central Command Thursday provided the most specific details so far of the chemical attacks it attributes to the group. "We believe that Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was responsible for the sulfur mustard attack in Marea, Syria on August 21, 2015, largely based on photographic evidence and the Syrian opposition's description of the event," said a CENTCOM statement."Based on the available information, we also believe that ISIL was likely responsible for some of the alleged attacks using sulfur mustard in Iraq." Mustard gas -- also known as "sulfur mustard" -- can cause respiratory distress, momentary blindness and painful blisters. "Any use by ISIL of CW is a continuation of its extensive record of gross violations of human rights, as well as its blatant disregard for international laws and norms," CENTCOM said. According to CNN, the U.S. intelligence community has confirmed 12 cases of the use of mustard agent, with three other cases suspected. They include locations in Syria and Iraq. However, CNN said that U.S. officials have been at pains to play down the attacks saying they believe any deaths were from being hit by artillery, not the agent. Dawud's capture and the subsequent raids mark the second major blow against the extremists announced this week, in the US-led attempt to wipe out the IS group and its self-declared caliphate across parts of Syria and Iraq where the extremists implement an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islamic law. Top Islamic State commander leader Omar al-Shishani, known as Omar the Chechen, was badly wounded in a recent U.S. strike in northeastern Syria, though not killed as first believed, according to a monitoring group.The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday that according to its sources the March 4 strike targeted the jihadist's convoy, killing his bodyguards, while Shishani himself "was seriously injured." A U.S. official had initially said Shishani "likely died" in the assault by waves of U.S. warplanes and drones -- but the United States had stopped short of announcing his death, which had been erroneously reported several times before. The U.S. official branded Shishani "the ISIL equivalent of the secretary of defense."Shishani was one of the IS leaders most wanted by Washington, which put a $5 million bounty on his head.

Lavrov Urges U.N. Envoy to Include Kurds in Syria Talks
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday urged the U.N.'s special envoy on Syria to include Kurds in upcoming talks that aim to resolve the five-year Syrian civil war. "I am convinced that Staffan de Mistura should take such a decision," Lavrov told reporters at a joint news conference with his Chinese counterpart. "Launching negotiations without the participation of this group would be a sign of weakness from the international community," Lavrov said. Russia's top diplomat argued that holding talks on forming a new ruling structure in Syria to prepare constitutional reform and elections without Kurds would be "a most serious infringement of the rights of a large and significant group living in Syria."Kurds are "allies both of the U.S. coalition and Russia" and control at least 15 percent of Syrian territory," Lavrov added. Lavrov hit out at Turkey, saying that "only Turks are blocking the invitation of Kurds from the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD)," criticizing this as "an ultimatum."Turkey accuses the PYD of being the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The issue of the Syrian Kurds has caused a rare rift between Ankara and Washington. The United States regards the armed wing of the PYD as the most effective fighting force on the ground against Islamic State jihadists and has resisted Turkish pressure to classify the group as a terror organization. De Mistura told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti Friday that "we are not sending out new invitations" to the upcoming talks, in response to a question on broadening opposition participation. t the same time, in comments translated into Russian, he stressed the importance of "ensuring as far as possible inclusiveness and participation of all Syrians who can make a contribution to Syria's future."The U.N. is hoping to restart peace talks that collapsed last month, building on a ceasefire that has led to the first significant decline in violence in Syria's nearly five-year civil war. A new round of talks aimed at ending the war in Syria will begin in Geneva on March 14 and will last no longer than 10 days, the U.N. mediator has said.

Fifth Year of War 'Worst yet' for Syrians, Say NGOs
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/Syria's fifth year of war was the worst yet for civilians increasingly beset by aid blockades and sieges, humanitarian groups said Friday ahead of the anniversary of the uprising. "Russia, the United States, France and the United Kingdom must now safeguard the glimmer of hope that the ceasefire has brought to civilians, rather than 'adding fuel to the fire'," the report said, referring to a partial truce that has largely held since February 27. "The fifth year of the Syria conflict was the worst yet for people as warring parties have continued to wreak havoc, increasingly blocked aid and placed more communities under siege," it added. Drafted by 30 Syrian and international humanitarian organizations, including Oxfam, CARE and the Syrian American Medical Society, the report criticizes U.N. Security Council members for failing to stop the violence -- and even fueling it. "U.N. Security Council resolutions have consistently been flouted by parties to the conflict. "And their international backers, including permanent members of the (Council), are not only failing to ensure implementation of the resolutions but -- through inadequate diplomatic pressure, political and military support to their allies, and direct military action -- have actively added fuel to the fire of the Syria conflict," it said. The NGOs crafted a "report card" to track which aspects of the conflict that began with anti-regime protests on March 15, 2011 had worsened, and which world powers had fueled the deterioration. While the U.N. and aid groups have demanded an end to all attacks against civilians, the report said Russia's air strikes launched in September 2015 "directly hit and damaged civilian infrastructure".Russia says that its campaign has only struck "terrorists". Titled "Fueling the Fire: How the U.N. Security Council's Permanent Members are undermining their own commitments on Syria", the document also cites reports of "300 civilian casualties" in U.S. strikes against IS. Russia and the United States back opposing sides in Syria's war, though both have launched aerial bombing campaigns against jihadists in the country. The report also looks at how the lives of children in Syria have grown even more hellish. "Despite calls from world leaders to prevent a 'lost generation'... attacks have left more than two million children in Syria out of school; an increase of 400,000 children compared with 2014," it said.The charities criticized all sides in the conflict for restrictions on aid access. "Air attacks and shelling have long been among the many challenges faced by humanitarian organizations working in Syria, especially in cities like Aleppo," the report said. "We always have to be careful. When I cross checkpoints, I don't tell guards that I am an aid worker. When we do our distributions we have to make sure we don't create a crowd that could become a target for armed groups," according to an unnamed Syrian aid worker in Daraa, southern Syria, cited by the report.

U.N.-Observed Polls in Syria 18 Months from March 14
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/Elections in Syria observed by the United Nations should be held in 18 months, the U.N.'s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told Russia's RIA Novosti state news agency on Friday. "New elections ... should be held 18 months from the start of talks, that is from March 14. The elections, both presidential and parliamentary, will be under U.N. observation," de Mistura said in an interview translated into Russian. The latest round of negotiations aimed at ending Syria's war are to begin on Monday. The U.N. envoy said the first question on the agenda was "an inclusive new government" followed by a new constitution and elections. "I hope that during the first stage of talks, we reach progress at least on the first question," de Mistura was quoted as saying.

Glimmer of Hope as Syria War Enters Sixth Year
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/Syria's war enters its sixth year next week with a glimmer of hope that a landmark ceasefire and a push for peace could help resolve a conflict that has sent hundreds of thousands fleeing to Europe. Analysts say the past 12 months have been transformative -- with Russia's military intervention and pressure from the migrant crisis pushing world powers into renewed peace efforts. Inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings of six years ago, protests erupted against President Bashar al-Assad's regime on March 15, 2011. A brutal crackdown sparked the civil war, which has since left more than 270,000 people dead and forced millions to flee towns and cities devastated by bombing and clashes. Sporadic peace efforts over the next five years failed as fighting raged, with the emergence of the jihadist Islamic State group adding a terrifying new dimension to the conflict. The last year has seen the war brought home to Europeans as never before, as hundreds of thousands of desperate Syrians arrived on Europe's shores in the continent's worst refugee crisis since World War II. Experts say the wave of refugees put the Syria crisis front and centre for the West, prompting a surge of diplomatic action. "Europe's fear about the refugee influx is one of the main factors that led to a reassessment of policies on Syria, making short-term stability a top priority at the expense of other political and geostrategic objectives," said Karim Bitar, an analyst at the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Relations.
The biggest international effort yet to resolve the conflict was launched late last year, with diplomats from world powers agreeing a plan for a ceasefire, the creation of a transitional authority and eventual elections. A partial truce -- which does not include fighting against IS and other extremist groups -- took effect on February 27. Russia's intervention in Syria last September marked another major shift, experts said. "The Russian intervention was undoubtedly a turning point in the Syrian war," said Bitar. "It allowed a regime that was otherwise losing ground (to rebels) to consolidate its control over 'useful Syria'," or the most populous territories, he said. The bombing campaign has bolstered Assad, helping him to firm up his grip on power despite years of opposition demands that he step down. Against all expectations, the partial ceasefire has been holding, and Syria's regime and fragmented opposition will hold new peace talks next week in Geneva. But divisions cut deep and despite the changes on the ground few are holding out much hope for the talks. The key sticking point -- Assad's fate -- is far from being resolved, experts say. Moscow is showing no sign of backing away from its longstanding support for a key ally. "Russia's intervention dotted the i's in their policy that 'we cannot let Bashar al-Assad fall'," said Yezid Sayigh, an analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut. Washington, which has long supported Syria's opposition, is also unlikely to compromise. "The U.S. wants at the very least a pledge that Assad will leave in the beginning, during, or at the end of a transitional period, which the Russians still don't accept," Sayigh said. "This core issue is like trying to square a circle," Bitar said. If the negotiations collapse -- as previous peace talks did in Geneva last month -- Sayigh said the ceasefire is likely to soon follow. "If the truce is not backed by a political accord, violence will return little by little," he said. The push for peace is also likely to run up against the myriad regional interests at play in Syria, experts said. Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are backing the opposition while Shiite Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are supporting Assad.Turkey meanwhile is pounding Kurdish positions in northern Syria, provoking a rare rift between Ankara and its chief NATO ally Washington. "Regional Sunni powers like Turkey and Saudi Arabia continue to walk a line that is much more intransigent and maximalist than (U.S. President Barack) Obama's administration," Bitar said. "In Syria, we allowed multiple proxy wars to develop that have nothing to do with the original demands of the Syrian people," he said. "The Syrian people remain the victim of score-settling among world powers."

