Fat Pig of Qatar Struts and Twirls His Curly Tail At Captive Arab Summit In Doha-(Updated)

Emir of Qatar Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, center, attends the opening session of the Arab League Summit in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Syrian opposition representatives took the country’s seat for the first time at an Arab League summit that opened in Qatar on Tuesday, a significant diplomatic boost for the forces fighting President Bashar Assad’s regime. (AP Photo/Ghiath Mohamad)

Arab League summit showcases Qatar’s swagger

Country has stepped into void of leadership.

By BRIAN MURPHY

The Associated Press

First Published 5 hours ago • Updated 5 hours ago

Doha, Qatar • Qatar’s emir looked over an assembly of Arab leaders Tuesday as both cordial host and impatient taskmaster. His welcoming remarks to kings, sheiks and presidents across the Arab world quickly shifted to Qatar’s priorities: Rallying greater support for Syrian rebels and helping Palestinians with efforts such as a newly proposed $1 billion fund to protect Jerusalem’s Arab heritage.

No one seemed surprised at the paternal tone or the latest big-money initiative. In a matter of just a few years, hyper-wealthy Qatar has increasingly staked out a leadership role once held by Egypt and helped redefine how Arab states measure influence and ambition.

Little more than a spot to sink oil and gas wells a generation ago, Qatar is now a key player in nearly every Middle Eastern shakeout since the Arab Spring, using checkbook diplomacy in settings as diverse as Syria’s civil war, Italian artisan workshops struggling with the euro financial crisis, and the soccer pitches in France as owners of the Paris Saint-Germain team.

As hosts of an Arab League summit this week, Qatar gets another chance to showcase its swagger.

With power, however, come tensions. Qatar has been portrayed as an arrogant wunderkind in places such as Iraq and Lebanon where some factions object to its rising stature, and Qatar’s growing independent streak in policy-making has raised concerns among its Gulf Arab partners. It also faces questions — as do other Gulf nations and Western allies — over support for some Arab Spring uprisings while remaining loyal to the embattled monarchy in neighboring Bahrain.

“The adage that money buys influence could very well be the motto of Qatar,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of regional politics at Emirates University outside Abu Dhabi. “But it goes beyond that. Qatar also has learned the value of being flexible and, at the same time, thinking big.”

It’s hard these days to find a point on the Mideast map without some link back to Qatar.

In recent years, Qatar mediated disputes among Lebanese factions and prodded Sudan’s government into peace talks with rebels in the Darfur region. Qatar’s rulers even broke ranks with Gulf partners and allowed an Israeli trade office — almost a de facto diplomatic post — before it was closed in early 2009 in protest of Israeli attacks on Gaza. And Doha has been atop the Arab media pecking order as headquarters of the pan-Arab network Al-Jazeera, which was founded with Qatari government money in 1996 and is now expanding its English-speaking empire into the United States.

But it was the Arab Spring that opened the way for Qatar to stake out an even bigger role in regional affairs, filling the vacuum for regional powerhouse Egypt as that country was mired in turmoil after the revolution that ousted longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.

Qatar was among the few Arab states offering active military assistance to NATO-led attacks against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya and, at the same time, was a key arms-and-money pipeline for Libyan rebels. In Egypt, Mubarak’s fall offered Qatar’s rapid-reaction outreach a head start over other Gulf states because of its longstanding ties with the now-governing Muslim Brotherhood.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who attended the Doha summit, has turned to Qatar to help prop up the country’s stumbling economy.

“We expect that financial pledges will be respected,” Morsi said in a message to Qatar and other Arab countries that have promised money for Egypt.

Almost nothing happens in the Syrian opposition without a voice from Qatar, which has played matchmaker for a broader political coalition against Syrian President Bashar Assad and leads appeals to provide rebel fighters more heavy weapons in attempts to turn the tide in the 2-year-old civil war. On Tuesday, Qatar led the official transfer of Syria’s Arab League seat from the Assad government to the opposition Syrian National Coalition.

The New York Times reported Monday that the CIA has helped Turkey and Arab governments, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to sharply increase military aid to Syria’s opposition in recent months with secret airlifts or arms and equipment. The Associated Press also reported, citing American officials and others, that the U.S. is training secular Syrian fighters in Jordan in a bid to stem the influence of Islamist radicals in the splintered Syrian opposition.

To view Qatar’s rise as purely a triumph of extreme wealth gives an incomplete picture, analysts say. True, Qatar’s pockets are deep. The most recent budget surplus swelled to $26 billion and Qatar has one of the world’s most well-heeled sovereign wealth funds whose acquisitions include stakes in luxury brands such as Tiffany and the Valentino fashion house as well as David Beckham’s new club, Paris Saint-Germain.

But Qatar represents a shift in Arab clout toward a new style: A country squarely in the Western-leaning camp, but far more willing to embark on policies and plans that could ruffle the U.S.

“Qatar believes it doesn’t have to wait for others to try to shape the direction and conversation in the region,” said Theodore Karasik, a security and political affairs analyst at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. “That kind of confidence opens up all kinds of new political equations.”

A clear example was a centerpiece of the Arab League summit welcoming address by Qatar’s ruler, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who pledged $250 million toward a proposed $1 billion fund to defend the Arab identity and history of Jerusalem against an expanding Israeli presence in traditional Arab districts.

“The Palestinian, Arab and Muslim rights in Jerusalem are not negotiable, and Israel must realize this,” the emir said after telling other Arab states that it is their responsibility to kick in another $750 million.

Such Qatar-led initiatives are likely to deepen its influence among Palestinians and, indirectly, appear to further challenge Washington as the main outside policy-shaper in Israel-Palestinian disputes. Last year, Qatar’s emir traveled to the Gaza Strip with promises for funds and assistance that also sought to undercut Iran as the principal backer for Hamas.

Hamas on Tuesday welcomed the emir’s invitation to meet in Cairo with the rival Palestinian Authority for another round of reconciliation talks, which began last year in Qatar.

“Qatar has money to spend and the political will to use it as an extension of its foreign policy,” according to Karasik, the analyst. “That’s a powerful combination.”

The Qatar government guest book is a case in point.

Qatar has offered debt-battered Italy and Greece separate 1 billion euro ($1.29 billion) funds for small businesses and traditional workshops if the countries match the amount. In the past few months, the prime ministers of Italy and Greece have come calling in Doha with words of thanks.

Lebanon Wants Rebel Arms Flow Halted, Arabs Want To Arm Sunni Factions, Government

Doha summit pledges support for Lebanon’s unity, stability

Sleiman meets with Abdel-Aziz in Doha.

BEIRUT: Arab leaders meeting Tuesday in Qatar expressed solidarity with Lebanon, promising political and economic support for its government to help it maintain the country’s national unity, security, stability and sovereignty over all its territories.

The leaders praised the Lebanese Army’s role in asserting state sovereignty in the south and safeguarding stability and civil peace, according to a final statement issued at the end of a one-day summit chaired in Doha by Qatari’s emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

The Arab League summit underlined the need for bolstering the capabilities of the Lebanese Army and security forces to enable them to carry out their security missions.

However, it was not immediately clear whether the leaders would provide military or financial assistance to shore up the Army’s military capabilities.

The summit also voiced its support for “the right of Lebanon’s government, people and resistance to liberate and recover the Shebaa Farms and the village of Ghajar, [areas occupied by Israel], and defend Lebanon against any [Israeli] aggression by all available means.”

Meanwhile, Lebanon employed its policy of disassociation toward the crisis in neighboring Syria during the Doha summit and urged members of the Arab League to shoulder responsibility in protecting its stability.

Addressing the summit, President Michel Sleiman urged both local parties and regional powers to help implement the Baabda Declaration, which calls for distancing Lebanon from regional conflicts, particularly the 2-year-old bloody conflict in Syria.

“Out of fear of the Lebanese being plunged into strife and violence as a result of the ongoing fighting in Syrian territories, the parties to the Lebanese National Dialogue Committee agreed on the so-called Baabda Declaration on June 11 last year to spare Lebanon the potential negative repercussions of the Syrian crisis by distancing it from regional and international conflicts and [regional] axis policies,” Sleiman said in his speech.

“On this basis, we disassociate ourselves from the [summit] decision pertaining to Syria,” he added.

Sleiman was apparently referring to the Arab summit’s decision to give Syria’s Arab League seat to Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, leader of the Syrian National Coalition, and also to allow member states to offer military assistance to Syrian rebels.

Sleiman told the leaders that Lebanon’s policy of neutrality toward the Syrian crisis needed to be strengthened with their help, citing the failure of Lebanese sides to abide by the Baabda Declaration.

“Nine months since the adoption of the Baabda Declaration, there is a pressing need to bolster it internally and regionally in light of opposing [domestic] sides having failed to abide by its provisions, which called for keeping [Lebanon] away [from regional developments] and preventing Lebanon from being used as a sanctuary, conduit or base for smuggling of weapons and fighters to Syria,” he said.

“But this also requires that the Syrian opposition sides in turn cease using Lebanon and its territories for military operations,” Sleiman added.

He said Lebanon and other Arab countries had the duty of ensuring adherence to the Baabda Declaration and preserving the country’s stability.

“The responsibility of abiding to the Baabda Declaration, maintaining the stability of Lebanon, its unity and civil peace is Lebanon’s responsibility first and foremost,” Sleiman said. “But from the standpoint of sisterly [relations] and solidarity, it is a joint Lebanese-Arab responsibility.”

Sleiman also said Lebanon’s foreign policy aimed at preserving the best of the ties with Arab states.

“Despite the freedom of expression in Lebanon, within the limits of the law, it is certain that the policy of the Lebanese state, represented by its president here, is one of keenness of preserving the best of ties with sisterly Arab states on the basis of ties and solidarity and a rejection of interference in their internal affairs,” he said.

Sleiman met on the sidelines of the summit separately with Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdel-Aziz, Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, Jordan’s King Abdullah, in addition to heads of governments and foreign ministers.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2013/Mar-27/211572-doha-summit-pledges-support-for-lebanons-unity-stability.ashx#ixzz2OjjTDJVm
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

Erdogan Accepts Netanyahu’s Apology, Israel Calls-Off the PKK

[Does Turkey not see, or not care, that renewed hostilities with the PKK began early on the same day as the Mavi Marmara attack, the PKK attack upon the Turkish naval facility (preceding it by a few hours), and now imprisoned Kurdish leader Ocalan agrees to a new ceasefire in the hours preceding the Erdogan/Netanyahu "love fest"(SEE:  Turkish-Israeli diplomats to agree compensation for Mavi Marmara victims)?  If this is the 10% of Obama's Mideast iceberg which we can see, then we can only guess at the hidden 90%.  The whirlwind of activity around the eastern Mediterranean are greater reflections of the "economic World War III" which can clearly be seen there.  Both Israel and Cyprus need Turkey to send their newfound gas to Europe.]

source

Israeli apology, the background story

MURAT YETKİN

murat.yetkin@hurriyet.com.tr

According to high-ranking sources, the diplomacy that resulted in an Israeli apology to Turkey over the Turks killed by Israeli soldiers in 2010 started some two weeks ago.American diplomats told their Turkish counterparts that U.S. President Barack Obama wanted to have an end to the Turkish-Israeli rift and wanted to open the subject up to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his visit to Israel, if Turkey wanted an agreement, too.

In the background of the latest U.S. moves there were many two incident on the same day. On Feb. 28 Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking at an international conference in Vienna said that Zionism was a “crime against humanity” like fascism, which triggered reaction in Israel and among the Israeli lobby in the U.S. and Europe. The same day U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said during a joint press conference with his Turkish hostAhmet Davutoğlu that the U.S. and Turkey do not share the same views on Israel.

On March 12, 89 members of the U.S. Congress wrote a letter to Erdoğan and asked him to retract his words on Zionism, which he did not; he said he stood behind what he said but he had been misunderstood.

It seems that letter triggered the U.S. move, since the White House wanted to see its two main allies in the region work together once again as they did until the “one minute” incident in Davos in 2009.

As Ankara said they could accept the good offices of the U.S. to have an agreement with Israel, based on an apology, the diplomacy started. Before the start of Obama’s visit on March 20, diplomatic drafts about the terms of a possible agreement started to go back and forth between Ankara and Jerusalem under the auspices of U.S. diplomacy.

The first positive step of goodwill, as a confidence-building measure, was taken as Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, the head of the Turkish Union of Chambers of Commerce (TOBB) was appointed as the head of the Arbitration Commission in disputes between Palestinian and Israeli businessmen on March 17.

The fact that there is still not a name for the new Israeli Foreign Ministry and Netanyahu assumes the office because of the corruption trial of Avigdor Lieberman, who opposes any apology to Turkey, made it easier for the Americans to get the deal closed.

At around 4 p.m. on March 22, Obama in Jerusalem in his last hours there called up Erdoğan. Following niceties, he passed the phone to Netanyahu. The two prime ministers agreed to issue the same statement in their capitals that would clarify an Israeli apology and compensation for the families of the Turks who were killed. Turkey softened its attitude on the third condition for an agreement, which was an end to the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Netanyahu, who takes the issue as its right of sovereignty, said Israel had already softened the embargo on Gaza since the revolution in Egypt and would take further steps depending on the situation in Gaza. The final text says anyway that Israel would take Turkish assistance in dealings with the Palestinians.

Following the conversation of around half an hour, Obama took the phone back, told Erdoğan that he was glad to see this happening and said “See you soon,” which was actually a sign that Erdoğan would get a White House appointment soon.

There is another interesting dimension of U.S. diplomacy between Turkey and Israel. Hours before the final move for an Israeli apology, the U.S. State Department issued a statement praising Erdoğan’s initiative to start a dialogue for a political solution to the Kurdish problem that resulted in a call by the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to stop its armed campaign.

There is one thing to be noted: Determination when you are right brings success. This is a success of the determination of the Erdoğan government regarding its policy on Israel. It also proved that Israel, despite the full backing of the U.S. government suffered more than Turkey because of the lack of relations between them. For the first time since its establishment in 1948, Israel regrets a military action.

This agreement will change the political balances of the whole region and will have implications on cases like Syria, Iran, Iraq and possibly Cyprus.

CIA “Not Supplying” Heavy Weapons To Syrian Terrorists, But Teaching Them How To Use Them

[Notice the red Saudi-colored headscarves.--SOURCE]

CIA Expands Role in Syria Fight

 

Agency Feeds Intelligence to Rebel Fighters, in Move That Deepens U.S. Involvement in Conflict

By ADAM ENTOUS, SIOBHAN GORMAN and NOUR MALAS

The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its role in the campaign against the Syrian regime by feeding intelligence to select rebel fighters to use against government forces, current and former U.S. officials said.

The move is part of a U.S. effort to stem the rise of Islamist extremists in Syria by aiding secular forces, U.S. officials said, amid fears that the fall of President Bashar al-Assad would enable al Qaeda to flourish in Syria.

 

The expanded CIA role bolsters an effort by Western intelligence agencies to support the Syrian opposition with training in areas including weapons use, urban combat and countering spying by the regime.

The move comes as the al Nusra Front, the main al Qaeda-linked group operating in Syria, is deepening its ties to the terrorist organization’s central leadership in Pakistan, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials.

The provision of actionable intelligence to small rebel units which have been vetted by the CIA represents an increase in U.S. involvement in the two-year-old conflict, the officials said. The CIA would neither confirm nor deny any role in providing training or intelligence to the Syrian rebels.

The new aid to rebels doesn’t change the U.S. decision to not take direct military action. President Barack Obama last year rejected a CIA-backed proposal to provide arms to secular units fighting Mr. Assad, and on Friday he reiterated his argument that doing so could worsen the bloodshed.

He also warned that Mr. Assad’s fall could empower extremists. “I am very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism because extremists thrive in chaos, they thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Amman, Jordan.

The new CIA effort reflects a change in the administration’s approach that aims to strengthen secular rebel fighters in hope of influencing which groups dominate in post-Assad Syria, U.S., European and Arab officials said.

The CIA has sent officers to Turkey to help vet rebels that receive arms shipments from Gulf allies, but administration officials say the results have been mixed, citing concerns about weapons going to Islamists. In Iraq, the CIA has been directed by the White House to work with elite counterterrorism units to help the Iraqis counter the flow of al Qaeda-linked fighters across the border with Syria.

The West favors fighters aligned with the Free Syrian Army, which supports the Syrian Opposition Coalition political group.

Syrian opposition commanders said the CIA has been working with British, French and Jordanian intelligence services to train rebels on the use of various kinds of weapons. A senior Western official said the intelligence agencies are providing the rebels with urban combat training as well as teaching them how to properly use antitank weapons against Syrian bunkers.

The agencies are also teaching counterintelligence tactics to help prevent pro-Assad agents from infiltrating the opposition, the official said.

Among other U.S. activities on the margins of the conflict, the Pentagon is helping train Jordanian forces to counter the threat posed by Syria’s chemical weapons, but isn’t working directly with rebels, defense officials say.

The extent of the CIA effort to provide intelligence to Syrian rebels remains cloaked in secrecy. The U.S. has an array of intelligence capabilities in the region, mainly on the periphery of the conflict.

The U.S. uses satellites and other surveillance systems to collect intelligence on Syrian troop and aircraft movements as well as weapons depots. Officials say powerful radar arrays in Turkey are likewise used to track Syrian ballistic missiles and can pinpoint launch sites.

The U.S. also relies on Israeli and Jordanian spy agencies, which have extensive spy networks inside Syria, U.S. and European officials said.

The current level of intelligence sharing is limited in scope because the CIA doesn’t know whether it can fully trust fighters with the most sensitive types of information, several U.S. and European officials said. The CIA, for example, isn’t sharing information on where U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies believe the Syrian government keeps its chemical weapons, officials said.

Rebel leaders and some U.S. lawmakers say more robust U.S. support is needed to turn the tide in the civil war. These officials say the CIA’s current role comes as too little, too late to make a decisive difference in the war.

In a letter to Mr. Obama this week, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, joined Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona in calling for the president to take “more active steps to stop the killing in Syria and force Bashar al-Assad to give up power.”

Sens. Levin and McCain urged the White House to consider using precision airstrikes to take out Mr. Assad’s air force and Scud missile batteries, among other military options.

The CIA got a green light from the White House last year to look for ways to provide limited support to the rebels, current and former officials said. But officials say the ramp-up has been slow, in part because of the difficulty of identifying reliable partners among the Syrian opposition to work with the U.S.

A senior U.S. official said the decision to provide actionable intelligence to vetted rebel units “shows that we’re working on the humanitarian level and the diplomatic level and on the intelligence level.”

“This would be a more direct level of engagement on the intelligence front,” the official added.

Officials said one of the advantages of providing actionable intelligence to rebel units is that such information is generally of operational use for a limited period because would-be targets move around the battlefield.

Arms, in contrast, can be used for years and passed between groups, reducing U.S. control over where they end up.

