‘US furious with Israel, but lobby too strong to oppose’

‘US furious with Israel, but lobby too strong t…, posted with vodpod

Ukraine parliament smackdown

This is what happens when you call a Ukrainian legislator a “Pharasee.”

Ukraine parliament smackdown, posted with vodpod

Kashmiri vs India

Changing targets: Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri POST OSAMA As jihad becomes difficult in Af-Pak, al Qaeda leader Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri has India in his crosshairs By Anupam Dasgupta/Kashmir & Delhi  He is a mortal threat to India and is capable of destabilising south Asia. Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, 47, has kept the US and Indian intelligence on their toes for over a decade now. His lone eye hidden behind aviator sunglasses, the former operational commander of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) is arguably the best jihadi commander active anywhere. The Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), which has been tracking him ever since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, believes that Kashmiri poses a greater threat to India after Osama bin Laden’s death than before. Indian and US intelligence communities are sure that Kashmiri will be directly involved in the next major strike in India or the west. Intelligence collected by the R&AW in the last quarter of 2010 hinted at Kashmiri’s fresh interest in India. A report circulated among senior national security officials said Kashmiri was reviving his anti-India network. His focus has been primarily restricted to the Af-Pak region for a few years now. Allegedly, Kashmiri was active across the Line of Control during the Kargil war in 1999 and had a direct role in planning the infiltration into India. In 2004-2005, reports said he was operating in Kashmir’s Poonch sector. In 2007, another report said Brigade 313 was recruiting youth from Doda district, Kashmir. The Kashmiri-led Brigade 313 is regarded to be one of the five brigades of the Lashkar al Zil (Shadow Army), al Qaeda’s military arm. No new intelligence is available on the Ghazwa-e-Hind, believed to have been created by Kashmiri for exclusively targeting India. Many intelligence analysts think the unit is imaginary. S.M. Sahai, inspector-general of police, Kashmir, told THE WEEK that no fresh information was available on Kashmiri. US sleuths said Kashmiri was in close touch with FBI agent-turned-LeT operative David Coleman Headley after the 26/11 attacks. It is not confirmed if Kashmiri had plans to ask Headley to case fresh targets in India or in the west. Some intelligence analysts think Kashmiri was closer to Headley’s accomplice Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a former Pakistan army captain, than Headley. “Kashmiri has the ability to elicit resources, given his extant links with the Pakistani establishment and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Also there are reasons that they might now want him back in the game,” said a R&AW official. However, Pakistan authorities have denied any links with Kashmiri. “We are convinced that he was behind the attempt on former president Pervez Musharraf’s life and also planned the attack on GHQ [General headquarters of Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi],” Major-General Athar Abbas, director-general of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Public Relations, told visiting Indian mediamen recently. In fact, Kashmiri was taken into custody following the bid on Musharraf and allegedly tortured. Wondered a colonel in the Pakistan army: “Would we cohort with a fellow who tried to kill our chief and bomb our HQ?” Incidentally, this is the first time that Pak army authorities have named Kashmiri as the one behind the attack on their GHQ. Kashmiri was always looking for a fight. He fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and then decided to support the separatists in Kashmir. In between, he had a stint with the Pakistan Army’s Special Services Group. He joined al Qaeda in 2004-05 and and took over the reins of Brigade 313. Indian sleuths said Kashmiri brought about a decisive shift in al Qaeda’s operational thinking. According to US intelligence, he is the only non-Arab to have risen up al Qaeda ranks. Kashmiri, Indian sleuths said, was based in North Waziristan’s Miram Shah area in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, after he realised that fighting in Kashmir was not viable in the long run. A shrewd student of military tactics, his gut instinct told him that fighting in Kashmir would need sustained logistical supply. So he shifted his focus to Pakistani tribal areas and launched attacks on Pakistani military installations and on US troops in Afghanistan. On March 2, 2006, Kashmiri’s unit bombed the US consulate in Karachi, killing four persons, including diplomat David Foy, and injuring 48 others. Kashmiri’s stock rose after Brigade 313 made repeated attempts to kill Musharraf. His name also figured in plots aimed at major European cities. Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, the only one to have interviewed Kashmiri in recent times, said, “Kashmiri will continue playing a major role in operational matters. However, it is difficult to speculate on his future moves.” Stephen Tankel, an expert on the Lashkar-e-Toiba at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told THE WEEK: “Kashmiri is not as plugged in to al Qaeda’s global network as some others in the organisation. So we might expect him to continue playing an important role in terms of operations in Pakistan, as well as in the wider south Asian region. He poses a threat to India. That should be taken seriously, though that threat is far from an existential one. Kashmiri invariably endorses attacks against India as he does attacks against Pakistan and various western countries.” A past master at engineering “well-honed, low-cost and high impact operations”, Kashmiri must have been directly reporting to bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current al Qaeda leader. He even dyed his beard red, a la bin Laden. “But ideology was never his forte, so he chose to involve himself in operational stuff,” said an intelligence source. US officials said he was the only non-Arab to attend ‘classified’ al Qaeda strategy sessions. “Following the organisational churning necessitated by bin Laden’s killing, Kashmiri might choose to move away from the Af-Pak theatre towards the eastern flanks,” said a top R&AW official. “This could be for the simple reason that Kashmiri could be finding it hard to hit US-led NATO troops in Afghanistan. India being traditionally a softer target, it makes sound operational thinking for him to switch flanks and move closer to the Indian border.” Kashmiri’s prior experience in Kashmir will be of added advantage to him. “This is no denying that Kashmiri enjoys a great degree of authoritative independence when it comes to choosing targets and shaping considerations that are weighed before a target is finalised. But it is also true that his own Brigade 313 does not have enough members at this point,” said an officer of the Indian military intelligence. According to media reports, Kashmiri dominated the discussions between Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon E. Panetta and Lt. General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, director-general, ISI, when Panetta visited Islamabad in September 2010. Panetta apparently said that US efforts to curb Brigade 313 in north and south Waziristan were going waste as Pakistan was reluctant to nab Kashmiri and his men. The south Waziristan based Teherik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a natural ally of al Qaeda, and Kashmiri may have been their guest to secure himself from US drone attacks. However, Pakistan army authorities asserted that they had “no evidence that there was any formal alliance between the groups operating in South Waziristan and the Taliban or al Qaeda”. “Kashmiri is a unifying figure within al Qaeda. He is a dangerous and capable operator. People like Kashmiri could be a convenient tool for the Pakistani establishment when it comes to real operations,” said Rick Nelson, a former US Navy officer and director of the homeland security and counter-terrorism programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington. Nelson was selected in 2005 to serve as an inaugural member in the US national counter-terrorism centre’s directorate of strategic operational planning. He had watched Kashmiri’s activities and rise closely when he was attached to the US Joint Special Operations Command as part of his last military assignment. Syed Adnan Ali Shah Bukhari, a Pakistan expert at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Singapore, said: “Kashmiri always had India in the back of his mind. It would be interesting to watch how he cobbles together a small band of trained terrorists for a 26/11 type future hit. Also one needs to see if Kashmiri uses his own Brigade 313 men or picks pro-LeT elements for an attack.” The TTP militants are adept at mountain and rough terrain tactics, but are not so well groomed for urban strikes. Experts bet on the LeT cadre, as they fit Kashmiri’s requirements. But there are hurdles along Kashmiri’s way. Bukhari feels that Kashmiri would find it difficult linking up with the LeT, since he is a Deobandi while the Lashkar cadre are Wahhabis. But there is cooperation between the different sects. Top al Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah was caught hiding inside an LeT safe house in Faisalabad in March 2002. By virtue of being the richest terrorist organisation anywhere, bankrolled by the wealthy Pakistani diaspora, the LeT might emerge as the key player in the global terrorism arena. “In the new scheme of things, the LeT could eventually ‘usurp’ al Qaeda in the coming days,” Nelson said. “And it would be interesting to observe what role Kashmiri then plays in al Qaeda.” Tankel said: “Several men close to Kashmiri formerly belonged to the LeT and so they act as a bridge to the group. In terms of his relationship with the group [LeT], Kashmiri cooperates and competes with it. That is not so unusual—the militant nexus in Pakistan is characterised by separateness and togetherness.” Kashmiri is feared as he has demonstrated his military ambitions and capabilities on a number of occasions during the past few years. “He is a mortal threat to India,” said Bill Roggio, senior fellow, Foundation for Defence of Democracies, Washington. “Despite his focus changing to the Af-Pak theatre he cut his teeth in Kashmir and my impression is that he would love to take the fight back to India. The US intelligence has changed its mind on Kashmiri from a few years ago, when he was seen as just a local Pakistani jihadi. Now he is considered to be one of their best military commanders, and a dangerous one at that.” As Tankel said, Kashmiri is a valuable commander and has his own network in south Asia as well as a much smaller Rolodex of associates in Europe. So even if he chooses to bleed India, he will remain a big threat to the US and the west at large. Indian intelligence officials, however, believe that Kashmiri will not be ‘allowed’ to head al Qaeda. The officials say al Qaeda would favour an Arab to lead it. And, al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian. Meanwhile, Kashmiri would remain a ghost, itching to strike at Indian and western targets.

Writing the Next Act of the Pakistani Psyop, Right Before Our Eyes

[In the following story we see the writing of the next chapter in the "al-CIA-da" psyop.  Creating a new flow in the false national narrative, requires inventing many things out of whole cloth.  Every element of the AQ story is the public linking of the imaginary organization to an actual terror event, or to a known terrorist like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Omar Sheikh, or a former member of Al-Zawahiri's very real terrorist organization, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, like Saif al-Adel.  The very tenuous link that has allegedly been established between KSM,  al-Adel and Daniel Pearl is another piece of government sleight-of-hand produced evidence that nobody else has seen.  A new technology of  "vein-matching" allegedly established a positive match between a Guantanamo photo of KSM's hand and the hand of the killer in the Pearl beheading video.  (See video HERE)  Further evidence, not seen by the public, which allegedly ties al-Adel to the Pearl murder, reports that KSM revealed during water-boarding the links with "al-Qaeda" leader Adel. 

With the bin Laden psyop in Abbottabad and all the Wiki leaks on Pakistan, this new "revelation" is further "proof" of the need for American forces to clean-up Pakistan.]

Study ties new al Qaeda chief to murder of journalist Pearl

By Augustine Anthony

ISLAMABAD

(Reuters) – Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian militant recently appointed interim leader of al Qaeda operations, has been linked to the killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002, U.S. investigators said in a report.

A Wall Street Journal reporter, Pearl was kidnapped in Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi in January 2002 while researching a story on Islamist militants, and was later beheaded.

The findings by investigators of the Pearl Project revealed al-Adel had discussed Pearl’s abduction with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, also known as KSM, the accused mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

“KSM told the FBI that he was pulled into the kidnapping by a high-level leader in al Qaeda circles, an Egyptian named Saif al-Adel, who told him to make the kidnapping an al Qaeda operation,” said the investigators in their report which was published in January.

Journalism academics and students set up the Pearl Project at Georgetown University in the United States to investigate Pearl’s kidnapping and murder.