Israel Raids Palestinian TV Station
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/Israeli forces have raided the West Bank offices of Palestine Today television and arrested its manager over allegations of inciting violence, Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency said on Friday. The overnight operation targeting the station's Ramallah offices was the latest attempt to silence Palestinian broadcasters Israel believes are fueling a five-month wave of violence. The Shin Bet charged that the channel "broadcasts on behalf of the Islamic Jihad" militant group and said it had closed it in a joint operation with the army. "The channel served the Islamic Jihad as a central means to incite the West Bank population, calling for terror attacks against Israel and its citizens. Incitement was broadcast on the television station as well as the Internet," it said in a statement. Israeli forces arrested Palestine Today manager, Farooq Aliat, 34, of Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah, "an Islamic Jihad operative who had been imprisoned in Israel for his activities," it added. Cameraman Mohammed Amr and technician Shabib Shabib were also arrested, the Palestinian Journalists Union said. An army spokeswoman said technical equipment and transmitters were confiscated from the Ramallah offices, which were ordered shut. The channel, which has offices in the Hamas-controled Gaza Strip, continued to broadcast to the West Bank via its Lebanese transmitters, it said.Islamic Jihad denounced the "Israeli aggression against the nationalist media of the resistance," calling the raid "another episode in the long saga of oppression by the occupation." A wave of violence has killed 188 Palestinians, 28 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese since October 1, according to an AFP count. Most of the Palestinians were killed while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, which have taken place more or less daily over the past five months. Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations. Many analysts say Palestinian frustration with Israeli occupation and settlement building in the West Bank, the complete lack of progress in peace efforts and their own fractured leadership have fed the unrest. Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media as a main cause of the violence. In November, Israel shut down two radio stations in the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron -- Al-Hurria and Al-Khalil -- accusing them of fanning the violence. On Thursday, Israel's security cabinet discussed ways to tackle the unrest, including "closing Palestinian broadcasters inciting terror," the prime minister's office said.A day earlier Israeli forces had arrested Al-Quds radio correspondent Sami al-Saee, 36, at his house in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm, according to a Palestinian NGO.Other measures being advanced by the government following a new spate of attacks since Tuesday include completing the security wall around Jerusalem, revoking Israeli work permits for relatives of Palestinian attackers and expediting demolitions of perpetrators' homes. Israel has increased its efforts against Palestinian laborers without permits, arresting more than 400 workers and dozens of Israeli employers over the past two days, police said.

North Korean Leader Orders Further Nuclear Tests
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 11/16/North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered further nuclear tests, state media said Friday, as military tensions surge on the Korean peninsula with South Korean and U.S. forces engaged in large-scale joint exercises condemned by Pyongyang. Since the joint drills began Monday, the North has issued daily warnings and statements, talking up its nuclear strike capabilities and threatening to turn Seoul and Washington into "flames and ashes."Just days after he was photographed posing in front of what state media described as a miniaturized nuclear warhead, Kim said the weapon required further testing. Overseeing a ballistic missile launch on Thursday, Kim ordered "more nuclear explosion tests to estimate the destructive power of the newly produced nuclear warheads," the North's official KCNA news agency said. Experts are divided as to just how far the North may have gone in shrinking warheads to a size capable of fitting on a ballistic missile -- a major step forward in strike capability that would present a heightened threat to South Korea, other countries in the region and, eventually, the U.S. mainland. - Nuclear strike drill -According to KCNA, Thursday's launch of two short-range ballistic missiles, which traversed the eastern part of the country before falling into the East Sea (Sea of Japan), was part of a nuclear strike exercise. The aim was to simulate conditions for "exploding nuclear warheads from the preset altitude above targets in the ports under enemy control," the agency said. Watching the exercise, Kim reiterated an earlier threat to launch an immediate nuclear attack if the "sabre-rattling" South Korea-U.S. drills should harm "even a single tree or a blade of grass" on North Korean territory. "I will issue a prompt order to launch attack with all military strike means," he said. Military tensions on the divided Korean peninsula have been on the rise since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a long-range rocket launch last month. South Korea and the United States responded by scaling up their annual joint drills, which Pyongyang has always condemned as provocative rehearsals for invasion. - 'Decapitation' strike -The North's anger has been fuelled this year by reports that the drills included a "decapitation strike" scenario in which the North Korean leadership and command structure is taken out at the start of any conflict.
In light of such drills, "our self-defensive countermeasures should adopt a more preemptive and offensive mode," Kim said. The UN Security Council responded to the North's latest nuclear test and rocket launch by adopting tough, new sanctions, which Pyongyang condemned as a "gangster-like" provocation orchestrated by the United States. Reacting to Kim's call for more nuclear tests, South Korea on Friday said the North Korean leader was being "rash" and displaying his ignorance of international opinion. "The international community is imposing strong and comprehensive sanctions and this only goes to prove why they are necessary," said Unification Ministry Spokesperson Jeong Joon-Hee. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday voiced grave concern over the growing tensions, and urged North Korea to avoid any further "destabilizing acts." Kim, however, chose to highlight the need for a diversified nuclear strike force, capable of delivering warheads from the ground, air, sea and underwater. The North has conducted a number of what is says were successful tests of a submarine launched ballistic missile. Outside experts have questioned the results of those tests, suggesting Pyongyang had gone little further than a "pop-up" test from a submerged platform.

Iranian General Hassan Ali Shamsabadi was killed in Syria
Now Lebanon/March 11/16/A commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been killed in Syria, the latest casualty suffered by Iran in the war-torn country. Iran’s semi-official Basij News reported late Wednesday that General Hassan Ali Shamsabadi was killed while performing an “advisory mission” in Syria, a day after his official retirement from the IRGC. The Iranian report claimed that Shamsabadi was killed in the defense of shrines in Syria, though pro-opposition media outlets contend he died in fighting near Aleppo.The general hailed from the small town of Shamsabad, which is located in the country’s north. Shamsabadi’s death comes one month after IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour announced the death of another commander, Brigadier General Mohsen Qaryajan, during an advisory mission in Syria. As with the case of Shamsabadi, Iranian media did not specify when and where the general was killed. However, a pro-Hezbollah online outlet reported that Qaryjan died during the “battle to break the siege of Nubl and Zahra,” two regime-held towns north of Aleppo. Syrian army troops, backed by Iraqi militias, broke the siege in February. A number of high-ranking officers have been killed in Iran in recent months, including Brigadier General Reza Khavari, a senior commander in the IRGC’s Fatemiyoun Division, General Farshad Hasounizad, the former head of the IRGC’s elite Saberin Brigade, and Hamid Mokhtarband, the former chief-of-staff of the 1st Brigade of Iran’s crack 92nd Armored Division, which is considered the country’s top armored unit. Lower-ranking officers, including Colonel Ezzatollah Soleimani—the commander of the Elite Battalion of the 44th Hazrat Bani Hashem Brigade—have also been among the dozens killed since Iran ramped up its military intervention in Syria. The spate of casualties follow the death in early October 2015 of IRGC general Hussein Hamdani, who was one of the IRGC’s leading officers and the country’s top military advisor in Syria. Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps deputy chief Hossein Salami admitted in late October 2015 that that his country was sending additional advisors to Syria, which was leading to increased casualties. However, the IRGC official did not provide a death toll and insisted that Tehran was only sending advisors, and not combat troops.

Policy of “terror containment” puts soldiers behind sandbags in Israeli cities
DEBKAfile Special Report March 10/16
Israel’s city centers will very soon see knots of soldiers armed with special rapid response weapons and gear for scotching Palestinian terrorist attacks before they deteriorate into rampages. Some of them will hide behind sandbag walls. Their deployment reflects the decision to persist in Israel’s defensive strategy as articulated in a special security forum summoned by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Tuesday and Wednesday, March 8-9, in the face of surging Palestinian terror. Other members of the forum are Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Public Security Minister Gilead Erdan, Shin Bet Director Yoram Cohen, Police Commissioner Ronnie Alsheikh and assorted security experts and evaluators. Dubbing its strategy “containment of terror,” the forum rejected the more proactive measures suggested by members of the opposition, as well as government members, for cracking down on Palestinians resorting to terror and their supportive environments, by such deterrents as long-term lockdowns of their neighborhoods (in Jerusalem too) and villages, the blockage of internet and cell phone services in Palestinian areas and the deportation of families of terrorists to the Gaza Strip.
One suggestion was to “relocate” to other parts of Palestinian Authority-ruled territory the kinsmen who are complicit in, or have knowledge of, a terrorist’s crimes. All in all, after three Israeli cities were struck by terrorists in a single day, the top decision-making forum on security precluded offensive military action, including the takeover of the Palestinian towns, villages or districts producing terrorists.  The only change discernible Thursday, March 10, was an intensified police sweep for illegal Palestinian workers employed in Israel. One of the forum’s members commented to debkafile: The forum's decision amounts to carrying on as before, except that IDF soldiers will boost the security and police forces in their counter-terror functions. Other sources maintained that the policymakers are not about to change much, despite the spike in attacks to two or three a day on average, and the increasing use of firearms by the assailants. It is estimated that a hard core of 200-300 young Palestinian hotheads is orchestrating the violence, whether street disturbances, rocks, firebombs, knifings, car-ramming or drive-by shooting. They use social media for internal communication and for stoking the angry fire that sends Palestinian youths out to seek glory as martyrs by killing Jews. debkafile’s intelligence and counterterrorism experts note that the Netanyahu government has followed a policy of “terror containment” for nearly two years, ever since Hamas kidnapped and murdered three Israel teens at the Gush Etzion intersection on June 12 2014.
While Israelis argue back and forth on methods for putting a stop to the Palestinian violence, its level keeps on rising. On Wednesday, a Palestinian car with guns poking out of its windows rampaged in the middle of the day through the streets of Jerusalem in search of victims.
“Containment” is no deterrent for terror. After the guns, bombs may be next.

Obama ‘proud for not bombing Syrian regime’
AFP, Washington Friday, 11 March 2016/US President Barack Obama does not regret stepping back from his “red line” on the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, saying he was ‘proud’ of the decision. In an interview published by the Atlantic magazine on Thursday, Obama described his decision to step back from planned military strikes, which would have changed the course of Syria’s brutal five-year-old civil war. “I’m very proud of this moment,” Obama said. “The overwhelming weight of conventional wisdom and the machinery of our national-security apparatus had gone fairly far,” Obama was quoted as saying. “The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that America’s credibility was at stake. And so for me to press the pause button at that moment, I knew, would cost me politically.”Critics argue that Obama’s decision did damage to American credibility that will not be healed quickly or easily. “The fact that I was able to pull back from the immediate pressures and think through in my own mind what was in America’s interest, not only with respect to Syria but also with respect to our democracy, was as tough a decision as I’ve made - and I believe that ultimately it was the right decision to make.”
Military drill in Saudi ends with massive parade
By Staff writer Al Arabiya English Friday, 11 March 2016/The North Thunder military drills that brought together armed forces from 20 Arab and Islamic countries concluded with a marching parade on Friday. Saudi King Salman was in attendance as a show of force from all the armies marched by with soldiers, Humvees and tanks in toe in Hafr Al-Batin, Saudi Arabia. The exercises were aimed at combatting guerrilla warfare, with the focus on countering tactics used by armed militias intervening in Arab states, such as Syria and Yemen. READ ALSO: 20-nation military drill launched in Saudi Arabia
“The Saudi government is aiming to send a message that the country, along with its Gulf neighbours, that the Arab world is capable of creating its own coalition of forces and don’t need to rely on foreign interventions,” Ibrahim al-Marei, a military analyst told Al Arabiya News Channel over the phone from the Saudi capital Riyadh. Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced in December 2015 that Saudi Arabia would lead efforts in the formation of a 34-nation military alliance of Muslim nations to fight “terrorism”. Military experts speaking to Al Arabiya during the live coverage of the North Thunder drills reiterated that the aims of the exercises were to unify defensive strategies. “The main aim of the coalition force and the strength showed in North Thunder was to unify what is called in military terms ‘Strategic defense.’ From Egypt’s side, we are a country that defends and does not attack.” Gen. Nasser Salem, Professor of strategic studies at Nasser Academy in Cairo told Al Arabiya News Channel
 

Secrets behind Israel’s historic withdrawal from Lebanon
Ronen Bergman/Ynetnews/March 11/16

http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/03/11/ronen-bergmanynetnews-secrets-behind-israels-historic-withdrawal-from-lebanon/

In May 2000, Israeli PM Barak made a brave decision that surprised the world to pull the IDF out of southern Lebanon after 18 years. Behind the scenes was a fierce battle of ambitions and intrigue between Barak, the former IDF chief, and the IDF commanders at the time, who were strongly against the unilateral withdrawal. A new book by Brig.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilboa, based on secret internal research he did at the time for the intelligence community, reveals the decision-making process behind one of the most dramatic decision made by the Israeli government in recent decades.