The shift in part reflects growing Israeli concerns about the limited ability of the U.S. to shape the outcome in Syria. In recent months, Israeli officials have privately pressed their European and American counterparts to strengthen secular forces in Syria because of concerns that the al Nusra Front will become more entrenched the longer the civil war drags on, according to Israeli and European officials.

Israeli officials are concerned that the U.S. reluctance to more directly intervene will limit Washington’s leverage in a post-Assad Syria. “Israel would welcome America’s influence in shaping the post-Assad Syria” said a senior Israeli official involved in deliberations on the neighboring Arab country.

U.S. and European officials said they fear that the al Nusra Front, which has seized control of swaths of northern Syria, could dominate the country once Mr. Assad falls.

U.S. counterterrorism officials said they have seen a growth in communications among operatives from al Nusra Front, al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda’s central leadership in Pakistan. Officials also report growing numbers of al Qaeda fighters traveling from Pakistan to Syria to join the fight with al Nusra.

The ties to al Qaeda’s central operations have become so significant that U.S. counterterrorism officials are debating whether al Nusra should now be considered its own al Qaeda affiliate instead of an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq, as it has generally been viewed within the U.S. government, according to a person familiar with the debate.

Al Nusra is “an organization that resembles an army more than a quaint little terrorist group,” said Seth Jones, an al Qaeda specialist at the Rand Corp. think tank in Washington. “As this war drags on against Assad and as long as they are able to build up their capabilities, it’s going to make it all the more harder to target them once the regime falls.”

Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com, Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com and Nour Malas at nour.malas@dowjones.com

The Bloodsucking Barbaric Saudis Given Special “Fast Pass” Around Customs Intended for Civilized Nations

[Obama and Napolitano will not be satisfied until they bring enough of their "Islamists" into this country to warrant the same use of US military force against them here that they currently only enjoy overseas.  Wahhabism is Islamist terrorism in its most basic form, that of uneducated degenerate "preachers" whose only purpose is to set the mobs loose against the alleged "infidels."  "Infidels," or "kfir," so defined, are anyone who refuses to accept murder in the name of God.]

Special Travel Benefit for Saudis a “Slap in the Face”

IPT News

Saudi Arabia, the nation which produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks, is about to become one of a handful of countries whose travelers can bypass normal passport controls at major U.S. airports. Sources tell the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) that this will mark the first time that the Saudi government will have a direct role in vetting who is eligible for getting fast-tracked for entry into the United States.

An agreement to accept Saudi Arabian applicants into the Global Entry trusted traveler program drew little notice when it was announced in January. Now, some officials question why the country merits such a benefit – which is similar to a theme park “fast pass” to avoid long lines – when other allies like Germany and France are not yet included. A program for Israeli travelers was reached last May but has not been implemented.

Travelers approved for the program can skip the normal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) lines starting next year and enter the country after providing their passports and fingerprints at a kiosk. Only Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands currently enjoy the benefit, although pilot programs could expand it to a handful of others.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the agreement in January after meeting with Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. It “marks another major step forward in our partnership,” Napolitano said at the time. “By enhancing collaboration with the Government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel.”

Details about how the plan will work with the Saudis have not been released. Nayef’s ministry, however, will be responsible for screening which applicants will be considered when the pilot program begins next year. It’s not known whether the Saudi ministry will share its raw intelligence about applicants with its American counterparts. What is known, based on information provided by a Homeland Security source, is that each individual who makes it into the program will have been vetted by both the CPB and by the Saudi Interior Ministry against various databases.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to make anyone available to answer questions about Saudi Arabia’s inclusion in the Global Entry program after repeated requests throughout last week, and after indicating someone would provide more details.

That is cause for concern, given lingering questions about possible Saudi support for some of the 9/11 hijackers and given the Ministry of Interior (MOI)’s inconsistent record on sharing its intelligence on suspected terrorists and terror financiers. Additionally, recent studies by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified significant problems in the way DHS components use computer systems and process intelligence for posting watch list lookouts and overseas screening of foreign nationals.

Once accepted into Global Entry, travelers can enjoy the faster border entry for five years.

A memo obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism said Saudi applicants “must meet the individual vetting criteria of both CBP and the MOI, and successfully complete vetting by each side against information available in various law enforcement, customs, immigration, criminal, intelligence, and terrorist databases.”

That doesn’t bring confidence to those who have investigated Saudi Arabian connections to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., whose district lost more than 70 people during the attack on the Pentagon, called the pact a bad idea. He also stated that he had not previously heard about the deal.

“I think you have radical Wahhabism in certain elements in Saudi Arabia, and I think to be more lenient there than in other places would be a mistake,” Wolf said. “There were 15 [hijackers] from that country, and there is a lot taking place in that region.

“Some of the people who went back to Saudi Arabia through Guantanamo – we find that they are in battlefields in Afghanistan or some other place, so I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Saudis have long been known for withholding information from their American counterparts. Wolf recalls that the Saudis obstructed former FBI Director Louis Freeh’s effort to investigate the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing by refusing to share information.

“I think there has been a history of not cooperating,” Wolf said.

The Saudis paved the way for 9/11 by funding the madrassas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which adds to Wolf’s concern.

Unseen Information, Unanswered Questions

“Adding KSA to the program before a full vetting of the Kingdom’s involvement in 9/11 is very unwise,” said Sharon Premoli, a 9/11 survivor who has sued the Saudis for allegedly helping finance the attacks.

“We don’t know if what they tell us is correct. Why should we trust them?” she said in an interview Thursday. She points to a 1998 agreement Saudi Arabia struck with bin Laden and the Taliban prior to 9/11. A 2011 Vanity Fair article described it this way:

In sworn statements after 9/11, former Taliban intelligence chief Mohammed Khaksar said that in 1998 Prince Turki, chief of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Department (G.I.D.), sealed a deal under which bin Laden agreed not to attack Saudi targets. In return, Saudi Arabia would provide funds and material assistance to the Taliban, not demand bin Laden’s extradition, and not bring pressure to close down al-Qaeda training camps. Saudi businesses, meanwhile, would ensure that money also flowed directly to bin Laden.

“They didn’t tell us that,” Premoli said in the interview. “They haven’t been forthcoming on anything.”

Saudi officials deny that deal existed. The only way to find out is to continue investigating, Premoli said. She’s perplexed that the brutal murder of 3,000 Americans even requires an effort to trigger additional investigation.

“Let’s vet them properly. Let’s really declassify. Let’s look at all of it. Until it is done, it’s an open wound. It’s an unanswered question.”

The Global Entry deal comes three years after U.S. officials briefly placed Saudi Arabia on a list of 14 countries whose travelers would face enhanced scrutiny when entering the United States. It followed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab‘s failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009.

A cable sent from the American embassy to the State Department that was published by Wikileaks reported that Saudi government officials expressed “shock to be included on the list” and threatened to “to re-evaluate areas of cooperation, including counter-terrorism cooperation” if it was not rescinded.

The policy was dropped three months later, replaced with a new program designed to use threat assessments and intelligence of traveler’s behavioral traits and travel patterns.

To Premoli, who is pushing legislation to strip sovereign immunity protection from governments tied to terrorist acts, both the removal of Saudi Arabia from that list and its addition to Global Entry show the country enjoys “favored nation status. It’s so extraordinary that they are so protected.”

She was critical of the Bush administration for its warm relations with the Saudi royal family and is equally critical of the Obama administration for being “a continuation of the Bush administration.” When the plaintiffs suing Saudi Arabia sought to appeal a decision absolving the Saudis to the Supreme Court, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan filed an amicus brief siding with the Saudis.

Saudi Arabian officials say all the investigations into the 9/11 attacks exonerated them of any involvement. But two former U.S. senators who led inquiries into the attacks say that’s just not so.

In affidavits submitted last year for plaintiffs suing the Saudis – including Premoli – former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey and former Florida Sen. Bob Graham wrote that the book on Saudi Arabia’s 9/11 connections should not be closed.

The 9/11 Commission on which he served lacked the time and resources “to pursue all potentially relevant evidence” involving Saudi Arabia, Kerrey wrote.

“Significant questions remain unanswered concerning the possible involvement of Saudi government institutions and actors in the financing and sponsorship of al Qaeda, and evidence relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government agents in the September 11^th Attacks has never been fully pursued,” Kerrey wrote.

Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time of the attacks, was co-chairman of a joint congressional inquiry. He has spent years arguing that a 28-page chapter from that inquiry would cast things in a different light if it ever is declassified.

“Based on my experiences as the Co-Chair of the Joint Inquiry, and the evidence collected by the Joint Inquiry during the course of its investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, the information contained in the Final Report of the 9/11 Commission, and reports and published material I have reviewed, I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,” Graham wrote in his affidavit.

Hijackers and Their Helpers

That line may have come in the form of Omar al Bayoumi, a Saudi who befriended hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar. While the 9/11 Commission Report describes Bayoumi as “an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists,” Graham believes he was a Saudi government agent.

Al-Bayoumi first met the hijackers in 2000, helped them find an apartment and “fronted the initial payments for that apartment” along with other financial help, Graham noted.

“During the period that he assisted the hijackers, al-Bayoumi’s allowances from a ghost job with a Saudi private firm and contractor with ties to the Saudi government increased eightfold. During that same period, Al-Bayoumi had an unusual number of telephone conversations with Saudi government officials in both Los Angeles and Washington.”

All this convinces him al-Bayoumi was a Saudi agent. “To this date, this evidence has not been fully explored and pursued, to the considerable detriment of the American public.”

In a column co-written with Premoli last fall, Graham said the classified chapter from the congressional inquiry focuses on the hijacker’s financial support while they were in the United States. “Sadly,” Graham and Premoli wrote, “those 28 pages represent only a fraction of the evidence of Saudi complicity that our government continues to shield from the public, under a flawed classification program which appears to be part of a systematic effort to protect Saudi Arabia from any real accountability for its actions.”

Abdulaziz al-Hijji, an executive with the Saudi government oil company Aramco, lived in Sarasota until just before the 9/11 attacks when he is reported to have suddenly left the U.S. Al-Hijji now lives in London. Recent media reports indicate al-Hijji met with 9/11 terror leader Mohamed Atta and current al-Qaida fugitive Adnan el-Shukrijumah while he lived in Sarasota. Graham has also looked into the al-Hijji matter and reportedly met with the FBI deputy director in November of 2011 and the deputy director refused to discuss the al-Hijji matter. Graham said, “I think that in the period immediately after 9/11 the FBI was under instructions from the Bush White House not to discuss anything that could be embarrassing to the Saudis.”

Saudi Arabia sends thousands of travelers into the United States each month, and more than 92 percent of Saudis who seek entry visas receive them, Asharq al-Awsat reported. In 2012, 20,677 student visas were granted to Saudi citizens.

The United States and Saudi Arabia do about $60 billion in business each year, most of which is Saudi oil exports.

The ambiguity of Saudi Ministry of Interior’s role is of particular concern, especially when it comes to who qualifies as a “low-risk traveler.” Although individuals with defined al-Qaida ties likely would not get a pass, worries arise particularly when it comes to those who support Hamas or Hizballah.

“I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them,” Jim Phillips, senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Heritage Foundation, said regarding the Saudi Interior Ministry.

Although the Saudi Interior Ministry has largely decimated al-Qaida’s infrastructure in the kingdom since 2003 in the wake of a series of bombings and killings of Westerners in the kingdom, Phillips says the ministry’s reliability as a partner remains an open question.

In an interview Tuesday, Graham reserved judgment on the program until more details are released on its implementation. He noted that the United States “went out of its way to placate the Saudis” after 9/11, arranging flights out of the country for Saudi nationals when all other air traffic was grounded, and waging “an effort to keep from public view the role of Saudis” in the 9/11 attacks.

Including Saudi travelers in Global Entry may be “a continuation” of an American policy of deference toward Saudi Arabia. “The question is what was the first step in approving a country to be involved in this? What are the requirements?” Graham asked. “This is not a theoretical. This really happened that 15 Saudis came into the country, I think all by aviation … It would seem there would be some red flags.”

Wolf suggested that the House Homeland Security Committee should examine the terms of the agreement to learn how it happened and it will work.

“It’s a slap in the face,” Premoli said. “Whatever they ask for, they get. There’s nothing they can’t have.”

The Road to World War 3

The Inate Evil of the American Terminator Program Cannot Be Hidden Under A Pentagon Banner

[The Pentagon and CIA have both been running parellel drone assassination programs concurrently in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  For some unknown reason, all drone attacks have been attributed to the CIA, even though no one outside of those two agencies really knows which drones carried-out the day's murders, or whether the war crimes were committed by piloted aircraft, or even whose air force that day's air assassins belonged to.  It seems that the CIA is often blamed for PAF attacks within FATA.  All terminator drone programs have been run out of US and Pakistani military bases.  For Obama to think that he can hide the more repulsive, better publicized CIA murder program beneath or within the Pentagon's drone program, now that the political backlash against all drones is rapidly building, is ludicrous, although keeping within the parameters defined by the complete hypocrisy inherent in all of Obama's "innovative" approaches to continuing the evil wars of George Bush.  All missile assassinations must end, as well as all illegal, criminal 'paramilitary" (terrorist) operations.] 

Exclusive: No More Drones For CIA

Three senior officials tell Daniel Klaidman that the Obama administration is poised to shift the CIA’s drone program to the Pentagon.

At a time when controversy over the Obama administration’s drone program seems to be cresting, the CIA is close to taking a major step toward getting out of the targeted killing business. Three senior U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast that the White House is poised to sign off on a plan to shift the CIA’s lethal targeting program to the Defense Department.

In this Jan. 31, 2010 file photo, an unmanned U.S. Predator drone flies over Kandahar Air Field, southern Afghanistan, on a moon-lit night. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP)

The move could potentially toughen the criteria for drone strikes, strengthen the program’s accountability, and increase transparency. Currently, the government maintains parallel drone programs, one housed in the CIA and the other run by DOD. The proposed plan would unify the command and control structure of targeted killings, and create a uniform set of rules and procedures. The CIA would maintain a role, but the military would have operational control over targeting. Lethal missions would take place under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which governs military operations, rather than Title 50, which sets out the legal authorities for intelligence activities and covert operations. “This is a big deal,” says one senior administration official who has been briefed on the plan. “It would be a pretty strong statement.”

Officials anticipate a phased-in transition in which the CIA’s drone operations would be gradually shifted over to the military, a process that could take as little as a year. Others say it might take longer but would occur during President Obama’s second term. “You can’t just flip a switch, but it’s on a reasonably fast track,” says one U.S. official. During that time, CIA and DOD operators would begin to work more closely together to ensure a smooth hand-off. The CIA would remain involved in lethal targeting, at least on the intelligence side, but would not actually control the unmanned aerial vehicles. Officials told The Daily Beast that a potential downside of the Agency relinquishing control of the program was the loss of a decade of expertise that the CIA has developed since it has been prosecuting its war in Pakistan and beyond. At least for a period of transition, CIA operators would likely work alongside their military counterparts to target suspected terrorists.

The policy shift is part of a larger White House initiative known internally as “institutionalization,” an effort to set clear standards and procedures for lethal operations. More than a year in the works, the interagency process has been driven and led by John Brennan, who until he became CIA director earlier this month was Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser. Brennan, who has presided over the administration’s drone program from almost day one of Obama’s presidency, has grown uncomfortable with the ad hoc and sometimes shifting rules that have governed it. Moreover, Brennan has publicly stated that he would like to see the CIA move away from the kinds of paramilitary operations it began after the September 11 attacks, and return to its more traditional role of gathering and analyzing intelligence.

Lately, Obama has signaled his own desire to place the drone program on a firmer legal footing, as well as to make it more transparent. He obliquely alluded to the classified program during his State of the Union address in January. “In the months ahead,” he declared, “I will continue to work with Congress to ensure that not only our targeting, detention, and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and systems of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.”

Shortly after taking office, Obama dramatically ramped up the drone program, in part because the government’s targeting intelligence on the ground had vastly improved and because the precision technology was very much in line with the new commander-in-chief’s “light footprint” approach to dealing with terrorism. As the al Qaeda threat has metastasized, U.S. drone operations have spread to more remote, unconventional battlefields in places like Yemen and Somalia. With more strikes, there have been more alleged civilian casualties. Adding to the mounting pressure for the administration to provide a legal and ethical rationale for its targeting polices was the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior commander of al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate, who also happened to be a U.S. citizen. (Two weeks later, his 16-year old son was killed in a drone strike, which U.S. officials have called an accident.) The recent nomination of Brennan to head the CIA became a kind of proxy battle over targeted killings and the administration’s reluctance to be more forthcoming about the covert program. At issue were a series of secret Justice Department legal opinions on targeted killing that the administration had refused to make public or turn over to Congress.

It looks like the White House may now be preparing to launch a campaign to counter the growing perception—with elites if not the majority of the public—that Obama is running a secretive and legally dubious killing machine. For weeks, though the White House has not confirmed it, administration officials have been whispering about the possibility that Obama would make a major speech about counterterrorism policy, including efforts to institutionalize—but also reform—the kinds of lethal operations that have been a hallmark of his war on terrorism. With an eye on posterity, Obama may feel the time has come to demonstrate publicly that his policies, for all of the criticism, have stayed within the law and American values. “Barack Obama has got to be concerned about his legacy,” says one former adviser. “He doesn’t want drones to become his Guantanamo.”

But for the president to step out publicly on the highly sensitive subject of targeted killings, he’s going to have to do more than simply give an eloquent speech. An initiative like shifting the CIA program to the military, as well as other aspects of the institutionalization plan, may be just what he needs.

How does the CIA’s targeted killing program differ from the military’s—and what are the implications of shifting one program into the other? Perhaps most important is that the CIA’s program is “covert”—which is to say it is not only highly classified, it’s deniable under the law. That means the CIA, in theory, can lie about the existence of the program or about particular operations. The military’s targeted killing program, however, is “clandestine”—which means it is secret but not deniable.

Losing its drone program will, at some level, be a blow to the CIA’s identity.

There are other important differences between how the two programs are run, especially the process by which killing decisions are made. Since the inception of the drone program, targeting decisions have been made inside the CIA with little or no input from other agencies, though the White House sometimes weighs in. In deciding who should be placed on its kill list, the military, on the other hand, subjects itself to robust interagency vetting, where officials and lawyers from across the national security bureaucracy weigh in on individual targeting “nominations.” While the CIA’s process is said to be extremely rigorous—in some ways even more rigorous than the military’s—the opportunity for, say, the State Department legal adviser to be heard on lethal activities adds an extra layer of accountability. With the CIA’s program moving to the Pentagon, DOD’s vetting procedures will prevail.

Another difference is the role of Obama himself. Upon taking office, Obama had decreed that he would sign off on individual kill or capture operations conducted by the military away from traditional battlefields; he does not, by contrast, sign off on all CIA strikes. (Obama’s sign-off authority on military drone strikes was a subject of contention during the recent Brennan-led internal reform process, according to a current and a former administration official. At one point, the military pushed hard to take the commander-in-chief out of the process. But the State Department and other agencies argued that letting the president call the shots was the ultimate form of accountability—and Obama ultimately retained his authority.)