The linkage of al-Adel to Pearl’s murder shows the long-standing ties between al Qaeda and Pakistan militancy, which flourishes not only in the lawless northwest along the Afghan border but in Karachi and other urban centers.

Pearl fell into al Qaeda’s hands after Pakistani militants, the subject of Pearl’s research, kidnapped him.

Al-Adel learned of Pearl and approached Mohammad to take him off the Pakistani militants’ hands.

“He (al-Adel) thought this was an opportunity,” Mohammad told FBI agents, according to the report’s authors.

“We can take advantage of it. He said he wanted to make sure it’s an al Qaeda thing.”

Mohammad, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and taken to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, later admitted he beheaded Pearl.

Mohammad told investigators he initially had no idea about the kidnapping and he also said al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was reportedly angry over Pearl’s brutal killing, the report said.

A former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo Bay military commissions told the researchers: “One of the high value detainees told interrogators that Osama bin Laden was angry that KSM had slaughtered Pearl so publicly and brutally, arguing that the murder brought unnecessary attention on the network.”

A British-born Islamist militant, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court in 2002 for his role in Pearl’s killing. He has appealed his conviction. Three other co-accused who face life sentences, have also appealed.

Al-Adel, the latest militant named in connection with Pearl’s murder, was appointed al Qaeda’s temporary leader following the killing of bin Laden by U.S. special forces in a Pakistani town on May 2.

U.S. prosecutors say al-Adel is one of al Qaeda’s top military commanders and helped plan 1998 bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. They also say he set up al Qaeda training camps in Sudan and Afghanistan in the 1990s.

(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Robert Birsel)

Militants Attack Karachi Naval Air Base, Holding Chinese Military Officers

Pakistan: Militants attack Karachi naval air base

The BBC’s Shoaib Hasan in Karachi says that there are hostages inside the base

Gunmen have attacked a military base in the Pakistani city of Karachi, killing at least 11 soldiers, officials say.

The well-armed attackers set off explosives and have been fighting gunbattles with navy personnel at the Mehran naval aviation base.

The gunmen are now holding hostages, including Chinese military personnel.

No group has claimed the raid, but the Pakistani Taliban have vowed to avenge the killing of Osama Bin Laden by US special forces on 2 May.

They have carried out several attacks since then.

Battle continues

On Sunday militants stormed three hangars housing aircraft at the Mehran base, according to officials.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said: “We have been able to confine them to one building and an operation is underway either to kill or capture them.”

Flames can be seen in the distance, and intermittent gunfire continues as troops battle the militants inside, says the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan at the scene.

Their first targets were aircraft parked on the tarmac and equipment in nearby hangers.

Eyewitnesses say the militants used rocket propelled grenades to damage and destroy several warplanes. These included the Pakistan navy’s premier anti-submarine attack jet – the US made P-3C Orion.

At least two of these multi-million dollar aircraft were set ablaze.

The gunmen then opened indiscriminate fire, killing several naval personnel as they carried their deadly raid into the heart of the base.

Subsequently, navy commandos and marines launched a counter assault. Dozens of heavily armed army reinforcements also arrived to provide cover.

Some of the militants have now been killed, officials say.

The remaining gunmen have taken several officials, including Chinese military personnel, hostage inside a building. Security officials say commandos are now being sent in to clear this area.

Frontier Corp. Gun-Down Unarmed Chechens, Because They Were Chechens

Authorities Say Chechens Killed On May 17 Were Unarmed

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: The Bomb Disposal Squad of Balochistan Police has declared that no suicide jacket or explosive device was recovered from the custody of  all five Chechen, including  three  women, who were shot dead in firing by police and Frontier Corps on May 17.

Submitting its report to the Inspector General of Balochistan here on Saturday BDS claimed that two safety levers of hand grenade were found close to the dead bodies and one of the two men was wearing the ring carrying safety pin of hand grenade.

The report did not mention the site of the blast caused by hand grenade or any splinter of the hand grenade. However, it declared that when the three member team of Bomb disposal squad reached the site, it found five bodies lying close to F.C Check post in the middle of round about who were killed by F.C and police personnel.

The report further mentioned that some 50 non electric fuses were found in emptied bottles of shampoo and two watch timers.

Earlier, in postmortem report, the death of all five persons as well as the baby in mother womb took place due to bullet injuries instead of hand grenade blast as claimed by Capital City Police Officer Daud Junejo. However, the medical team found some signs of pellets, not splinters in the bodies. However no pellet was found in the bodies. Even the seven month baby received three bullets. All the victims received 2 to 8 bullets while Police and Frontier Corps personnel opened volley of bullets.

The Rosa Parks of Saudi Arabia: Women Challenging the Ban by Driving

Immoral Woman Driver in Saudi Arabia -16 March 08, posted with vodpod

[Obama cited Rosa Parks in his new Middle East speech, but it is certain that he will not press his Saudi allies about such petty issues as women's rights, when the Saudis are carrying the ball for him in the anti-Iranian offensive.]

“Sometimes, in the course of history, the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has built up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a king, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat.”

Posted by Hena Zuberi

I learned how to drive at the age of 13, in a golden Toyota Corolla on the dusty roads of Khartoum.  It was empowering,  when my dad gave me keys the of the tiny, bright red Suzuki FX, a car I had to share with my sister, the deal was I was to drop my brothers and sisters off at school on the way to Kinniard. We had a driver for my mom who never drove but my father wanted his daughters to be self-reliant. He showed me how to fix a flat and pointed out every trusted auto mechanic on the route back and forth from school. Have driven in the crazy streets of Lahore, Dubai, New York, Los Angeles amongst other places. I am a ‘conservative’ Muslim woman; I drive my children to Quran class, to school, to the grocery store, to visit elders in the community, to the masjid school where I teach.  Always took it for granted until was struck with severe vertigo and was at the mercy of others to chauffeur me around for a few weeks. Take away the ability to move from a human being and you have put her or him in a virtual prison. Saudi Arabian women have been in this virtual prison for years. They are not allowed to drive. Every Muslim country in the world lets women drive, except Saudi Arabia. Why? No one except the Saudi Arabian government knows. There is no Islamic reasoning for it. Since there were no ‘cars’ 1400 years ago, Muslim scholars turn to permissibility of an action by looking at the closest general mode. Here it is transportation. Women used horses and camels to travel during the time of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). There is stories of the Prophet’s wives, daughters and sahabiyaat riding horses. Most Saudis, themselves, don’t claim the ban to be Islamic.

The debate to allow women to drive cars has been ebbing and flowing in the oil-rich conservative kingdom for many years. (globalvoices.org) The religious authorities have always viewed this license, if granted, as something that will ruin women and the whole of society. There are some Saudi scholars for example, Abdel-Mohsin al-Obaikan – one of Saudi Arabia’s senior religious figures and another well-known cleric, Mohsin Awaji that say that Islamic law does not prevent women driving. Everything depends, they say, on the context. There are road safety issues, steps need to be taken to prevent harassment of women drivers.  Liberals, along with a lot of Saudi women, say it is a basic right that women should naturally have, especially those who cannot afford to employ a driver. Why it is a divide amongst liberals and religious authorities.? This is a woman’s issue, one that affects woman, let them decide. Driving is not a “right”, it is a privilege that should be  earned by proving that you can drive safely and revoked if misused ie. drinking while driving, speeding, texting, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman.

But wait it is a male issue too, Saudi men spent countless hours chaffeuring their female relatives back and forth from doctor’s appointments,  to school, to college, to hairdressers to the mall.

Weddings are a nightmare.

“Usually, I’m too tired” to enjoy the festivities, Auda says, “because I’m preparing the whole day for the wedding. You have to take the dresses from the dry cleaners. You have to get the gifts, pick up the hairdresser for the girls. Drive the hairdresser back.  “Sometimes, for example, there is a hairdresser working at home on five women, and there is another five who want to go to salons. You can imagine the headache. You are tired because you are driving three to four hours before the wedding.”

By limiting this privilege just to men what has Saudi Arabia gained? Women are still allowed to sit in a car often with a non-mahram driver, which if looked from a deen perspective it worse. This editorial in the Saudi newspaper suggest that the myth of Saudi taxi drivers molest Saudi women is so encompassing that no self respecting Saudi woman will get into a taxi for the fear of losing her reputation. Comments under the editorial further fuel that myth. The editorial does inform the readers that many more Saudi women are working out of necessity but are not able to save any money because they spend it all on hiring private drivers or taxis.

Such views are dysfunctional and display a distrust of both Saudi women and men. Qatar is a conservative Muslim society, so is Kuwait but women drive in both places. Are Qatari or Kuwaiti women any less virtuous than Saudi women? Of course not.

Najla Hariri is a mom who has been driving around Jeddah for the past few days taking her children to school. Her feat stormed the Internet, and on Twitter, the long debate continued between those who refused what Najla had done and those who praised her courage and struggle to prove that society is wrong in banning women from driving cars. (globalvoices.org)

Hariri reacted kindly to the praise she got in comments through her Twitter account saying [ar]:

أعزائي، جعلتم مني رائدة ورمز، أنا لست أي من ذلك، انا أم وجدت نفسها في احتياج لأخذ زمام المبادرة، ففعلت من غير بطولات ولا انجازات

You have made me a leader and an icon, when I am not any of that. I am just a mother who found herself in need to do something, so I did what I’ve done without looking for heroic acts or achievements.

In an interview with Arab News, she ridiculed “the social belief that Saudi women are treated “like queens” as they are driven around by their male relatives or drivers, saying “this is a big lie. We are always under their mercy to give us a lift,” she said.

Saudi blogger Fouad Al-Farhan wrote a comment [ar] on what Mrs Hariri had done, saying:

ما قامت به الأستاذة نجلاء حريري من قيادة سيارتها يوم أمس في جدة وتوصيل أطفالها هو حق حلال ومشروع ومصادرة الحق ظلم

What Mrs Najla Hariri has done driving her car in Jeddah to give a ride to her children is a legitimate [Halal] right and taking this right away is unfair.

Another Saudi tweep, Abdulrahman Kattoa, praised what Najla did, describing [ar] her as another Rosa Park, the African-American civil rights movement activist:

ما يكسر حاجز الخوف إلا الشجعان زي ما كسرت الأمريكية في الباص الاضطهاد العنصري في أمريكا

No one breaks the fear wall except the brave, just the way an American woman broke racist oppression in a bus

Kuwaiti columnist Abdullah Zaman wrote a tweet in English to Mrs Hariri praising her courage:

Najla, I envy you for what you did today. You got the guts to be a symbol of the will in the women’s world.

Saudi political activist Waleed Abu Alkhair pointed out [ar] the importance of what Mrs Hariri had done:

باختصار سياقة نجلاء حريري لسيارتها في وسط جدة ووقت الذروة ولمسافة طويلة دون أي مضايقات يبدد ما يشاع عن مجتمعنا أنه سوف يؤذي المرأة إن ساقت

In short, Najla Hariri driving her car in the middle of Jeddah City during the rush hour for a long distance without getting harassed, should end what has been rumored in the society about women getting hurt if they would drive.