A soldier delivered a sealed letter in a manila envelope, decorated with notes and warnings of its highly sensitive and classified nature, from the Military Intelligence chief’s office to the defense minister’s office, on February 27, 2000. The letter was addressed to “Ehud Barak, the prime minister and defense minister,” and stated, “The fact AMAN (Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate) was not asked to provide a focused intelligence assessment ahead of government discussions on the withdrawal from Lebanon constitutes a flaw in the process, denies government members of information and estimates (needed to make the decision) and undermines the role of AMAN as a national assessor.”
The head of AMAN at that time, Maj.-Gen. Amos Malka, scolds Barak in the letter, “For the first time since the formation of the current government, a significant discussion about the possibility of a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon is taking place. The IDF and AMAN were not invited to this discussion in order to provide our assessments. I consider it very strange that AMAN was not asked to give its assessment and this, in my opinion, undermines the upcoming discussion about the matter. The different forums of the political echelon – the prime minister and defense minister, the cabinet and the government – have not been privy to an in-depth intelligence assessment on this central issue. “…It is clear to me as it is to you that AMAN’s assessment on the issue of a unilateral withdrawal does not exactly match that of some members of government. Yet we must insist that this assessment be presented. You can contradict this assessment, you can accept it, you can also criticize it, but it is inappropriate to prevent its delivery.”
The letter was a part of the growing tensions between Barak and Malka, and essentially between Barak and the IDF’s top command. The existence of letter and its contents comprise selected excerpts from Amos Gilboa’s new book “The true story of how Israel left Lebanon (May 2000) codenamed: ‘Dawn.’” The letter highlights one of the crises, but not necessarily the most severe, between the IDF and Barak over the withdrawal from Lebanon. Barak had promised the public that he would leave, while most generals intensely opposed such a move if it is not part of an agreement with Syria. Gilboa was the head of the Research Division of AMAN in the early 1980s and is considered to be one of the most knowledgeable minds in the intelligence community’s history. He doesn’t remember many incidents of this sort either. “It seems to me that Malka’s letter is unprecedented, and serves as a rebuke of the political establishment by the military establishment over incorrect conduct,” he said. “This is the first manifestation of the disconnect between the political and military establishments, which would only become deeper and take the ugly form of leaks to the press.”
In the past 15 years, Gilboa has authored a number of internal investigative reports for AMAN, referred to as “methodological discussions,” whose aim was to draw lessons from historical events – some successful, most not very much so – from the annals of the State of Israel and its intelligence community. For his research of the exit from Lebanon, Gilboa received access to all the relevant documents, recordings, transcripts, and discussion summaries (including the detailed personal diary of then-IDF chief of staff Shaul Mofaz). He also interviewed all parties involved. While the military censor has classified most studies, it approved the study on the withdrawal from Lebanon for publication, and this is what Gilboa’s book is based on. The book is fascinating. The unprecedented access given to Gilboa, as well as his time-honed research abilities, make it read like both a suspense story and an important – and sometimes quite grim – documentation of the Israeli decision-making process. Gilboa spares no one, and few people come out unscathed. Barak comes across as a groundbreaking and visionary statesman, but also as one who adopted a disorderly decision-making process in addition to being indifferent to the suffering of the soldiers of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) – the militias Israel established to aid it in its fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon – and their families.
The top IDF command at the time is portrayed as being closed-minded for its continued opposition to a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, despite emerging realities, but also as more sensitive to important and human issues than Barak. The names of the players in this story are quite interesting: Ehud Barak stars alongside Gabi Ashkenazi, Gadi Eisenkot, Benny Gantz, Amos Gilad, Amos Malka and many other senior figures who continue to play a major role in Israel’s history.
Preventing a public panic
Gilboa deals with the withdrawal from Lebanon and not the IDF’s 18 years in the area that preceded it, but he employs data that indicates the cost, power, and magnitude of the Israeli presences there: From June 1985 until the beginning of 2000, the IDF sustained 235 fatalities in Lebanon (not including the 73 who died in 1997 when two helicopters crashed). The number of SLA fatalities reached more than 500. “It is hard to understand, hard to believe,” says Gilboa, “you can’t help but raise a few troubling questions: Why did it take so long to reach the decision to leave Lebanon once and for all? Why wasn’t it decided by prime ministers that came before Barak?” Barak was the first to escape the mental stagnation. In his view, as presented in the remarks he made to the General Staff on March 9, 2000, for which Gilboa has the transcript, “for the past 18 years, Israel has been in Lebanon, ‘surrendering’ to the Syrians, giving them an unusual opportunity to constantly draw the blood of its soldiers. What is our interest in this? What does Israel gain from the fact that it continues to hold the security zone in southern Lebanon? Nothing! Only casualties, only an internal split. Why should we give Hezbollah the legitimacy to lead the Lebanese fight against us, attack the IDF, and make the entire north of Israel a constant target for their rockets? Is the security zone really providing security for Israel?”
On March 1, 1999, the day after the top IDF commander in southern Lebanon, Brig.-Gen. Erez Gerstein, was killed in an ambush in Lebanon, Barak promised that if he wins the election and forms a government, the IDF will withdraw from Lebanon within a year and Israel will be “deep in discussions with Syria on a permanent settlement.” When he won the election, he quickly worked to fulfill this promise. Barak gave priority to conducting secret negotiations with Syria over the Palestinian issue because he believed it was simpler. He believed he would succeed in reaching a comprehensive agreement with Syria, which would also include the question of the IDF’s presence in Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah – or at least secure a Syrian commitment to stop the organization’s activities against Israel. Here was the central fallacy behind the Israeli preparations, especially the military’s, for the withdrawal. Gilboa says that “Barak ordered the IDF to prepare for the evacuation from Lebanon as part of a comprehensive peace agreement with Syria. Such withdrawal is very convenient for the military: neat, not done under fire, not during the chaos of fighting, and it’s known ahead of time that the border will be quiet, a peaceful border.
“The Northern Command prepared itself for withdrawal even without an agreement with Syria. Preparing the border when you have an agreement is 180 degrees different from preparing it if you exit without one. Ashkenazi said to Barak, ‘If I pull out without an agreement – it will be under fire,’ but Barak instructed them not to produce any official paperwork that deals with a withdrawal sans an agreement. Perhaps he feared that the existence of such administrative work will make the option of unilateral withdrawal, which he really did not want, possible. And above all, he feared that it will despair the SLA and break it.”Barak understood that a unilateral withdrawal would be interpreted as a retreat and a submission to Hezbollah’s IEDs, so he took care to only talk about a withdrawal following an agreement in his speeches and briefings to the General Staff. The prime minister and defense minister, according to sources familiar with the matter, knew that the military would strongly resist withdrawal and feared that if he were to allow preparations for it during a time of fighting, the information would be leaked to the media and cause public panic.
At the end of 1999, Barak sought to reach an agreement with Syria and meet with President Assad. But the more time passed without the attempts bearing fruit, the more he apparently realized that there’s a possibility that the retreat would look different than planned. On October 14, 1999 Barak summoned IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz and told him that he would make every effort to ensure the withdrawal follows an agreement, but that “Mofaz as COS has to prepare the IDF for withdrawal from Lebanon under fire and pillars of smoke.” On the other hand, he still barred Mofaz from ordering the IDF to conduct written preparatory work on the subject. Israel, with Barak’s support and the mediation of President Clinton, continued to make an effort to reach an agreement with Syria. Its highlights were the meeting between Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa in Shepherdstown and in Clinton’s meeting with Assad in Geneva in March 2000. But all these attempts failed miserably.
According to records made by Mofaz on February 8 during his meeting with the Military Secretary to the Prime Minister, Eisenkot, and a group of senior officers of the General Staff, Barak asked Mofaz to stay behind for a private talk (alongside Eisenkot, who is present in all meetings). “I made every effort for the negotiations with Syria to succeed, but we failed,” said Barak. “It’s clear to me that we need to start preparing for the possibility of evacuation from Lebanon without an agreement.”Mofaz responded, saying, “Does this mean that your political decision not to prepare administrative work in relation to a unilateral withdrawal is no longer in effect? That I can begin to formally plan a withdrawal without an agreement?”Barak answered, “We should not do it all at once, but gradually. We can go on saying that the priority continues to be at this stage withdrawal following an agreement, while starting to prepare for the possibility of evacuation without an agreement.””I understand,” muttered Mofaz, and it was at that very second, he later told Gilboa, that he clearly and sharply recognized that the withdrawal will be done with no agreement.
“As you know,” Barak interrupted his thoughts, “this is a most sensitive issue. We should make every effort so that preparations for a unilateral withdrawal will not be seen outwardly, and we must maintain a high degree of classification and keep as few people in the loop as possible. It is very important that the SLA not know about this! I plan to meet with all the battalion commanders and senior officers of the SLA soon in order to raise their morale.”
At that point, Barak actually came to terms with reality, but wasn’t willing to give the military an unequivocal directive. The plans trickle down to the General Staff and create strong opposition among its members. In the concluding remarks to his book, which deal with the lessons learned from this event that he recommends decision-makers take to heart, Gilboa writes of the former prime minister, “Even if Barak needed secrecy, especially on the eve of departure, the general picture displayed in front of us is one that shows a culture of defeatist action: Compartmentalization, secrecy, not involving professional entities in the process, private conversations with no protocol, no records. It seems like the process is conducted in the dark, as if surreptitiously, and it just seems like the conductor of this piece has no orchestra. “This pattern of behavior created tension between Barak and the military leadership from the start, which harmed (Barak) himself and his status, spilled over into the public sphere, and poisoned the public atmosphere and (Barak’s) personal relationship with Maj.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi. This substandard conduct was what, in part, caused resistance to his decision to withdraw from Lebanon without an agreement with Lebanon. The quality of the historic decision he made was damaged by the substandard way in which it was made and implemented.”
To the last centimeter
The AMAN assessment, written by head of Research Division Maj.-Gen. Amos Gilad (who is now the director of the Political-Military Affairs Bureau at the Defense Ministry) was quite frightening. “A withdrawal without an agreement leaves no chance for quiet,” Gilad said in an internal discussion at the Research Division. “Will we be able to move freely along the border when Hezbollah’s men are just a few dozen meters away? It is very possible that at first, a few months after the withdrawal, it will be quiet, as Hezbollah settles down and improves its deterrent capabilities, but then we can expect terror attacks. And the terror attacks wouldn’t just be on the Lebanese border, but also abroad and deep inside the borders of the State of Israel.”A “Special intelligence evaluation – expected developments following the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, March 3,” which was distributed to the political and security echelons, stated, among other things, that “Most of the attacks will be directed against military targets along the border fence (in particular IDF outposts that remain inside Lebanon), but because of the situation on the ground, these attacks will also endanger civilian areas and severely affect the quality of life and sense of security of the residents of northern Israel.” In short, a gloomy prophecy.
Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz and the IDF adopted AMAN’s strict assessment, and added to its gravity. The IDF’s grave assessment was leaked to the media by “senior officials at the General Staff.”Gilboa states that “The problem with AMAN’s assessments was that they did not point to any prospects or benefits of the withdrawal. AMAN’s tune was always that of military marches.” The day-to-day battle between the government – mostly led by then-education minister Yossi Sarid – which wholeheartedly supported the withdrawal even if there was no agreement, and the IDF leadership, which strictly opposed it. It was against this backdrop that Barak decided to remove AMAN from the decision-making process, and did not invite the intelligence heads to present their position to the government, a move that led to the unprecedented letter from Maj.-Gen. Malka described above. Things went so far that there were some who advised Barak to dismiss part of the General Staff in fear that they will not follow his orders during the evacuation. Barak refused and said that he had no doubt that the IDF “will conform to the political leadership’s views.”During a cabinet meeting that Malka did end up attending, one of the ministers yelled at him: “You present a development in which any decision will lead to attacks, and our situation will bad. You’re basically telling us a unilateral withdrawal is not good, and that the government’s decision is wrong.”
Before Mofaz could come to the defense of the AMAN commander, Malka responded: “First of all, what I say is partly based on solid information. Secondly, AMAN has no position on a unilateral withdrawal. It is neither in favor nor against it. The political decision has been made. All AMAN is doing is describe, as best as it can, the possible consequences for Israel, both good and bad.” Without an agreement with Syria, the Coordinator of the Activities of Israeli Government in Lebanon and Syria, Uri Lubrani, and his deputy, Col. Dr. Reuven Erlich, proposed an idea that some in the IDF considered absurd and preposterous: to withdraw from Lebanon with UN confirmation that Israel withdrew to the international border, according to Resolution 425 of the Security Council in 1978 (following the Litani Operation). The objective was to receive legitimacy from the world and essentially refute the claims made by Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria that they are fighting Israel over land it stole from Lebanon.
Gilboa relates, “Barak decided that there won’t be a unilateral withdrawal, but rather withdrawal following an ‘agreement’ with the United Nations. I believe that herein lies the unique nature of the decision, which is based on the perception that international legitimacy for the withdrawal, and for Israeli retaliation if it should be attacked from Lebanon, is in itself a strategic asset for Israel’s security and eliminates any justification for attacks against Israel from Lebanese territory.”But where will the border with Lebanon pass? Here began a long saga, leading the Israeli, American, French, Lebanese and many other experts who were recruited for the task, to researching maps from the beginning of the 20th century, Lebanese deeds that included the country’s map, the UN archives in East Talpiot in Jerusalem, ownership documents over agricultural land which were examined with the help of aerial photographs, three-dimensional renderings, and much electronic equipment. Gilboa: “It was clear to Israel that only a complete withdrawal from all the territories to the last centimeter, according to UN definitions, would lead the secretary general to declare that Resolution 425 has been implemented.”
In order to reach the desired outcome, Barak instructed the IDF, once again in the face of fierce opposition, to prepare to evacuate any outpost that is even a few meters inside Lebanon – even intelligence posts that have important strategic significance for Israel. “The political leadership is determined to implement Resolution 425,” cynically said one of the generals in the General Staff, according to the transcript of a meeting at Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz’s office on March 11. “And what the prime minister has already stated regarding that essential outpost: If we can keep it, great. If we can’t, then we simply can’t!” The AMAN Unit 8200 learned that the Lebanese, Hezbollah and the Syrians were completely surprised by the Israeli move. No one there expected that Barak would keep his promise. The Syrians, who felt that an Israeli withdrawal takes away the legitimacy of their presence in Lebanon, initiated a move to sabotage the withdrawal – Lebanon suddenly told the UN that the Shebaa Farms (Mount Dov) belong to Lebanon and not Syria, and therefore Israel must evacuate that area as well.
The UN told the Lebanese that it does not accept their position on the Shebaa Farms, and that Secretary-General Kofi Annan intends to firmly state this in his report to the Security Council, but the Lebanese dug their heels in. The Syrians worked to pressure the UN to recognize that the territory is Lebanese, while Hezbollah in turn stated that if the IDF remains in the Shebaa Farms, the organization will continue to attack it. “This is the excuse, this is the area that Syria and Hezbollah chose to justify the continued terrorist activity after our departure from Lebanon,” AMAN’s Research Department concluded. Barak decided to put the Syrians to the test: He told the Americans that as far as he is concerned, he has no issues with the Shebaa Farms. If the Syrians say it was an area given to Lebanon, then President Assad should have it in writing, thus confirming to the world that Syria is willing to give up part of the Golan Heights. Of course no such letter arrived from Assad, and Barak thus proved to the UN that the Syrian foreign minister was simply lying.
When the IDF is being intransigent
The UN planned to finish the mapping process and its talks with the sides by July of 2000, but new facts were determined on the ground. AMAN has been collecting more intelligence that Hezbollah was preparing a bloody farewell for the IDF that would include as many attacks and casualties as possible. “Hezbollah, with Syrian encouragement, was prepared to turn the withdrawal into a humiliation for Israel,” the head of the Research Department, Amos Gilad, said in one of the meetings. “The goal was to make it the withdrawal difficult for the IDF and turn it into a defeat.” Meanwhile, the number of attacks against IDF and SLA soldiers sharply increased. The GOC Northern Command Ashkenazi was watching the SLA fall apart. Gilboa says, “Ashkenazi felt, perhaps more than anyone else, a moral responsibility for the fate of the SLA. So did Benny Gantz, the commander of the Lebanon Liaison Unit.” The book describes how Ashkenazi, upset, spoke up against abandoning the SLA and turning them into the biggest losers out of all the parties involved. Ashkenazi was worried that the SLA will refuse to return the heavy weapons that Israel has given it. If the SLA failed to return the weapons, it was clear to all, the UN would not give the desired confirmation that Israel completely withdrew from Lebanon, and regardless – a bloody civil war would break out in Lebanon. The IDF’s assessments regarding the SLA were completely unrealistic, “a form of unfounded wishful thinking,” as Gilboa explains it, thinking that the SLA could continue to exist as small units in villages, with some of the weapons supplied by Israel and its secret support.
Hezbollah, incidentally, had other plans. It announced that any SLA soldier who kills one of the SLA and IDF’s senior commanders and leaves the security zone, will be pardoned. The SLA’s disintegration began with one battalion, the Shi’ite battalion, and it spread quickly throughout the entire army. General Antoine Lahad, who received a promise from Barak that Israel would continue supporting him and the SLA, left to visit his family in Paris, while relying on Barak’s promise. The IDF continued promising SLA their support – despite already knowing that this promise could not hold water. The desertions from the SLA and the abandonment of outposts were accompanied by mass processions of Hezbollah supporters who “conquered” every outpost that was abandoned, breaking down the barriers, doing whatever they wanted. Mofaz and Ashkenazi briefly debated whether to send attack helicopters to stop the processions, and decide against it, in light of the risk of hurting the civilian population. They did order the preparation of an attack plan against Lebanese and Syrian targets in case fighting breaks out during or after the Israeli withdrawal.
AMAN chief Malka told Gilboa in interviews that he was jealous of Hezbollah’s propaganda, their psychological warfare capabilities, their talent to quickly understand the situation and maximize their exploitation of the media. “I would give their propaganda a commendation,” he said, “and give our hasbara a fail grade.” He remembers that while reading through intelligence material he noticed another thing in Hezbollah’s credit – it prevented looting and robbery in “liberated areas,” and with that reassured the local population.
‘I need another month!’
The GOC Northern Command’s biggest nightmare – a complete disintegration of the SLA, while the IDF is left alone facing Hezbollah in Lebanon – was becoming a reality. At this point, the beginning of May, the tables have turned: the Northern Command wanted to leave Lebanon as soon as possible so as not to jeopardize IDF soldiers further, while Barak wanted to postpone the withdrawal as much as possible to get the stamp of approval from the UN. Ashkenazi wrote to the chief of staff, sending copies to many of the members of the General Staff: “Re: Bringing forward the withdrawal from the security zone … terrorist operatives have upped shooting attacks, there have been significant attempts to commit large-scale attacks, the pressure on the SLA is increasing, the time left allows Hezbollah to better prepare so they could inflict casualties during the withdrawal. Our deployment at the new border is not going improve during the time that is left anyway, not on the border fence and not in technological measures … therefore I recommend that you implement the withdrawal plan … within a day or two.” Gilboa remarks, “Ashkenazi’s letter was interpreted by Barak as if the military was trying to spite him, as if the IDF was trying to force its will upon him and demonstrate to him that in the end, the military’s position is what matters. ‘Their mentality was, and remains, against a unilateral withdrawal,’ Barak kept telling himself.”
But even Barak could not keep ignoring the facts for long. Incidents became more frequent – more attacks, more deserters, more territories captured by Hezbollah, while the Lebanese army and UNIFIL – the UN’s international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon – were doing nothing. On the morning of May 22, another dramatic matter came up, both related and not – Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s military commander and Israel’s number one most wanted target, was in the Israeli intelligence’s crosshairs, which knew Mughniyah was going to lead a delegation of senior Hezbollah official to southern Lebanon, to prepare for Israel’s withdrawal. Barak, who was at a political event in the north that day, called the heads of the military and the intelligence community to the headquarters of the regional brigade in Shomera to discuss the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strike the most important terrorist in the world.
Eisenkot accompanied Barak to the meeting. Even Gantz and Kaplinsky, senior commanders in the Northern Command, were asked to leave the meeting because of its highly classified nature. Malka presented the information to the attendees. After a few minutes, Barak stopped him. “Keep gathering intelligence on the target,” he told him. But that meeting to discuss Mughniyah very quickly became the most important meeting concerning the Israeli presence in Lebanon since the Begin government decided to invade the country in June 1982. Malka presented a general picture, in which he put an emphasis on the fact that Hezbollah was surprised by what is happening, and that it was planning a series of bombings in preparation for and during the IDF’s withdrawal, which he said Hezbollah believes would happen in a month. Ashkenazi described what is happening on the ground and the military consequences of that. Mofaz briefly presented the military’s recommendations.
Ashkenazi, according to his summary of the meeting, intervened at that point, declaring out aloud, “Prime Minister, we have to withdraw! It is better to leave now, there will not be a lot of casualties, Hezbollah is not ready for it, and we can surprise everybody. At the moment we have all the advantages, but within a few days we will lose everything and we will have all of the disadvantages.”Barak responded, “I need time to exhaust the process of (resolution) 425, I need another month!” But all of those present thought otherwise and pressured Barak to authorize an immediate withdrawal. Barak to Mofaz: “How many troops will we need to send into the security zone if the SLA completely collapses everywhere except in the Druze areas?”Ashkenazi: “Two infantry brigades and an armored brigade.”Barak (who was reportedly surprised by the size of force that would be needed to enter Lebanon): “Gabi, would you be able to leave Lebanon with a minimum amount of casualties and no fire on the State of Israel?” Ashkenazi said yes.
Barak returned by helicopter to Tel Aviv and called an urgent meeting at the defense minister’s office with his deputy (Ephraim Sneh), the defense ministry’s director-general, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yaron, and his Military Secretary Eisenkot. With a grave face, he discussed the situation they were facing and decided to ask the cabinet that same evening to give the IDF the freedom of action to decide when to withdraw to the international border in accordance with Resolution 425. When everyone got up to leave, Barak asked Mofaz to stay behind. Eisenkot also stayed. “Can you withdraw as early as tonight? Is Gabi ready?” Barak wanted to know. Mofaz was shocked, paused, and then replied: “We can withdraw tonight!” “Then you have my authorization to withdraw,” Barak replied. Gilboa comments, “At this point Barak demonstrates, in his own unique way of management, the decision-making ability of a politician who is no longer fighting the cruel reality. He understands that this is exactly the right moment, literally, to make the tactical decision.”
Mofaz went to his office and called Ashkenazi on an encrypted phone. Ashkenazi affirmed that they would be able to withdraw the following night, within 24 hours. Mofaz then updated Barak. Barak nodded his head in understanding, “We are set for tomorrow night. In a bit I will conduct a phone survey among the cabinet members, getting them to leave the freedom of action on the withdrawal in the hands of the IDF. Of course they will not know about our understanding that the withdrawal will be tomorrow.” Barak paused, thought on it for a moment and added, “As long as there are no leaks from the Northern Command.” “In this way,” Gilboa narrates, “the decision was made on the time of departure from Lebanon. Orally, with only three people present. There is no written document about it, no directive from the IDF’s Operations Division.”
Because the decision excluded the General Staff, the next morning’s meeting was a strange one – only the chief of staff, his assistant and Eisenkot know the truth, that the die had already been cast and the withdrawal would be that very night. The rest of the generals have no clue. Ashkenazi kept his promise to withdraw IDF forces without any casualties. “This is a historic event for the IDF and the State of Israel, where the IDF concluded its presence in Lebanon after 18 years, and redeployed to the international border,” thus Mofaz began his report during a video conference of the General Staff on May 24, at 7:30am.
Gilboa elucidates, “However, this event was branded in the national and international consciousness unjustifiably differently – the Israeli media reports about the IDF’s escape from Lebanon. This is the motto that so unjustly stuck to the IDF, this is how it will be etched into the collective consciousness.” Gilboa’s conclusion and the insights from his research are twofold. On the one hand, Barak’s move to get international legitimacy was a positive one. “It is unfortunate that in 2005, when we left Gaza, the withdrawal was completely unilateral, without any agreement with the Palestinian Authority or the UN, without any international legitimacy. The lesson left by Barak – the need for international legitimacy – was not learned or implemented. To date, there has been no international recognition of our withdrawal, and Gaza is still considered occupied territory by most countries in the world. This despite the fact the IDF fully withdrew from the Gaza Strip, all the way to the Green Line (Israel-Egypt border in 1967).”On the other hand, “On July 12, 2006, the deterrence on the Lebanese border was shattered when two soldiers were abducted and the Second Lebanon War began. The main conclusion, in my opinion, is that the withdrawal itself and the international legitimacy do not provide a complete deterrent, certainly not for an extended period of time, and should be supplemented with military moves. Historically, the Second Lebanon War can be seen as a necessary move to supplement the May 2000 withdrawal. In that war (that was managed in such a poor manner), full long-term deterrence was achieved, primarily thanks to the destruction of Dahiya in Beirut, meaning the destruction of Hezbollah’s stronghold, in the most cruel and merciless manner.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4776966,00.html