There are other ways in which the military’s program is more constrained than the CIA’s. Typically, though not always, the military’s lethal activities occur under a congressional grant of authority in the context of an armed conflict. The CIA can resort to lethal force simply when the president issues a covert finding—one that the American people may never know about. Another key legal difference: the military considers itself bound by international law and specifically the laws of war. The CIA, on the other hand, has signaled that while it follows “all applicable law,” international law does not necessarily apply to all of its activities.

To be sure, even with these distinctions, it is not clear that the bureaucratic shift will usher in a new era of openness and accountability. For one thing, targeted killing operations will likely be run by the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command, the umbrella organization for shadow warriors like the Navy SEALs and DELTA Force. And while they run clandestine, rather than covert operations, JSOC is not known for its eagerness to advertise its operations with the press or Congress.

In fact, there’s at least a chance that the change could mean less congressional oversight rather than more. There’s nothing in the law that says the military has to brief congressional committees about its lethal activities. The CIA, on the other hand, is compelled under Title 50 to notify Congress of its intelligence activities. Says Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former Justice Department official during the Bush administration: “Moving lethal drone operations exclusively to DOD might bring benefits. But DOD’s lethal operations are no less secretive than the CIA’s, and congressional oversight of DOD ops is significantly weaker” compared to congressional oversight of the CIA. (Still, as a matter of policy, the Obama administration has taken it upon itself to “back brief” Congress after any of its targeted killings away from conventional battlefields.)

Losing its drone program will, at some level, be a blow to the CIA’s identity. The program has given the Agency a prominent and—ironically—highly visible role in the terror wars. And the spies can take credit for severely degrading, if not decimating, al Qaeda’s core organization in Pakistan. At the same time, according to multiple officials, there has been relatively little pushback from the CIA’s top leadership. One reason might be a sense of relief that the CIA would no longer own such a controversial program. The more likely reason? The man who engineered the idea—John Brennan—is now in charge.

Klaidman, a former NEWSWEEK managing editor, is writing a book on President Obama and terrorism to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

The Wahhabi War Against Religion In the Levant

Sayyeda Zeinab: the 7th Century Heroine of Karbala

by FRANKLIN LAMB

Sayyeda Zeinab Shrine

Damascus.

It is well known in this region that powerful foreign and domestic forces in nearly every country, but particularly Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, are increasingly acting, for purely political purposes, to ignite a bloody internecine conflict within Islam. Indeed, the 3/17/13 attacks targeting four Sunni sheiks in Beirut that led to immediate road blockings in Beirut, Sidon and the Bekaa Valley is a reminder of the vulnerability of Lebanon’s own delicate sectarian balance to potential chaos.

The seemingly rapid escalation of Shia-Sunni sectarian strife pulsating back and forth across Syria and in and out of Iraq and Lebanon appear to some analysts to be unstoppable.  This week the UN Security Council expressed alarm that rising sectarian violence threatened a return to civil war in Lebanon. The sect targeted for destruction, is mainly, but not exclusively, Shia Muslims and a potential conflagration among a few Muslim sects is smoldering from Yemen to Libya to Pakistan and in more than a dozen countries. Places of worship are being attacked with the hope of creating flight and destruction among so-called kuffar (infidels) and other alleged “enemies of Allah.”

As the violence continues in parts of Syria it is not always clear who exactly is behind, for example, the thefts of antiquities from museums and shops, the carting off of medical equipment from hospitals, the widespread stripping of certain factories in places like Aleppo and moving their assets to Turkey, apparently with little if any objection from Ankara, and the damaging of mainly Christian and Shia places of worship. But there is little doubt that Islamist extremists, are behind many of these crimes. 
Against this backdrop of targeting religious institutions and  shrines of minority sects in Syria, it is little wonder that following serious attacks on the Sayedda Zeinab Shrine near the village of Zoa south of Damascus, one as recently as last month, that Shia Muslims and others across the world are deeply concerned about its safety. Three recent attacks on the resting place of Zeinab bint Ali, the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) has also led to speculation that certain elements may launch a ‘false flag’ attack to ignite conflict between Sunni and Shia. Al-Qaeda affiliated groups such as Jabhat al Nursa and Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) have pledged to defeat Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the name of Allah.

Tens of thousands of Shia pilgrims and others from around the world visit this Damascus suburb every year, most to pray at the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine. It was also one of the reasons why I wanted to go there.

But trying to get to Sayyeda Zeinab has not been easy these past few months. In fact this observer’s new lucky number may be five.  Because that is the number of times I thought I had a deal with a driver to take me from central Damascus to the Zeinab shrine. But each time, shortly before our scheduled departure, the driver invariably called to tell me his car broke down or he had to attend a family event or that the road had been hit by a mortar and was impassable, or he could not find any benzene. Taxis are understandably a bit spooked in Damascus these days and as with the road to the airport there are sometimes snipers peering around and an occasional IED or two.  Fortunately some fellows from Lebanon who are among those guarding the shrine sent me a message that it was ok to come and I trusted their judgment.  Finally I found a driver and he took me to Fao without problems.  However, he was unwilling to wait for me while I visited the Shrine and he abruptly split, even before I had a change to pay him, leaving me to find another way to return to Damascus.

As this observer exited the Shrine, having performed absolution type prayers for myself and friends in Lebanon and Syria who specifically asked me to, I was approached by a middle-aged woman who turned out to be from Homs.  She had lost her home and her neighborhood was emptied by shelling so she came to the village of Fao which she thought would be safe. But as she told me later she wanted also to be near Zeinab bint Ali, the 7th Century Heroine of Karbala, during these uncertain times.

One resident who lives near the Sayedda Zeinab told this observers that during the most recent attack on the shrine, the bomber detonated an explosives-packed van that he drove into a parking lot about 50 meters from the shrine. The blast shattered the shrine’s windows, knocked down chandeliers ceiling fans and cracked some of its mosaic walls. He added that militiamen at Sayyeda Zeinab were motivated partly by the desire to prevent a repeat of the wholesale sectarian violence that followed the 2006 attack on the Iraq’s Shiite Imam al-Askari Mosque, blamed on Al-Qaeda, which cost thousands of lives, both Sunni and Shia.

The story of Zeinab at Karbala, and her subsequent life, like the passion play of Karbala itself, is history that one never tires of hearing.  I had read about both but when this obviously devout woman who told me her name was Miriam, approached me, assuming I guess, that I was a tourist unfamiliar with this holy place,  which was true, I was pleased to sit with her, to be quiet,  and to listen.

Miriam summarized the Battle of Karbala in October 680, in present day Iraq,  and how it is commemorated during Ashoura (October tenth) by millions across religious divides because of its universal message of resistance to oppression, relentless pursuit of justice and even sacrificing one’s life for the good of the community. The actual battle pitted a grandson of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), Hussein bin Ali, one of two of Zeinab’s brother killed that day, against the caliph of the time in the first of a series of succession crises that shaped the unfortunate historic split between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

I was amazed that like me, and others from various countries and cultures that I have crossed paths with over the past few years in this region, who were also raised in a Christian tradition, that my new friend Miriam, viewed the 7th century suffering of Hussein Ibn Ali and those who were martyred at Karbala, in some ways similar to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at Calvary, 700 years earlier. We both lite up at the realization that the other exactly understood this connection and the historic resistance ethos that Karbala and Calvary have meant for mankind and the current relevance of both working together for humanity as pillars of the Resistance.

But Miriam shed even more light for this admittedly dim observer by mentioning another woman, in some ways much like Zeinab, who was from Europe.  As a group of chadored Iranian women gathered around us, with a Farsi interpreter relating Miriams words, our group shared a common and rapt spirituality. Miriam told us that during this month of recognizing women’s accomplishments, she was reminded of the similarity between Zeinab bint Ali and La Pucelle d’Orléans, known as Jeanne d’Arc who was falsely accused of heresy and burned alive at the stake for resisting the English occupation of her country.

Miriam explained many parallels, between the “two sisters of Resistance” as she called them even quoting from memory the historic speech of Zeinab in Damascus to Yazid, the killer of her family including her bothers Hussein and Abbas and their dozens of followers and relatives at Karbala in present day Iraq.

On the 11th Muharram, 61 AH, after the battle of Karbala, the caravan of the captives, including Zeinab, were marched through the city of Kufa and Sham. For one year they stayed captives in Damascus prison. Zainab encouraged resistance among her fellow prisoners and fearlessly faced Yazid and recited to him the wrongs he had done. Her address to Yazid ends with a black-clad Zeinab addressing Yazid. “You will not succeed in erasing our memory,” she says.

Miriam explained that Zeinab bint Ali like La Pucelle d’Orelans was devout, frugal and unstintingly generous to the poor, homeless and parentless. Both communicated with Allah and were fierce defenders of justice, the cause for which they both willingly sacrificed themselves. Through her good works Zeinab helped her community to know the principles and practices of Islam.

Concerning Joan, the uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege of Orleans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in just nine days. Several additional swift victories, against overwhelming odds led to Charles VII’s coronation at Reims and hastened the departure of the British.  Despite her achievements, Joan was accused of heresy. Joan’s trial record demonstrates her remarkable intellect Miriam explained. The transcript’s most famous exchange is an exercise in subtlety. “Asked if she knew she was in God’s grace, the illiterate farm girl answered: ‘If I am not, May God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.’” The question of course was a prosecutorial trap carefully set for Joan. Church doctrine held that no one could be certain of being in God’s grace. If Joan had answered yes, then she would have convicted herself of heresy. As the still preserved trial transcript proves, Joan’s trial was a fraud from beginning to end and she insisted, even when threatened with torture and facing  death by fire, that she was guided by God to liberate her country form occupation.

Miriam told us that “one of the legacies of the sisters Zeinab bint Ali and Joan d’Arc is that every women should realize that she can always make a positive difference for mankind. She can always reach for and achieve the better. Those men alone cannot win independence and prosperity, neither can the women. Together, and under the banner of resistance at Karbala and Calvary and following the examples of Zeinab and Joan d’Arc they can achieve to justice and defeat occupation and hegemony.”

One Lebanese druze pilgrim explained to this observer that Sayedda Zeinab represents all women and all who seek justice in the face of tyranny and that the Sayyeda is “everywoman” meaning that Zeinab does not belong just to the Shia or Muslims but to all people of goodwill.

Zeinab bint Ali continues to rest in peace at the sacred shrine at Foa village southwest of Damascus —her final community.  Repairs at Sayedda Zeinab havebeen made and the beauty and tranquility the holy site has been fully restored.

No doubt to the relief of untold millions, the Heroine of Karbala is being protected by her own–Muslims from different sects as well as Christians like Miriam among others—for they, and all who are part of the culture of resistance to injustice, are truly among Zeinab’s own. It is right that we should protect her for Zeinab bint Ali, like Karbala, belongs to all of us.

As I was trying to figure out how to get back to Damascus and we said good-bye that Miriam told me she was Christian. She understood me perfectly and gave me a warm knowing smile when I gestured toward the glorious Sayyeda Zeinab resting place, and opined that it seems likely that spiritually, we are both Shia-Christian and Christian-Shia.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Warns of CIA and Pentagon Assassination Plot

Plan to kill U.S. comes Capriles

WORLD So said Nicolas Maduro. He said that the Pentagon and the CIA are the organizers.

Author: EFE

Nicolas Maduro had talked about it but told the Venezuelan right ..

The acting president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, warned U.S. President Barack Obama, that “officials from the Pentagon and the CIA”, alongside exembajadores Roger Noriega and Otto Reich, are behind plans to assassinate the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.

 

“I am calling on President Barack Obama from here, the Government of the United States responsibly (…) Roger Noriega, Otto Reich, senior Pentagon and CIA are behind a plot to assassinate presidential candidate Venezuelan right to create chaos in Venezuela, “he said. In an interview with the former vice president Jose Vicente Rangel and journalist transmitted by the private channel Televen, Maduro said he has “very good source of information” that these plans are designed to “throw blame the Bolivarian government and create chaos in Venezuela. “ Everything for the elections to be held on April 14 to elect a successor to President Hugo Chavez, who died on day 5 by a cancer that affected him for nearly two years. On Wednesday, President and denounced plans charge “of the far right” group U.S. linked to Noriega, former ambassador to U.S.to the OAS, and Reich, former ambassador to U.S. in Venezuela, Capriles to attack. ”We will ensure, and we have ordered and are doing well, all the protection for all presidential candidates, particularly at this”, Maduro reiterated stating that “there are sectors of the right Venezuelan involved in these plans. “ Moreover, Maduro said this week his government will decorate the two “worthy” U.S. diplomats Venezuelans Venezuela expelled after the last 5th declared persona non grata two members of the U.S. military attache in the country. ”They are representing the dignified voice of Venezuela, never went to the U.S. to conspire, never sought any Pentagon to tell military had to overthrow President Obama, “he said. U.S. Government decided last Monday deport Montañéz Orlando Olivares, second secretary of the Embassy of Venezuela in Washington, and Victor Mata Camacaro, consular official in New York, in response to the Venezuelan decision to expel two U.S. diplomats. On 5 March, hours before announcing the death of President Chavez, the Venezuelan government officials accused David DelMonaco and David Kostale of “destabilizing projects proposing” a Venezuelan military, which the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon have denied.

The Brilliant Pentagon Plan To Ignite Holy War In the Middle East and the Unacceptable Price That Civilians Must Pay

[SEE:  America’s “Islamists” Go Where Oilmen Fear to Tread ;  f the Script Calls for Credible “Bad Guys,” Then Invent Some! ]

New Excuse for Greater CIA Involvement in Iraq

Lobe Log

by Wayne White

With a long history of misguided, damaging American intervention and meddling in the Middle East, the reported CIA effort to target the al-Nusra Front in Syria by helping Iraqi anti-terrorism units to attack its roots in Iraq seems to be the former and possibly destined to be the latter.

The Sunni Arab politics of Iraq, already complicated by the 2003 American invasion, have been further harmed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s unremitting hostility toward Iraq’s Sunni Arab community. He and his Shi’a cronies bitterly opposed the American deal with Sunni Arab insurgents back in late 2006 through 2008, and attempted to undermine the arrangement while US-Sunni Arab Awakening efforts to take down much of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) were in progress.

In the years since, Maliki has been rather consistent in his exclusion of the bulk of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs from the Baghdad political mainstream. He has driven away many of those who have sought or secured office using the machinery of so-called “de-Ba’thification” and has even purged, assassinated or arrested large numbers of former Awakening cadres as well as various other key Sunni Arabs, often on trumped up charges of terrorism (or no formal charges at all — frequently employing his own extrajudicial security forces or Iraq’s mainly Shi’a Anti-Terrorism Service, which answers directly to him).

In this context, it is hardly surprising that a robust measure of Sunni Arab extremism flourishes in Iraq (apparently more now than back in 2008 when most Sunni Arabs were, by contrast, relatively more war-weary and eager for some sort of enduring engagement with the government in Baghdad). Resentment over Maliki’s disinterest in anything that would re-integrate Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority into much of the country’s core activities has done a lot to sustain a drumfire of AQI bombings inside Iraq and, since late 2011, sent gaggles of Islamic fighters from Iraq’s Sunni Arab northwest into the raging battle for Syria.

Al-Nusra probably is to a large extent an arm of AQI, as the US alleges, but also could be the recipient of many Iraqi fighters simply enraged over the plight of Sunni Arabs in their own country more generally. Additionally, there are quite a few historic tribal and family connections that extend far beyond the Syrian-Iraqi border, making events in Syria that much more palpably personal for quite a few Sunni Arabs inside Iraq.

So al-Nusra most likely is more than an organization; a phenomenon welling up from the profound resentment among many Sunni Arabs toward hostile political orders in both countries. If so, that’s not something that can be surgically extracted. Unfortunately, there always is the possibility that somewhere down the road a frustrated Washington (after Baghdad inevitably fails to address al-Nusra, just as it has been unable to deal a crippling blow to AQI) might think drones offer such a capability. If, however, they ever were employed over Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, the anger currently aimed primarily at the Maliki government and the Assad regime would become far more focused on the US.

Al-Nusra clearly is an unwelcome and dangerous player on the opposition side amidst the fighting in Syria. Yet, the sheer length, brutality, mass destruction, horrific casualties and more than a million refugees generated by the violence so far, predictably have rendered more extreme certain elements of the opposition. The seeming rise in regime-like rebel atrocities most likely is linked to some extent to the duration of the carnage.

The US already has become unpopular in broad Syrian opposition and popular circles for not providing desperately needed military assistance. At first, this frustration centered upon frantic requests for a US/NATO no fly zone over Syria. Since hope for that evaporated, attention shifted to arms and ammunition needed by rebels to take on regime-armored vehicles and air power. Some oppositionists in Syria may understand why the US remains wary of providing surface to air missiles that could very well fall into the hands of international terrorist groups, but anti-tank rockets are less of a concern in that respect. Yet, Washington decided not to send any arms whatsoever to opposition fighters — even vetted ones — late last summer and once again recently.

The US designation of al-Nusra as a terrorist group does not appear to have reduced that group’s high military profile as the tip of the opposition’s combat spear against the forces of the Assad regime. And involving the US in a campaign against al-Nusra’s support base in Iraq now could easily be perceived more broadly as being anti-Sunni Arab. After all, many of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs might ask pointedly why the US has chosen not to take a stronger stand against Maliki’s ongoing persecution of and human rights violations against Iraq’s Sunni Arab community — concerns that extend far beyond AQI and its supporters.

Iraq essentially remains in a state of sectarian conflict with Maliki playing the leading role as provocateur. The opposition effort to take down the Assad regime in Syria also has become, in large measure, a sectarian conflict.

By doing little to cross Maliki about his mistreatment of Sunni Arabs, going after al-Nusra in Iraq and providing meager support to the Syrian opposition, Washington potentially is setting itself up to be viewed — at least by Sunni Arab participants in these struggles — as anti-Sunni Arab across much of the greater Arab al-Jazira region as well as the northern Levant. The US faces enough grievances in the region as it is. Why add more to the list?

Saudi Arabia Wants the Entire Middle East, Except for the Zionist Toilet

Saudi Fuel, Syrian Fire

Sunni Rollback: the Second Front

by Peter Lee – China Matters

“If Syria falls, we are liberated; if we are liberated, Syria will be liberated. We have the same battle with Iran – by defeating them we break the Shia crescent of Iran, Syria and Lebanon.”

Readers of this blog know I have been promoting the ideathat Saudi Arabia, in particular, will not be interested in negotiating an end to the bloodshed in Syria that involves anything less than an overthrow of Assad and a triumph by the largely Sunni rebels.

That’s because I believe Saudi Arabia has its eyes on the prize: a Sunni resurgence that captures Iraq as well as Syria and isolates Iran.  And it isn’t going to endanger the regional Sunni insurgency by letting peace break out in Syria and standing idly by as Western and non-Sunni governments mop up the extremist foot soldiers (as happened in the “Sunni Awakening” a.k.a. the violent suppression of Al Qaeda in Iraq coordinated by the US military with more moderate Sunni sheiks).