A campaign “Teach me to drive to protect me” is scheduled to start on June 17th- here is their facebook page.  The duplicitous  part about this farce is that there is nothing in the Saudi traffic laws that prohibits Saudi women from driving-they are just not issued drivers licenses and there is a driving ban.   They can own cars just not drive them. The drama is so ridiculous that the same religious figures who support women’ s rights to drive have to navigate the religious minefield by issuing nonsensical fatwas ie. give breast milk to adult male drivers to make them mahram, which is clearly against Islamic law as breast milk is haram after the age of 2. But a right to transport oneself on/in a mode of transport that is not haram, is clear and straightforward, no fatwa can be issued.

The ban on driving was unofficial at first but was introduced as official legislation after 47 Saudi women drove cars through the streets of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in the 1990s in an attempt to challenge authorities.  To get around this issue, the women of June 17 are asking all drivers with international drivers licenses to drive. They are also offering driving lessons to women in rural areas.  Manal Al Sharif- one of the organizers of the event was stuck without a ride, unable to get in touch with her mahram, her brother, she is a single mother of a five year old and could not find a taxi at 9 o’ clock at night. She says she was harassed by every car that passed by. She was desperate to get home to her son.

“We want to live as complete citizens, without the humiliation that we are subjected to everyday because we are tied to a driver,” her Facebook message reads. “We are not here to break the law or demonstrate or challenge the authorities, we are here to claim one of our simplest rights.”

As I write this: Manal has been arrested by the religious police and is in jail in Khobar. She posted a video on Youtube.

MSNBC describes the video made by al-Sharif and her friend:

Dressed in a headscarf and the all-encompassing black abaya all women must wear in public, al-Sharif said not all Saudi women are “queens” who can afford to hire a driver. She extolled the virtues of driving for women, saying it can save lives, and time, as well as a woman’s dignity. Al-Sharif said she learned how to drive at the age of 30 in New Hampshire.  “We are humiliated sometimes because we can’t find a taxi to take us to work,” she said.

@monakareem Mona Kareem

RT @Safarzo: Manal was arrested not 4 violatin the law but 4 “violating culture.” Ppl, is there ANYTHIN in Saudi thats not against culture.

omar9944 omar johani An unsung hero in Manal’s saga, her bro! Accompanied her when she drove, had his wife babysit Manal’s son. Saudi guys #TakeNote! #FreeManal

The following announcement from the campaign was originally released in Arabic, and can be found here. Translation by Ziad Abu-Rish and Khuloud of Jadaliyya.org

Us women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are the ones who will lead this society towards change. While we failed to deliver through our voices, we will not fail to deliver through our actions. We have been silent and under the mercy of our guardian (muhram) or foreign driver for too long. Some of us barely make ends meet and cannot even afford cab fare. Some of us are the heads of households yet have no source of income except for a few hard-earned [Saudi] Riyals that are used to pay drivers. Then there are those of us who do not have a muhram to look after our affairs and are forced to ask strangers for help. We are even deprived of public transportation, our only salvation from being under the mercy of others. We are your daughters, wives, sisters, and mothers. We are half of society and give birth to [the other] half, yet we have been made invisible and our demands have been marginalized. We have been deliberately excluded from your plans! Therefore, the time has come to take the initiative. We will deliver a letter of complaint to our father, the King of Humanity and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques calling on him to support the Women of June 17.

Not all women in Saudi think this initiative is the solution, one commenter called Fatima at the Jadaliyya websitesays:

I support an initiative to help Saudi women improve our situations but I think the real problem is not a driving license, it’s the men we agree to marry. A driving license just gives men more excuse to neglect us because we can now do all the shopping and take the children everywhere with us and so on. The men abdicate responsibility. The better fight would be in the process of selecting a husband; select one who supports our independence and will pay for our driver. I don’t see how a license helps women who can’t pay for a taxi. They still won’t be able to buy a car? A chauffeur is something most people of the world covet. So called supporters are working to deprive us of this luxury. Be careful.

To choose to drive or not. This is a privilege that every man or woman should have who can do it safely and responsibly. Praying for my Saudi sisters may Allah give them this freedom and grant them the hikmah to use it for the betterment of their deen and dunya.

Hostage crisis looms in Sana’a

[The following report is from the usually reliable Hindu Press, but it contradicts this previous AP Report (SEE:  Ambassadors flown out of besieged Sanaa embassy).  As the situation unfolds, perhaps it will become clear.]

ATUL ANEJA

Volatile Situation: An anti-government protest in Sana’s on Saturday. Photo: AP

Envoys of U.S., U.K. and others under siege

In a desperate attempt to prevent the signing of an accord which would have led to the exit in one month of Yemen’s President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, gunmen loyal to the President have in Sana’a besieged the embassy of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), entrapping inside, the envoys of the United States, Britain, the European Union and four Gulf countries.

CNN quoting the U.S. Ambassador in Yemen, Gerald Feierstein, said the Ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE were also under siege inside the embassy.

Mr. Saleh was scheduled to sign an accord on Sunday that was already inked a day earlier by the opposition.  On Saturday, the opposition signed an agreement drafted by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which bars prosecution of the Yemeni President and his family, but also cements Mr. Saleh’s departure from office in 30 days. “We signed the initiative in the presence of envoys from the United States, Britain, the European Union and the GCC Secretary General Abdullatif Al Zayani,” an unnamed opposition leader was quoted as saying.

But hours before Mr. Saleh was to ink the accord, gunmen pledging loyalty to the President surrounded the UAE embassy where the envoys were awaiting word from the Yemeni authorities, before proceeding for the signing ceremony at the presidential palace.

Secretary General of the GCC Abdullatif al-Zayani is also inside the UAE embassy, Al Arabiya television station is reporting.

CNN quoted Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khaled al-Khalifa as saying the situation in the Yemeni capital was “volatile.” He said he was in touch with the Mr. Zayani. Witnesses say thousands supporting Mr. Saleh have blocked the road leading to a building where the President had been meeting some of his officials.

They  said Mr. Saleh would not be allowed to leave the compound to sign the proposed deal. Signalling growing anarchy in Sana’a, tribal leaders have mobilised gunmen, in anticipation of violence.

NATIONAL UNITY

On Saturday, Mr. Saleh had stressed that he would be signing the deal, not out of conviction, but for preserving national unity. “The initiative is in fact purely a coup operation but we will deal positively with it for the sake of the motherland,” he said at a military parade ahead of celebrations marking the twenty-first anniversary of Yemen’s unification. Mr. Saleh, who had earlier been working closely with the United States to counter Islamic extremism, warned that his exit would lead to a surge in al-Qaeda activity.

The “Palestinian State” Obama Describes Is NOT West Bank and Gaza

“The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and

contiguous state.”

Obama is referring to the silent knowledge shared by all Washington insiders when they speak of the “two-state solution,” they mean Israel and Jordan.  (SEE: The Jordanian Option has Always Been Zionism’s Plan )

Taliban warns Muslim Kazakhstan on entering Afghan war

By Amie Ferris-Rotman

KABUL | Sun May 22, 2011 4:16am EDT

(Reuters) – The Taliban has warned majority Muslim Kazakhstan that its decision to send troops to the NATO-led war in Afghanistan would have severe consequences and was not in its regional interest.

The statement, distributed to media on Saturday, appeared to nod to a growing Islamist tendencies in ex-Soviet Central Asia, where militants enjoy support from the Taliban and have worried Kazakhstan and neighboringRussia.

The Kazakh parliament decided on May 18 to become the first nation of mainly Muslim, ex-Soviet Central Asia to send troops to join the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as the war drags into its 10th year.

Though not a member of NATO, Kazakhstan said it would send an unspecified number of soldiers on six-month missions. It has been providing air and ground corridors for the delivery of supplies to Western troops in Afghanistan.

“(Kazakhstan) has focused on protection of American interests instead of taking into account the aspirations of their people and the regional interests,” the English-language Taliban statement said.

Kazakhstan is Central Asia’s most successful economy and largest oil producer. Seventy percent of its 16.4 million people are Muslim. The vast nation has to date avoided the Islamist violence that has occurred in its ex-Soviet neighbors.

“The Muslim people of Kazakhstan should stand against this wrong policy of their rulers … This step on the part of Kazakhstan will leave a long-term negative impact on relations between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan and the region,” the statement said.

Analysts have warned that Central Asian militants, after years fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are filtering back across the region’s porous borders to their homelands, bringing with them ambitions to spread jihad, or holy war.

Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan all border Afghanistan.

Tajikistan’s army has been fighting insurgents in the country’s mountainous east since an attack on a military convoy killed 28 troops last September, shortly after suicide car bombers attacked a police station in the country’s second city.

Several militant Islamist groups have stated their objective of creating a Muslim caliphate incorporating large swathes of Central Asia, a region twice the size of Saudi Arabia.

However, in contrast with poorer republics in Central Asia, analysts have said militant groups were unlikely to garner much support in relatively prosperous Kazakhstan.

Despite the presence of up to 150,000 foreign troops, violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government by U.S.-backed Afghan forces. Last year both sides suffered record casualties.

(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Alex Richardson)

What Is Different About Ft. Carson, Colorado Soldiers?

What is really going on at Ft. Carson (formerly Camp Carson), or what is really happening in their PTSD treatment program for returning vets?  Recent history of returning vets from the terror war is a reoccurring story of out-of-control, brutal soldiers, who are ticking time-bombs,  with very little regard for human life.  Two of those stories are included below–the first story is of a Ft. Carson soldier who allegedly executed a Taliban leader in his custody in Afghanistan; the second story concerns 17 soldiers from Ft. Carson, who had been charged with murder or attempted murder.  Why is this problem so prevalent at this one base?  Could it have anything to do with the base mental health program for soldiers suspected of having post-traumatic stress disorder? 

The base houses a “Warrior Transition Battalion,” intended to treat soldiers, primarily by removing the “stigma” of  “combat fatigue,” as it used to be called, in the politically incorrect days of WWII and Korea.  The so-called “stigma” is the shame of “unmanliness” in the face of battle.

Definition of UNMANLY : not manly: as a : being of weak character : cowardly b : effeminate

REAL MEN do not have PTSD, just as they have no hesitation to kill for their country.  REAL MEN volunteer to be on the front lines–ALWAYS, or so the Top Hats at the Pentagon would have men believe.  

In WWII, as in Korea, Camp Carson was one of the primary facilities for treating shell-shocked vets, as well as soldiers deemed psychologically unfit for duty.  At first, the first urge among the generals was to imprison all apparently healthy men who refused to kill for their country, or failed to support the war effort.  This effort was a massive failure, leading the brass to choose psychological treatment to force recruits to reverse their unmanly ways.  

The “inadequate soldiers,” who missed the mark of “manliness” established by our bloodthirsty culture, were subjected to the equivalent of Soviet psychiatric gulags, in order to give them a new militarized outlook on life.  Then, as now, the most powerful tools available were used to “man-up” gold-bricking soldiers.  Judging by the testimony given by Jose Barco in the video accompanying the “Ft.  Carson Killing Spree” story below, the tendency today is to supply a different powerful behavioral control drug to each soldier, to counter every exhibited symptom.  “Jose Barco, is serving 52 years in jail for shooting and wounding a pregnant woman when he opened fire at a party in Colorado Springs,” while under the influence of various administered anti-depressants and all the street drugs he could find.  

