Who is arming the Syrian rebels?

Who is arming the Syrian rebels?

    Wednesday, May 08, 2013   No comments

Human rights activists and military affairs analysts have all concluded that Syria is awash with weapons. It will take years to bring the spread of weapons inside Syria under control. The availability of weapons in Syria is not a safety problem for Syrians after a settlement is reached, it will be a problem of all neighboring countries, especially Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey.

The New York Times compiled a record of cargo flights believed to be supplied to the rebels show that Syria might be the country with most weapons in the hands of non-governmental agencies at this time.

New York Times compilation of weapons heading to Syria: An Arms Pipeline to the Syrian Rebels

U.S. skeptical on reported use of chemical weapons by Syrian rebels

U.S. skeptical on reported use of chemical weapons by Syrian rebels

    Tuesday, May 07, 2013   No comments

U.S. officials said Monday that they were taking seriously new allegations that Syrian rebels had used chemical weapons but had seen no evidence to confirm the reports.

The Obama administration has said it believes the Syrian government likely used the nerve agent sarin in recent months and has supported a U.N. investigation into the use of chemical agents in Syria, where the government of President Bashar al-Assad has alleged the illicit weapons were used by the opposition.

On Sunday night, a Swiss broadcaster aired an interview with a leading member of a U.N. investigative committee, Carla Del Ponte, in which she said there are indications the rebels, not the government, used chemical weapons. U.S. officials, however, said they did not believe the rebels had obtained sarin or other such illicit agents.

“We are highly skeptical of suggestions that the opposition could have or did use chemical weapons,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters. “We find it highly likely that any chemical weapon use that has taken place in Syria was done by the Assad regime. And that remains our position.”

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Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talks with UK government over legal settlement

Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talks with UK government over legal settlement

    Monday, May 06, 2013   No comments

Ian Cobain and Jessica Hatcher in Nairobi

The British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency in what would be the first compensation settlement resulting from official crimes committed under imperial rule.
In a development that could pave the way for many other claims from around the world, government lawyers embarked upon the historic talks after suffering a series of defeats in their attempts to prevent elderly survivors of the prison camps from seeking redress through the British courts.
Those defeats followed the discovery of a vast archive of colonial-era documents which the Foreign Office (FCO) had kept hidden for decades, and which shed new and stark light on the dying days of British rule, not only in Kenya but around the empire. In the case of the Mau Mau conflict, the secret papers showed that senior colonial officials authorised appalling abuses of inmates held at the prison camps established during the bloody conflict, and that ministers and officials in London were aware of a brutal detention regime in which men and women were tortured and killed.
As a handful of details began to emerge last week from the confidential talks between lawyers for the government and the Mau Mau veterans, the FCO said it acknowledged the need for debate about Britain's past, and added: "It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history." Up to 10,000 former prisoners may be in line for compensation, if the talks result in a settlement. Although the individual amounts will vary greatly, the total compensation is likely to run into tens of millions of pounds.
The Foreign Office knows that compensation payments to Mau Mau veterans are likely to trigger claims from other former colonies. Any such claims, if successful, would not only cost the British taxpayer many millions of pounds; they could result in testimony and the emergence of documentary evidence that would challenge long-cherished views of the manner in which Britain withdrew from its empire.
Former Eoka guerrillas who were imprisoned and allegedly mistreated by the British in 1950s Cyprus are already considering bringing claims against the British government.

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U.N. Has Gathered Testimony Indicating That Syrian Rebels Have Used Sarin Gas, Says Investigator

U.N. Has Gathered Testimony Indicating That Syrian Rebels Have Used Sarin Gas, Says Investigator

    Monday, May 06, 2013   No comments

Use of WMD in Syria could make a brutal war worse

GENEVA, May 5 (Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

"Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

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Iowa Town Named for Muslim Hero Extols Tolerance

Iowa Town Named for Muslim Hero Extols Tolerance

    Sunday, May 05, 2013   No comments

ELKADER, Iowa — Amid an expanse of undulating farmland, deep in the steep valley carved by the Turkey River, the town of Elkader sits most of the year in remote obscurity. Population 1,200 and gradually shrinking, it is the seat of a county without a single traffic light.
Improbably enough, this community settled by Germans and Scandinavians, its religious life built around Catholic and Lutheran churches, bears the name of a Muslim hero. Abd el-Kader was renowned in the 19th century for leading Algeria’s fight for independence and protecting non-Muslims from persecution. Even Abraham Lincoln extolled him.

This weekend, for the fifth year in a row, Elkader will welcome a delegation of Arab dignitaries to celebrate this rare lifeline of tolerance, spanning continents and centuries. Coming less than three weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings, which the authorities say were committed by two Muslim brothers, the Abdelkader Education Project’s forum stands more than ever for an affirming encounter between the United States and Islam.

“Our audience is the people who are compassionate already,” said Kathy Garms, 63, a retired human-resources administrator who is the driving force in the Abdelkader project. “But there are so many people who are ignorant or scared or even hateful. We just hope that once they get across the starting line, they will listen.”