The Middle East Is Unraveling—and Obama Offers Words
Hisham Melhem/The Atlantic/11 March/16
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/03/obama-doctrine-middle-east/473178/
Jeffrey Goldberg has conducted the most extensive autopsy of President Obama’s foreign policy—and revealed that it is based on the doctrine that the best leader is the one who leads the least, and contemplates and talks the most. Obama is an impressive wordsmith. The most important milestones in his political career, before and after he became president, have been well-crafted speeches. He has lived by words—eloquent, searing, soaring, contemplative words—to the point where he might equate words and concepts with what the ancient Greeks called praxis, or practical action. In Obama’s world, sharp words can be almost as effective as sharp swords.
Goldberg’s article delves into some of these pivotal speeches: the Cairo speech, the speeches on the Arab uprisings, addresses on combatting terrorism and the agony of Syria. Most of the pledges contained in these speeches ring hollow now; instead of ushering in a “new beginning” with the Muslim world, Obama’s relations with Pakistan, Turkey, and the Arab states are strained and characterized by mutual contempt. Obama told those Arabs struggling non-violently for basic rights such as free speech, gender equality, the freedom of peaceful assembly, and the right to choose their leaders that “our support for these principles is not a secondary interest.” But as I have written, when Obama “looked at the enormity of the challenges posed by the Arab uprisings, particularly when they became more violent, he simply flinched.” Obama did inherit a dysfunctional Arab state system and fraying civil societies, yet his own ill-conceived actions and inactions have contributed significantly to the great unraveling of the Middle East.
In these speeches, as in Goldberg’s article, Obama comes across as a scholar who oscillates between providing compelling analysis of the problems and trends he is confronting or anticipating, and a tireless sophist and procrastinator weaving elaborate excuses and justifications for dithering and hand-wringing. His explanation of his passivity regarding Russia’s rampaging in Ukraine and Syria is rooted in denial. Obama has convinced himself that President Vladimir Putin’s military intervention in Syria came “at enormous cost to the well-being of his own country.” He believes the Russians “are overextended. They’re bleeding.” Yes, Russia’s economy is contracting, and Putin is in charge of an autocratic oligarchy. And yet Russia has filled the vacuum Obama helped create in Syria when he failed to act on his promises and deliver on his threats. The Russia-Iran-Assad regime axis is the one determining the tempo of military operations and diplomatic maneuvering in the Syrian theater, not the United States and its allies. Putin has diabolically exploited the Syrian refugee challenge in Europe to weaken the institutions of the European Union and to divert Europe’s attention from his predations in Ukraine. Because of Obama’s dithering, Syria’s war has metastasized into a Middle Eastern and European crisis.
It is as if the president of the United States is declaring a whole generation of Arabs as the devil’s rejects.
What is most jarring is Obama’s tendency to distort the views of his detractors to the point of dissembling by reframing their original positions. He perfected this formula on critics of his maddening approach to Syria, including senior members of his administration, by belittling their proposals for establishing no-fly zones, or protected safe havens in Syria, as “half-baked” ideas or “mumbo-jumbo” proposals. Obama told Goldberg that his critics say, “You called for Assad to go, but you didn’t force him to go. You did not invade.” But Mr. President, who asked you to invade Syria? Could you please name one serious critic who said so? Obama speaks expansively and derisively about the “Washington playbook” and what he describes as the foreign-policy establishment’s “credibility” fetish; the playbook, according to Obama, tends to prescribe militarized responses to different crises in order to maintain America’s credibility. But credibility, particularly for a great power, is the coin of the realm. And it need not be purchased by force every time.
Obama boasts that he is “very proud” of the moment, on August 30, 2013, when he retreated from his threat to punish the Assad regime militarily following its mass murder of more than 1,400 innocent Syrian civilians, many of them children, with chemical weapons. He may view that date as his day of liberation from promises he made to help people who have been at the receiving end of weapons of mass destruction. But for millions of Syrians, August 30, 2013 is a day that shall live in infamy.
Obama is right to be resentful of America’s Sunni Arab allies, who foment sectarianism and anti-Americanism and help radical jihadists who are wreaking havoc in Syria and Libya. His frustration with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt is well-known. Obama’s retrenchment from the Middle East reflects deep disillusionment with the region.
But it also reflects disdain for an Arab world that should be avoided. Obama ignores those states seeking tepidly to implement reforms and fight terrorism. He coldly and correctly diagnoses the ills of the majority of Arab states: predatory autocratic regimes, violent Islamist groups, diminishing civic traditions, rampant sectarianism and tribalism. But he does not see any ray of hope or promise in this bleak scene. It is as if the Arab world is inhabited only by angry Arab youths “thinking about how to kill Americans,” and totally bereft of decent Arab men and women, like those millions who marched and struggled against tyranny and called for freedom, empowerment, dignity, and modernity. He laments that if the U.S is not talking to the young people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America “because the only thing we’re doing is figuring out how to destroy or cordon off or control the malicious, nihilistic, violent parts of humanity, then we’re missing the boat.” It is as if the president of the United States is declaring a whole generation of Arabs as the devil’s rejects; it is as if he wants to have large swaths of the Middle East quarantined indefinitely.