We have no way of knowing what other “treatments” are being given to these suffering, returning vets, who are being “transitioned” to civilian life, but there are old Army records which document some of the treatments used in previous Camp Carson transitioning/reconditioning programs.  The following excerpt from an Army history document details the merciless treatments/torture used upon previous unmanly vets (they were used upon my own father, during the Korean War–  Human Nature Is the Enemy of the State):     

  “At the Camp Carson, Colo., Station Hospital, an unusually active psychological testing program was developed.¹² Studies were performed on the underlying emotional problems of enuretics and patients with rheumatic fever; also, correlations were made between psychological tests and clinical diagnosis of illiterate personnel (including mental and educational deficiencies)…. “Under these conditions, shock therapy (mostly electroshock) was used freely for disturbed or agitated psychoses and depressions; subshock insulin treatment was employed in the more severe psychoneurotic reactions with encouraging results; psychotherapy under sedation called narcosynthesis, which had gained great popularity overseas in the treatment of combat neuroses, was resorted to in patients with residual symptoms of psychoneuroses incurred in combat and in cases of conversion hysteria.”

WARRIOR TRANSITION BATTALION MISSION:

Provide command and control, primary care and case management for Warriors in Transition to establish conditions for healing and promote the timely return to the force or transition to civilian life.

WARRIOR IN TRANSITION MISSION:

I am a Warrior in Transition. My job is to heal as I transition back to duty or continue serving the nation as a Veteran in my community. This is not a status, but a mission. I will succeed in this mission because.

Pfc. David Lawrence takes a break from an Article 32 hearing at Fort Carson in November. Lawrence, who was serving with the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division is accused of killing a Taliban commander while he was detained in a cell at an outpost north of Kandahar in Afghanistan. Lawrence was on guard duty at the time of the shooting.

Fort Carson soldier expected to plead guilty in death of Taliban prisoner

DAVID S. CLOUD

Tribune Co. Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — An Army private accused of killing a Taliban prisoner last year in Afghanistan has agreed to plead guilty, according to his attorney, even though several military psychiatrists concluded he was suffering severe mental illness at the time.

Pfc. David W. Lawrence is expected to receive a “substantially” reduced sentence for the killing of Mullah Mohebullah, a senior Taliban commander who was shot in the face last October while being guarded by Lawrence at a U.S. detention facility in Kandahar province, said James Culp, the defendant’s lawyer.

Lawrence had been charged with premeditated murder in military court. The plea deal will spare Lawrence from a possible life sentence without parole, the minimum punishment he faced if convicted on the charge under military law.

It will also shield the Army from the controversy over locking up a 20-year-old soldier for the rest of his life after its own doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

The killing sparked tensions between the U.S. and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who described it as an example of coalition forces’ frequent use of excessive force. Karzai threatened his own investigation. But the case also raised questions about whether the Army is being vigilant enough in screening troops for mental illness, especially in combat units.

The plea deal is expected to be accepted when court-martial proceedings convene at Fort Carson on Wednesday, the lawyer said. Lawrence is likely to serve his sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Culp would not disclose the reduced sentence agreed to with Army authorities, saying it would be revealed in court. An Army spokesman declined to comment.

Lawrence’s mental state at the time of the shooting was a matter of intense debate throughout the seven-month case.

Culp said that his client’s mental condition deteriorated last summer within weeks of his arrival in Afghanistan after the chaplain and seven soldiers from his unit were killed in a bomb attack. Lawrence had formed a close bond with Chaplain Dale Goetz, the first Army chaplain killed in combat since Vietnam, he said,

Ten days after Goetz’s death, Lawrence requested to see a mental health therapist, complaining of depression and sleeplessness. He was pulled out of his unit in the Arghandab Valley and sent to a combat stress clinic at Kandahar air base, Culp said.

Mohebullah was killed a few weeks after Lawrence returned to his unit, the 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division.

In February, a board of Army psychiatrists concluded that Lawrence was “unable to appreciate the nature and quality or wrongfulness of his conduct” at the time of the killing. Even so, the board concluded Lawrence was capable of understanding why he was being prosecuted and was therefore fit to stand trial.

Culp planned to argue that Lawrence was not guilty by reason of insanity. But there was also evidence that Lawrence carefully planned the killing and weighed the risks.

Fort Carson soldiers’ killing spree after Iraq combat

By Dan Edge This World

Seventeen US soldiers from a Colorado military base who mostly served in Iraq have been linked to violent killings and attempted killings since their return to US soil. Three of them came from one platoon – highlighting how a generation of American soldiers are struggling to cope with life after military service.

“I was having a total mental breakdown. Every day we were getting in battles, and never having a break, it seemed like, it was just crazy.

Four members of the Third Platoon are now in prison after serving in Iraq

“I just got to where I couldn’t take it. I tried to go to mental health, and they put me on all kinds of meds, too. And I was still going out on missions… they tried different medications, different doses, and nothing worked.”

Kenny Eastridge was a decorated gunner, but is now serving 10 years in prison for his role in the murder of fellow soldier Kevin Shields in Colorado Springs.

In November 2007, Eastridge along with two other soldiers, Louis Bressler and Bruce Bastien, were out drinking in a nightclub with Mr Shields after returning from a rough combat tour in Baghdad.

Drunk and stoned, they drove off to find more alcohol. Minutes later, Specialist Kevin Shields lay dead, gunned down in a drunken argument, and left in a pool of blood by the side of the road.

Bressler and Bastien were sentenced to 60 years in prison for the murder and a string of other crimes in Colorado Springs.

Kevin Shields’ murder was not a unique case. At Fort Carson military base, 17 soldiers have been charged or convicted of murder, attempted murder or manslaughter in the past four years.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

In the first six months you’re just happy to be home. And then after that… problems started”

Ryan Krebbs Third Platoon medic

For over a year, This World has been tracking down the members of Third Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st battalion, 506th infantry, which later reflagged and became the 2nd batallion, 12th infantry regiment, trying to make some sense of the killings that have occurred since their return to the US.

The majority of Third Platoon served multiple combat tours with distinction and managed to adjust to life after Iraq. But a significant minority have not.

Four of the platoon have ended up in prison. Two are dead – one died from an overdose, another was killed by a suicide bomb.

In all, 15 out of 42 soldiers from Third Platoon left the army after a single Iraq tour. Four were kicked out for failing drug tests, and one was sent to prison for driving while drunk and fleeing the scene of an accident. Five were medically discharged. Only five left the army because their service had ended.

More than half of the platoon said they suffered from psychological problems after Iraq.

‘Trigger happy’

The platoon’s youngest member, Jose Barco, is serving 52 years in jail for shooting and wounding a pregnant woman when he opened fire at a party in Colorado Springs. He was convicted on two counts of attempted murder.

Barco said he became desensitised to death and killing during the vicious combat of the “surge” in 2007, when his battalion were tasked with driving al-Qaeda out of Baghdad.

BBC News -

Fort Carson soldiers’ killing spree after Iraq …, posted with vodpod

Jose Barco became desensitised to death and killing during the vicious combat of the Baghdad “surge”

It was Third Platoon’s job to move mutilated bodies every morning.

“It got to the point where it was like seeing a dead dog or a dead cat. If you’re not numb in those moments, you’re going to go crazy. I guess it just follows me,” he said from his prison cell.

As Third Platoon’s tour wore on, discipline deteriorated. Jose Barco said that for some soldiers, casual brutality became the norm, and that he routinely shot unarmed Iraqis.

“We were trigger happy. We’d open up on anything. They even didn’t have to be armed. We were keeping scores,” he said.

The US army investigated, but no soldier from Third Platoon has been charged with killing civilians in Iraq.

While in Iraq, Eastridge had exhibited signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), was taking anti-depressants and sleeping pills, but was also taking valium, smoking pot and drinking whisky.

He had a history of aggression, and been charged with assault before he went on his second tour, but he was still deployed.

He said Iraqi civilian deaths did not bother him at all: “You disassociate. To you they’re not even people, you know. Like, they’re not humans.”

Continue reading the main storyThird Platoon’s Iraq tours:• August 2004 – August 2005. Stationed in the desert in the heart of the Sunni triangle, they patrolled the main highway from Ramadi to Falluja drawing out insurgent attacks and dealing with 1000 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)

• September 2006 – December 2007. Stationed near Al Dora, an al-Qaeda “hub” that became the site of al-Qaeda’s last stand in Baghdad. Main task was to try to secure neighbourhoods street by street, which were subject to widespread sectarian killings

The platoon’s first battalion commander Colonel David Clark, accepted that the price of “success” on the battlefield could take a psychological toll.

“It’s got to have an impact,” he said.

“Is that a reason not to do the surge? No. The surge worked. We needed to do the surge. War is a dangerous thing,” he added.

The number of Fort Carson soldiers failing drug tests rose by 3000% in the first three years of the Iraq war.

Ryan Krebbs, the platoon medic, admitted abusing medication in Iraq, stockpiling sleeping pills to calm himself down after missions.

He never forgave himself for the death of one of his sergeants, and eventually tried to kill himself with an overdose of prescription anti-psychotic drugs when he returned home.

“In the first six months you’re just happy to be home. And then after that… problems started.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The black box warning for these anti-depressants say that they can make people suicidal”

Dr Joseph Glenmullen Psychiatrist, Harvard Medical School

“Depression, anxiety, paranoia, getting the feeling that you’re in Iraq all over again.

“I just couldn’t take it anymore,” he said.

Before the Iraq war, American soldiers on psychiatric medications were not allowed to deploy to a combat zone.

But by the time of the surge, more than 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were taking anti-depressants and sleeping pills to cope with the stresses of combat.

The military has come under fire for medicating troubled soldiers rather than taking them away from the front line.

Dr Joseph Glenmullen warned that such medication could be dangerous in war.

“All of these anti-depressants now carry in recent years a black box warning.

“The black box warning for these anti-depressants say that they can make people suicidal and a variety of other side effects that include insomnia, anxiety, agitation, irritability, hostility, impulsivity and aggression, all of which obviously could become critical in a combat situation,” he said.

The vice-chief of the US army, General Peter Chiarelli defended the policy, but said that the army needed every soldier it could get.

“It’s a supply and demand problem,” he said.

More than 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were taking anti-depressants and sleeping pills

“I cannot do anything about the demand, I only have a finite supply, and when the demand goes up, and orders are given, we provide the soldiers.”

Spurred by the public outrage, the army’s medical command last year conducted an investigation in to the violence.

It found that most of the soldiers had experienced unusually intense combat in Iraq, six of them had criminal records before they joined the military, 11 had a history of substance abuse and nine were taking psychiatric medications.

It concluded that the intensity of battle and shortcomings in mental health treatment may have converged with “negative outcomes” such as alcohol and drug abuse.

Last week the final American combat brigade pulled out of Iraq after more than seven years of war.

But for many soldiers, the end of combat operations is just the beginning of a different kind of struggle back home.