So the pot is going to stay boiling, in my opinion, with Saudi fuel thoughtfully provided via western Iraq as well as directly to Syria.

On the subject of Iraq—the second Sunni front, by my formulation–two data points torn from the headlines.

First, from the Guardian’s Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on the apparently snowballing (if such a simile is apt for the torrid deserts of western Iraq) Sunni insurgency against the Maliki regime and the major buy-in it has received from the Gulf:

In Mosul and Falluja, tent cities have sprung up in public squares. Some have even demonstrated in Sunni areas of Baghdad, braving the draconian Friday security measures imposed on them.

But perhaps more remarkable is the scene inside the tent. Among the tribal sheikhs and activists around Abu Saleh are former enemies and victims, men who feared him and men who hunted him on behalf of the Americans. Sensing an opportunity, Sunni factions have put aside their differences to mount a common front against Baghdad.

Abu Saleh, rotund and balding, explains how a week after the first demonstrations in Sunni cities, he and other fighters commanding the remnants of Sunni insurgent groups held a series of meetings to form a pact and use the momentum in Sunni cities.

“Call us the honourable nationalistic factions – people here are still sensitive to using words like mujahideen or resistance. We decided to sign a truce with the tribal sheikhs, other factions and even moderate elements in al-Qaida,” he said.

“The Sunnis were never united like this from the fall of Baghdad until now. This is a new stage we are going through: first came the American occupation, then the resistance, then al-Qaida dominated us, and then came internal fighting and the awakening … now there is a truce even with the tribal sheikhs who fought and killed our cousins and brothers.

“The politicians have joined us and we have the legitimacy of the street. To be honest, we had reached a point when people hated us, only your brother would support you.”

One of the things that transformed the reputation of men such as Abu Saleh in the eyes of their fellow Sunnis has been their involvement in the Syrian conflict, a few hundred miles west along the highway.

The conflict pitted Sunni rebels against government forces and Alawites, backed by Iran, also patrons of Iraq’s Shia leadership. Weapons flowed to the rebels from the Iraqi tribes – sold for a comfortable profit – while the Iraqi Shia prime minister toed the Iranian line and lent his support to the Syrian regime. With both sides using the same sectarian rhetoric, it was easy to join the dots between the two conflicts.

Abu Saleh found himself fighting his old war in a new field. He lent a hand to the novice Syrian rebels and joined the fight, commanding a unit of his own operating in the city of Aleppo and the countryside north of it.

“We taught them how to cook phosphate and make IEDs. Our struggle here is the same is in Syria. If Syria falls, we are liberated; if we are liberated, Syria will be liberated. We have the same battle with Iran – by defeating them we break the Shia crescent of Iran, Syria and Lebanon.”

Abu Saleh claims that once he and his men had been accepted back in Ramadi, they formed three battalions that had hit convoys carrying supplies to Syria as well as an Iraqi army helicopter.

In another echo of recent Arab uprisings, Abu Saleh says he and other Sunni leaders have now secured support from wealthy Gulf state figures who funded them during the early years of their insurgency against the Americans.

After the truce between Sunni groups, he says, a meeting was set up in the Jordanian capital, Amman, between a united front of Iraqi factions and representatives of “charities” from the Gulf.

The Iraqis asked for money and weapons; after a decade of war their arsenals were almost depleted. What didn’t get destroyed by US or Iraqi forces was sold to the Syrians. They needed money to train and recruit new fighters but more importantly a religious sanction from the religious authorities for a new round of fighting.

The Gulf figures asked for more time and a second meeting was held in Amman, this time attended by a higher-ranking group of officials from the both sides. The answer was yes: the “charities” would offer support as long as the Iraqi Sunnis were united and used their weapons only after Iraqi government units used force against them. Another Sunni leader confirmed to the Guardian that the Amman meetings had taken place.

“There is a new plan, a grand plan not like the last time when we worked individually,” another commander told me. “This time we are organised. We have co-ordinated with countries like Qatar and Saudi and Jordan. We are organising, training and equipping ourselves but we will start peacefully until the right moment arrives. We won’t be making the same mistakes. Baghdad will be destroyed this time.”

And, at LobeLog, ex-US diplomat Wayne White describes the Iraq/Syria synergies and writes about the somewhat desperate (and in his view deluded and self-defeating) US efforts to assist the Maliki government in putting a lid on Sunni extremism inside Iraq—as a parallel to the well-publicized US efforts to funnel arms preferentially to more friendly or, at least, more tractable elements of the Free Syrian Army as a counterweight to Islamist groups:

With a long history of misguided, damaging American intervention and meddling in the Middle East, the reported CIA effort to target the al-Nusra Front in Syria by helping Iraqi anti-terrorism units to attack its roots in Iraq seems to be the former and possibly destined to be the latter.
…
Resentment over Maliki’s disinterest in anything that would re-integrate Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority into much of the country’s core activities has done a lot to sustain a drumfire of AQI bombings inside Iraq and, since late 2011, sent gaggles of Islamic fighters from Iraq’s Sunni Arab northwest into the raging battle for Syria.

Al-Nusra probably is to a large extent an arm of AQI, as the US alleges, but also could be the recipient of many Iraqi fighters simply enraged over the plight of Sunni Arabs in their own country more generally. Additionally, there are quite a few historic tribal and family connections that extend far beyond the Syrian-Iraqi border, making events in Syria that much more palpably personal for quite a few Sunni Arabs inside Iraq.

 I have a feeling that the United States, when it opportunistically encouraged the bedraggled Syrian opposition not to negotiate with Bashar al Assad, did not realize that what it would get in return was not an admirable but weak and easily led democracy in Syria but a near-total loss of control of the Middle East agenda to the Gulf autocracies and a narrative of trans-national sectarian aggression.

Not the Obama administration’s finest hour, perhaps.

Tunisian Patriots Take A Brave Stand Against Bloodthirsty Saudi Puppets

Thousands of Tunisians call for Islamist government to quit

By Tarek Amara

Tunis

(Reuters) – Thousands of Tunisians took to the streets of the capital Tunis on Saturday to call for an end to an Islamist government they blame for the assassination of a leading secular politician 40 days earlier.

It was the biggest demonstration since Chokri Belaid was gunned down outside his house on February 6, igniting the worst unrest since the Jasmine Revolution that toppled strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 and started the Arab Spring.

In a bid to quell the protests, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned and was replaced by Ali Larayedh, a fellow member of the Islamist Ennahda party, who formed a new coalition government including independents in key ministries.

But protesters on Saturday blamed the ruling party for Belaid’s murder and chanted “Ennahda go,” “The people want a new revolution,” and “The people want to bring down the regime.”

No one has claimed responsibility for the killing, which Belaid’s family blames on Ennahda. The party denies involvement and police say the killer was a radical Salafist Islamist.

Belaid, a left-wing lawyer, was shot at close range outside his Tunis home by an assassin who fled on a motorcycle.

His nine-party Popular Front bloc has only three seats in Tunisia’s Constituent Assembly, which is acting as parliament and writing a new national charter, compared to some 120 for Ennahda and its partners. But Belaid spoke for many who fear religious radicals are stifling freedoms won in the Arab Spring.

The North African state’s new Islamist-led government won a confidence vote on Wednesday although the death of an unemployed man who set himself on fire underscored popular discontent with high unemployment, inflation and corruption.

“They killed Chokri but they cannot kill the values of freedom defended by him,” Belaid’s widow Basma said in front of her husband’s grave on Saturday.

Tunisia’s transition has been more peaceful than those in Egypt and Libya, and has led to freedom of expression and political pluralism. But tensions run high between liberals and the Islamists who did not play a major role in the revolt but were elected to power.

The government is also pressing ahead with tax rises and subsidy cuts to reduce this year’s projected budget deficit of 6 percent of gross domestic product, despite a storm of public criticism.

Lacking the huge oil and gas resources of neighbours Libya and Algeria, Tunisia’s compact size, relatively skilled workforce and close ties with Europe have raised hopes it can set an example of economic progress for the region. Tourism is a major foreign currency earner.

(Reporting by Tarek Amara; Editing by Jason Webb)

Manufacturing Terrorists–How FBI sting operations make jihadists out of hapless malcontents

[SEE:  The Informants]

Manufacturing Terrorists

How FBI sting operations make jihadists out of hapless malcontents

Michael German

Imagine a country in which the government pays convicted con artists and criminals to scour minority religious communities for disgruntled, financially desperate, or mentally ill patsies who can be talked into joining fake terrorist plots, even if only for money. Imagine that the country’s government then busts its patsies with great fanfare to justify ever-increasing authority and ever-increasing funding. According to journalist Trevor Aaronson’s The Terror Factory, this isn’t the premise for a Kafka novel; it’s reality in the post-9/11 United States.

The Terror Factory is a well-researched and fast-paced exposé of the dubious tactics the FBI has used in targeting Muslim Americans with sting operations since 2001. The book updates and expands upon Aaronson’s award-winning 2011 Mother Jones cover story “The Informants.” Most readers likely have heard about several alleged conspiracies to attack skyscrapers, synagogues, or subway stations, involving either individuals whom the FBI calls “lone wolves” or small cells that a credulous press has tagged with such sinister appellations as the Newburgh 4 or the Liberty City 7. But they may be astonished to learn that many of these frightening plots were almost entirely concocted and engineered by the FBI itself, using corrupt agents provocateurs who often posed a far more serious criminal threat than the dimwitted saps the investigations ultimately netted.

Drawing on court records and interviews with the defendants, their lawyers, their families, and the FBI officials and prosecutors who oversaw the investigations, Aaronson portrays an agency that has adopted an “any means necessary” approach to its terrorism prevention efforts, regardless of whether real terrorists are being caught. To the FBI, this imperative justifies recruiting informants with extensive criminal records, including convictions for fraud, violent crimes, and even child molestation, that in an earlier era would have disqualified them except in the most extraordinary circumstances.

In addition to offering lenience, if not forgiveness, for heinous crimes, the FBI pays these informants tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, creating a perverse incentive for them to ensnare dupes into terrorist plots. Aaronson quotes an FBI official defending this practice: “To catch the devil you have to go to hell.”

Such an analysis might make sense when police leverage one criminal to gain information about more-serious criminal conspiracies—in other words, to catch a real “devil.” But Aaronson’s research reveals that the targets in most of these sting operations posed little real threat. They may have had a history of angry anti-government rhetoric, but they took no steps toward terrorist acts until they received encouragement and resources from government agents.

Aaronson describes the case of an unemployed and practically homeless 22-year-old named Derrick Shareef, befriended by an FBI informant with an armed robbery conviction who gave him a place to live. When Shareef couldn’t (or wouldn’t) raise the money to buy weapons needed for a plot suggested by the informant, he was introduced to a faux weapons dealer who was willing to trade four hand grenades and a pistol for Shareef’s used stereo speakers. The fact that Shareef believed a real weapons dealer would accept such a barter provides a clue as to his criminal experience.

Aaronson correctly takes pains to avoid portraying those caught in the stings as completely innocent of malice. But he demonstrates that they almost universally lack violent criminal histories or connections to real terrorist groups. Most important, while they may have talked about committing violent acts, they rarely had weapons of their own and, like Shareef, usually lacked the financial means to acquire them. Yet the government provided them with military hardware worth thousands of dollars that would be extremely difficult for even sophisticated criminal organizations to obtain, only to bust them in a staged finale.

This aspect of Aaronson’s narrative is most troubling to me, as a former FBI agent who worked undercover in domestic terrorism investigations before 9/11. Prior to September 11, 2001, if an agent had suggested opening a terrorism case against someone who was not a member of a terrorist group, who had not attempted to acquire weapons, and who didn’t have the means to obtain them, he would have been gently encouraged to look for a more serious threat. An agent who suggested giving such a person a stinger missile or a car full of military-grade plastic explosives would have been sent to counseling. Yet in Aaronson’s telling, such techniques are now becoming commonplace.

My concern is partly that the artificially inflated scale of the threat in these cases seems designed to overwhelm judges, jurors, and the general public, who might otherwise view such methods as illegal entrapment. The FBI often announces these arrests with great fanfare, highlighting the scope of the damage that could have been caused by weapons provided entirely by the government. Such pretrial publicity creates a climate of fear that is likely to influence judges and jurors.

Indeed, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon severely criticized the investigation that led to the 2009 arrest of James Cromitie, a small-time ex-con from Newburgh, New York, whose apparent reluctance to join a fake missile plot was overcome when an informant offered him $250,000 to participate. At his sentencing, Judge McMahon observed that “only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope.” Yet McMahon let the jury’s conviction stand and sentenced Cromitie to 25 years in prison. Of 150 defendants charged in these schemes, Aaronson documents only two acquittals.

The exaggerated significance of these manufactured terrorist plots also raises the possible penalties for those charged, due to “terrorism enhancement” sentencing provisions. The majority of defendants plead guilty to mitigate draconian penalties, raising an additional question of whether the purpose of this government tactic is to avoid judicial and public scrutiny altogether. Law enforcement has no business staging theatrical productions that intentionally exaggerate the seriousness of a defendant’s criminal conduct.

Even more unsettling is the flawed reasoning that drives the use of these methods. FBI agents have been inundated with bigoted training materials that falsely portray Arabs and Muslims as inherently violent. The FBI also has embraced an unfounded theory of “radicalization” that alleges a direct progression from adopting certain beliefs, or expressing opposition to U.S. policies, to becoming a terrorist. With such a skewed and biased view of the American Muslim community, the FBI’s strategy of “preemption, prevention, and disruption” results in abusive surveillance, targeting, and exploitation of innocent people based simply on their exercise of their First Amendment rights.

Aaronson fails, however, to recognize that these tactics are neither new to the FBI nor exclusively used against Muslims. The FBI’s earliest documented use of agents provocateurs with criminal backgrounds was revealed during congressional investigations of labor “radicals,” pacifists, and socialists in 1918. The bureau’s investigations of radicals led to nationwide warrantless raids, resulting in thousands of arrests and hundreds of deportations, yet solved no terrorist bombings and discovered less than a handful of firearms. Although reforms were implemented, decades later the Church Committee’s inquiries revealed that covert operations conducted as part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO investigations had targeted civil rights and anti-war groups because of their First Amendment–protected activities from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Recalling this history is important because in both cases, reform of these improper practices was implemented by restricting FBI intelligence activities and requiring a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity before initiating investigations. These restrictions have once again been relaxed, and the rapid increase in sting operations under the Obama administration that Aaronson documents is directly attributable to amendments made to the FBI’s guidelines in 2008, authorizing the use of informants without requiring any factual predicate of wrongdoing. The FBI also has used these dubious tactics against aged anti-government militiamen and misfit anarchists, so Muslims are not the only targets in its crosshairs.

Without reforms to FBI guidelines, anyone holding unorthodox views or challenging government policies could find himself targeted by overzealous federal agents using unscrupulous informants. The FBI should be investigating violent crime, not inventing it.

Jewish Think Tank Nails Obama’s Pro-Islamist Tilt

Obama’s Islamist Tilt

 

By Kyle Shideler

Important overseas populations are drawing the conclusion that the Obama administration is quietly realigning itself in the Middle East, toward the Islamists.

Recently returning from a visit to Egypt, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) noted that many of the Coptic Christian minorities he met believe the United States supports the Muslim Brotherhood’s vicious rule there:

“I was told people think the United States is developing relationships with the Muslim Brotherhood because it believes the party is going to remain in power,” Wolf said. “[T]he feeling is that as long as the Brotherhood protects the United States’ interests in the region, it can act with impunity within its borders.”

Such sentiments are increasingly common in Egypt. Protestors against Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Cairo stood outside the Egyptian Foreign ministry, and accused the U.S. of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.  The leadership of the primary Muslim Brotherhood opposition, the National Salvation Front, refused to meet with Kerry, citing his “pro-Morsi stance.” And U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson has been repeatedly accused of leading an effort to transform Egypt “into Pakistan,”  which is to say, a militarized, hardline-Islamist state. For his trip to Cairo, Kerry brought with him news of the release of $250 million in aid for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government, a figure which would have been larger still had Congress not intervened.

Nor are the Egyptian opposition the only ones convinced that America has become the strongest ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, or their even more violent Islamist brethren.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently accused the U.S. of partnering with the Taliban in a cynical strategy to prolong the military campaign in Afghanistan.  Karzai’s statement is ridiculous on its face since it’s difficult to give credence to any argument in which the Obama Administration appears anxious to remain in Afghanistan.

But given the repeated U.S. efforts to conduct negotiations with the Taliban, grant them an embassy,  and resist declaring them terrorists, one wonders if Karzai is quite as far off the mark as an objective observer would think he would be. Even if Karzai were speaking to a domestic audience only, shouldn’t the idea that the U.S. is partnering with the Taliban be so laughable as to be completely inconceivable even among isolated Afghan tribal peoples?

And, of course, if the idea of the U.S. collaborating with the Taliban should be considered as likely as flying pigs, then the idea that, in Syria, the U.S. is actively arming Jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda-affiliates, should be an idea popular with only the tinfoil hat crowd.

But increasingly it’s not.

As long time specialist on Syria, Barry Rubin, notes:

The United States is helping arm and perhaps helping to train radical Islamist guerrillas who want a Sharia state in Syria, who believe Israel should be wiped off the map, and who may soon be murdering and oppressing Christians and other groups in Syria itself.

Author of the Long War Journal, and an authority on Al Qaeda, Bill Roggio agrees:

The State Department announced that it would provide $60 million in direct aid to the Syrian Opposition Coalition, an alliance of Syrian groups that has come out in support of the Al Nusrah Front after the US designated it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and al Qaeda in Iraq’s affiliate in Syria in December 2012.

The struggle for Syria is becoming a repeat of the prior situation in Libya.  There, the U.S. provided assistance, including air cover, for Libyan rebels with openly admitted Al Qaeda ties. And we continue to reap the consequence0efits”  of that decision today from Benghazi to Mali. Now, the U.S. is doing the same for the Al Qaeda-affiliated Syrian groups.

Apropos the concerns of the protesting Egyptians, not only does U.S. policy risk turning Egypt into Pakistan, but increasingly, in our own way, we are turning our own country into Pakistan. We are, objectively speaking, supporting Islamic fundamentalists, and yes, even terrorists with the one hand, while opposing them with the other. We have transformed ourselves, in the span of a decade, from a nation that declares, “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists,” to a nation that is credibly accused of arming terrorists.

And as in Pakistan, there is perhaps some room for debate over whether this schizophrenic policy is due largely to an increasingly incompetent bureaucracy (of the sort that invites a virulent twitter anti-Semite to be awarded a women’s rights award) or if it is by Machiavellian design.

But there’s no question over what gave rise to the increasing belief that the United States is backing the Muslim Brotherhood over religious minorities in Egypt, providing aid and comfort to the Taliban, or supporting violent jihad in Syria and Libya. What gave them that idea? We did.