Will Obama Try to Blackmail Israel?
Shoshana Bryen/Gatestone Institute/March 11/16
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7595/obama-peace-process-israel
President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one "victory."
Iran has come closer to nuclear weapons competence in the past eight years. And Obama's abandonment of dissidents and pro-democracy advocates in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Turkey and Iran paves the way for waves of repression and bloodshed around the world.
It is estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in 2014, four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces. This is a far cry from 2011, when Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq."
He needs to find a "success." Cue the Middle East "peace process."
As Vice President Biden arrived in Israel this week, word leaked about yet another "peace plan" designed by the Obama administration. There isn't much new in it. According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. might support a UN Security Council resolution calling on "both sides to compromise on key issues," and it might involve the Middle East Quartet. Israel would be told to stop building in the territories and recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian State. The Palestinians would be told to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and give up the "right of return" for the original 1948/49 refugees and their descendants.
Just do it and voila! Problem solved.
As Vice President Biden arrived in Israel this week, word leaked about yet another "peace plan" designed by the Obama administration. (Image source: Israel Prime Minister's Office)
Why and why now? Because President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office and needs another job. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one "victory." Consider the list of Administration failures right now and the terrible destruction they have entailed:
In his first foreign visit, President Obama opened the door in Egypt to an uprising not only of "Google people" in Tahrir Square, but also to the Muslim Brotherhood. Brotherhood representatives were front and center at the President's speech in Cairo's Al-Azhar University, to the dismay of longtime ally Hosni Mubarak. After Mubarak's overthrow, the White House pressed for the inclusion of the Brotherhood in Egyptian elections despite its history of terrorism. Since then, the U.S. and Egypt have been unable to find a way to communicate constructively, despite Egypt's increasing closeness to Israel and their joint interest in controlling the terrorist Hamas and Iranian-sponsored jihadis in Sinai.
The Muslim Brotherhood was emboldened in Syria by its successes in Egypt.
The Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS -- both in some measure precipitated by the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq – have killed upwards of 350,000 people (more than 55,000 in 2015) and displaced nearly 4 million more. Chemical weapons, starvation, beheadings and aerial bombing are weapons of choice by various sides. Russia is calling the shots (literally) in Syria, while Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia continue to fund various jihadi groups, and Iran operates freely in both Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah, despite taking enormous casualties in Syria, continues to add to its missile arsenal in Lebanon.
This is a far cry from 2011, when President Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq." An Iraqi non-governmental organization estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed there in 2014, double the number from the previous year and four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces.
Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have all been destabilized by an influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq. Lebanon, a fragile country of less than 4.5 million people divided into Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Druze, now has more than one million Syrian refugees.
Afghanistan was the "good war" in President Obama's narrative. At West Point at the end of 2009, President Obama announced an additional deployment of 30,000 American soldiers to stabilize Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan. Six years later -- 15 years after we got there -- American military leaders told him the Afghan government still couldn't survive without a continuing American military presence. Since the administration decided to leave a contingent of nearly 10,000 soldiers for an indefinite period of time, the Taliban has refused to continue peace talks with the Afghan government, and we're looking at another bloody summer. Terrorist bombs in Pakistan are a daily occurrence.
Libya was supposed to be a test of our "responsibility to protect." It also had, from the President's point of view, the benefit of "leading from behind" and having "no boots on the ground." After successfully ousting Moammar Gaddafi -- who had turned his WMD program over to US and UK intelligence, kept al-Qaeda from moving from Egypt to Western North Africa, and paid reparations for terrorism -- the U.S. acknowledged as many as 30,000 Libyan deaths in two months of war.
The war in Mali was a direct result of the demise of the Gaddafi government and the raiding of government weapons depots by al-Qaeda-supported Tuareg forces. Only the direct involvement of French troops saved the government there. The deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone S. Woods, and Glen Doherty are attributable to the rise of al-Qaeda there as well. Today, there are as many as 1700 armed gangs across Libya and ISIS controls Sirte, a city of more than 100,000. The Pentagon is drawing up plans for U.S. military action to force ISIS out, we are again bombing Libya and there are American Special Forces on the ground. Meanwhile, the U.S. bombed an al-Shabaab training base in Somalia this week, killing more than 150 members of the group. Iran has come closer to nuclear weapons competence in the past eight years. And President Obama's abandonment of dissidents and pro-democracy advocates in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Turkey and Iran paves the way for waves of repression and bloodshed around the world. The widespread wreckage and carnage that accrues to President Obama's policies and fantasies should disqualify him from further activity on the international stage when his term ends. But since retirement doesn't appear in the offing, he needs to find a "success."
Cue the Middle East "peace process."
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center.
© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved.