Yemen transition deal falls through – diplomats

SANAA | Sun May 22, 2011 11:52am EDT

May 22 (Reuters) – Western and Gulf diplomats failed on Sunday to persuade Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to sign a deal that would ease him out of power and make him the third Arab leader ousted by popular protests, diplomats said.

“It failed,” one of the diplomats told Reuters. A Gulf diplomat said the Gulf Cooperation Council bloc of Yemen’s wealthy oil-exporting neighbours may withdraw its initiative as a result. (Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari and Mohamed Sudam; Writing by Cynthia Johnston)

Yemeni army helicopters took U.S. and other ambassadors out of a besieged embassy

[Saigon, anyone?  Metaphoric reference to Obama's impending total defeat in Middle East.]

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4151/4833102501_aed6a8099d.jpg

Ambassadors flown out of besieged Sanaa embassy

© 2011 The Associated Press
SANAA, Yemen — Witnesses say Yemeni army helicopters took U.S. and other ambassadors out of a besieged embassy to the presidential palace to witness ruling party leaders signing an agreement for the president to step down in 30 days.

However, state TV says President Ali Abdullah Saleh will not sign the deal unless opposition leaders are present.

The U.S., European and Arab ambassadors, who were pressing Saleh to sign the accord, were trapped for hours Sunday in an embassy by an armed mob of the president’s supporters. Eventually, Yemeni army helicopters ferried the diplomats out to the palace.

State TV then showed ruling party leaders signing the pact at the palace as Saleh and the U.S. ambassador stood behind them. Saleh himself did not sign.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — The U.S., European and Gulf Arab ambassadors were trapped inside a diplomatic mission Sunday by an armed mob angry over a deal for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after 32 years in power. Prospects that Saleh would sign the pact as promised were thrown into doubt.

Wielding knives, daggers and swords, hundreds of Saleh loyalists blocked the entrances to the United Arab Emirates Embassy, where at least five ambassadors were gathered in expectation the embattled leader would arrive to sign the deal.

“Everybody is worried. We can’t leave the embassy,” said a Saudi diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Pro-Saleh militiamen dressed in traditional Yemeni dress roamed the streets of the capital, especially outside embassies, and blocked the road to the presidential palace.

At one point, armed men attacked a convoy of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s chief mediator, secretary-general Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, to try to keep it from reaching the UAE Embassy, witnesses said. Pounding the car, they shouted against Gulf intervention in Yemeni affairs.

The convoy of the Chinese ambassador also came under attack by armed men before a police detail was deployed to clear the way and disperse the crowd.

Saleh has backed away from signing the U.S.-backed deal at least twice before, adding to the opposition’s deep mistrust of a leader known for adept political maneuvering that has kept him in power for decades. The deal, mediated by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, calls for Saleh to step down within 30 days and transfer power to his vice president. It also would give him immunity from prosecution.

Yemen’s opposition coalition signed the deal Saturday, based on what it said were guarantees the president would sign the next day. But a ruling party statement early Sunday said Saleh objected to signing “behind closed doors” and wanted a public event attended by the opposition.

An official in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, said the GCC would drop the proposal and withdraw from mediation if Saleh did not sign by the end of the day.

Even if Saleh goes ahead with signing, it was far from certain whether that would satisfy the many different groups protesting his rule in the streets.

Hundreds of thousands poured into a central square Sunday that has become the center of opposition protests, waving Yemeni flags and shouting rejection of the deal. They held banners that read: “Now, now Ali, down with the president!” and “Go out Ali!”

Women mingled with men, unlike in previous protests when female protesters stood on the edge of the square segregated from men, in keeping with Sharia law that mandates separation of the sexes. Children had their faces painted with Yemeni flags, while youths carried pictures of slain protesters. Young men and women held a 6-foot-long (2-meter) Yemeni flag.

The protesters say the deal falls short of their demands for Saleh’s immediate departure and the dismantling of his regime. They also reject any immunity for the Yemeni leader and say the opposition parties don’t speak for their demands.

“This initiative is only meant to save Ali not Yemen. We are going to continue our revolution until the end. Like Tunisia and Egypt, we will go against the opposition if they form a government while Saleh is still in power,” declared Tawakul Karman, a protest leader and senior member of the opposition Islamic fundamentalist Islah Party.

She said the protesters were escalating their push by calling a nationwide general strike.

On Saturday, Saleh condemned the proposed deal as “a coup” and warned the U.S. and Europe that his departure would open the door for al-Qaida to seize control of the fragile nation on the edge of Arabia.

In what appeared to be a state-orchestrated move to show a security void, dozens of pro-Saleh loyalists gathered in front of the Police Academy, where the ruling party general assembly had convened to discuss the deal. “We are coming under pressure, to reject the initiative,” said Mohammed Saad, a general assembly member.

Dozens of other supporters erected a big tent in one of Sanaa’s main streets, blocking traffic and raising banners that read: “Don’t go, don’t sign!”

Saleh has managed to cling to power despite near daily protests by tens of thousands of Yemenis fed up with corruption and poverty. Like other anti-government movements sweeping the Arab world, they took inspiration from the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

The president has swung between offering concessions, taking them back and executing a violent crackdown that has killed more than 150 people, according to the opposition, which says it compiled the tally from lists of the dead at hospitals around the nation.

The bloodshed triggered a wave of defections by ruling party members, lawmakers, Cabinet ministers and senior diplomats. Saleh’s own tribe has joined those demanding his ouster. Several top army commanders, including a longtime confidant who heads a powerful armored division, joined the opposition and deployed their tanks in the streets of Sanaa to protect the protesters.

Saleh has been able to survive thanks to the loyalty of Yemen’s most highly trained and best-equipped military units, which are led by close family members.

That has raised concerns the political crisis could turn into an armed clash between the rival military forces if a deal is further delayed.

Seeking to win some support in the West for his continued rule, Saleh has warned several times that without him, al-Qaida would take control of the country.

The United States, which had supported Saleh with financial aid and military equipment to fight the country’s dangerous al-Qaida branch, has backed away from the embattled leader.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has an estimated 300 fighters in Yemen and has been behind several nearly successful attacks on U.S. targets, including one in which they got a would-be suicide bomber on board a Detroit-bound flight in December 2009. The explosive device, sewn into his underwear, failed to detonate properly.

The proposed deal — first put forward in March by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — gives a clear timetable for a transfer of power.

One week after Saleh signs, the opposition takes leadership of a national unity government that will include representatives of Saleh’s party. Parliament will then pass a law granting him legal immunity and a day later — 30 days after the deal is signed — he is to step down and transfer power to his deputy.

A month after that, presidential elections are to be held.

___

Associated Press Writer Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.

Cable #178082: Extremist recruitment on the rise in southern Punjab

[With Saudi and UAE sources flooding $100 million/year into radical madrassas of the Deobandi and Al-Hadith faiths, in order to purchase young Pakistani boys as terrorist recruits from poor Berelvi families, it is no wonder that Pakistan has lost control of the jihadists in its midst.  If the US was serious about eradicating Islamic terrorism from the Middle East, it would now be waging war upon Saudi Arabia, instead of enlisting it to front an anti-Shiite coalition for war on Iran.  The fact that this admission is contained in a US State Dept. secret cable, proves beyond any doubt that our leaders have embraced Sunni terrorism as their primary weapon against Islam. 

It doesn't matter how many revelations such as these come out about American complicity in terrorism, if the rest of the governments of the world continue to meekly accept each new startling revelation, without creating an international stink over the whole mess. 

We are all screwed, as long as we are led by governments composed of cowards and thieves.]

During recent trips to southern Punjab, Principal Officer was repeatedly told that a sophisticated jihadi recruitment network had been developed in the Multan, Bahawalpur, and Dera Ghazi Khan Divisions.

178082 11/13/2008 10:30:00 AM 08LAHORE302 Consulate Lahore SECRET//NOFORN ACTION SCA-00 INFO LOG-00 EEB-00 AID-00 AMAD-00 INL-00 DOEE-00 PERC-00 PDI-00 DS-00 DHSE-00 EUR-00 OIGO-00 FBIE-00 VCI-00 H-00 TEDE-00 INR-00 IO-00 LAB-01 MOFM-00 MOF-00 VCIE-00 NSAE-00 ISN-00 OMB-00 NIMA-00 GIWI-00 SCT-00 ISNE-00 DOHS-00 FMPC-00 SP-00 SSO-00 SS-00 NCTC-00 ASDS-00 CBP-00 R-00 SCRS-00 DSCC-00 PRM-00 DRL-00 NFAT-00 SAS-00 FA-00 SWCI-00 /001W ——————FA445D 131023Z /38 O 131030Z NOV 08FM AMCONSUL LAHORETO SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 3818INFO AMEMBASSY ISLAMABAD IMMEDIATE AMCONSUL KARACHI PRIORITY AMCONSUL PESHAWAR PRIORITY AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI AMEMBASSY KABUL NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DCCIA WASHDCSECDEF WASHINGTON DCJOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DCCDR USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FLAMCONSUL LAHORE S E C R E T LAHORE 000302 NOFORN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/13/2018 TAGS: PTER, PGOV, KISL, PK

SUBJECT: (S/NF) EXTREMIST RECRUITMENT ON THE RISE IN SOUTHERN PUNJAB

Derived from: DSCG 05-1, B,D

1. (S/NF) Summary: During recent trips to southern Punjab, Principal Officer was repeatedly told that a sophisticated jihadi recruitment network had been developed in the Multan, Bahawalpur, and Dera Ghazi Khan Divisions. The network reportedly exploited worsening poverty in these areas of the province to recruit children into the divisions’ growing Deobandi and Ahl-eHadith madrassa network from which they were indoctrinated into jihadi philosophy, deployed to regional training/indoctrination centers, and ultimately sent to terrorist training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Locals believed that charitable activities being carried out by Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith organizations, including Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Al-Khidmat Foundation, and Jaish-e-Mohammad were further strengthening reliance on extremist groups and minimizing the importance of traditionally moderate Sufi religious leaders in these communities. Government and non-governmental sources claimed that financial support estimated at nearly 100 million USD annually was making its way to Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith clerics in the region from “missionary” and “Islamic charitable” organizations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ostensibly with the direct support of those governments. Locals repeatedly requested USG support for socio-economic development and the promotion of moderate religious leaders in the region as a direct counter to the growing extremist threat. End Summary.

2. (S/NF) During a recent visit to the southern Punjabi cities of Multan and Bahawalpur, Principal Officer’s discussions with religious, political, and civil society leaders were dominated by discussions of the perceived growing extremist threat in Seraiki and Baloch areas in southern and western Punjab. Interlocutors repeatedly stressed that recruitment activities by extremist religious organizations, particularly among young men between the ages of 8 and 15, had increased dramatically over the last year. Locals blamed the trend on a strengthening network of Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith mosques and madrassas, which they claimed had grown exponentially since late 2005. Such growth was repeatedly attributed to an influx of “Islamic charity” that originally reached Pakistani pseudo-religious organizations, such as Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Al-Khidmat foundation, as relief for earthquake victims in Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province. Locals believe that a portion of these funds was siphoned to Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith clerics in southern and western Punjab in order to expand these sects’ presence in a traditionally hostile, but potentially fruitful, recruiting ground. The initial success of establishing madrassas and mosques in these areas led to subsequent annual “donations” to these same clerics, originating in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The value of such donations was uncertain, although most interlocutors believed that it was in the region of $100 million annually.