Kyle Shideler is the Director of Research and Communications at the Endowment for Middle East Truth (www.emetonline.org).

Commentary: Saudis Gain Upper Hand on Syria’s Battlefields

[By supporting Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as they wage war against the "Shia crescent," we are once again using ethnic cleansing as a weapon of war.  By following a policy of attempted genocide, as we wage war against a people because of their religious beliefs, assisting Sunnis, as they seek to destroy their Shiite competition, we are following the same path as did Hitler in Europe.  (SEE: Be Careful: Russia Is Back to Stay in the Middle East ; Syria, L'Enfant Terrible of Foreign Politics ; IRAN-IRAQ: Pipeline to Syria Ups Ante) ]

By: Felix Imonti

Daniel Leal-Olivas | AFP | Getty Images

Syrian rebels gather around a T-72 tank, captured from government forces, in the flashpoint Syrian province of Idlib near the border with Turkey.

As the war in Syria moves into a third year, there are serious concerns that the violence will spread throughout the Middle East. No one seems to have the answer how to bring the war to an end, but now it appears the Saudis are going to try.

When Sunni tribes in Syria make appeals for protection from the brutality of the Al-Assad regime, their Sunni kinsmen in the Gulf States of Saudia Arabia and Qatar have a hard time ignoring them. The blood ties are broad and deep; moreover, the appeals came at an opportune moment for Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is troubled by the “Shia Crescent” that has extended from Iran through Iraq, into Syria and to the Mediterranean shores of Lebanon. The uprising in Syria created an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to use tribal bonds to destroy the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad. His fall would break the Shia (read as, Iranian) chain of power through the region and begin the process of pushing back its influence. The Gulf States have their own potentially volatile Shia minorities to worry about–to the Gulf States, the more limitations on Iranian influence, the better.

With Al-Assad driven out, the Saudi-based, fundamentalist Wahhabi Sect that had been established among the Syrian tribes can, the reasoning goes, secure the continuation of Sunni domination there. That would protect the security of the Kingdom and the wealth and power of all of the other rulers along the Gulf.

Qatar agrees with the Saudis that Al-Assad has to be removed, but has a much less religiously radical vision for Syria’s future. The successor regime that Qatar envisions would be a government under the leadership of the social elite that would bring a modern government and economy to the country.

“Working at arm’s-length through Qatar enabled the U.S. and Ambassador Chris Stevens to maintain the fairy tale that it was providing only non-lethal equipment to Syria’s rebels.”

At first, it was Qatar that had the tactical advantage in promoting its vision. The Emirate had sent Special Forces to Libya to remove Gaddafi. Qatar spent an estimated $2 billion to arm, train, and to lead Libyan forces against the government, which included the funding of the February 17th Martyr Brigade and its leader Abdel Hakim Belhadj.

From the time that Ambassador Chris Stevens was named liaison with the rebels in Libya in March 2011, he worked closely with the leader of the February 17th Martyr Brigade. When President Obama authorized in 2012 the distribution of heavy weapons to the rebels, it was Abdel Hakim Belhadj with his Qatari credentials who gave the ambassador an open channel.

Working at arm’s-length enabled the U.S. to maintain the fairy tale that it was providing only non-lethal equipment to Syria’s rebels. After the murder of the ambassador, the supply chain to the arms of Libya was broken.

Circumstances have shifted to favor the Saudis. The United States no longer has an organization that it can use as a weapons-smuggling front and insists that Washington will provide only non-lethal materials to the rebels.

American dithering worries the Saudis, with their memories of the growth of Al-Qaeda and the rise of Osama Bin Laden–the battlefields of Afghanistan nurtured the radicals who turned on their former benefactors. That could happen again in Syria if the war continues and more radicalized warriors are released upon the world.

Saudi Goal: End the War ASAP

King Abdullah had anticipated that the Al-Assad regime would collapse much sooner than is proving to be the case. Every day that the war continues is seen in Riyadh as a threat to the stability of the Kingdom. One means to bring the war to an end is to control the flow of weapons; the Saudis have moved in that direction by turning to an unusual source for heavy weapons that would force recipients to depend exclusively upon the Saudis for additional supplie: the former Yugoslavia.

The former Yugoslavia had developed a major munitions industry that has survived the break-up of the Communist state. M60 recoilless weapons and M79 Osa anti-tank rocket launchers from Croatia are appearing in large quantities throughout Syria. According to an article in the New York Times, the source of these and other weapons has been traced to the Saudis. Recipients appear to be the more moderate, indigenous members of the Free Syrian Army that have objected to the influx of the more radicalized foreign Jihadists.

At the same time, the Saudis are seeking an alternate course to end the fighting through a political settlement with Syria. Riyadh has opened negotiations in Jordan with Al-Assad’s government. Prince Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the son of the Saudi king, is leading the Saudi delegation.

Even Russia Has Reason to Fear Saudis

And what of Al-Assad’s other big ally, Russia? Al-Assad’s dependence on Russian determination is itself a weakness in his defenses. The Russians have indicated that they do not anticipate a NATO invasion. Without NATO intervening, there is the possibility for some kind of settlement that would preserve Russia’s interests — even if it excludes Al-Assad.

The Saudis may be able to get the Russians to bend. Saudi Arabia has the means to make life for the Russians dangerous. Wahhabi cadres operating in the Moslem regions of Russia are already starting uprisings. Once-peaceful areas in Russia are no longer safe, and Moscow has not figured how to deal with the problem.

Is Russia prepared to sacrifice its own stability to save Al-Assad? The Saudis are in a position to force Putin to consider seriously the answer to that question.

Afghanistan: Atrocity against Civilians. The Fiction of US Troop Withdrawal

No amount of lying Pentagon propaganda can hide the reality that the war has been an unmitigated disaster for the Afghan people and for the thousands of dead and tens of thousands of maimed troops sent to kill and die there in the interests of empire

By Richard Becker

On March 1, a U.S./NATO helicopter gunship killed two Afghan brothers, seven and eight years of age, as they tended cattle in Uruzgan province. According to reports from residents, the boys were listening to a radio, which the helicopter crew interpreted as “radio signals” from Afghan resistance fighters.

The latest killing comes amidst a series of atrocities against civilians that has further enflamed opposition to the ongoing occupation.

On. Feb. 24, Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-installed “president” of Afghanistan, announced that he was demanding the withdrawal of all U.S. Special Forces troops from Wardak province within two weeks. Wardak is a key strategic region and an area of active resistance to the U.S./NATO occupation.

Will NATO commanders pay any more attention to Karzai’s latest “order” than the many earlier ones that NATO forces ignored and Karzai quietly dropped? Not likely.

Eleven and a half years of U.S./NATO war and occupation have been a disaster for all but a tiny sliver of the Afghan population.
Afghanistan ranks as the worst country in the world for infant mortality, with a shocking 122 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. (CIA World Factbook 2013) By way of comparison, the infant mortality rate is 6 per 1,000 in the U.S. and 4.8 per 1,000 in Cuba. Life expectancy is just 49 years. Afghanistan is listed as 172nd out of 187 countries in the Human Development Index, with the average adult having 3.3 years of schooling.

Global Research, Mar. 5, 2013

What prompted Karzai’s latest proclamation was explained in a statement from his office, which read in part: “After a thorough discussion, it became clear that armed individuals named as US special force[s] stationed in Wardak province engage in harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people.

“A recent example in the province is an incident in which nine people were disappeared in an operation by this suspicious force and in a separate incident a student was taken away at night from his home, whose tortured body with throat cut was found two days later under a bridge.”

While U.S. commanders predictably denied the accusations, the level of popular anger in Wardak was made clear by street protests and threats by civilian groups to join the armed resistance if U.S. forces were not withdrawn.

On Feb. 26, 500 people marched in protest of the killings. “If the situation remains like this, this province will collapse very soon,” protester Haji Abdul Qadim told the Reuters news service. “People will join the insurgency very soon because of the abuses of these forces.”

In another recent incident brought to international attention on Feb. 26, a Swedish organization that operates health clinics in Afghanistan said that U.S. military forces occupied and damaged one of their clinics in Wardak on Feb. 11.

The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan said in a statement: “Foreign soldiers entered the health facility by force, tied up and blindfolded the guard on duty, and occupied the facility.”

Afghan protesters throng the streets following the killing of four people in a NATO raid during an anti- US demonstration in Taloqan, Takhar province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday, May 18, 2011. (Photo: Fulad Hamdard/AP)

Andreas Stefansson, director of SCA, said that it was the second time one of SCA’s clinics had been occupied by NATO troops. The previous occupation lasted three days. Stefansson said that NATO has promised that such an occupation would not happen again.

“What we are seeking is that they actually live up to what they say,” Stefansson said. (Reuters, Feb. 26)

On Feb. 13, 10 people, including women and children, were killed in a NATO air strike in Kunar province. On June 6, 2012, 18 civilians were killed in a strike in Logar province. The grisly list of “accidental” killings stretches back a decade.

A ‘president’ in name only

These atrocities and the daily abuses that inevitably accompany imperialist occupation are the source of burning anger among the Afghan people. In the eyes of the population, Karzai shares blame with the occupiers for these outrages. Thus, Karzai’s repeated “orders” forbidding Afghan army units from calling in U.S./NATO air support and for U.S. troops to withdraw from Wardak and stop the hated “night raids” on people’s homes.

In reality, the lowest level U.S. commander has greater military authority than does the ‘president’ of the country.

Afghan children killed in a 2011 NATO air strike (Photo: Uruknet)

But his proclamations continue to be disregarded by the occupation forces, exposing the actual power relationship in the country. In reality, the lowest level U.S. commander has greater military authority than does the “president” of the country.

Further illuminating both this relationship and the U.S. intention to maintain a dominant role in Afghanistan was a Feb. 3 joint interview with then-Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey. Panetta and Dempsey reaffirmed that the United States would sustain a “strategic partnership” with Afghanistan, citing a decision by the NATO heads of state during a 2012 summit meeting in Chicago to maintain a long-term presence in the country despite a drawdown in the number of U.S. ground troops in the country.

“We’re committing to an enduring presence,” Mr. Panetta said on Feb. 3.

“Strategic partnership” and “enduring presence” are more Washington weasel words for continuing colonial domination over Afghanistan.

On Feb. 26, it was revealed that claims of resistance attacks inside the country declining by 7 percent in 2012 were just one more Pentagon lie. The 7 percent figure was posted on the International Security Assistance Force (the official name of the U.S./NATO force in Afghanistan) website in January, to bolster the administration’s “positive track” line about the war.

When the Associated Press made inquiries about the statistics, NATO officials in Kabul immediately backtracked, stated that they had “erred,” and admitted that in fact, there was no decline at all.

Costs of war

Eleven and a half years of U.S./NATO war and occupation have been a disaster for all but a tiny sliver of the Afghan population.

Despite tens of billions of dollars in U.S.-funded “reconstruction aid,” Afghanistan remains one of the very poorest countries on the face of the Earth. The total U.S. budget for the Afghanistan war is over $640 billion and counting. (Center for Strategic and International Studies)

While U.S. and other NATO-country contractors, and elements of the Afghan elite, have become incredibly rich from this “aid,” the Afghan government presently spends a miniscule $46 per year on health care per person. (GlobalHealthFacts.org)

Afghanistan ranks as the worst country in the world for infant mortality, with a shocking 122 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. (CIA World Factbook 2013) By way of comparison, the infant mortality rate is 6 per 1,000 in the U.S. and 4.8 per 1,000 in Cuba. Life expectancy is just 49 years. Afghanistan is listed as 172nd out of 187 countries in the Human Development Index, with the average adult having 3.3 years of schooling.

In addition to the tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands wounded in the war, more than 2.7 million Afghans remain external refugees, most in Pakistan and Iran, and 425,000 are internally displaced. (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 2012

No amount of lying Pentagon propaganda can hide the reality that the war has been an unmitigated disaster for the Afghan people and for the thousands of dead and tens of thousands of maimed troops sent to kill and die there in the interests of empire.

Frontier Corps Seizes Large Stash of Pre-Positioned Weapons Near Chinese/Pakistani Port of Gwadar

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FC seizes hoard of arms, ammunition in Dasht

AFP

 

A Pakistani security personell examines bullets displayed at a security compound in Quetta late March 8, 2013. PHOTO: AFP

DASHT: Frontier Corps seized a large quantity of arms and ammunition in an operation in Dasht area of Balochistan on Friday, reported Radio Pakistan. According to AFP, eight suspected militants were also detained. 

The seized weapons included machine guns‚ sniper rifles‚ rocket propelled grenades‚ detonators and explosive material. The collection was displayed at a security compound in the city of Quetta on March 8.

Violence in Balochistan has escalated with recent terror attacks targeting the Hazara community residing in the province. A bomb at a market in Hazara Town, a Shia neighbourhood in the suburbs of Quetta, killed 89 people. The Supreme Court announced to take suo motu notice of the killings of the Hazara community.

There are reports of missing persons from the region as well, with numbers going as high as23,000 persons according to Nasrullah Baloch, the chairperson of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons.

A Balochistan MPA was also kidnapped earlier in the week from Kuchlack, just outside of Quetta. A group of armed men dressed in Frontier Corps uniform kidnapped Balochistan Assembly member and leader of the Awami National Party (ANP) Malik Sultan Tareen in the Bostan area of Pishin district on Tuesday.

Violence continued to plague Balochistan on Wednesday when four people were killed and one was injured in separate incidents across the province, while a bomb also exploded in Chaman district.

The chief justice has taken the on-going violence into notice and security forces conduct raids to find miscreants and their supplies.

Killing Americans on U.S. Soil: Eric Holder’s Evasive, Manipulative Letter

[SEE:  Does Eric Holder know the law?]

source

By Conor Friedersdorf

The attorney general should be brought before Congress and interrogated about his notion of what the president could do in the aftermath of an attack.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese war planes bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Six decades later, Al Qaeda terrorists flew hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Neither President Franklin Roosevelt nor President George W. Bush targeted and killed Americans on U.S. soil in the aftermath of those attacks. Doing so wouldn’t have made any sense.

How strange, then, that Attorney General Eric Holder invoked those very attacks in a letter confirming that President Obama believes there are circumstances in which he could order Americans targeted and killed on U.S. soil. “It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws … for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” he wrote. “For example, the President could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances of a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941 and on September 11, 2001.”

The very scenario to be guarded against is a president using the pretext of a terrorist attack to seize extraordinary powers. Isn’t that among the most likely scenarios for the United States turning into an authoritarian security state? To be sure, if Americans are at the controls of fighter jets en route to Hawaii, of course Obama could order that they be fired upon. If Americans hijacked a plane, of course it would be permissible to kill them before they could crash it into a building. But those are not the sorts of targeted killings that Senator Rand Paul asked about in a letter to White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, prompting Holder’s response.

If you read to the end of Holder’s letter, to the passage where he says, “Were such an emergency to arise, I would examine the particular facts and circumstances before advising the president on the scope of his authority,” it becomes clear that, despite invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11, even he isn’t envisioning a response to an attack in process, which would have to happen immediately. So what does he envision? If he can see that a “for example” is necessary to explain, he ought to give us a clarifying example, rather than a nonsensical one that seems to name-check events for their emotional resonance more than for their aptness to the issue.

Elsewhere in his letter, Holder writes that “the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat.” Interesting they reject it “as a policy matter,” but aren’t willing to reject military force in the United States as a legal matter, even in instances where law enforcement would better incapacitate the threat. For the Obama Administration, conceding that the executive branch is legally forbidden to do certain things is verboten, despite the fact that an unchecked executive is much more dangerous than the possibility of a future president failing to do enough to fight back against an actual attack on our homeland*.

Any thinking person can see that Holder’s letter is non-responsive, evasive, and deliberately manipulative in its sly reassurances, right down to the rhetorically powerful but substantively nonsensical invocation of 9/11. (Being more subtle about it than Rudy Giuliani doesn’t make it right.) To credulously accept this sort of response, on an issue as important as this one, is behavior unfit for any citizen of a free country, where safeguarding the rule of law is a civic responsibility.

Rand Paul deserves tremendous credit for eliciting this response. In its wake, he needs help from his colleagues and his countrymen. The time to discuss the appropriate scope of the president’s authority is now, not in the aftermath of a catastrophic attack on the nation, as Holder suggests. The fact that he disagrees speaks volumes about Team Obama’s reckless shortsightedness.

__
*Does anyone imagine, in the aftermath of a future Pearl Harbor or 9/11, that Congress would refuse to authorize whatever reasonable authority the executive branch required to kill or capture the perpetrators? It is difficult to imagine anyone even worrying over so implausible an outcome.

White House Continually Hampered By Pentagon Sabotage of Administration Foreign Policy

[The following article details how Gen. James Jones derailed Ambassador Holbrooke's intended $50 billion investment in Pakistani development, with an insincere bluff of a secret civilian nuclear deal.  The photo used below is of Jones and the head of Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), the Iranian terrorist outfit, before testifying before Congress for taking Washington and Saddam Hussain's favorite terrorists off the State Dept. terror list.  The MEK are the hands of the CIA and Mossad within Iran.  They are responsible for bombings, assassinations of nuclear scientists and obtaining photos which are to be used to create convincing, false propaganda about Iranian programs.  Apparently, Gen. Jones was tasked with sabotaging all roads which did not lead to war with Iran, or war on Pakistan.]

Holbrooke wanted $50bn for Pakistan

Anwar Iqbal

Gen. James Jones and Maryam Rajavi (President elect, wife of Massoud Rajavi, founder of terrorist MEK).

WASHINGTON: A former US National Security Adviser offered Pakistan an ‘off script’ civilian nuclear deal in exchange for its counter-terrorism cooperation, a former member of Richard Holbrooke’s team wrote on Wednesday.

In an article he wrote for the Foreign Policy magazine, Vali Nasr said his time in the Obama administration “turned out to be a deeply disillusioning experience”.

He recalled how former National Security Adviser James Jones travelled to Pakistan for high-level meetings without informing the State Department or Mr Holbrooke, who was the special US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He said that during one trip to Pakistan, Gen Jones “went completely off script and promised Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani… a civilian nuclear deal in exchange for Pakistan’s cooperation”.

“Panic struck the White House. It took a good deal of diplomatic tap-dancing to take that offer off the table.”

Mr Nasr said that Mr Holbrooke wanted Washington and the international community to commit $50 billion to stimulate Pakistan’s economic development and convinced former secretary of state Hillary Clinton of forging a strategic partnership with the country.

“The true key to ending the war, Mr Holbrooke often told us, was to change Pakistan… but to convince Pakistan that we meant business, we first had to prove that America was going to stay,” he wrote.

Mr Holbrooke understood that the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA wanted Pakistan to cut ties with the Taliban and do more to fight terrorism. “That would never happen, however, without at least some semblance of a normal relationship between Pakistan and the United States,” Mr Nasr wrote.