UN report: Iran executes nearly 1,000 people in 2015
Barbara Slavin/Al-Monitor/March 11/16
Iran last year maintained its grim record of executing more people per capita than any other country in the world, the majority for drug-related offenses, according to the latest report by Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran.The report, which was shared with Al-Monitor in advance, states that Iranian authorities executed between 966 and 1,054 people in 2015, including four people under the age of 18. The total reflects a tenfold rise over the past decade and exceeds the 2014 figure by more than 200. Saudi Arabia, which has a much smaller population than Iran, executed 151 people last year and appears to be on track to execute more this year. China, the world's most populous nation, is believed to have executed the largest number of individuals last year — estimates are well above 1,000 — but per capita, Iran exceeds all other countries.
Stung by international and domestic criticism over this grim statistic, Iran has begun to debate substituting life in prison for the death sentence for many drug offenses, which accounted for 65% of those executed last year, according to the UN report.
Shaheed noted that in “December 2015, 70 members of parliament presented a bill that — if approved by the legislature and the Guardian Council — would reduce the punishment for nonviolent drug related crimes from death to life imprisonment. … While reserving judgment on the particulars of the bill, the Special Rapporteur welcomes attempts to reduce the staggering number of executions in the country and appreciates the government’s willingness to re-evaluate existing law with consideration for human rights obligations.”
According to an annex to the Shaheed report, those on death row include at least 1,200 Afghans. Of 59 non-Iranians executed in 2015, 16 were Afghans. The annex noted that “foreign nationals are particularly vulnerable as they often do not speak the language in which the legal proceedings take place, are unfamiliar with the laws under which they are charged, have inadequate access to legal assistance and support, and are often forced to sign confessions.” According to Shaheed, Iran has revised its criminal procedure code to require all death sentences to be reviewed by the country’s supreme court. In addition, the new code is supposed to guarantee access to legal counsel, but the provisions are not always implemented, particularly for those charged with political crimes. The UN report said that there are 53 people in Iranian jails for offenses related to freedom of expression. Among them are at least 17 journalists and media activists including Atena Farghadani and Issa Saharkhiz. Also detained on unspecified charges are Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American businessman, and his 80-year-old father, Baquer, who was arrested when he returned to Iran from Dubai to see his jailed son.
The Iranian government has responded to the Shaheed findings by accusing the UN of “double standards.” Iran said that “appointing a country specific rapporteur for a country like Iran, which has complied with its commitments toward its citizens and international community, is unwarranted, meaningless and absolutely destructive." At the same time, the government said that “in keeping with its intention to cooperate with the UN human rights mechanisms, and motivated by the aim to provide the Special Rapporteur with reliable and authentic information, our missions in Geneva and New York as well as other officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran have met with the Rapporteur for several times, and engagement with him will continue.”
The report includes detailed responses by Iran to most of its findings.
The Iranian Mission to the United Nations did not respond to requests for additional comment.
Expectations for an improvement in Iran’s human rights record rose with the 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani but were disappointed as his administration focused on achieving a landmark nuclear accord. In the aftermath of that agreement and Feb. 26 parliamentary elections that appear to have strengthened the Rouhani government at the expense of hard-line forces, pressure is building again to decrease the repressive role of the judiciary, Intelligence Ministry and the intelligence branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Right now is a huge window of opportunity,” Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, told Al-Monitor. With Iranian officials striving to re-integrate Iran into the global economy, “this is a key time to let the government know that normalization and extension of relations has to be accompanied by improvement in human rights.”
It will be interesting to see if members of the UN Human Rights Council share that view or whether attitudes toward Iran soften in light of the nuclear deal and warming Iran-Europe relations. Every spring since Shaheed was appointed Special Rapporteur in 2011, the council has renewed the office’s mandate.
According to Shaheed’s office, 13 other countries are also facing special UN scrutiny for their human rights records, most of them in Africa and Asia. Countries under mandates to monitor and report on their records include North Korea, Eritrea, Belarus, Myanmar and Syria. Israel also has a Special Rapporteur focused on Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Shaheed, a former foreign minister from the Maldives, has repeatedly asked Iran for permission to visit but has had to settle for consultations with Iranian officials in Geneva.
Ghaemi said he doubted Iran would allow him into the country but that a successor might have better luck. The last time a UN Special Rapporteur for Iran actually visited the country was in 2005 under then-President Mohammad Khatami. Rouhani’s government has engaged more actively with Shaheed than the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, although the UN official noted in his latest report that in 2015, Iranian officials responded to only five of 24 communications from his office, reducing its rate of reply “from 40% in 2014 to 20.83% in 2015.”