3. (S/NF) According to local interlocutors, current recruitment activities generally exploit families with multiple children, particularly those facing severe financial difficulties in light of inflation, poor crop yields, and growing unemployment in both urban and rural areas in the southern and western Punjab. Oftentimes, these families are identified and initially approached/assisted by ostensibly “charitable” organizations including Jamaat-ud-Dawa (a front for designated foreign terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Tayyaba), the Al-Khidmat Foundation (linked to religious political party Jamaat-e-Islami), or Jaish-e-Mohammad (a charitable front for the designated foreign terrorist organization of the same name).

4. (S/NF) The local Deobandi or Ahl-e-Hadith maulana will generally be introduced to the family through these organizations. He will work to convince the parents that their poverty is a direct result of their family’s deviation from “the true path of Islam” through “idolatrous” worship at local Sufi shrines and/or with local Sufi Peers. The maulana suggests that the quickest way to return to “favor” would be to devote the lives of one or two of their sons to Islam. The maulana will offer to educate these children at his madrassa and to find them employment in the service of Islam. The concept of “martyrdom” is often discussed and the family is promised that if their sons are “martyred” both the sons and the family will attain “salvation” and the family will obtain God’s favor in this life, as well. An immediate cash payment is finally made to the parents to compensate the family for its “sacrifice” to Islam. Local sources claim that the current average rate is approximately Rps. 500,000 (approximately USD 6500) per son. A small number of Ahl-e-Hadith clerics in Dera Ghazi Khan district are reportedly recruiting daughters as well.

5. (S/NF) The path following recruitment depends upon the age of the child involved. Younger children (between 8 and 12) seem to be favored. These children are sent to a comparatively small, extremist Deobandi or Ahl-e-Hadith madrassa in southern or western Punjab generally several hours from their family home. Locals were uncertain as to the exact number of madrassas used for this initial indoctrination purpose, although they believed that with the recent expansion, they could number up to 200. These madrassas are generally in isolated areas and are kept small enough (under 100 students) so as not to draw significant attention. At these madrassas, children are denied contact with the outside world and taught sectarian extremism, hatred for non-Muslims, and anti-Western/anti-Pakistan government philosophy. Contact between students and families is forbidden, although the recruiting maulana periodically visits the families with reports full of praise for their sons’ progress. “Graduates” from these madrassas are either (1) employed as Deobandi/Ahl-e-Hadith clerics or madrassa teachers or (2) sent on to local indoctrination camps for jihad. Teachers at the madrassa appear to make the decision based on their read of the child’s willingness to engage in violence and acceptance of jihadi culture versus his utility as an effective proponent of Deobandi or Ahl-e-Hadith ideology/recruiter.

6. (S/NF) Children recruited at an older age and “graduates” chosen for jihad proceed to more sophisticated indoctrination camps focused on the need for violence and terrorism against the Pakistan government and the West. Locals identified three centers reportedly used for this purpose. The most prominent of these is a large complex that ostensibly has been built at Khitarjee (sp?). Locals placed this site in Bahawalpur District on the Sutlej River north of the village of Ahmedpur East at the border of the districts of Multan, Bahawalpur, and Lodhran. The second complex is a newly built “madrassa” on the outskirts of Bahawalpur city headed by a devotee of Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Maulana Masood Azhar identified only as Maulana Al-Hajii (NFI). The third complex is an Ahl-e-Hadith site on the outskirts of Dera Ghazi Khan city about which very limited information was available. Locals asserted that these sites were primarily used for indoctrination and very limited military/terrorist tactic training. They claimed that following several months of indoctrination at these centers youth were generally sent on to more established training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and then on to jihad either in FATA, NWFP, or as suicide bombers in settled areas. Many worried that these youth would eventually return to try and impose their extremist version of Islam in the southern and western Punjab and/or to carry out operations in these areas.

7. (S/NF) Interlocutors repeatedly chastised the government for its failure to act decisively against indoctrination centers, extremist madrassas, or known prominent leaders such as Jaish-e-Mohammad’s Masood Azhar. One leading Sufi scholar and a Member of the Provincial Assembly informed Principal Officer that he had personally provided large amounts of information on the location of these centers, madrassas, and personalities to provincial and national leaders, as well as the local police. He was repeatedly told that “plans” to deal with the threat were being “evolved” but that direct confrontation was considered “too dangerous.” The Bahawalpur District Nazim told Principal Officer that he had repeatedly highlighted the growing threat to the provincial and federal governments but had received no support in dealing with it. He blamed politics, stating that unless he was willing to switch parties — he is currently with the Pakistan Muslim League — neither the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz provincial nor the Pakistan Peoples Party federal governments would take his requests seriously. The brother of the Federal Minister for Religious Affairs, and a noted Brailvi/Sufi scholar in his own right, Allama Qasmi blamed government intransigence on a culture that rewarded political deals with religious extremists. He stressed that even if political will could be found, the bureaucracy in the Religious Affairs, Education, and Defense Ministries remained dominated by Zia-ul-Haq appointees who favored the Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith religious philosophies. This bureaucracy, Qasmi claimed, had repeatedly blocked his brother’s efforts to push policy in a different direction.

8. (S/NF) Interlocutors repeatedly requested USG assistance for the southern and western Punjab, believing that an influx of western funds could counter the influence of Deobandi/Ahl-e-Hadith clerics. Principal Officer was repeatedly reminded that these religious philosophies were alien to the southern and western Punjab — which is the spiritual heartland of South Asia’s Sufi communities. Their increasing prominence was directly attributed to poverty and external funding. Locals believed that socio-economic development programs, particularly in education, agriculture, and employment generation, would have a direct, long-term impact in minimizing receptivity to extremist movements. Similarly, they pressed for immediate relief efforts — particularly food distribution and income support — to address communities’ immediate needs. Several interlocutors also encouraged direct USG support to Brailvi/Sufi religious institutions, arguing that these represented the logical antithesis to Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith philosophy and that if adequately funded, they could stem the tide of converts away from their moderate beliefs.

Comment

9. (S/NF) A jihadi recruiting network relying on Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith religious, charitable, and educational institutions is increasing its work in impoverished districts of southern and western Punjab. Local economic conditions coupled with foreign financing appear to be transforming a traditionally moderate area of the country into a fertile recruiting ground for terrorist organizations. The provincial and federal governments, while fully aware of the problem, appear to fear direct confrontation with these extremist groups. Local governments lack the resources and federal/provincial support to deal with these organizations on their own. The moderate Brailvi/Sufi community is internally divided into followers of competing spiritual leaders and lacks the financial resources to act as an effective counterweight to well-funded and well-organized extremists.

10. (S/NF) Post believes that this growing recruitment network poses a direct threat to USG counter-terrorism and counter-extremism efforts in Pakistan. Intervention at this stage in the southern and western Punjab could still be useful to counter the prevailing trends favoring extremist organizations. USAID development resources in agriculture, economic growth, education, and infrastructure development are useful and necessary and will address some of the immediate needs. In post’s view short-term, quick impact programs are required which focus on: (1) immediate relief in the form of food aid and microcredit, (2) cash for work and community-based, quick-impact infrastructure development programs focusing on irrigation systems, schools, and other critical infrastructure, and (3) strategic communication programs designed to educate on the dangers of the terrorist recruiting networks and to support counter-terrorist, counter-extremist messages.

Saudi Arabia’s Neo-Islamist Reformers Threat to “Arab Spring” Movement

Saudi Arabia’s Neo-Islamist Reformers

Jamal Khashoggi

In the 1930s, when Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, asked the founder of Saudi Arabia, King Abdel-Aziz al-Saud, for permission to open a branch of his movement in the kingdom, the king rejected the request as unnecessary. “The entire kingdom is a branch for the Brotherhood, and all Saudis are Muslim brothers,” he replied. The king wanted to close the door firmly on any independent political activity, but he also spoke the truth. If the Brotherhood’s goal was to establish a Muslim state and a Muslim society, this already existed in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom itself was the product of a revivalist Islamic movement.

Even so, Islamic opposition movements have long operated in Saudi Arabia. Some, like the extremists who seized Mecca’s Grand Mosque in 1979, have used violence to oppose what they consider the Saudi state’s insufficiently Islamic character. Al-Qaeda and its local offshoots are a part of this violent tendency.

Nonviolent movements are another facet of the Saudi Islamic opposition landscape. The Muslim Brotherhood made its way into the kingdom in the 1970s through Egyptian and Syrian teachers. For the next two decades the Brotherhood was Saudi Arabia’s leading nonviolent Islamist group. It emphasized educational and spiritual activities and the plight of Muslims outside the kingdom’s borders. The Brotherhood’s appeal in Saudi Arabia seriously declined in 1990-1991, when its affiliates in other Arab countries hesitated to endorse military action to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation and to defend the kingdom against Iraqi aggression.

The erosion of the Brotherhood’s standing, combined with the unprecedented environment of criticism of the Saudi state that prevailed after the 1991 Gulf War, led to the emergence of a homegrown Islamic opposition in the form of Salafis. The Salafis are puritans who claim they only follow the practice and theology of the Prophet Mohammed’s followers in the early time of Islam. The Salafis distanced themselves from what they considered the Brotherhood’s liberal interpretation of Islam, but adopted its organizational structure. Salafis also criticized the Saudi leadership for domestic “wrongdoing” that in their view violated Islamic principles. In short, they demanded that the Saudi state reform to become more Islamic.

The appeal of the Salafi reformers’ message, along with their organizational strength (their followers have permeated the Education Ministry and the Islamic Affairs Ministry), earned them wide popularity, especially among the youth.

Throughout the 1990s, however, the Saudi leadership rejected their demands for reform, even imprisoning several of them. Since the kingdom’s founding, the state has won all confrontations with hard-line Islamic opposition forces, and enjoyed strong public backing in doing so. But since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and particularly since the May and November 2003 terrorist attacks in Riyadh, the Saudi leadership has felt vulnerable, and has thus become more receptive to some demands for reform.

As a result, it has included more than a dozen Salafis, along with other Islamists and liberals, in the National Dialogue, a soul-searching process on reform that began last fall. The Riyadh bombings have also emboldened progressive Islamists to blame Salafi doctrine and preaching for radicalizing some Saudi youth. Such criticism would have been too politically risky prior to the attacks.

In this new environment, splits within the Salafi movement on crucial theological and policy matters are becoming apparent. The Salafis have been unable to offer coherent positions on issues under discussion in the National Dialogue. These issues include the need to update laws and regulations, modernize the educational curriculum, expand women’s employment, adopt a more tolerant jurisprudence, open the doors of Saudi Arabia to the rest of the world, and comply with international law.