He said that in 2009, half the US diplomatic mission in Pakistan worked on intelligence and counter-terrorism rather than diplomacy or development.

“The US Consulate in Peshawar was basically bricks shielding antennas. And it paid big dividends,” Mr Nasr wrote.

Based on the information it received from intelligence sources, “the Obama administration began carrying out drone strikes in Pakistan on an industrial scale”.

Al-Nusra in Syria Remains True To Founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

[SEE:  Syrian citizens: Jabhat al-Nusra trying to 'control everything']

Iraqi analysts: Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria mirrors al-Qaeda in Iraq

By Mohammed al-Qaisi in Baghdad

Al-Qaeda in Iraq attacks places of worship, culture and education deeming them blasphemous, officials say. Above, a theatre in Samarra, Salaheddine province, lays in ruin, after an AQI attack in 2008. (Mohammed al-Qaisi/Mawtani)

As tensions increase between Syrian citizens and members of extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra (JAN) Iraqi officials, researchers and security leaders warned of similarities between JAN and al-Qaeda in Iraq in terms of ideology and strategy.

They called on the Syrian people and other opposition group to prevent members of the JAN from taking over their revolution, warning that though both sides share the common goal of toppling the regime of President Bashar Assad, JAN has other intentions.

“We are monitoring with concern the recent attacks conducted by the extremist JAN in Syria because it is ruining the situation there,” said acting Iraqi Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi. “JAN is turning its attacks on the people, just as al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups did in Iraq.”

He said attacks on churches and destruction of statues, archaeological sites and sacred shrines bears resemblance to what al-Qaeda did in Iraq in past years.

In February, Syrians from the Idlib town of Maaret al-Numan accused JAN of cutting off the head of a statue in town of the poet Abu al-Alaa al-Maari, who was born there, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

They posted pictures online of a headless dark brown bust riddled with bullet holes, lying on the ground near its former pedestal.

In December 2012, the Universal Syriac Union Party condemned alleged JAN attacks on citizens’ houses, private possessions and houses of worship in Ras al-Ain, Hasakeh province.

The party said the violations included the desecration of religious symbols as well as attacking the Syriac school and destroying its contents.

JAN attacks indicate only one thing, al-Dulaimi told Mawtani. “They are terrorists and different from the other revolutionaries”.

“This confirms al-Qaeda’s ideology and style are the same, anytime, anywhere, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Syria,” al-Dulaimi said.

The Syrian people alone can determine their future, and they “must not allow anyone to take away their freedom, because allowing terrorist groups to proliferate there is a repeat of the Iraqi scenario”, he said.

JAN TIES TO AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ

According to a recent report published by counter-extremism think tank Quilliam Foundation, “many members of JAN come from the jihadist network of Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi”, which was created in 2000 and solidified in Baghdad in 2002.

“Syrians who had been with al-Zarqawi in Herat, Afghanistan, in 2000 were sent to build branches of his network in Syria and Lebanon,” the report said.

“With approximately 5,000 members, JAN is by no means the largest group fighting in the [current] conflict, although it has often been described as the most effective,” Quilliam said.

Lt. Gen. Radhi al-Malhamy, commander of Iraqi army operations in Anbar province, which borders Syria, spoke to the similarities between JAN and al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group al-Zarqawi eventually joined.

“Attacks by JAN in Syria remind us of horrific attacks by al-Qaeda that targeted houses of worship, such as churches, husseiniyas, mosques, sacred shrines, archaeological sites, statues, monuments and even artwork, which are all considered by al-Qaeda in Iraq as blasphemous and atheistic,” he told Mawtani.

“Syrians cannot trade a fever for certain death, nor can Syria be reduced to one faction. It is a country with multiple sects, religions and cultures, and groups [like JAN] will eventually begin to target people’s personal freedoms and their beliefs, and may even ban women from driving cars, wearing modern clothes or listening to music,” al-Malhamy said.

He advised Syrians to tighten the noose on JAN and boycott it completely, saying “after everything is over”, it will turn to kill them inside their homes.

“We are confident the Iraqi experience is sufficient for all people to learn the lesson of al-Qaeda and the terror it unleashed in past years,” he said.

According to al-Malhamy, JAN’s spread in Syria would not only threaten security in the country, but in the region as a whole.

He called on the Free Syrian Army to “assume responsibility for protecting Syria against them, and preventing them from hijacking the revolution from the people”.

‘ACT SWIFTLY TO REJECT JAN’

Meanwhile, Col. Mohammed al-Rubaie, deputy commander of border guard forces along the Iraqi-Syrian border, said the “majority of the terrorists involved in killing hundreds of Iraqis fled to Syria after security forces killed or cornered many of their fellow criminals”.

They formed JAN “after they found in the troubled situation in Syria a suitable environment for establishing an al-Qaeda branch, as happened in Iraq the first time”, he said.

He said the blood of their Iraqi victims — children, women and the elderly — has not dried yet.

“Soon you will be like them unless you act swiftly to eradicate [JAN members] by boycotting and rejecting them. At the present moment, it is possible to deal with them and wipe them out as a social disease, but if they spread and expand more than they have so far, it will become very difficult,” he added.

Sheikh Ahmed Abu Reesha, head of the anti-al-Qaeda Iraqi Sahwa Council, also appealed to “all mothers and fathers in all Syrian cities to prevent your sons, particularly teenagers and enthusiastic youth, from joining those who promote the terrorist project JAN — the ones with beards, black banners and resonant slogans”.

He said now JAN members are destroying statues and the arts, and “afterwards they will move to destroy people by way of killings, arsons and torture, if the people do not side with them.”

He said that by then, “all the sacrifices of the Syrian people will have gone in vain”.

‘AL-QAEDA CANNOT BE A REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AGAINST PERSECUTION’

Fouad Ali, an expert on al-Qaeda in Iraq and member of the security committee at Anbar provincial headquarters, told Mawtani “al-Qaeda cannot in any way be a revolutionary movement against persecution”.

It cannot be “because it is an ideology based on calling others apostates, and opposing the principles of democracy and freedom. It is presently fighting in Syria not to establish a free, pluralistic, democratic system, but rather to find an alternative to [being in] Iraq, after security forces triumphed over it”, he said.

Ali said JAN now resembles to a large extent the Tawhid wal Jihad group when it came to Iraq, “which soon enough revealed its name as al-Qaeda”.

“JAN will reveal its identity openly under the name of al-Qaeda in Bilad al-Sham, but we hope and wish the Syrians do not fall into the trap as Iraqis did in the past,” he said.

Hard Evidence on Turkish Government Involvement in Stealing hundreds of Syrian Plants: Shehabi

DAMASCUS,ST) Chairman of the  Federation of the Syrian Chambers of Industry Fares Shehabi stressed that Aleppo Chamber of Industry has all the evidence on the involvement of the Turkish government   in stealing production lines and machines of  hundreds of different laboratories from  the city of Aleppo and in smuggling them into the  Turkish territory,  in clear violation of international laws.

 

In a statement to SANA, al-Shehabi indicated that terrorists  looting of factories and laboratories in Aleppo aimed at the destruction of the Syrian economy,  damaging the Syrian industry  which competes the Turkish products and making a rift between the national  business and the government in Syria, , adding that  industrialists in Aleppo accuse the Turkish government of deliberate  terrorism and criminality against the Syrian industry and demanding the formation of a neutral international commission to investigate facts about stealing and looting  factories in Aleppo, at the full knowledge of the Turkish government.

He demanded  the current Turkish government to compensate for the damages inflicted upon Aleppo industry, by facilitating the transit of terrorists, who stole the Syrian  factories ‘s machinery and production lines and smuggled them across the border from Syria   into Turkey.

” There are no accurate estimates for  industrialists on  total losses in Syria by armed terrorist groups because of the inability to have  access to certain plants,” he said,  explaining that terrorists stole about 1,000 factories  in the city  of  Aleppo.

He continued  that initial estimates of the damage inflicted on Aleppo ‘s industrial plants caused by terrorist acts exceed  200 billion  Syrian Pounds, indicating that “this sum does not include the destruction of buildings and  ancient markets , nor  the growing accumulated losses borne on a  daily basis on industrialists.

He pointed  the importance of eliminating terrorists in all areas of Aleppo and the restoration of  security and safety  so as industrialists could return to their factories to take part in the  relief, reconstruction and reconciliation efforts in the country.

” In a time record,  industrialists will be able to rebuild  factories , much better than before,” he stressed.

He  called more efforts to be exerted as to secure fuel oil  for   remaining factories  to continue  working to meet the increasing demand for  the local market under the current circumstances.

” These terrorist acts are but  a crime against the Syrians, targeting  everyone  in livelihood , housing and daily  needs, including the traders and industrialists  .” he emphasized.

T. Fateh

Sec. Kerry discusses Iran, Syria in meeting with Saudi foreign minister

[It is highly significant that the Fat Pig of Qatar was not invited to this soiree.  It is not that Qatar has suddenly become the Black Sheep of Arabia, but that conspiracies must keep up appearances.  Somebody has to take the fall when this latest terrorist operation blows-up in the CIA’s face, and all of its terror operations eventually do just that.  The contradiction between what they do and what they say always arises to mess-up their super-spy wet dreams. 

Qatar is openly (almost) and bravely picking-up the “Al-CIA-da” ball in nearly all ongoing Islamist plots.  From Syria to Mali, Qatar sponsors the local “al-Qaeda,” meaning the criminal gangs and the CIA private contractors, who always dress like the local loonies, so that they cannot tell the spy from the real religious fanatic, by “fanatic,” I mean Wahhabi.  The top Wahhabi at this meeting with Kerry claimed that Saudi Arabia had a “moral duty” to stop the “slaughter” in Syria.  He never mentioned that the so-called Royal Kingdon was and is the primary sponsor of all of the real terrorists in Syria.   Now they want credit for turning-off the terror tap in Syria, just as they originally turned it on.  Future historians will find the hypocrisy of our generation to be beyond belief.  They will find it impossible to believe that anyone could have been as hypocritical as those sell-outs to the human race, who were in bed with the Saudis.]

 

Kerry discusses Iran, Syria in meeting with Saudi foreign minister

Mar. 4, 2013: Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah, second from right, is greeted as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, second from left, speaks with an advisor. (AP)

 

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday the Syrian government is receiving support from multiple nations including Iran and warned the window of opportunity for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear problem “cannot by definition remain open indefinitely.”

Kerry, who was meeting in Riyadh with the foreign ministers of Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman as well as the Saudi crown prince and foreign minister, added that “there is time to resolve this issue providing the Iranians are prepared to engage seriously” on proposals to defuse it.

“But talks will not go on for the sake of talks and talks cannot become an instrument for delay that will make the situation more dangerous,” he said. Kerry said he and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal “discussed our shared determination to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

Saud said that Saudi Arabia “supports the efforts to resolve the crisis diplomatically in order to alleviate all doubts surrounding the program.”

“Therefore, we hope that the negotiations will result in putting an end to this problem rather than containing it,” he said, “taking into account that the clock is ticking and negotiations cannot go on forever.”

In addition to Iran, Kerry, who is on his first overseas trip as secretary of state after succeeding Hillary Clinton, also held discussions about the situation in violence-torn Syria.

Kerry said that unfortunately the “bad actors” in Syria are receiving support from Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.

“The United States will continue to work with our friends to empower the Syrian opposition to hopefully be able to bring about a peaceful resolution, but if not, to increase pressure on Assad,” he said. The United States last week agreed to increase non-lethal aid to Syrian opposition groups.

Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf states are believed to be involved in shipping weapons to Syrian rebels, who have yet to receive lethal aid from the West.

“The Kingdom stressed the importance of enabling the Syrian people to exercise its legitimate right to defend itself against the regime’s killing regime,” Saud said.

Saud said that Syrian President Assad has lost all authority, saying he has never heard of a regime that would use missiles against innocent women and children in cities.

“Saudi Arabia will do everything within its capacity, and we do believe that what is happening in Syria is a slaughter,” he said, “… and we can’t bring ourselves to remain quiet. Morally we have a duty.”

Kerry also was to meet in Riyadh with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is visiting the Saudi capital.

Kerry’s working lunch with Abbas was coming two weeks before the secretary is to accompany President Obama to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan to explore ways of restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Kerry travels next to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar before returning to Washington Wednesday.

Fox News’ James Rosen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Fat Pig of Qatar the Financier and Catalyst Behind the Union of Islamists Fighting for African Oil and Gas

Duck reveals: Dollars to finance the Qatar Islamic khalifa borders of Algeria

Alilat

This is information that does not arrange the already strained relations between Algeria and the emirate of Qatar. The French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reported in its edition of Wednesday, June 6 that the emir of Qatar has given financial support to armed movements that took control of northern Mali. Among these groups were the dollars are the Qatari Mujao which is holding seven Algerian diplomats since April 5.

---

Under the title “‘Our friend from Qatar’ funds Islamist Mali” (the original Chained Duck article seems to be gone, but this copy still exists) Chained Duck indicates that the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM), which reports to the Chief of Staff of the French armies, gathered information that “the insurgent’s MNLA (independence and laity), movements Ansar Dine, AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) and Mujao (Jihad in West Africa) received assistance dollars of Qatar. ‘

The satirical newspaper did not specify the amounts of aid Qatari, nor the mode of its allocation. However, he argues that the French authorities are aware of the actions of Qataris in this part of northern Mali that shares 1300 km border with Algeria.

In short: the emirs of Qatar fund armed Islamist movements that spread terror in Algeria and the Sahel holding hostages Algerian and proclaimed a khalifa Islamic Algerian border.

Oil Sahel

But there’s more. Also according to the Duck, the emirate of Qatar has designs on the riches of the basement of the Sahel. “Negotiations are already underway with discrete Total”, the French oil giant to exploit future oil’s vast African region.

The MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) and Ansar Dine who received these grants took control of northern Mali in favor of a coup that toppled 22 March 2012 the regime of President of Mali Amadou Toumani Touré.

Both movements had announced their merger Saturday, May 27 and declared a “Islamic State” in the region. However, the MNLA was quick to deny this commitment and to dissociate themselves from this initiative. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, led since 2004 by the Algerian Droukdel, who leads the war in Algeria is particularly present in Kabylia and in the vast territories of the Sahel desert.

As for Mujoa (Movement for the uniqueness and jihad in West Africa), an AQIM dissidence, it holds seven Algerian diplomats kidnapped on April 5 and the Algerian authorities claimed 15 million against their release and threat of terrorist actions in case of refusal to meet their demands.

Bear garden

In short, a real bear garden that could turn the Sahel into a new Afghanistan.

According Chained Duck, the French Minister of Defence, Jean-Yves Le Drian, “knows no bad news arrived from sub-Saharan Africa. And no involvement, our friend from Qatar ‘formula of an officer of the General Staff in the’ capture ‘of northern Mali by several jihadist movements. ”

“Earlier this year, writes the weekly notes several of the DGSE alerted the Elysée on international activities, if we may say so, the Emirate of Qatar. And without really insist, requires diplomacy, the boss of this tiny State, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Sarko has always treated as a friend and ally. The officers say their DRM, the generosity of Qatar is unparalleled and he has not merely help financially, sometimes delivering weapons, revolutionary Tunisia, Egypt or Libya. ‘

Tensions between Algiers and Doha

Precisely, relations between Algeria and Qatar have cooled since the fall of dictatorships in 2011 in Tunis, Cairo and Tripoli. Algerians taste and very little financial aid, military and diplomatic support provided by the Qataris to these three countries of North Africa and the influence made by the emirate within the Arab League.

This information is by using a Qatari armed Islamist movements have gained a foothold in northern Mali and their interest in the oil of the Sahel are not likely to ease tensions between Algiers and Doha.

Lire l’article original : Duck reveals: Dollars to finance the Qatar Islamic khalifa borders of Algeria | DNA – Latest News from Algeria

The Oft-Predicted Fickle Syrian ‘Tipping Point’ Has Tipped–But the Tilt Is In the Other Direction

The Oft-Predicted Fickle Syrian ‘Tipping Point’ Has Tipped

by FRANKLIN LAMB
Damuscus
Graphics by Alex

Damascus — This observer lost count more than a year ago of the sheer number of predictions by analysts and lobbyists that the “tipping point” signaling the Assad government’s collapse was a sure thing and would happen any time now. “It’s just a matter of days, not weeks” President Obama declared back in 2011.

Based on personal observations and interviews with a fair number of informed people who actually live in Syria, as opposed to the Zionist think tank armchair “expert” variety, this observer concedes that prognosticators are finally right. In point of fact, I have concluded over the past few months that the long elusive “tipping point” in Syria has indeed been reached and the momentum has shifted decisively in this embattled.

But not the tipping point that the rebel promoters were hoping for, including the NATO countries.

Rather, the momentum here has tipped in favor of the current regime due to its capacity to maintain a slowly rising level of popular support, and good relations with key foreign supporters during the current run up to next year’s Presidential election. Then, it will be up to the Syrian voters to decide who stays, goes, and/or joins in their next government.

I base my tentative conclusions, on among others, the following factors.

The Syrian population here is so tired, so exhausted and beaten down, the killing has gone on for so long, and the Syrian people, like Iranians and others I have observed, appear to exhibit a distinctly noticeable, profound and almost moral and religious bond with their countrymen and they personally feel acutely their country’s suffering. Such that people on the streets are very shocked and incredulous at what is going on and many in fact feel less strongly about either side in the conflict and just want the slaughter to end and for life to return to ‘normal’ even without deep revolutionary-across the board-changes for now.

Two days ago mortars hit the campus of Damascus University. By the grace of God there were no casualties-this time. But students report that on average about six mortars or explosive devices hit Damascus every week. While unreported in the media, the attack on Damascus University where the student body has pretty much stayed on the sidelines during the current crisis, is an example of the nerve shattering recognition here that rebels can more or less fire mortars or rockets at will into Damascus, from miles away. And these terrorist attacks are very difficult to stop and constitute an ever present danger for Damascenes. The relatively frequently used small US M252 81mm mortar that can be carried in a deep pocket or under a shirt when strapped, has a bit more than a one mile range (1609 meters). Larger ones can travel several miles when set at between 45 and 85 degrees to the ground according to military sources.

Also, according to students, about five days ago the Tishereen War Panorama Museum was hit with four or five rebel projectiles. The military museum was built to celebrate the October 1973 Yom Kippur War (“Tishreen” means “October” in Arabic), and this main tourist attraction is only two miles northeast of the Old City in Damascus.

One also experiences here an attitude that the Assad government is showing signs of learning some serious lessons about the direction that Syria must move in. While number estimates are difficult, increasing number of Syrians appears to believe that the current regime is the best solution — at least for now. For now, meaning, until next year’s election.

