Islamic Societies Review WEEKLY

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Who are the Kurdish people?

Tuesday, February 19, 2013 No comments

Kurdish mountain guerrilla fighter

About 25 to 30 million live in the Middle East. Throughout history, the majority inhabited the mountains and plateau regions where Iran, Iraq and Turkey meet. About half the Kurds live in Turkey, accounting for an estimated 20 percent of the total population there. There are believed to be approximately 5.7 million Kurds in Iran and about 1.5 million in Syria. There also important communities of Kurds in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

America’s involvement with Iraq, where Kurds make up about 20 percent of the population, has led to the creation of a semi-autonomous region that is the closest thing to a Kurdish state since the end of World War I.

But while the Kurds of northern Iraq have prospered, the growth of their power there has been at the price of the dream of true independence. And while they have exploited their role as holding the balance of power in a country divided between a Shiite Muslim majority and a resentful Sunni minority, their position will remain vulnerable as long as Iraq lurches from political crisis to crisis.

On top of the tensions in Iraq and long-simmering Kurdish autonomy movements in Iran and Turkey, the civil war in Syria is presenting the Kurds with a new set of hopes and dangers.

The Kurdish militias in northern Syria had hoped to stay out of the fighting there. They were focused on preparing to secure an autonomous enclave for themselves within Syria should the rebels succeed in toppling the government. But slowly, inexorably, they have been dragged into the fighting and now have one goal in mind, their autonomy, which also means the balkanization of the state.

Analysts fear this combustible environment could presage a bloody ethnic and sectarian conflict that will resonate far beyond Syria’s borders. There is concern that Iraq’s Kurds, who are already training Syrian Kurds to fight, may jump into the Syria fight to protect their ethnic brethren. That could also pull in Turkey, which fears that an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria would become a haven for Kurdish militants to carry out cross-border attacks in the Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey.

Visiting Libyan doctor reports harsh treatment by FBI

Tuesday, February 19, 2013 No comments

By Alexa Vaughn

Three Libyan doctors, visiting Boston and Seattle to begin a health-care partnership with U.S. physicians, say they were detained and interrogated as soon as they arrived in the U.S.

When Dr. Laila Taher Bugaighis landed in the United States with two other Libyan physicians Sunday, all she was expecting was the beginning of an exciting partnership with hospitals in Seattle and Boston — one that would help elevate sorely lacking health care in her own country.

The partnership was the kind of outreach former U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens had been trying to create when he was killed in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. His sister, Seattle Children’s Dr. Anne Stevens, has since collaborated with Dr. Thomas Burke of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital to make that dream happen.

So it shocked everyone when, as soon as they landed in Boston, Bugaighis and the other physicians were immediately detained by people she believed to be Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and then interrogated for hours, she said.

Bugaighis, deputy director general of Benghazi Medical Center, hadn’t been to the United States since before Stevens’ death. So when their passports were taken and their baggage searched, Bugaighis said, she thought the security measures might be routine, considering the current uneasy relations between Libya and United States. The trip, after all, had been cleared through her government and the U.S. State Department.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Extra-Juridical Killing Is the Opposite Of Justice In A Free Society

Monday, February 18, 2013 No comments

Last week, Senators threatened to put a “hold” on the nomination of John Brennan to be CIA director over his refusal to answer questions about the use of drones to kill Americans on US soil. That the president’s nominee to head the agency that has used drones to kill perhaps thousands overseas could not deny their possible use at home should be shocking. How did we get to this point?

The Obama administration has rapidly expanded the use of drones overseas, as they appear a way to expand US military action without the political risk of American boots on the ground. In fact they are one of the main reasons a recent Gallup survey of Pakistan, where most US drone strikes take place, found that 92% disapprove of U.S. leadership. This is the lowest approval rate Pakistan citizens have ever given to the United States. And it is directly related to US drone strikes. The risk of blowback increases all the time. However the false propaganda about the success of our drone program overseas leads officials to believe that drones should also be used over US soil as well.