Recently some of the relatively more progressive Salafis, such as the writer Mansour Al-Nogaidan and the former judge Abdel-Aziz al-Qasim, along with Muslim Brotherhood figures and independent scholars, have come to represent a new “group,” the so-called neo-Islamists. They are distinguished by their receptivity to the forces of modernity. So far, the neo-Islamists are participating constructively in the National Dialogue. They use the Koran, the Sunna, and even Salafi jurisprudence to support their modernizing platform, which includes supporting civil society, introducing a more tolerant religious curriculum, codifying the Sharia, and holding elections for a parliamentary form of government.

Not only are the neo-Islamists’ reform ideas a dramatic departure from the Salafi opposition’s longstanding discourse, some of the neo-Islamists are, remarkably, more progressive than what senior officials themselves are willing to endorse. Crown Prince Abdullah, for instance, described the neo-Islamists’ recent proposal for a constitutional monarchy as a “leap in the dark.”

It is uncertain whether the neo-Islamists could ever manage to build the institutional networks and gain the popular support that have led the Salafis to dominate the Islamic opposition for so many years. But the fact that Saudi Islamists have even put forward such ideas illustrates the dynamism that Saudi Arabia, a deeply conservative country, is experiencing.

Jamal A. Khashoggi is media adviser to the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United Kingdom. Previously, he was the editor of the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan. This article is reprinted with permission from the Arab Reform Bulletin Volume 2, Issue 3 (March 2004) (c) 2004, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Pakistan wants China to build naval base at Gradar

Pakistan wants China to build naval base

By KAMRAN HAIDER  | REUTERS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said on Saturday it wanted China to build it a naval base, in the latest sign of moves to strengthen ties with Beijing as relations with Washington falter.

The announcement from Pakistan’s defense minister came a day after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yosaf Raza Gilani returned from a four-day visit to China, Islamabad’s biggest arms supplier.

“We would be… grateful to the Chinese government if a naval base is… constructed at the site of Gwadar for Pakistan,” Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar said in a statement, referring to a deep-water port in Pakistan’s southwest.

The statement did not say whether Pakistan had asked China to build the base at the port in Balochistan province.

Islamabad is trying to deepen ties with Beijing as relations with the United States have come under strain following the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan this month.

Many in Washington have called for a review of billions of dollars of US aid to Pakistan after discovering Bin Laden had been hiding for years in a Pakistani garrison town.

China invested $200 million in the first phase of the construction of the port, which was inaugurated in 2007.

The development, 70 km east of the Iranian border and on the doorstep of Gulf shipping lanes, was designed to handle transshipment traffic for the Gulf.

Mukhtar said the Chinese government had agreed to take operational control of Gwadar port once a contract with Singapore’s PSA International Ltd. expired in around 35 years’ time.

During Gilani’s visit, Mukhtar said China had agreed to speed up the delivery of 50 multi-role combat JF-17 “Thunder” aircraft, each worth up to $25 million.

The close ties between China and Pakistan reflect long-standing shared wariness of their common neighbor India and a desire to hedge against US influence across the region.

Western “People Power” Weapon Turning On Its Masters

US and European envoys trapped in Yemen

A mob of armed loyalists to Yemen’s president are outside the UAE embassy, where the diplomats were meeting

Hani Mohammed  /  AP

Anti-government protesters reach up to catch a youth after throwing him into the air during a demonstration demanding the resignation of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sanaa, Yemen, on May 21.

By AHMED AL-HAJ

SANAA, Yemen — A mob of armed loyalists of Ali Abdullah Saleh trapped the U.S., British, European and Gulf Arab ambassadors inside a diplomatic mission in the capital Sunday, protesting a deal for the embattled Yemeni president to step down after 32 years in power. Prospects that Saleh would sign the pact as promised were thrown into doubt.

Men wielding knives, daggers and swords were seen roaming the streets outside the United Arab Emirates Embassy, where the ambassadors were meeting ahead of the planned signing. “Everybody is worried. We can’t leave the embassy,” said a Saudi diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Saleh has backed away from signing the U.S.-backed deal at least twice before, adding to the opposition’s deep mistrust of a leader known for adept political maneuvering that has kept him in power for decades.

Yemen’s opposition coalition signed the deal Saturday, based on what it said were guarantees the president would sign the next day. But a ruling party statement early Sunday said Saleh objected to signing “behind closed doors” and wanted a public event attended by the opposition.

The deal, mediated by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, calls for Saleh to step down in 30 days and transfer power to his vice president. It also would give him immunity from prosecution.

Even if Saleh went ahead with the planned signing, it was far from certain whether that would satisfy the many different groups protesting his rule in the streets.

Hundreds of thousands poured into a central square Sunday that has become the center of opposition protests, waving Yemeni flags and shouting rejection of the deal. They held banners that read: “Now, now Ali, down with the president!” and “Go out Ali!”

The protesters say the deal falls short of their demands for Saleh’s immediate departure and the dismantling of his regime. They also reject any immunity for the Yemeni leader and say the opposition parties don’t speak for their demands.

On Sunday, women mingled with men, unlike in previous protests when female protesters stood on the edge of the square segregated from men, in keeping with Sharia law that mandates separation of the sexes. Children had their faces painted with Yemeni flags, while youths carried pictures of slain protesters. Young men and women held a 6-foot-long (2-meter) Yemeni flag.

“This initiative is only meant to save Ali not Yemen. We are going to continue our revolution until the end. Like Tunisia and Egypt, we will go against the opposition if they form a government while Saleh is still in power,” declared Tawakul Karman, a protest leader and senior member of the opposition Islamic fundamentalist Islah Party.

She said the protesters were escalating their push by calling a nationwide general strike.

On Saturday, Saleh condemned the proposed deal as “a coup” and warned the U.S. and Europe that his departure would open the door for al-Qaida to seize control of the fragile nation on the edge of Arabia.

In what appeared to be a state-orchestrated move to show a security void, pro-Saleh militiamen dressed in traditional Yemeni dress with daggers at their waists roamed the streets of the capital Sunday, especially outside embassies.

At one point, armed men attacked a convoy of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s chief mediator, secretary-general Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, to try to keep it from reaching the UAE Embassy, witnesses said. Pounding the car, they shouted against Gulf intervention in Yemeni affairs.

The convoy of the Chinese ambassador also came under attack by armed men before a police detail was deployed to clear the way and disperse the crowd.

Dozens of pro-Saleh loyalists also gathered in front of the Police Academy, where the ruling party general assembly had convened to discuss the deal. “We are coming under pressure, to reject the initiative,” said Mohammed Saad, a general assembly member.

Dozens of other supporters erected a big tent in one of Sanaa’s main streets, blocking traffic and raising banners that read: “Don’t go, don’t sign!”

Saleh has managed to cling to power despite near daily protests by tens of thousands of Yemenis fed up with corruption and poverty. Like other anti-government movements sweeping the Arab world, they took inspiration from the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

The president has swung between offering concessions, taking them back and executing a violent crackdown that has killed more than 150 people, according to the opposition, which says it compiled the tally from lists of the dead at hospitals around the nation.

The bloodshed triggered a wave of defections by ruling party members, lawmakers, Cabinet ministers and senior diplomats. Saleh’s own tribe has joined those demanding his ouster. Several top army commanders, including a longtime confidant who heads a powerful armored division, joined the opposition and deployed their tanks in the streets of Sanaa to protect the protesters.

Saleh has been able to survive thanks to the loyalty of Yemen’s most highly trained and best-equipped military units, which are led by close family members.

That has raised concerns the political crisis could turn into an armed clash between the rival military forces if a deal is further delayed.

Seeking to win some support in the West for his continued rule, Saleh has warned several times that without him, al-Qaida would take control of the country.

The United States, which had supported Saleh with financial aid and military equipment to fight the country’s dangerous al-Qaida branch, has backed away from the embattled leader.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has an estimated 300 fighters in Yemen and has been behind several nearly successful attacks on U.S. targets, including one in which they got a would-be suicide bomber on board a Detroit-bound flight in December 2009. The explosive device, sewn into his underwear, failed to detonate properly.

The proposed deal — first put forward in March by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — gives a clear timetable for a transfer of power.

One week after Saleh signs, the opposition takes leadership of a national unity government that will include representatives of Saleh’s party. Parliament will then pass a law granting him legal immunity and a day later — 30 days after the deal is signed — he is to step down and transfer power to his deputy.

A month after that, presidential elections are to be held.

___

Associated Press Writer Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.

Israeli rebuke of Obama exposes divide on Mideast

US president Barack Obama listens to Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu during talks at the White House last week. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters

WASHINGTON: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly told President Barack Obama on Friday his vision of how to achieve Middle East peace was unrealistic, exposing a deep divide that could doom any U.S. bid to revive peace talks.In an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel’s closest ally, Netanyahu insisted Israel would never pull back to its 1967 borders — which would mean big concessions of occupied land — that Obama had said should be the basis for negotiations on creating a Palestinian state.

“Peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle East reality,” an unsmiling Netanyahu said as Obama listened intently beside him in the Oval Office after they met for talks.

Netanyahu insisted that Israel was willing to make compromises for peace, but made clear he had major differences with Washington over how to advance the long-stalled peace process.

Netanyahu’s resistance raises the question of how hard Obama will push for concessions he is unlikely to get, and whether the vision the U.S. leader laid out on Thursday to resolve the decades-old conflict will ever get off the ground.

Despite assurances of friendship by both leaders, this week’s events also appeared to herald tense months ahead for U.S.-Israeli relations, even as the Arab world goes through political tumult and Palestinians prepare a unilateral bid this fall to seek U.N. General Assembly recognition for statehood.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Obama said he reiterated to Netanyahu the peace “principles” he offered on Thursday in a policy speech on the Middle East upheaval.

The goal, he said, “has to be a secure Israeli state, a Jewish state, living side by side in peace and security with a contiguous, functioning and effective Palestinian state.

Obama on Thursday embraced a long-sought goal by the Palestinians: that the state they seek in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip should largely be drawn along lines that existed before the 1967 war in which Israel captured those territories and East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu, who heads a right-leaning coalition, responded with what amounted to a history lecture about the vulnerability to attack that Israel faced with the old borders. “We can’t go back to those indefensible lines,” he said.

Picking a fight with Israel could be politically risky for Obama at home as he seeks re-election in 2012.

CRISIS IN RELATIONS

The brewing crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations dimmed even further the prospect for resuming peace talks that collapsed late last year when Palestinians walked away in a dispute over Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.

Obama and Netanyahu, meanwhile, appear to have reached an impasse after two and a half years of rocky relations. The Obama White House was angered when Netanyahu refused a U.S. demand to halt building Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Some Israelis have never felt entirely comfortable with Obama, unnerved by his early attempts to reach out to Iran and his support for popular Arab revolutions that have unsettled Israel.

In a pointed comment clearly aimed at Obama’s new approach to the long-running conflict, Netanyahu said: “The only peace that will endure is one that is based on reality, on unshakable facts.”

Netanyahu, Israeli officials said, was determined to push back hard because the reference to 1967 borders was a red flag that would attract more international pressure on Israel for concessions. A senior Israeli official said Netanyahu felt he had to speak bluntly so he would be “heard around the world.”