Why some Shiites are refusing to join the fight against the Islamic State
Adnan Abu Zeed//Al-Monitor/March 11/16
BAGHDAD — Iraq's Shiites have started speaking up about their fighters being sent to the battlefields in Salahuddin, Anbar and Fallujah, where the Islamic State (IS) and its allies, the Sunni tribes, are present, given the sectarian discourse in Sunni areas — such as Ramadi, Fallujah and Mosul — toward Shiite fighters. As a result, the Shiites are not sending their youth to fight IS.Haidar al-Khafaji, a Shiite from Babil, told Al-Monitor, “My son Mohammad, age 20, died on July 12, 2014, during the battle to liberate Tikrit — where many IS supporters live.”He said, “It is no use for the Shiites to participate in the upcoming Mosul battle because the citizens hate them, and taking part in these battles will not end this enmity.”Hostility between the Sunnis and Shiites increased when the Baathist regime — made up of Sunnis, most notably Saddam Hussein — ruled the country; Shiite leaders and clerics were assassinated and removed from high-level positions. Shiites feel that their sacrifices are not being appreciated, which Islamic researcher and author Ali al-Momen explained in an article on May 25, 2015, when he wrote that “Shiite fighters take all the lies, insults and accusations from the owners of the land.”
Abu Ali al-Mahawili, from al-Mahawil district in Babil province, south of Baghdad, shares these thoughts. Mahawili is the father of a young man who died during the Ramadi battle on Dec. 26, 2015. While speaking to Al-Monitor, he pointed to the pictures on a thick wooden board in the city square of about a dozen fighters of the Popular Mobilization Units who had died in the clashes in Salahuddin and Ramadi.
Mahawili said, “They sacrificed their lives in these mostly Sunni regions, but their sacrifices were not appreciated.”
In response to whether national feelings are running cold and sectarian feelings are flaring up, social researcher Ali al-Husseini from Babil told Al-Monitor, “Yes, many Iraqis no longer have national zeal, and they are no longer driven by slogans that pushed them to liberate regions in the past. Many have even joined IS.”Husseini's statements are reflected in the rejection of the Popular Mobilization Units to fight in Fallujah against IS on April 23, 2015, under the pretext that the government had not been supporting them.However, Saeed al-Sharifi, a fighter with the Popular Mobilization Units from Babil, told Al-Monitor, “I am a volunteer in the Hezbollah Brigades, but I abandoned their ranks because I feel a sense of ingratitude on the part of some Sunnis toward us, who view us as militias. The sectarian insults are among the reasons that are de-motivating Shiite men from fighting to liberate Mosul and Fallujah.”
The Ninevah provincial council unanimously voted on March 1 on the refusal of the participation of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units in the liberation of Mosul.
This refusal triggered controversy and opposing views. Shiite fighter Issam al-Asadi, who volunteered with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units in July 2014 and then retreated, told Al-Monitor, “We are fighting for people who hate us. So I stepped back.” He was referring to the citizens of the Sunni regions.
Yet Abbas Makki, a Shiite fighter hailing from Babil, told Al-Monitor, “The fight against IS in all of Iraq’s territory is a religious and national duty,” referring to the righteous jihad fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in June 2014, which requires that volunteers join the fighting against IS.
The Shiite’s disappointment with the Sunnis who do not appreciate the sacrifices on their behalf was expressed by Samir Abu Sajjad, a blogger, on Dec. 29, 2015. He addressed the residents of Ramadi and Salahuddin, saying, “You need to respect the martyrs’ sacrifices.”Shiite journalist Walid Taei supports the idea of not involving Shiite youth in the fighting in Sunni areas. He told Al-Monitor, “The Shiite sacrifices will be in vain for Iraq’s Sunnis, who curse the martyrs and consider them a sectarian militia.”
However, former Iraqi Environment Minister Qutaiba al-Jubouri denied in a statement that Sunnis are ungrateful for the sacrifices of the Popular Mobilization Units. In a press statement on March 9, 2015, Jubouri praised the “sacrifices of the security forces and Popular Mobilization Units to return Salahuddin to Iraq and the participation of the people of the south in the liberation of the province from IS.”Al-Monitor learned about other positive stances toward the Popular Mobilization Units. In a statement on March 2, 2015, the tribal council of elders in the Salahuddin governorate voiced support for the Sunni tribesmen who joined the ranks of the Popular Mobilization Units. Talib al-Dulaimi, a Sunni who moved from Ramadi to Baghdad, told Al-Monitor, “These claims are false. The fact is that I have volunteered with dozens of Sunni youths in the Popular Mobilization Units and that both Sunnis and Shiites are citizens of this homeland. The sectarian stances of some Sunnis or Shiites do not apply to everyone.”
Jassem al-Moussawi, a political author and analyst from Baghdad, denied to Al-Monitor that some Shiites tend to oppose any participation in the liberation of Sunni areas, and described it as “a propaganda designed to counter the Popular Mobilization Units’ participation in the liberation of the Iraqi territory. This is because the majority of the Shiites consider the war against terrorism as a holy war, and in the eyes of the Shiites the battle for Fallujah is of strategic security importance since it is located near Baghdad.”
Ghayath Abdel Hamid, from Baghdad, who preferred not to disclose his sectarian affiliation, told Al-Monitor, “It is untrue that the Shiites prevented their sons from fighting IS under the pretext of the growing death toll.” Islamic researcher and author Taleb Rammahi told Al-Monitor about the background of some of the negative stances. He said, “There are Sunni organizations, such as al-Qaeda and IS, that went too far in shedding Shiite blood. This was behind the Shiites’ conviction that the armed confrontation is the only choice they have.” The stances are subject to the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites, regardless of whether or not they go in line with the reality. Rather, the reality has become subject to sectarian interpretations, depending on the sect that the person embraces. In this regard, Sunnis and Shiites who embrace a national and cross-sectarian feeling have struggled so that a rational unified position prevails, which would preserve national unity and reduce human losses within the ranks of both the Sunnis and Shiites. This unified stance of a national front fighting against terrorism goes beyond all differences. This is reflected today in calls to let go of sectarian quotas in parliament and in the government. Among these calls is the conference on communal reconciliation and social cohesion, held in Baghdad on Feb. 28, and sponsored by the United Nations Development Program, to find a cross-sectarian political bloc to rise up to this challenge.

Saudi Journalist, Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh: Iran – Not Israel – Is The Gulf States' No. 1 Enemy
MEMRI/March 11, 2016Special Dispatch No.6346
On March 8, 2016, Saudi journalist Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh wrote in his column in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah that today, Iran is the No. 1 enemy of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, supplanting the historical enemy Israel. Any citizen of the Gulf who disagrees with this assessment, he added, is a traitor.
Arguing that Iran is exploiting the Palestinian issue as a pretext for "infiltrating deep into the Arab world, shredding its Arab fabric, and dragging Arab society into supporting its expansionary plan," he emphasized that the Palestinians should expect no salvation from Iran. He also warned the Gulf Shi'ites that they were mere pawns for Iran, which was using them to promote Persian national aspirations.
Below are translated excerpts from Aal Al-Sheikh's column:[1]
"The Persian enemy is Enemy No. 1, and the Zionist enemy is [only] Enemy No. 2. We must present this truth directly, flattering no one, to all those [who try] to extort us with the tale that Israel is the Arabs' Enemy No. 1 and that Iran supports us on the Palestinian issue. This tale could still be true vis-à-vis the Arabs to the north [of the Arabian Peninsula], and in Egypt, because Israel threatens [Egypt] and its security and stability. But as for the [Saudi] kingdom and the Gulf states, it is Iran, not Israel, that tops the list of the enemies and the dangers that lie in wait for us, face us and threaten us. Iran is exploiting the issue of the Palestinians and the liberation [of Palestine] as a pretext for infiltrating deep into the Arab [world], shredding its Arab fabric, and dragging Arab [society] into supporting its expansionary plan.
"It is true that the Palestinian issue has throughout history been the No. 1 Arab cause, and liberating Jerusalem from the yoke of the Israeli occupation has doubtless been the No. 1 issue for us, with nothing more important. However, at this time, and in light of the Persian ambition that the extremist Muslim Iranian government is backing with all its resources and for which it is mobilizing all its forces and capabilities, the Persian enemy takes priority – and must take priority – over the Israeli danger.
"For example, when [former Iraqi president] Saddam [Hussein] invaded Kuwait, occupied its territory, expropriated its sovereignty, and annexed it to Iraq, Kuwait's Enemy No. 1, and the No. 1 enemy of the [rest of] our Gulf countries, was not Israel but Saddam's Iraq. Furthermore, I am not ashamed to say that anyone in the Gulf, particularly among the Kuwaitis, who prioritized liberating Palestine over liberating Kuwait from the claws of the Iraqi occupier was considered a clear traitor. The Lebanese need to realize this, as do the Egyptians and the Palestinians...
"I do not think that any reasonable Gulf resident would consider the danger [posed by] the Zionist enemy to be greater than [that posed by] the Persian enemy. The Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians, whose land is wholly or partially occupied by Israel, are expecting us – for whatever reasons and excuses – to be courteous towards them and to prioritize the Israeli danger over that posed by the Persian enemy. They are delusional.
"Moreover, let me say this bluntly: Any citizen of any of the five Gulf states who prioritizes the Israeli danger over that of the Persian enemy, whether from a pan-Arab or an Islamist perspective, is sacrificing his homeland, its security, its stability and perhaps its very existence for his neighbor's cause. By any national standard, this is absolute treason.
"This issue has to do with our very existence, and there is no bargaining over it or dismissing or neglecting it. It is a matter on which the Gulf residents, whether Sunni or Shi'ite, agree equally. I know that for a minority among the ordinary Gulf Shi'ites, sectarian affiliation is the most important factor, and they place it above national affiliation. To them I say: The Persians have no interest in sect or even in religion. What really interests them is utilizing [your] sectarian [affiliation] as a lure to mobilize you against your homeland, as a fifth column. Take, for example, the Arabs of the Ahwaz [district in Iran].[2] Although they are Twelver Shi'ites, they are oppressed and excluded [in their own homeland], and the Persians are eradicating their [Arab] identity and with it their human rights. The regions [of Iran] where they live are the least developed and have the highest rates of poverty and unemployment – [even though] they are [the country's] richest in natural resources. Were sect and faith important [to the Persians], they would not be fighting the [Ahwazi] identity and heritage and forcing [the Ahwazis] to assimilate into a Persian identity, and would not be stopping them from speaking their language [Arabic], the language of the Koran... The [Persians'] goal and purpose is to [advance] the Persian race's control [in the region] and to establish a Persian empire with Baghdad as its capital – as a Persian religious scholar said in a documented press release..."[3]
Endnotes:
[1] Al-Jazirah (Saudi Arabia), March 8, 2016.
[2] On recent Arab efforts to promote the cession of Ahwaz from Iran, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No.1233,
MPs In Gulf Countries Urge Recognition Of Ahwaz Province In Iran As Occupied Arab Country, March 9, 2016.
[3] Possibly a reference to a March 2015 statement by Ali Younesi, advisor to Iranian President Hassan Rohani, in which he said that Iran is now again an empire and its capital is Iraq. See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5991, Advisor To Iranian President Rohani: Iran Is An Empire, Iraq Is Our Capital; We Will Defend All The Peoples Of The Region; Iranian Islam Is Pure Islam – Devoid Of Arabism, Racism, Nationalism, March 9, 2015.