One also notices in Syria these days that people appear (maybe influenced a bit by the recent spring weather) somewhat more optimistic that things are getting “better” — warmer weather means less need for mazot (heating oil), people are car-pooling more to decrease dependence on limited benzene, some flour, still often difficult to find due to rebel burning fields, theft from supply warehouses and Turkish-condoned destruction of a majority of 
manufacturing enterprises in Aleppo, is appearing to a degree, brought in from bordering countries. Many of the shortages — partly caused by the US-led sanctions — are for now somehow less severe due to the ingenuity of the Syrian people and the government too has been employing some shrewd countermeasures.

This observer along with others has been critical of the Lebanese government for not doing more for the Syrian and Palestinian refugees forced into their country by the current crisis. While still a serious problem, there has finally developed a life-line of sorts operating from Lebanon into Syria. More consumer goods now move officially from the Masnaa Syrian-Lebanese border crossing where vehicles are checked, and much more food stuffs and essential goods arrive into Syria via many other routes — smuggling routes established between the two countries when the French created Lebanon back in 1943.

From Chtoura to Majdal and Anjar, one comes across lines of massive fuel tankers as well as trucks loaded with Bekaa valley vegetables like onions, potatoes, carrots, squash, radishes, wheat, barley, lentil, beets, zucchini,
cabbage, cauliflower and beans of different varieties. According to my favorite driver, Ahmad, government’s regulations require that these large vehicles line up until 4 p.m. so as not to jam the narrow, potholed and frankly dangerous cliff-hanging roads.

Even Ahmad has become involved in the import business. No longer does he transport up to five passengers. Only me who rides “shotgun.” This is because he fills the trunk of his taxi and the back seat with about a dozen tanks of pressurized cooking gas. Ahmad pays $16 per filled tank in Lebanon and sells them in Syria for $50 each. I am not sure why he needs me to ride with him and why he gives me such a great price, but having an American on board seems to help in some way with some of the checkpoints. Maybe the novelty distracts the soldiers somehow from his cargo and they decide to cut him some slack.

For about a decade, starting at about age seven, this observer would almost never miss a Saturday matinee at the Victory theater in Milwaukie, Oregon. I have known since that time that riding shotgun, whether on a stage coach or covered wagon, was not the best seat because you might catch an arrow from “wild Injuns on the warpath” or a bullet from road bandits.

Things have not changed so much. Riding shotgun from Beirut to Damascus with a dozen tanks of pressurized gas invites instant immolation from a snipers bullet fired from some hill overlooking the main highway. Trying to
make a joke, my driver reminds me from time to time that the US M24 specially adapted Remington Model 700 sniper rifle, some of which are in the hands of rebels around here, has a supposed range of more than two miles
and one bullet into one tank and it’s all over for the both of us.

More seriously, regular views are expressed in Syria about the support levels for the current regime vs. support for the rebels. Admittedly based on nothing very scientific, this observer tends to agree with what he has been

hearing from a cross section of the local population that the regime has the fairly strong backing of around 30% of the population. Less than half of that for the rebels. Syrian minorities, including Christians, Shi’a and Alawites,
among others, cast with the regime because they are afraid of the Wahabist/Salafist jihadi types and the breaking up of their country.

One teenager who I asked why she supports the current regime explained that the Assad regime is doing their best and despite the rising prices that her parents chronically complain about she is grateful that, “despite all the rising prices the government has not allowed the cost of telephone service to increase so I can chat with my friends just like before!” The kid has a point because during this crisis and all the rumors ricocheting around people are
staying in contact with loved ones more than ever it seems.

A bit more than 50% do not seem to express firm support for either side and just want the killing to stop and for some sort of normalcy to return, while at the same time expressing an opinion something like, “how did our country get into this mess. Let the foreigners go home and we can deal with our problems ourselves.” Tragically, this plea does not appear to be acted on anytime soon in Washington DC, Paris, London or Brussels, given the new
pledges this week of more “non-lethal” aid to the rebel factions.

If ever there were meaning- and logic-destroying non-sequiturs as in the past few days it is hard to remember when. Faced with the tipping point moving away from the foreign forces and toward the Syrian government and majority population, the “Friends of Syria” has stretched beyond recognition the meaning of ordinary phrases like “defensive APC’s,” “non-lethal devices to help pinpoint the locations of the Syrian Arab Army troops,” “weapons to protect the civilian population,” as well as “humanitarian sanctions” that supposedly but don’t exempt food and medicines. In fact all of the new Friends of Syria “breakthrough assistance” targets Syria’s civilian population and all are lethal given the uses to which they are put.

History instructs us that as a result of American wars, from Vietnam to the Middle East — that it is the civilian population who will pay the price of the Obama administration’s just announced “humanitarian assistance” to
selected groups in Syria. This history is well known here by Syrians who understand well the strange paradox of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement this week of Washington’s desire to speed up the political process aimed at ending the crisis in Syria by backing the armed Wahabist/Salafist jihadi groups in the country.

This week’s US and European decisions to back Syria’s rebels with direct aid will only lead to more bloodshed and encourage “terrorism” in the war-torn country, according to two Sheiks from Syria’s largest tribe who held court recently during tea in the lobby of the Dama Rose Hotel here.

What Washington fears, according to the same interlocutor from the Russian embassy who spoke with this observer for nearly two hours, is the confirmation that the Syrian opposition is ready to immediately enter into negotiations with the Syrian government without preconditions and that President Assad’s departure or even his future status will not be part of the process. The Russians’ belief that the rebels are finally coming around to a more realistic approach is gaining support from the population here as well as military and political players. This is more than anathema to Washington and its allies.

fplamb@gmail.com

The Return of Empires, Part 3

The Return of Empires (III)

By Dmitry MININ (Russia)

Part I

Part II

«Smart power» in the service of the American empire

The dissociation of the United States from a number of international problems by shifting these problems onto allies and delegating authority to them, a result of the United States’ «imperial overheating», is based on the currently popular concept of «smart power», the very emergence of which suggests that America’s former sources of power have been exhausted… The time when America’s leadership went unquestioned has passed. Nowadays, maintaining leadership demands considerable intellectual and political efforts from the rulers of the American empire.

At the official level, the name of this concept was first heard in a speech given by Hillary Clinton at the Senate on 13 January 2009 before she confirmed her candidacy for the post of Secretary of State. Hillary Clinton called for the use of «smart power» in order to maintain America’s leadership in the world, referring to the full range of tools at America’s disposal – «diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural – picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation».

The idea of «smart power» is a development of the «soft power» concept formulated in 1990 by Harvard professor and politician Joseph Nye, who successfully served as chairman of the National Intelligence Council and was a candidate for National Security Advisor in the team of John Kerry, who went on to lose in the presidential elections. Their closeness suggests that the new Secretary of State is making use of his former colleague’s suggestions with much greater enthusiasm than Hillary Clinton.

In 2004, Nye’s ideas were finalised in his book «Soft Power». Nye’s principal idea is that the United States ought to achieve its stated objectives in the international arena through «engagement» rather than «coercion». Hence the need to use social and cultural values as tools of foreign policy. The dominant power should be attractive in everything it does and offer its own example of development guidelines to others. The theory was well received in Washington and has been actively used in some places, for example in the «colour revolutions» and during the «Arab Spring», although it has since been shown as inadequate since its effect is prolonged and not always obvious. In addition, nobody was prepared to give up «hard power» based on force.

Whereupon Nye suggested combining both concepts within a universal «smart power». In 2006, the renowned research centre CSIS organised the Bipartisan Commission on Smart Power, headed by Joseph Nye and «neocon» Richard Armitage. In 2007, the Commission presented a paper entitled “A Smarter, More Secure America”, which laid out the principles for reorganising world order whilst preserving America’s power.

The concept of «smart power» gave the theory of «soft power» some strategic direction. Its leitmotif was the need for a balanced combination of the resources of both types of power, «soft» and «hard». Of course, everybody already understood what the «carrot and stick» policy is all about. The achievement of modern theoreticians has been the detailed elaboration and operationalisation of ideas that are, by and large, clear to everybody. The concept of «smart power» is not just a synthesis of soft and hard power (combining public diplomacy mechanisms with military interventions, for example), but a new philosophy of interrelations with other powers. Its bottom line is that America’s leadership position should not be realised through the single-handed resolution of international problems, but through the organisation of joint actions. Which, for example, is how America operated during the Libyan war; experts called this «leadership from behind».

«America must learn to do things that others want and cannot do themselves, and to do so in a cooperative fashion», the document reads. In the new approaches, it is also possible to detect a division of the leadership concept into two elements – spacial (control over territories) and functional (superiority in addressing problems on a global scale). The US is prepared to give up part of its spatial leadership for the sake of preserving its functional leadership in all key issues of international life.

The concept of «smart power» allows for the fact that power resources are being redistributed in the modern world and new centres of power are emerging. A complex, multi-tiered cobweb of actors is replacing the pyramidal world order with a hierarchical structure. The hierarchy between them is being preserved, just not as rigidly formalised as before. The one proving to be the most influential in this world is the one who is the most involved in widespread and interlinking networks. As another of the creators of the «smart power» concept, Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, noted, «The state with the most connections will be the central player, able to set the global agenda, and unlock innovation and sustainable growth».  Slaughter is the one responsible for the idea of creating «a league of democracies», a kind of super-empire on federalist principles whose members should manage the world through joint efforts. Under Bill Clinton, and on the initiative of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, an alliance like this was even established, but was not developed any further for a number of reasons, including the fact that at that time, the US was not seriously ready to share its authority to manage the world, even with its closest allies. Time has inexorably brought them back to this problem.

In line with the concept of «smart power», in 2010 Barack Obama announced the United States’ commitment to the multilateral (read: in partnership with their closest allies and satellites) resolution of all world problems and international conflicts in their newly outlined National Security Strategy. The document states that, «…we must recognize that no one nation – no matter how powerful – can meet global challenges alone». In addition, their willingness to share the burden of maintaining world order was not postulated as a way to democratise international relations, but as a method to preserve «America’s leadership» in the world under new conditions, «based upon mutual interests and mutual respect», obviously. Such «engagement» is expected to begin with their «closest friends and allies – from Europe to Asia; from North America to the Middle East», among which were named Great Britain, France and Germany.

An active transition to the adoption of this policy was clearly timed to coincide with the beginning of the president’s second mandate. In this respect, US Vice-President Joseph Biden’s speech at the International Security Conference held in Munich in February 2013 is revealing. Biden confirmed that the US was switching its attention to the Asia-Pacific Region, having called upon their European allies to be more active in their zone of responsibility «with the unfailing support of the USA». According to Biden’s assurances, «Europe remains the cornerstone and catalyst for America’s engagement with the world». Biden also spoke of the United States’ support for democratic states in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. Having outlined the claims to America’s newly-established spheres of influence in this way, Biden condemned the notion itself, as usual, but in a rather remarkable way. He declared that America will not recognise the right of any state to have «a sphere of influence», linking this to the non-recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. And this means that the USA is not going to concede its own positions in the Caucasus alongside Caspian Oil and will continue to regard the post-Soviet world as a geopolitical space, the consolidation of which will not be tolerated.

In Europe, Biden’s speech was seen as a bid to redistribute its spheres of influence. The German newspaper Die Welt wrote: «Europeans are anticipating that, in the future, nothing will remain as it is now. Either with NATO or without this organisation, Washington is no longer able to secure them against the consequences of the weakening of their leadership role and their disorientation. The new world order is worsening the disease identified as «imperial overstretch». At the same time, a new balance is taking shape in the Pacific Region, and without its naval, air force and cyber power, it will be difficult for America to oppose the Chinese Middle Kingdom». According to Die Welt, it has fallen to Joseph Biden to «take Europeans on a journey towards the Pacific Ocean and warn them that America is no longer able, and no longer wants, to carry the burden of maintaining world order alone».

The policy of delegating authority to allies or vassals was discernible in Barack Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress on 12 February, in which he set forth his policy priorities for a second term. Having placed the main emphasis on resolving pressing social and economic problems being faced by America, the President reported that over the next year, 34,000 American servicemen will return home from Afghanistan. «This drawdown will continue and by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over», Obama said. From the President’s address it follows that, from now on, America will not wage war on terrorists abroad: «to meet this threat, we don’t need to send tens of thousands of our sons and daughters abroad or occupy other nations. Instead, we’ll need to help countries like Yemen, and Libya, and Somalia provide for their own security, and help allies who take the fight to terrorists, as we have in Mali».

And so a formula has been found: «as in Mali»! In other words, from now on America will work towards others fighting for their interests, like the «conqueror of Timbuktu», François Hollande, while they themselves will prefer to exercise «leadership from behind».

To be continued…

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

The Return of Empires, Part 1

The Return of Empires (I)

By Dmitry MININ (Russia)

 Part I , Part II  

«Larger spaces» versus chaos in international relations?

The recent expeditions of the French in Africa clearly smack less of neoimperialism than they do neocolonialism, and have prompted many to wonder whether the events are the start of a new cycle of world politics in which an outgoing unipolarity is perhaps being replaced by a forthcoming multipolarity not hailed by everyone, or something different, something new or maybe a repeat of history, but in new packaging? Maybe something that would allow, for example, the United States «to leave without actually leaving», to continue implementing their global plans in a more complex system of interstate relations? If so, then the imperial projects and vassal relations of by-gone eras that had seemingly vanished forever will turn out to be much in demand…

One of the first instances of this trend was noted and identified by Jürgen Habermas, a well-known German philosopher, at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first mandate. He observed, for example, that the «realistic» school of international relations that had restored its influence in Washington after Bush differed from the «neocons» not so much in its aims to preserve America’s global hegemony, as the way these aims would be realised. According to Habermas, the desired world order of this school is largely in response to Carl Schmitt’s theory of larger space (Großraumtheorie). Schmitt thought of «larger spaces» as the spheres of influence of dominant imperial powers and their «strong ideas».

One could say that America was still at a crossroads during Obama’s first mandate, leading rearguard actions to preserve its global leadership, while at the same time becoming increasingly aware of the inefficiency and onerousness of its attempts, especially amid the global financial crisis. From the beginning of his second term in office, however, Obama is starting to decisively reformat the world. The problem being faced by Washington is not only that maintaining its unipolarity is becoming impossible, but that multipolarity is undesirable. Washington is already uncomfortable with the fact that while preserving the existing order, China will eventually arrive at the point of global hegemony and could behave exactly as America itself is doing. As Habermas shrewdly observed: «It is more in America’s own interests to attempt today to bind tomorrow’s global powers to the kind of international order that no longer needs a superpower».

Meanwhile, more and more research is appearing in the West showing that a natural rebirth process of the imperial policies of a number of former parent states has begun in reaction to the devolution of America as global leader and the growing chaos of global politics, and often not in the direction that America would find favourable. The return of empires is described metaphorically in the Italian geopolitical magazine Limes: «Empires will never die so long as their roots are not dug up or covered with salt. Their spirit lives on in many generations of descendants and ascendants, as well as subordinate nations. They are ready to rise again at the first available opportunity, the moment geopolitical pressure on them begins to wane and the systems that have been declared immortal turn out to be brittle and dilapidated». Unable to withstand this «hurricane», the White House, according to proposed recommendations, should be at the head of this process and send it in the «necessary direction». It is advisable to contrast the natural formation of new empires with the organised construction of the kind of empires that America would be able to act jointly with, whilst as far as possible slowing down the creation of potentially hostile formations.

Thus in the newspaper National Interest, Dov Zakheim, former undersecretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the US Department of Defense, points to «the growing triumphalism of several empires manqué». According to Zakheim, «In East Asia, China is increasingly flexing its political, economic and military muscles as a commanding power to which others must perform the kowtow ritual of subservience. In the Middle East and Central Asia, Turkey is exploiting its newfound economic and political prowess to extend its influence over the many states that once constituted the Ottoman Empire. And Russia is drawing upon the power and influence it derives from its energy resources to pursue a neo-czarist policy in Europe and in the outlying regions of the old Russian Empire. Nor should one overlook the influence in South Asia of India, whose economy dwarfs that of its neighbors and where the Moghuls once were the dominant force, and Brazil’s inheritance of the Portuguese Empire’s mantle in Africa, facilitated by its own increasing economic clout. The imperial legacies of these states have provided impetus to their nations to cut a greater figure not only within their regions but also on the world stage. When visiting these countries or meeting with their elites, one senses a growing sense that they are reverting to their traditional roles as major powers».

Most worrying to Zakheim, however, is that «all believe that the United States, and even more so Europe, no longer should monopolize decision making for the international community. They reject the post-World War II settlement as outdated and will not automatically accept American leadership on any given issue. Washington policy makers, currently obsessed with that other imperial legatee, Iran, would do well to recognize that there is more to these states than impressive economic growth, military expansion and political influence. Americans are known for their lack of historical sensitivity. They will need all the sensitivity they can muster in order to deal successfully with states whose claim to a greater role on the world stage is motivated as much by past glory as by present success».  It is not difficult to see that Zakheim’s misgivings are akin to those expressed in Samuel Huntington’s prophecies regarding a future «clash of civilizations».

One of the main dilemmas being faced by the United States’ imperial policy at the present moment, according to the German academic Herfried Münkler and expressed in his book «Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States», is the discrepancy between recognising the irrelevance of further expansion and the fear that this will be perceived by others as a sign of weakness. «It is harder to put down an imperialist, civilizing, humanitarian, value-expanding mission by which an empire has defined itself, without being seen – by those within the empire as well as by others – as in decline». Another peculiarity of America, as defined by Münkler, is that America is, by nature, an «empire in a hurry», a consequence of its short four-year election cycle. «Probably, Washington’s growing tendency in recent years to use the military for problem-solving also has something to do with the time pressure built into democratic mechanisms. Military solutions offer themselves with a suggestion of speed and finality, so that an «empire in a hurry» may grasp at them more often than would be sensible or advisable».

Academics also believe distinct traces of imperial ambition are evident in the policies of the European Union. In an article entitled “The Imperial Re-Bordering of Europe: the case of the European Neighbourhood Policy” (Cambridge Review of International Affairs, June, 2012), it has been pointed out, for example, that the European Neighbourhood Policy could be interpreted as a declaration of the European Union’s imperial intentions. In particular, the fact that the EU’s neighbouring countries would be more like its subordinate subjects than equal partners, according to the plans for integrated relations laid out in the policy, could also be part of its imperial strategies. In keeping with the strategies of a multicultural empire, the European Union is using the European Neighbourhood Policy to create new borders and division lines between its neighbours following the example of the Balkans. According to the article’s author, the imperial policy of transforming borders being carried out by the European Union uses less noticeable, but more importunate instruments of control based on voluntary subordination and the acceptance of imposed regulations.

And so the construction of «larger spaces» in global politics has begun. There is undoubtedly no point in waiting for the borders of these new/old empires to be formalised or officially announced. After all, the point here is not their direct reinstatement with all the accompanying paraphernalia (that would look like a farce), but the return to an appropriate modus operandi for projecting the interests of former parent states. The future global hierarchy which is emerging at the behest of Washington will, in every way possible, avoid identifying itself with the colonial empires of former times, for fear of stirring up the memories of nations. And not just the former colonies who were subjected to ruthless exploitation, but the imperial capitals themselves, whose inhabitants are not so keen on saddling themselves with a burden they have already shaken off and who do not want to see the arrival of new and overwhelming streams of migrants from these territories. Neither is there any point waiting for conventions or agreements similar to the capitulation regimes or acts of vassalage, since modern legal bondage can be far stronger evidence of the dependence of former times. The neoimperialist renaissance of Western powers is easier to follow when it comes to the logic behind their ideas and actions, if one does not attach too much importance to the «high moral standards» they hide behind.