“There is a feeling that Washington does not understand the reality, doesn’t understand what we face,” an official on board the plane taking Netanyahu to Washington told reporters.

Despite that, Obama’s first declaration of his stance on the contested issue of borders could help ease doubts in the Arab world about his commitment to acting as an even-handed broker and boost his outreach to the region. Another failed peace effort, however, could fuel further frustration.

In line with Netanyahu’s stance, Obama voiced opposition to the Palestinian plan to seek U.N. recognition of statehood in September in the absence of renewed peace talks.

The Democratic president has quickly come under fire from Republican critics, who accuse him of betraying Israel, the closest U.S. ally in the region. Pushing Netanyahu could alienate U.S. supporters of Israel as Obama seeks re-election.

Obama may get a chilly reception in a speech to an influential pro-Israel lobbying group on Sunday. Netanyahu is expected to be feted when he addresses the same audience on Monday and then the U.S. Congress on Tuesday.

MARKERS FOR COMPROMISE

Obama, in his speech on Thursday, laid down his clearest markers yet on the compromises he believes Israel and the Palestinians must make to resolve a conflict that has long been seen as a source of Middle East tension.

But he did not present a formal U.S. peace plan or any timetable for a deal he once promised to clinch by September.

In Thursday’s speech, Obama said: “We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” of land. While this has long been the private view in Washington, Obama went further than U.S. officials have in the recent past.

Agreed swaps would allow Israel to keep settlements in the West Bank in return for giving the Palestinians other land.

Going into the talks, Netanyahu said he wanted to hear Obama reaffirming commitments made to Israel in 2004 by then-President George W. Bush suggesting that it may keep some large settlement blocs as part of any peace pact.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Friday that Obama had said nothing that “contradicts those letters.”

Obama on Thursday also delivered a message to the Palestinians that they would have to answer “some very difficult questions” about a reconciliation deal with Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza and which the United States regards as a terrorist group.

Saudi Arabia, UAE financing extremism in south Punjab–$100 million per year

Saudi Arabia, UAE financing extremism in south Punjab

By Qurat ul ain Siddiqui

A boy reads verses of the Quran, while studying in a madrassah, January 11, 2011. — Photo by AP/File

KARACHI: A US official in a cable sent to the State Department stated that “financial support estimated at nearly 100 million USD annually was making its way to Deobandi and Ahl-i-Hadith clerics in south Punjab from organisations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ostensibly with the direct support of those governments.”

The cable sent in November 2008 by Bryan Hunt, the then Principal Officer at the US Consulate in Lahore, was based on information from discussions with local government and non-governmental sources during his trips to the cities of Multan and Bahawalpur.

Quoting local interlocutors, Hunt attempts to explain how the “sophisticated jihadi recruitment network” operated in a region dominated by the Barelvi sect, which, according to the cable, made south Punjab “traditionally hostile” to Deobandi and Ahl-i-Hadith schools of thought.

Hunt refers to a “network of Deobandi and Ahl-i-Hadith mosques and madrassahs” being strengthened through an influx of “charity” which originally reached organisations “such as Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Al-Khidmat foundation”. Portions of these funds would then be given away to clerics “in order to expand these sects’ presence” in a relatively inhospitable yet “potentially fruitful recruiting ground”.

Outlining the process of recruitment for militancy, the cable describes how “families with multiple children” and “severe financial difficulties” were generally being exploited for recruitment purposes. Families first approached by “ostensibly ‘charitable’” organisations would later be introduced to a “local Deobandi or Ahl-i-Hadith maulana” who would offer to educate the children at his madrassah and “find them employment in the service of Islam”. “Martyrdom” was also “often discussed”, with a final cash payment to the parents. “Local sources claim that the current average rate is approximately Rs 500,000 (approximately USD 6,500) per son,” the cable states.

Children recruited would be given age-specific indoctrination and would eventually be trained according to the madrassah teachers’ assessment of their inclination “to engage in violence and acceptance of jihadi culture” versus their value as promoters of Deobandi or Ahl-i-Hadith sects or recruiters, the cable states.

Recruits “chosen for jihad” would then be taken to “more sophisticated indoctrination camps”. “Locals identified three centres reportedly used for this purpose”. Two of the centres were stated to be in the Bahawalpur district, whereas one was reported as situated “on the outskirts of Dera Ghazi Khan city”. These centres “were primarily used for indoctrination”, after which “youths were generally sent on to more established training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and then on to jihad either in FATA, NWFP, or as suicide bombers in settled areas”.

The cable goes on to quote local officials criticising the PML-N-led provincial and the PPP-led federal governments for their “failure to act” against “extremist madrassas, or known prominent leaders such as Jaish-i-Mohammad’s Masood Azhar”. The Bahawalpur district nazim at the time told Hunt that despite repeatedly highlighting the threat posed by extremist groups and indoctrination centres to the provincial and federal governments, he had received “no support” in dealing with the issue unless he was ready to change his political loyalties. The nazim, who at the time was with the PML-Q, “blamed politics, stating that unless he was willing to switch parties…neither the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz provincial nor the Pakistan People’s Party federal governments would take his requests seriously”.

Cable referenced: WikiLeaks # 178082.

178082: Extremist recruitment on the rise in southern Punjab

1. (S/NF) Summary: During recent trips to southern Punjab, Principal Officer was repeatedly told that a sophisticated jihadi recruitment network had been developed in the Multan, Bahawalpur, and Dera Ghazi Khan Divisions. The network reportedly exploited worsening poverty in these areas of the province to recruit children into the divisions’ growing Deobandi and Ahl-eHadith madrassa network from which they were indoctrinated into jihadi philosophy, deployed to regional training/indoctrination centers, and ultimately sent to terrorist training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Locals believed that charitable activities being carried out by Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith organizations, including Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Al-Khidmat Foundation, and Jaish-e-Mohammad were further strengthening reliance on extremist groups and minimizing the importance of traditionally moderate Sufi religious leaders in these communities. Government and non-governmental sources claimed that financial support estimated at nearly 100 million USD annually was making its way to Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith clerics in the region from “missionary” and “Islamic charitable” organizations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ostensibly with the direct support of those governments. Locals repeatedly requested USG support for socio-economic development and the promotion of moderate religious leaders in the region as a direct counter to the growing extremist threat.

Must change the ruling bargains in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan

By Thomas Friedman
Contra Costa Times Perspective Online

People attend a pro-Pakistan army rally organized by Pakistan Peace Party near the Parliament in Islamabad, Pakistan on Thursday, May 12, 2011. Pakistan army and its spying wing Inter Services Intelligence, ISI, facing serious criticism from media and public after killing of Osama bin Laden by a helicopter-borne U.S. military force on last week, in a fortress-like compound on the outskirts of Pakistani city of Abbottabad. (AP Photo/B.K.Bangash)

So Osama bin Laden was living in a specially built villa in Pakistan. I wonder where he got the money to buy it? Cashed in his Saudi 401(k)? A Pakistani subprime mortgage, perhaps? No. I suspect we will find that it all came from the same place most of al-Qaida’s funds come from: some combination of private Saudi donations spent under the watchful eye of the Pakistani army.

Why should we care? Because this is the heart of the matter; that’s why. It was both just and strategically vital that we killed bin Laden, who inspired 9/11. I just wish it were as easy to eliminate the two bad bargains that really made that attack possible, funded it and provided the key plotters and foot soldiers who carried it out. We are talking about the ruling bargains in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which are alive and well.

The Saudi ruling bargain is an old partnership between the al-Saud tribe and the Wahhabi religious sect. The al-Saud tribe get to stay in power and live however they want behind their palace walls, and, in return, the followers of the Wahhabi sect get to control the country’s religious mores, mosques and education system.

The Wahhabis bless the Saudi regime with legitimacy in the absence of any elections, and the regime blesses them with money and a free hand on religion. The only downside is that this system ensures a steady supply of “sitting around guys” — young Saudi males who have nothing other than religious education and no skillsto compete — who then get recruited to become 9/11-style hijackers and suicide bombers in Iraq.

No one explains it better than the Saudi writer Mai Yamani, author of “Cradle of Islam” and the daughter of Saudi Arabia’s former oil minister. “Despite the decade of the West’s war on terror, and Saudi Arabia’s longer-term alliance with the United States, the kingdom’s Wahhabi religious establishment has continued to bankroll Islamic extremist ideologies around the world,” wrote Yamani in The Daily Star of Beirut, Lebanon, this week.

“Bin Laden, born, raised and educated in Saudi Arabia, is a product of this pervasive ideology,” Yamani added. “He was no religious innovator; he was a product of Wahhabism, and later was exported by the Wahhabi regime as a jihadist. During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent some $75 billion for the propagation of Wahhabism, funding schools, mosques, and charities throughout the Islamic world, from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Yemen, Algeria and beyond. … Not surprisingly, the creation of a transnational Islamic political movement, boosted by thousands of underground jihadist websites, has blown back into the kingdom. Like the hijackers of 9/11, who were also Saudi-Wahhabi ideological exports, Saudi Arabia’s reserve army of potential terrorists remains, because the Wahhabi factory of fanatical ideas remains intact. So the real battle has not been with bin Laden, but with that Saudi state-supported ideology factory.”

Ditto Pakistan. The Pakistani ruling bargain is set by the Pakistani army and says: We let you civilians pretend to rule, but we will actually call all the key shots, we will consume nearly 25 percent of the state budget and we will justify all of this as necessary for Pakistan to confront its real security challenge: India and its occupation of Kashmir. Looking for bin Laden became a side-business for Pakistan’s military to generate U.S. aid.

As the al-Qaida expert Lawrence Wright observed in The New Yorker this week: Pakistan’s army and intelligence service “were in the looking-for-bin-Laden business, and if they found him they’d be out of business.” Since 9/11, Wright added, “the U.S. had given $11 billion to Pakistan, the bulk of it in military aid, much of which was misappropriated to buy weapons to defend against India.”

President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan plays the same game. He’s in the looking-for-stability-in-Afghanistan-business. And as long as we keep paying him, he’ll keep looking.

What both countries need is shock therapy. For Pakistan, that would mean America’s converting the lion’s share of its military aid to K-12 education programs, while also reducing the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan. Together, the message would be that we’re ready to help Pakistan fight its real enemies and ours — ignorance, illiteracy, corrupt elites and religious obscurantism — but we have no interest in being dupes for the nonsense that Pakistan is threatened by India and therefore needs “strategic depth” in Afghanistan and allies among the Taliban.

Ditto Saudi Arabia. We are in a menage a trois with the al-Sauds and the Wahhabis. We provide the al-Sauds security, and they provide us oil. The Wahhabis provide the al-Sauds with legitimacy and the al-Sauds provide them with money (from us). It works really well for the al-Sauds, but not too well for us. The only way out is a new U.S. energy policy, which neither party is proposing.

Hence, my conclusion: We are surely safer with bin Laden dead, but no one will be safe — certainly not the many moderate Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who deserve a decent future — without different ruling bargains in Islamabad and Riyadh.

Thomas Friedman is a syndicated columnist who writes for the New York Times.