Islamic extremists are an increasingly multilingual bunch, especially online

Monday, February 18, 2013 No comments

ARABIC was for long the unchallenged language of Islamic extremism. Its speakers far outnumber any other linguistic group. Arab lands are the most fruitful recruiting grounds. Without Arabic, tyros may struggle at training camps and on the battlefield. And fluency implies piety: the language of the Koran also connotes learning and wisdom.

But the once monoglot world of jihad is increasingly multilingual. Al-Qaeda has long advocated the creation of self-starting, independent terrorist cells. Materials are being produced in the language of any part of the world that has a Muslim minority and thus potential sympathisers, says Thomas Hegghammer, an expert on violent extremism. Translations are appearing in the languages of countries where jihadist leaders want to see further activity.

Counting the Dead in Syria

Monday, February 18, 2013 No comments

The U.N. is using a number that suppresses the true extent of the number of people killed in Syria. Do they have an better alternatives -- and would it even matter if they did?

The death count in Syria's ongoing civil war was revised upwards on Tuesday. Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, now says that the toll is "probably now approaching 70,000," an increase of 10,000 from the end of November, when a U.N.-commissioned report found 60,000 individual instances in which a name, date and location of death could be determined. The data set from that report suggested that the true number of dead in the Syria conflict was even higher than that, and one of the report's authors told The Atlantic that the figure was "a very conservative under-count." Pillay's 70,000 number has some relationship to two unknown figures: the number of deaths that can be estimated given currently available information, and the actual number of deaths in the conflict, a total which might not be known for several years (if it is ever conclusively known at all). Both of these numbers are higher than 70,000. Perhaps they're even much higher.

Whether intended or not, Pillay's claim masks the actual gravity of the Syria conflict. The widely-cited 60,000 and 70,000 numbers bear some kind of statistical relationship to the true death count; though at present, we have no idea what that relationship is. The numbers are a reflection of what is currently known about the conflict -- and not, in fact, a reflection of the realities of the conflict. Official and popular adherence to such an obviously deflated figure is troubling, given the enormity of the Syria conflict and the still-unfolding debate over how and whether the United States and the international community should intervene there. A misleading number is now woven into a debate of global importance: because Pillay and the news media are using the 60 or 70,000 figure without any meaningful qualification, the conflict's true humanitarian scope is being unintentionally yet insidiously distorted.

United Arab Emirates helps Joplin ‘think big’ in rebuilding tornado-scarred schools

Monday, February 18, 2013 No comments

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

JOPLIN, Mo. — Two weeks after a mile-wide tornado tore through this city, killing 161 people and rendering a landscape of apocalyptic devastation, the public school system here received a telephone call from a man working for the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington.

“Tell me what you need,” the embassy staffer said.

Six schools, including the city’s sole high school, were destroyed in the May 2011 disaster. Insurance would cover the construction of new buildings, but administrators were scrambling to replace all of the books that had blown away.

Instead of focusing on books, the staffer wanted “to think big.” So the school system’s development director pitched the most ambitious plan that came to mind, a proposal to obviate the need for high school textbooks that had been shelved two years earlier because nobody — not the cash-strapped school system, not the state of Missouri, not even local charities — had the money for it: Give every student a computer.

Today, the nearly 2,200 high school students in Joplin each have their own UAE-funded MacBook laptop, which they use to absorb lessons, perform homework and take tests. Across the city, the UAE is spending $5 million to build a neonatal intensive-care unit at Mercy Hospital, which also was ripped apart by the tornado.

The gifts are part of an ambitious campaign by the UAE government to assist needy communities in the United States. Motivated by the same principal reasons that the U.S. government distributes foreign assistance — to help those less fortunate and to influence perceptions among the recipients — the handouts mark a small but remarkable shift in global economic power.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Turkey's role in destabilizing Iraq for energy could backfire

Sunday, February 17, 2013 No comments

The Turkish prime minister has expressed resolve to continue to purchase oil from Iraq’s Kurdish region, maintaining that the Iraqi constitution bestows on the Kurds the right to export oil and gas, but the issue of legality seems to be a rather controversial one.

“Mr. [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan’s interpretation appears to be an extremely loose one, which is unlikely to be supported by the Iraqi Supreme Court,” says Joost Hiltermann, a senior Iraq analyst from the International Crisis Group (ICG) based in Brussels.

Turkey, which aims to knit closer ties with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq in an effort to decrease the enormous size of the bill it pays for energy imports while at the same time diversify its energy sources, has been getting, since last year, oil by the truckload from the Kurdish region despite protests by the Iraqi central government, and opposition from the US.

“The US says, ‘You are acting wrongly.’ No, we are saying, the [Iraqi] constitution allows this, because the Kurdish region is entitled to dispose of 18 [sic] percent [of the country’s natural resources],” Prime Minister Erdoğan said on his return flight from the Czech Republic about two weeks ago, once again affirming Turkey’s position on the issue.

While the US is concerned that Turkey’s efforts may pave the way for an already fragile Iraq to break up, pushing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki further towards Iran, the Iraqi central government’s opposition is a legitimate concern. The central government, which maintains that, as per the constitution, all energy deals and exports of oil and natural gas need the authorization of the central government, describes the Kurds’ trade with Turkey as illegal.

Libya marks two-year anniversary of uprising

Sunday, February 17, 2013 No comments

Security forces were on high alert across Libya on Sunday as the north African nation marks two years since the start of the revolt that toppled Moamer Kadhafi after four decades of iron-fisted rule.

Borders have been closed and some international flights suspended amid fears of a new outbreak of violence.

The anniversary of the uprising that ended with Kadhafi's killing in October 2011 comes as Libya's new rulers battle critics calling for a "new revolution" and accusing them of failing to usher in much-needed reforms.

On Friday, thousands of people gathered in the main cities of Tripoli and Benghazi to celebrate the initial February 15, 2011 protest that ignited the revolt two days later.

There is no official programme for Sunday's anniversary, but the authorities have taken steps aimed at preventing any violence on a day when spontaneous celebrations are expected.

Libya's borders with Egypt and Tunisia were closed from Thursday for four days, and all international flights have been suspended except at the airports of Tripoli and second city Benghazi – the cradle of the "February 17 revolution."

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Pakistan: bomb targeting Shiite Muslims kills and wounds 250 people

Saturday, February 16, 2013 No comments

At least 63 people are dead and another 180 are wounded after an explosive device went off in a crowded marketplace in Quetta, Pakistan. Photos from the scene show heavy smoke rising over buildings.

Pakistani news outlet, Dawn, cites Quetta senior police official Wazir Khan Nasir, who says the bomb appeared to target Shiite Muslims because of the neighborhood the attackers picked. Most of the victims are women with their children who were shopping for vegetables.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Sergei Lavrov urges the opposition to abandon preconditions for talks with the Assad government

Friday, February 15, 2013 No comments

Russia's foreign minister has dismissed the Syrian opposition as offering nothing constructive since the uprising began.

In an hour-long interview with the German broadcaster ARD, Sergei Lavrov urged the opposition to abandon preconditions for talks with the Assad government.

The price for insisting on the removal of Assad before talks begin, will be more violence, he said.

Lavrov conceded that the reforms offered by Assad were too little, too late, and that the Syrian president was not “really getting in line with events”.

But he claimed Assad was offering a form of dialogue which the opposition should seize.

The opposition is not offering any political alternative. The only thing which is uniting the opposition is toppling the regime ... In almost two years [the opposition] never produced any constructive platform.

Lavrov insisted that last June's Geneva agreement, which does not explicitly call for Assad to go, should be the basis for a settlement.