The Obama ‘Middle Eastern’ Doctrine
Abdullah Hamidaddin/Al Arabiya/March 11/16
Jeffrey Goldberg’s The Obama Doctrine could have well been entitled The Obama Middle Eastern Doctrine. In this very long - yet interesting read – we were given a peek into the way Obama thinks about my region and how America should deal with it. All of the tenets of that doctrine are presented as a rationalization of previous decisions Obama made on the Middle East, or as a preemptive testament before the court of history. The fact that Obama is leaving office in less than a year may lead many to read his doctrine as a chapter in Obama’s forthcoming biography. I think it is more prudent to read it as a first draft of a new American Middle Eastern Doctrine. This is because the discussions in which those tenets are couched in echo Neo-Realist wisdom, American popular sentiment and they resonate with America’s global interests.
We all know that a new chapter between America and the Middle East has been open in the White House, and we have seen some of its pages. That the Middle East is of less importance to the US is a given. Sadly this lack of importance is being embedded with a condescending view toward the Middle East. Our region, according to Obama, is a hopeless case, full of “malicious, nihilistic, violent parts of humanity”. Moreover it is a distraction to the US from other regions where “young people yearning for self-improvement, modernity, education, and material wealth”.
Whatever the case, Obama is now giving us a sneak preview of that new chapter. He is telling us that America is revising its alliances and it is also changing its rules of the game. Obama took great pride when speaking about not abiding by what he called the “Washington playbook”; a set of expectations and prescriptions towards international events.
Washington playbook
Obama is encouraging future presidents not to abide by that book, perhaps re-write it, warning them that the “conventional expectations of what an American president is supposed to do” can sometimes become traps. He is also telling us not to make expectations based on our knowledge of the current Washington playbook. The fact that Obama is leaving office in less than a year may lead many to read his doctrine as a chapter in Obama’s forthcoming biography. I think it is more prudent to read it as a first draft of a new American Middle Eastern Doctrine.
From the article I extracted what seemed to me the core tenets of the new Middle Eastern doctrine:
1. America’s global leadership is going to be based on its capacity to set the global agenda not on its capacity to direct regional events.
2.An American president should not “place American soldiers at great risk in order to prevent humanitarian disasters, unless those disasters pose a direct security threat to the United States.”
3.America’s pronounced moral position vis-à-vis a situation is not a signal that it will intervene.
4. When action is needed, America will not work alone rather with other countries.
5. America shall no longer welcome free riders as allies.
6.American will not commit US military forces unless they would change “the equation on the ground.”
7.Terrorism is not an existential threat to the US.
8.America’s credibility, while important, is also over rated and lead to decisions that damage US interest.
9.Stability in the Middle East can only come through “some sort of cold peace” based on sharing and not competition.
Each tenet has immediate implications on the security of the region. And we had already seen quite a few of them. I will not discuss those implications now. What I want to say is that we need to understand them quite well if we are going to be able to understand current and future US behavior and more importantly if we want to have an intelligible communication with American leadership. In the Middle East we’ve gotten used to a totally different doctrine, one based on extensive American interventionism. Many policy advisors, political analysts have always had that different doctrine in the back of their minds whenever they try to understand or criticize the US. They think: “your doctrine says you will do so and so; why aren’t you doing it?” Diplomats also had that doctrine in mind when they communicate with the US; and they formulate their communication in a language compatible to the now old doctrine.
The US will continue to be the indispensable ally no matter what its shortcomings are. And if we want to sustain an intelligent discussion with it we should read Goldberg’s piece well, again and again.

Only Bernie Sanders can stop Donald Trump
Abdallah Schleifer/Al Arabiya/March 11/16
There is a social rebellion going on in America - a white predominantly male working class revolt that has surfaced as the popular base of support for Donald Trump. The white working class was once the most important element among the voters who supported the Democratic Party. From the 1930s onward the Democrats reciprocated with legislation that favored trade unions, established a minimum wage, organized a tax-funded pension - social security - for all working Americans, and later health insurance for retired Americans (Medicare) and other legislation that assisted many working class families move up into the middle class. But over the past five decades an increasing number of white working class voters have shifted over to the Republicans. Unlike Western Europe the American working class is relatively religious, was strongly anti-Communist and is patriotic. On the moderate Left when it came to economic issues, American workers tended to be socially conservative - opposed to abortion and in more recent years to same-sex marriage. And increasingly white workers became convinced that the Democratic Party, wasn’t just pushing a life-style liberalism detached from religion, but was also indifferent to their middle class aspirations, focusing instead on the needs of minorities be they the very poor or African Americans.
But over the past decade economic insecurity has returned to haunt the white working class. American manufacturers have closed down thousands of factories and relocated them abroad in low-wage countries as close as Mexico and as far away as China and Vietnam, thereby transferring a million or so jobs outside of America. Because of free trade agreements, the country has also been flooded with cheap foreign manufactured products, leading to still more factory closures and loss of jobs.Most media reports on Donald Trump’s popularity with Republican primary voters focus upon his character - boastful, pugnacious and crude speech; verbal abuse of anyone who disagrees with him. And racism - characterizing illegal Mexican immigrants to America as drug dealers and rapists, and promising to forbid Muslims visas to visit America until a secure vetting system can be set up.
Trump’s manners scandalize the Republican establishment, and since the white working class rebellion is against all Washington establishments Trump’s outrageous style delights his supporters. But there is another dimension to Trump’s appeal that has to do with policy not bad character. Trump, denounces the free trade agreements that have led to the massive loss of jobs. Free trade is a Republican position He denounces the flooding of the American market with cheap manufactured goods from China and other low-wage countries and has pledged to impose high custom duties on these imports. He is opposed to any cuts in the social security system which the Republican establishment has quietly sought.
Sanders’ challenge
All of these positions which Trump alludes to in between his long bouts bullying his rivals for the Republican nomination, are expressed with far greater coherence and vigor by Bernie Sanders. Trump’s bad character and bellicose approach to foreign affairs so offends most Democrats that there is no chance any pro-Hillary Democrat will cross party line and vote for Trump in November, if miraculously Sanders wins the Democratic party nomination this summer. Last Tuesday Sanders won the Michigan primary despite nearly every pundit predicting Hillary Clinton would win, given the support she had among the Democratic Party leadership there. But Sanders pressed his points over and over again - that Clinton supported the free trade agreement in the past that led to the closing of factories and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in Michigan. Nor does he hesitate to single out the financial support she has received in the past from Wall Street and continues to receive in this campaign. Clinton has already acquired far more delegates to the nominating convention than Sanders, largely because she has swept the southern states, where the Democratic Party is overwhelmingly African American. The Clintons have intensely and successfully cultivated the African American community and its leadership on a social basis.
But all of these southern states are solid Republican - they will all go to Trump. Trump’s bad character and bellicose approach to foreign affairs so offends most Democrats that there is no chance any pro-Hillary Democrat will cross party line and vote for Trump in November, if miraculously Sanders wins the Democratic party nomination this summer. But the polls indicate that just as Trump is despised by nearly all committed Democrats so is Hillary despised by nearly all committed Republicans. So it is difficult to imagine widespread Republican defections to Clinton if, as expected, Trump secures the Republican nomination. Bernie Sanders can be tough with Hillary Clinton but he presses home his disapproval of Hillary’s track record of support from Wall Street with irony, rather than outrage. Trump will tear her apart.

The Muslim world is going backwards – and the West isn’t to blame
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Al Arabiya/March 11/16
Turkey and Malaysia have long been regarded as the most developed countries in the Muslim world. Through a historic commitment in the C20th to modernisation and development, they have achieved standards of infrastructure, education, healthcare but also industrialization and economic output that compare favorably to that of many of the newer members of the European Union. They were not, of course, the only countries in the Muslim world to have attempted such development. But they have been by far the most successful. They were also quite fortunate to not end up as collateral damage in the Cold War struggle between the USSR and the West – as some other Muslim countries have been. But ultimately, one feels that much of their success is down to their respective determination to build integrated, inclusive nations. Unlike in Syria, or Iraq, in Turkey one is not, first and foremost, a Sunni, or a Shiite, or a Christian. One is, before anything else, a Turk. In Malaysia, the ethnic group of every citizen is something that is acknowledged and celebrated. But unlike in Afghanistan, the competition and the conflicts between groups is not settled through tribal warfare: it is settled through the political process. And when specific ethnic groups have been historically disadvantaged, like for example the indigenous Malays, this is acknowledged and there are quotas in place for access to higher education or to the institutions of political administration to redress historical imbalances in the representation of their interests.
Blame game
But right now, unfortunately, both of these countries are sliding backwards. And this time, I am afraid to say, the West is not to blame. Turkey has been steadily becoming more and more illiberal in the last 14 years in which President’s Erdogan AK Party have been the dominant political force in the country. Press freedom, for example, has been eroded to the point where, in this past week, the government could simply take over the administration of the country’s largest opposition newspaper, Zaman, followed swiftly by the Cihan news agency. Any independent-minded journalists can expect to be sacked if they choose to not toe the party line. And now people are going to prison for the crime of “offending the President”. Very many Muslim countries also have fractured populations who put parochial or tribal interests well above collective national concerns. Meanwhile, Malaysia is being ruled by a prime minister who has distinguished himself through incompetence in public administration. Though it does seem that Najib Razak is quite able to line his own pockets an investigation by the Wall Street Journal and Sarawak has found that the PM may have managed to pilfer as much as $1 billion from Malaysian state coffers. Though, of course, this is just the tip of the corruption iceberg. In Malaysia, it seems, corruption is systemic, and the people are largely resigned to this fact.
Five years ago, the Islamic world was brimming with the hopes of the Arab Spring. Even though the rot at the heart of Turkey and Malaysia has been in place for well over 10 years, other Muslim and Arab countries were looking forward to a brighter future, as they sought to rid themselves of the same kind of authoritarian or corrupt leaders that the most Westernised countries in the Islamic world now tolerate. But it was not to be. Libya and Syria are examples of how badly wrong things can go if you get rid of some of these corrupt leaders, and how badly things can go wrong if you do not. Tunisia stands alone as the only success story of the Arab Spring; at least for now. But ISIS already has it in their sights. And the internal politics of the country, though they have remained largely civil so far, are still volatile and can erupt into state-destroying conflict just like they did in neighbouring Libya.
Note, however, what proportion of these woes affecting the Muslim world is in fact to do with the West and how much more it has to do with local or transnational Muslim factors. The most frequent problem is corruption and economic mismanagement. Very often, there is a huge problem with large, young populations with poor education and virtually no economic opportunities. Very many Muslim countries also have fractured populations who put parochial or tribal interests well above collective national concerns. And if that was not enough, you have militant Islamists, very often foreign, barging in left, right and centre and blowing things up. Is it any wonder that states in the region are so fragile? Is it surprising that so many have failed or are failing?
Everyone likes blaming the West for all this, of course. But if the West just suddenly stopped existing tomorrow, would any of this get any better? The West is responsible for plenty of debacles and foreign policy blunders in the region. But it cannot be held responsible for the fact that so many Muslims there cannot abide to live in peace and justice just because they are a different tribe, or sect, or have a different political ideology. You have proper societies when you have a group of people who will work hard to live in peace and harmony with each other. There are virtually no societies left in much of the Muslim world and Muslims have only themselves to blame for that.