Abdallah Baali, Algeria’s ambassador to the United States and an annual participant in the forum, put its impact in global terms. “In our increasingly tormented world,” the ambassador wrote in an e-mail, “Abd el-Kader — a true world hero — is ‘talking’ today to a much broader audience about our shared values and on how humanity could and can prevail over all differences and prejudices.”

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Israel... could be providing a major psychological and perhaps military assist to Syrian rebels

Israel... could be providing a major psychological and perhaps military assist to Syrian rebels

    Sunday, May 05, 2013   No comments

BEIRUT — A series of explosions that hit just west of Damascus early Sunday, sending fiery mushroom-shaped clouds towering over the landmark Mount Qasioun and brightening the night sky above the city, left the region concerned about an unexpected escalation in the Syrian war.

The Syrian government immediately blamed Israel for the explosions, whose power appeared to far outstrip that of any weapons in the rebel arsenal; many Damascus residents said the attack was by far the most fearsome near the capital in more than two years of fighting.
...
But the explosions that struck Damascus on Sunday, shaking the ground across the city, appeared to be of far greater magnitude and potentially broader political and military significance.

¶ The attack raised the possibility that Israel, even if merely intending to pursue its own national security goals, could be providing a major psychological and perhaps military assist to Syrian rebels, who over the last several weeks have faced losses in a series of government offensives around Damascus and the city of Homs to the north.

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U.S. plan: a “moderate crescent” as a counterweight to the “fundamentalist crescent”

U.S. plan: a “moderate crescent” as a counterweight to the “fundamentalist crescent”

    Sunday, May 05, 2013   No comments

The Turkish Foreign Ministry today dismissed a British newspaper report suggesting a role for Turkey in a regional cooperation against the “fundamentalist crescent,” which consists of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah.

“These are manipulative reports which have nothing to do with the reality,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry official told Hürriyet Daily News.

British daily the Sunday Times reported that Israel would agree to a joint effort with regional powers to counter Iran and the “fundamentalist crescent.”

Israel had been working toward a cooperative agreement in compliance with Turkey and three Arab states to implement an allied system of detection technologies to defend against Iranian ballistic projectiles, the Sunday Times reported.

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Despite stalled Arab Spring, Muslim nations grasp for democracy

Despite stalled Arab Spring, Muslim nations grasp for democracy

    Friday, May 03, 2013   No comments

Elections in Pakistan and Malaysia show step-by-step progress to reconcile Islam with secular values of elected government
By the Monitor's Editorial Board / May 3, 2013

Two years on, the Arab Spring has stalled. Only four countries in the Middle East – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen – have advanced from despotic rule toward democracy, even if slowly.

Yet among the world’s Muslim countries that are already democratic, a similar struggle continues, one to reconcile the world’s second largest religion with secular democracy. Two elections show how this struggle is faring:

On May 11, voters in Pakistan go to the polls in what could be a historic transition – the first democratic transfer of civilian power. Yet while this would signify how the military’s role has lessened in Pakistan, Muslim radicals who denounce democracy as “un-Islamic” have given the secular political parties a hard time – with bombs and guns. Hundreds of people have been killed during the campaign by the Taliban and other militants in an attempt to thwart the elections and create an Islamic state.

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Editorials Call for the Closure Of Guantánamo In New York Times, Washington Post And Guardian

Editorials Call for the Closure Of Guantánamo In New York Times, Washington Post And Guardian

    Friday, May 03, 2013   No comments

By Andy Worthington

As the prison-wide hunger strike in Guantánamo continues (sign the petition calling for its closure here!), nearly three months since the majority of the 166 prisoners still held began refusing food, it is abundantly clear that, after several years in which, frankly, almost everyone had forgotten about Guantánamo or had given up on it, the prison — and the remaining 166 prisoners — are now back in the news and showing no signs of being as easily dismissed as they were three years ago, when everyone went silent after President Obama’s promise to close the prison within a year fizzled out dismally.

The need to exert concerted pressure on the Obama administration is more important than ever, because, until the prisoners appealed to the world by putting their lives on the line, President Obama had been content to abandon them, and had been encouraged to do so by Congress, where lawmakers had blocked all his attempts to close the prison, and had ended up imposing restrictions, in the National Defense Authorization Acts passed at the end of 2011 and 2012, that made it almost impossible to release any prisoners...

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Muslim Bashing in the Wake of Boston Bombing

Muslim Bashing in the Wake of Boston Bombing

    Wednesday, May 01, 2013   No comments

When the FBI identified the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects as Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the American Muslim community braced itself for another onslaught of anti-Islamic feeling—a caustic sentiment that has persisted in the country since 9/11.

In fact, the wave of suspicion and accusations had already begun. A Saudi student, injured in the blast, was tackled by another bystander and labeled a suspect by the New York Post. The hashtag #Muslims trended on Twitter, which was also the platform for one of the more incendiary comments from Fox News contributor Erik Rush, who, when prompted by another user if he was "already blaming Muslims," responded: "Yes, they're evil. Let's kill them all."

American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which issued a statement "expressing deep concern" regarding the negative statements and threats against Arab and Muslim Americans, demanded an apology. When Internet users noted a possible resemblance between one of the bombing suspects and Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown University student missing since March 16 (he was cleared and his body subsequently found), news organizations picked up the story without comment from authorities and overwhelmed his already suffering family with interview requests.

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