 To be continued…

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Counter-Terrorism As An Excuse for Everything Else

[The following article from Russia Today claims to highlight "new thinking" in the effort to counter terrorism, but it is just another Establishment excuse for NOT doing anything to end the flow of drugs, guns, or terrorism.  NEW THINKING on this compound issue would immediately insist that the Establishment end its sponsorship of all of those things.  Recent revelations about drug money serving as a "safety valve" for bankrupt corporations and economies (SEE:  Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor) confirm the direct Establishment connection to the drug "pipelines." These drug pipelines transport contraband at maximum capacity, twenty-four hours a day, sending drugs, guns and militants/terrorists throughout the world .  It was state suppliers who put powerful weapons like automatic weapons and grenade launchers into the hands of terrorists and other criminals (Fast and Furious).  In the Mexican drug war, it was America's selective drug war policies which elevated the Sinaloa Cartel over the rest (SEE:  US Government Informant Helped Sinaloa Narcos Stay Out of Jail). 

Finally, and most vital to any real understanding of "international terrorism," is the link between governments and terrorists.  You can get a glimpse of all of these elements in the reports on Saudis and Qataris buying guns from the Bosnian and Croatian "al-CIA-da"-linked terrorists empowered by the West (SEE: Saudi Arabia Supplies Syrian Militants with Croatian Arms: Report), shipping Bosnian and Croatian heavy weapons through their Albanian "al-CIA-da" drug pipeline, to their Libyan "al-CIA-da" terrorists, who have been relocated to Syria, to overthrow the government there for the Americans and Saudis. 

If it was not for state-sponsorship, then there would be no terrorism of any magnitude today.  If it was not for America and Arab sponsorship of Sunni terrorism in the world then there would be no terrorists to fight.]

New thinking to tackle new terrorism

Dr Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Deputy foreign minister (2005-2011).

AFP Photo / Al-Andalus / TV grab

Terrorism and violent extremism are very dangerous trends which are spreading under slogans of reformed democracy, and calls for street protest.

Lately there has been a growing destructive wave of radicalism, which provoked tensions in various regions and created favourable conditions for bringing new adherents, especially young people, into the movement.

Recent events show that the threat of terrorism has not diminished but has acquired a new dimension and gravity. It is adapting to new realities, spreading to regions previously untouched. Terrorism has crossed all borders, it is fast-arming, and it develops new funding sources. Al-Qaida and the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region continue to generate terrorist threats, with a heavy reliance on the drugs trade. Terrorists have strong connections to organized crime, including in West Africa and the Sahel region.

This is a threat to international peace and security which is hard to predict and address. Transnational cooperation is crucial if this threat is to be dealt with effectively. Much has been done to create the effective global response system, which includes a solid treaty base.

In June 2012 the UN General Assembly recommitted the international community to the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, thus strengthening the resolve to support victims of terrorism everywhere and to adopt a comprehensive anti-terrorism approach based on respect for human rights and the rule of law. No counter-terrorism policy could be effective without addressing conditions that are terrorism’s breeding grounds. Development and security were critically linked.

Three conferences on the subject of terrorism will be held in the near future. In April, the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF) Working Group on human rights while countering terrorism, a new project on human rights training for counter-terrorism law enforcement officials, would hold its first conference in Amman, Jordan. In two weeks, the CTIFT United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre would hold an International Conference on National and Regional Counter-Terrorism Strategies, in Bogota, Colombia. And this summer, the CTITF and the Swiss Government would host a conference of counter-terrorism focal points aimed at addressing conditions conducive to terrorism’s spread. States are in need of capacity-building to respond to the financing of terrorism. The Counter-Terrorism Committee’s special meeting on that subject last November, chaired by India’s Permanent Representative, was an important step.

We attach huge importance to the work of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, the “1267″ and “1988″ Committees on, respectively, Al-Qaida and the Taliban. It is also critical to maintain a focus on sanctions and to prevent nuclear terrorism.

The UN Security Council needs a common approach, yet it displays a lack of unity, especially in the context of the Syrian events unfolding against the backdrop of Al-Qaida-linked terrorism.

The United Nations has an essential coordinating role to play. At the same time, the level of participation must be expanded. Counter-terrorism also requires improved cooperation of law enforcement agencies. Timely and appropriate reaction remains a priority for the United Nations and its Security Council.

Humanitarian, security and politicians have to engage in an open, sustained policy dialogue to ensure that anti-terrorism measures never thwart timely delivery of aid to civilians. It is very important that all states cope with increasing humanitarian emergencies around the world, citing challenges in Mali and the broader Sahel region, where terrorism was feeding on extreme destitution and undermining development through violence, intolerance and human rights abuses.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Turkish and Qatari support for Syrian insurgents is tantamount to a declaration of war against Iraq

Amiri says Turkey, Qatar hamper peaceful Syria solution

BAGHDAD – Reuters

A man walks in front of a burning building after a Syrian Air force air strike in Ain Tarma neighbourhood of Damascus in this January 27, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

Turkish and Qatari support for Syrian insurgents is tantamount to a declaration of war against Iraq, which will suffer from the fallout of an increasingly sectarian conflict next door, an Iraqi Shi’ite politician said.

Hadi al-Amiri, transport minister and head of the formerly armed Badr Organisation, said SunniMuslim Turkey and Qatar had stymied all efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict peacefully.

Iraq is calmer than in the communal bloodletting that killed tens of thousands in 2006-2007, but the war in neighbouring Syria is straining its precarious sectarian balance.

Amiri accused Ankara and Doha, which support the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, of arming jihadi groups in Syria, where many Sunni militants are fighting, including the Qaeda-approved Nusra Front, which has links to al Qaeda in Iraq.

“Presenting money and weapons to al Qaeda (in Syria) by Qatar and Turkey is a declaration of armed action against Iraq,” Amiri told Reuters in an interview this week. “These weapons will reach Iraqi chests for sure.”

Sectarian-tinged unrest has been on the rise in Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqi Sunnis have staged protests against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government in their western stronghold of Anbar bordering Syria, and al Qaeda has urged them to take up arms.

Al Qaeda-linked militants appear to be regrouping in Anbar’s caves and valleys, with some moving into Syria to join the fight against Assad, whose Alawite sect springs from Shi’ite Islam.

Scores of Iraqi Shi’ite militants are also fighting in Syria alongside forces loyal to Assad, who is backed by Shi’ite Iran.

Amiri, whose Badr Organisation laid down its weapons in 2004, said he was against militias, criticising the recent formation of a new Shi’ite militia named al-Mukhtar Army.

Some people in Baghdad’s southwestern district of Jihad have received death threat leaflets signed by al-Mukhtar Army telling them to leave the mixed Sunni-Shi’ite neighborhood.

“Using militias again is a big mistake,” Amiri said. “If we (Shi’ites) form militia and they (Sunnis) form militia, then Iraq will be lost.”

Kurdish-Shi’ite alliance  

Turning to the Baghdad government’s dispute with autonomous Kurds over land and oil rights in the north, Amiri said this should not undermine traditional ties between Shi’ites and Kurds who were both oppressed under former strongman Saddam Hussein.

“This has nothing to do with this deep strategic alliance. Technical problems have to be fixed based on the constitution and the oil and gas law,” he declared.

Baghdad says it alone has the authority to control Iraqi oil exports, while the Kurds say their right to export from their autonomous northern region is enshrined in Iraq’s federal constitution, drawn up after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

New legislation to govern the world’s fourth largest oil reserves has been caught up for years in a struggle over how to share power between Iraq’s Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish factions, which has intensified since U.S. troops withdrew a year ago.

“Frankly, we are in the federal government and the prime minister is serious about this issue,” Amiri said. “He won’t make a concession … he is a stubborn and won’t bargain”.

Those Wacky Wahhabi Head-Choppers’ Murder of the Day–A Jordanian Drug Dealer

Saudi beheads Jordanian over drug trafficking

The Jewish Lobby Which Owns American Government Demands World War Against Iran

[Both Engel and Ros-Lehtinen have served that little Zionist shit-hole which impersonates a legitimate "state" long and well, having been co-sponsors of every resolution leading to war against Iran since the beginning of this whole mess (SEE: IRAN WAR RESOLUTION, co-sponsor ‘SELL-OUTS”).  Both Jewish enclaves in New York and Florida continue to send these traitors back to the treason nest in Washington, time after time.]

Israel instructs Obama:

“Iranian and Syrian Sanctions are Not Painful Enough!” …impose an international blockade now!

thepeople’svoice.org

Franklin Lamb
Damascus

On 3/26/2013 Iran is expected to meet with other world powers in Astana, Kazakhstan to discuss its nuclear program. Discussions that the occupiers of Palestine fervently hope will not be successful. It is toward this end that their key demand this week to the US Congress, the White House and the European Union is “to cast responsibility on the Iranians by blaming them for the talks’ failure in the clearest terms possible.”

According to the Al-Monitor of 3/19/13, Israel also demands that the countries meeting in Kazakhstan “make it perfectly clear that slogans such as ‘negotiations can’t go on forever’ are their marching orders to the White House, and they want the Kazakhstan attendees to act “so severely that the Iranians realize that they face a greater threat than just Israeli military action.” “The message must be that this time the entire west, behind Israel’s leadership, is contemplating the launch of a massive military action.” Unsaid is that “the entire West” is expected to confront Iran militarily while Tel Aviv’s forces will mop up Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Syria if necessary.

Pending the above arrangements, Israel this week is further demanding that the Obama White House issue another Executive Order dramatically ratcheting up the US-led Sanctions against Iran and Syria while it prepares for a hoped for “ game changing international economic blockade, including no-fly zones enforced by NATO.

To achieve yet another lawyer of severe sanctions, and at the behest of AIPAC, a “legislative planning” meeting was called by Congressman Eliot Engel, who represents New Yorks 17th District (the Bronx) and who is the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep.   (Florida’s 27th District), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. The session was held in a posh Georgetown restaurant and participant’s included representatives from AIPAC, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain plus half a dozen Congressional staffers.

Congressman Engel has co-sponsored virtually every anti-Arab, anti-Islam, anti-Palestinian, anti-Iran, and anti-Syrian Congressional broadside since he entered Congress a quarter-century ago. His campaign literature last fall stated: “I am a strong supporter of sanctions against those who repeatedly reject calls to behave as responsible nations. (Israel excepted-ed). I have authored or helped author numerous bills which have been signed into law to impose sanctions against rogue states including Iran and Syria.” Ros-Lehtinen and Engel led all members with AIPAC donations on the House side in last fall’s Congressional elections. They are ranked number one and two respectively as still serving career recipients of Israel-AIPAC’s “indirect” campaign donations.

Some Congressional operatives accuse Rep. Ros-Lehtinen of being a bit lazy and neglecting the bread and butter needs of her Florida constituents. But others argue that it depends on which constituents one has in mind. Her election mailings and her Congressional website claim that the Congresswoman “led all Congressional efforts tirelessly to generate votes to block what she views as anti-Israel resolutions offered at the former UN Commission on Human Rights.”

A big fan of US-led sanctions against Iran and Syria, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen introduced the Iran Freedom Support Act on January 6, 2005, which increased sanctions and expanded punitive measures against the Iranian people until the Iranian regime has dismantled its nuclear plants. Rep. Ros-Lehtinen also introduced H.R. 957, the Iran Sanctions Amendments Act, which she claims “will close loopholes in current law by holding export credit agencies, insurers, and other financial institutions accountable for their facilitation of investments in Iran and sanction them as well.” In addition, H.R. 957 seeks to impose liability on parent companies for violations of sanctions by their foreign entities. She also co-sponsored H.R 1357 which requires “U.S. government pension funds to divest from companies that do any business with any country that does business with Iran.” Her campaign literature states that, “She was proud to be the leading Republican sponsor of H.R. 1400, the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act. This bill applies and enhances a wide range of additional sanctions.”

In addition, last year Illeana introduced H.R. 394, which enlarges US Federal Court Jurisdiction regarding claims by American citizens their claims in U.S. courts. Unclear is whether she realizes that one consequence of her initiative would be to open even wider US courtroom doors to Iranian-Americans and Syria-Americans who today are being targeted and damaged by the lady’s ravenous insatiable craving for civilian targeting economic sanctions.

But Ileana and Elliot appear to be fretting.

So is Israel.

The reasons are several and they include the fact that the US-led sanctions have failed to date to achieve the accomplishments they were designed to produce. These being to cripple the Iranian economy, provoke a popular protest among the Iranian people over inflation and scarcity of food and medicines, weaken Iran as much as possible before adopting military measures against it, and, most essentially, achieving regime change to turn the clock back to those comfortable days of our submissive, compliant Shah.

Zionist prospects for Syria aren’t any better at the moment. Tel Aviv’s to intimidate the White House into invading Syria have not worked. Plan A has failed miserably according to the Israeli embassy people attending the Engel-Ros Litinen’s informal conflab. Neither did the “how about we just arm the opposition” plan that originated last year with David H. Petraeus and was supported by Hillary Clinton while being pushed by AIPAC. The goal was to create allies in Syria that the US and Israel could control if Mr. Assad was removed from power. Moreover, the White House believes that there are no good options for Obama. It has vetoed 4 recent Israeli proposals including arming the rebels and is said to believe that Syria is already dangerously awash with “unreliable arms.”

The recent shriveling of Israeli prospects for a dramatic Pentagon intervention in Syria reflect White House war weariness. And also Israel’s predilection to bomb targets itself in Syria, as it did recently to assassinate a senior Iranian officer in the Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Hassan Shateri. Contrary to the false story that Israel attacked a missiles convoy, some unassembled equipment was damaged but that was not the primary target according to Fred Hof, a former U.S. State Department official. Gen. Shateri was.

Making matters worse for Tel Aviv, the Israeli military is reportedly becoming skittish due to its deteriorating political and military status in the region and its troops have recently completed subterranean warfare drills to prepare them for a potential clash with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Jerusalem Post reported on 2/20/13. “Today during training, we simulated a northern terrain, that included what we might encounter,” Israeli Lt. Sagiv Shoker, commander of a military Reconnaissance Unit of the Engineering Corps, based at the Elikim base in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon explained. Shoker added that his units spent a week focused on how to approach Hezbollah’s alleged underground bunkers and tunnels in South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley quietly and quickly. Israeli forces commander Gantz has been complaining recently to the Israeli cabinet that Hezbollah Special Forces are gaining much valuable experience in Syria fighting highly skilled and motivated al Nusra jihadists and his troops may not be prepared to face them on the battlefield if a conflict erupts. It has been known since 2006 that Israeli soldiers “are having motivation deficits” as Gantz and others have complained.

Ordinary citizens in Iran and Syria with whom this observer met recently, including some with whom he has shared lengthy conversations while posing many questions, cannot ignore the burden of the US-led sanctions in various aspects of their lives. Nor can the Iranian or Syrian governments or their economic institutions. At the beginning of the summer of 2010, and even more so since the summer of 2012, the US-led civilian targeting sanctions imposed were significantly tightened by the Obama administration and its allies. The administration realized that the sanctions imposed on Iran until then were ineffective and understood that Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear power capability would quickly leave the US with no alternative than the acceptance of a nuclear Iran. But the administration, according to former State Department official Hof, believed that unless it took more drastic measures against Iran, Israel would launch a military strike against Iran which would likely destroy Zionist Israel- a prospect not every US official and Congressional staffer privately laments. Congressional sources report that the White House now feels that Iran has achieved deterrence and that Israel would be dangerously foolhardy to attack the country.

While Israel advocates an economic blockade of Iran and Syria, under binding rules of international and US law, economic blockades are acts of war. They are variously defined as surrounding a nation with hostile forces, economic besieging, preventing the passage in or out of a country of civilian supplies or aid. It is an act of naval warfare to block access to a country’s coastline and deny entry to all vessels and aircraft, absent a formal declaration of war and approval of the UN Security Council.

All treaties to which America is a signatory, including the UN Charter, are binding US law. Chapter VII authorizes only the Security Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, or act of aggression (and, if necessary, take military or other actions to) restore international peace and stability.” It permits a nation to use force (including a blockades) only under two conditions: when authorized by the Security Council or under Article 51 allowing the “right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member….until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security.”

As International law Professor Francis Boyle reminds us, Customary International Law recognizes economic blockades as an act of war because of the implied use of force even against third party nations in enforcing the blockade. Writes Boyle, “Blockades as acts of war have been recognized as such in the Declaration of Paris of 1856 and the Declaration of London of 1909 that delineate the international rules of warfare.” America approved these Declarations, thereby are became binding US law as well “as part of general international law and customary international law.” US presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy, called economic blockades acts of war.

So has the US Supreme Court.

In Bas v. Tingy (1800), the US Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of fighting an “undeclared war” (read extreme economic sanctions). It ruled the seizure of a French vessel (is) an act of hostility or reprisal. The Court cited Talbot v. Seaman (1801) in ruling that “specific legislative authority was required in the seizure. In Little v. Barreme (1804), the Court held that “even an order from the President could not justify or excuse an act that violated the laws and customs of warfare. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that a captain of a United States warship could be held personally liable in trespass for wrongfully seizing a neutral Danish ship, even though” presidential authority ordered it.

“The Prize Cases” (1863) is perhaps the most definitive US Supreme Court ruling on economic blockades requiring congressional authorization. The case involved President Lincoln’s ordering “a blockade of coastal states that had joined the Confederacy at the outset of the Civil War. The Court….explicitly (ruled) that an economic blockade is an act of war and is legal only if properly authorized under the Constitution.”

Iran and Syria pose no threat to the US or any peaceful law abiding nation. Imposing a blockade against either violates the UN Charter and settled international humanitarian laws as well as US law. It would constitute an illegal act of aggression that under the Nuremberg Charter is the designated a “supreme international crime” above all others. It would render the Obama administration and every government of other participating nations criminally liable.

Contrary to what the occupiers of Palestine may fantasize, if the White House wants an economic blockade of Iran or Syria it must declare war, letting the American people be heard on the subject and convince the UN Security Council to pass a UNSCR under Chapter 7.

The White House cannot legally, morally or consistently with claimed American humanitarian values continue to target civilian populations with economic sanctions on the cheap.

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Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and can be reached c/ofplamb@gmal.com
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Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon

“Legislate Now! Demand that Lebanon’s Parliament grant Palestinian Refugees elementary civil rights including, the right to work, to own a home, and to repair camp shelters. No more excuses!”

Franklin P. Lamb, LLM,PhD
Director, Americans Concerned for
Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut

Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC
Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp