U.S., Britain suspend aid to north Syria after Islamists seize weapons store

U.S., Britain suspend aid to north Syria after Islamists seize weapons store

    Wednesday, December 11, 2013   No comments

Nusra fighters transporting weapons and munitions

The United States and Britain suspended non-lethal aid to northern Syria after Islamist fighters seized Western-backed rebel weapons warehouses, highlighting fears that supplies could end up in the wrong hands and the general chaos engulfing the nation.

The rebel Free Syrian Army fighting President Bashar al-Assad said the U.S. and British moves were rushed and mistaken. "We hope our friends will rethink and wait for a few days when things will be clearer," FSA spokesman Louay Meqdad said.

The suspension underlines a crisis for the FSA leadership which needs international backing to reinforce its credibility and to stop its fighters joining powerful al Qaeda-backed Islamist militants who now dominate the war with Assad.

The United States and Britain have in the past offered radios, body armor, medical supplies, money and food to rebels fighting Assad, but a U.S. embassy spokesman in Turkey declined to give details of what supplies may have been halted.

Fighters from the Islamic Front, which groups six major rebel brigades and which said last week it had quit the FSA, seized headquarters of the Syrian Military Council, nominally in charge of the FSA, and weapons warehouses at the Bab al-Hawa crossing on Syria's northwestern border with Turkey.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based anti-Assad monitoring group, said the Islamic Front had seized dozens of 'Shilka' anti-aircraft weapons and anti-tank rockets from the SMC arms stores in fighting on Friday and Saturday.

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Saudi Arabia migrant expulsions: 'They beat us. I want to warn others not to go'

Saudi Arabia migrant expulsions: 'They beat us. I want to warn others not to go'

    Wednesday, December 11, 2013   No comments

Abdulla Shahmola trudges up the road leading from Addis Ababa airport to the outskirts of the city, his battered black suitcase balanced precariously on his head. Weariness and relief are etched into his delicate features as he heaves his heavy bag to the floor. "I have so many possessions that I had to leave behind in Saudi Arabia – a television, a bed, a fridge," he laments, adding that he is thankful to be back in Ethiopia.

Abdulla is one of hundreds of men, women and children steadily streaming from the airport cargo terminal, where up to 20 flights have been arriving daily from Jeddah and Riyadh since 13 November. A kilometre's walk from the hastily erected transit centre, which has been processing some 7,000 returning migrants each day, a small crowd, held back by federal police officers in blue military fatigues, waits anxiously for a glimpse of a loved one.

As of 8 December, 115,465 Ethiopians – 72,780 men, 37,092 women and 5,593 children, 202 of whom were unaccompanied – had returned from Saudi Arabia, according to government figures. The migrants, most of whom were in Saudi Arabia without work permits, were expelled after a tightening of labour regulations in March and the expiration of an amnesty for illegal workers on 4 November.

More than a million migrant workers from across Asia have been expelled from the kingdom as part of the crackdown, which is designed to get more Saudis into jobs and reduce the high unemployment rate.

The crackdown has triggered clashes in the capital, Riyadh, in which three Ethiopians were reportedly killed, sparking outrage in Ethiopia.

"They beat us," alleges Abdulla. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his mobile phone and opens images of badly beaten Ethiopians, singling out one man whose throat appears to have been slit. His friends do the same, thrusting forward their mobiles. "I saw people killed. They are murderers," he hisses.

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Whose sarin: The Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin

Whose sarin: The Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin

    Monday, December 09, 2013   No comments

Seymour M. Hersh

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

In his nationally televised speech about Syria on 10 September, Obama laid the blame for the nerve gas attack on the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta firmly on Assad’s government, and made it clear he was prepared to back up his earlier public warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a ‘red line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said. ‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.’ Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.

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With Iran, Obama can end America’s long war for the Middle East

With Iran, Obama can end America’s long war for the Middle East

    Sunday, December 08, 2013   No comments

President Obama calling President Rouhani

By Andrew J. Bacevich, Boston University

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and the author of “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.”

What Jimmy Carter began, Barack Obama is ending. Washington is bringing down the curtain on its 30-plus-year military effort to pull the Islamic world into conformity with American interests and expectations. It’s about time.

Back in 1980, when his promulgation of the Carter Doctrine launched that effort, Carter acted with only a vague understanding of what might follow. Yet circumstance — the overthrow of the shah in Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — compelled him to act. Or more accurately, the domestic political uproar triggered by those events compelled the president, facing a tough reelection campaign, to make a show of doing something. What ensued was the long-term militarization of U.S. policy throughout the region.

Now, without fanfare, President Obama is effectively revoking Carter’s doctrine. The U.S. military presence in the region is receding. When Obama posited in his second inaugural address that “enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war,” he was not only recycling a platitude; he was also acknowledging the folly and futility of the enterprise in which U.S. forces had been engaged. Having consumed vast quantities of blood and treasure while giving Americans little to show in return, that enterprise is now ending.

Like Carter in 1980, Obama finds himself with few alternatives. At home, widespread anger, angst and mortification obliged Carter to begin girding the nation to fight for the greater Middle East. To his successors, Carter bequeathed a Pentagon preoccupied with ramping up its ability to flex its muscles anywhere from Egypt to Pakistan. The bequest proved a mixed blessing, fostering the illusion that military muscle, dexterously employed, might put things right. Today, widespread disenchantment with the resulting wars and quasi-wars prohibits Obama from starting new ones.

Successive military disappointments, not all of Obama’s making, have curbed his prerogatives as commander in chief. Rather than being the decider, he ratifies decisions effectively made elsewhere. In calling off a threatened U.S. attack on Syria, for example, the president was acknowledging what opinion polls and Congress (not to mention the British Parliament ) had already made plain: Support for any further military adventures to liberate or pacify Muslims has evaporated. Americans still profess to love the troops. But they’ve lost their appetite for war.

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Mass murder in the Middle East is funded by our friends the Saudis

Mass murder in the Middle East is funded by our friends the Saudis

    Saturday, December 07, 2013   No comments

Shi`a victims of suicide attacks

World View: Everyone knows where al-Qa'ida gets its money, but while the violence is sectarian, the West does nothing
Donors in Saudi Arabia have notoriously played a pivotal role in creating and maintaining Sunni jihadist groups over the past 30 years. But, for all the supposed determination of the United States and its allies since 9/11 to fight "the war on terror", they have showed astonishing restraint when it comes to pressuring Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies to turn off the financial tap that keeps the jihadists in business.
Compare two US pronouncements stressing the significance of these donations and basing their conclusions on the best intelligence available to the US government. The first is in the 9/11 Commission Report which found that Osama bin Laden did not fund al-Qa'ida because from 1994 he had little money of his own but relied on his ties to wealthy Saudi individuals established during the Afghan war in the 1980s. Quoting, among other sources, a CIA analytic report dated 14 November 2002, the commission concluded that "al-Qa'ida appears to have relied on a core group of financial facilitators who raised money from a variety of donors and other fund-raisers primarily in the Gulf countries and particularly in Saudi Arabia".

Seven years pass after the CIA report was written during which the US invades Iraq fighting, among others, the newly established Iraq franchise of al-Qa'ida, and becomes engaged in a bloody war in Afghanistan with the resurgent Taliban. American drones are fired at supposed al-Qa'ida-linked targets located everywhere from Waziristan in north-west Pakistan to the hill villages of Yemen. But during this time Washington can manage no more than a few gentle reproofs to Saudi Arabia on its promotion of fanatical and sectarian Sunni militancy outside its own borders.

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Don’t Sanitize Nelson Mandela: He’s Honored Now, But Was Hated Then: If we turn the late South African leader into a nonthreatening moral icon, we’ll forget a key lesson from his life: America isn’t always a force for freedom

Don’t Sanitize Nelson Mandela: He’s Honored Now, But Was Hated Then: If we turn the late South African leader into a nonthreatening moral icon, we’ll forget a key lesson from his life: America isn’t always a force for freedom

    Friday, December 06, 2013   No comments

Now that he’s dead, and can cause no more trouble, Nelson Mandela is being mourned across the ideological spectrum as a saint. But not long ago, in Washington’s highest circles, he was considered an enemy of the United States. Unless we remember why, we won’t truly honor his legacy.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan placed Mandela’s African National Congress on America’s official list of “terrorist” groups. In 1985, then-Congressman Dick Cheney voted against a resolution urging that he be released from jail. In 2004, after Mandela criticized the Iraq War, an article in National Review said his “vicious anti-Americanism and support for Saddam Hussein should come as no surprise, given his longstanding dedication to communism and praise for terrorists.” As late as 2008, the ANC remained on America’s terrorism watch list, thus requiring the 89-year-old Mandela to receive a special waiver from the secretary of State to visit the U.S.

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Syrian rebels consider joining forces with regime troops to fight al-Qa’ida

Syrian rebels consider joining forces with regime troops to fight al-Qa’ida

    Thursday, December 05, 2013   No comments

The spectre is looming of a second Syrian civil war with the head of the opposition’s official forces declaring that he is prepared to join regime troops in the future to drive out al-Qa’ida-linked extremists who have taken over swathes of rebel-held territories.

General Salim Idris, the commander of the Free Syrian Army warned that in particular Isis (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham), with thousands of foreign fighters in its ranks, was “very dangerous for the future of Syria” and needs to be confronted before it becomes even more powerful.

Western security agencies now believe that Syria poses the most potent threat of terrorism in Europe and the US from where hundreds of Muslims have gone to join the jihad. MI5 and Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch recently tackled the first case of men sent from there specifically to carry out attacks in London.

One senior Western intelligence official stressed that the Syrian regime’s forces must be preserved for the battles ahead against the Islamists and the need to avoid the mistakes made in Iraq and Libya, where the army and police were disbanded with the fall of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, allowing terrorist groups to rise in a security vacuum.

The official held that talks between the regime and rebels set to take place in Geneva in January could be the beginning of the formation of an anti-al-Qa’ida front in Syria, along with a negotiated settlement to end the conflict which has claimed more than 117,000 lives so far and made millions refugees inside and outside the country.
Speaking in Istanbul, General Idris, a former officer in the regime’s army, said he and his associates were dropping the precondition that Bashar al-Assad must leave power before the Geneva meeting takes place. Instead they would be satisfied if his departure were to take place “at the end of the negotiation process” when General Idris will join forces with the remainder of the regime to mount an offensive against the Islamists.

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Study: Muslim job candidates may face discrimination in Republican states

Study: Muslim job candidates may face discrimination in Republican states

    Tuesday, December 03, 2013   No comments

A new study by Carnegie Mellon University found that in the most Republican states in the country, employers may be less likely to interview job candidates whose social networking profiles indicate that the applicants are Muslim.

As part of a social experiment, the researchers created four fictitious job candidates – each with a unique name that most likely points to someone who is male, U.S. born and Caucasian. The candidates had identical resumes. The researchers also created social network profiles for each of the candidates that revealed either his sexual orientation or whether he was a Muslim or Christian. All other information, including the profile photograph used for each candidate, was the same. The resumes, which did not mention the candidates’ online profile, were then sent out to more than 4,000 employers nationwide with job openings.

Readers should note that the study’s authors did not design the pool of open jobs to be representative of all jobs available in the country, or in Republican-leaning or Democrat-leaning states. The number of job vacancies varied from state to state, and overall, a smaller share of all open jobs was located in Republican states.'

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Algerian daily al-Shorouq: “The Algerian security services have conducted a careful investigation into the networks which recruit Salafis to fight against Houthis in Yemen”

Algerian daily al-Shorouq: “The Algerian security services have conducted a careful investigation into the networks which recruit Salafis to fight against Houthis in Yemen”

    Monday, December 02, 2013   No comments

The investigations have been carried out after three people were killed in Wadi al-Souf region in Yemen, it reported.

“There is information showing that certain sides in an Arab country recruit forces in Algeria and pay them huge sums of money up to $8,000 to use them in different conflicts,” the newspaper said.

Other media reports in November also said that Salafi Takfiris continue invasion of Houthi-populated areas in Northern Yemen, killing large groups of them recently.

The clashes broke out in Damaj region of the border province of Sa’ada in October when after several attacks by the Salafis, the Shiite Houthi fighters, who control much of the bordering province, accused their Sunni Salafi rivals of recruiting thousands of foreign fighters in preparation of a large-scale war, and raided the Salafis’ Damaj mosque which resulted in the death of one person and injury of seven others, al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), about 200 to 600 people have been wounded so far.

The two sides declared ceasefire two weeks ago, but it lasted only for two hours.

Addressing the National Dialogue Conference in Yemen, Spokesman of Houthis Ali Al-Bakhiti said that after few hours the ceasefire was broken because Director of Salafis Training Center in Damaj Sheikh Ali Al-Bakhiti could not take control of his foreign armed rebels near Damaj.

Al-Bakhiti reiterated that the clashes are going on between the Houthis and the Salafis in Damaj.

Sectarian rivalry between Salafi Takfiris and Houthis is feared to ignite the fire of civil war in Yemen which is also influenced by foreign meddling, specially by Saudi Arabia.

The continued turmoil on several fronts in the country has risen the alarms of civil war in the country.

The recent events in Damaj have created concern among the Yemeni activists and analysts. “The main goal of these conflicts is feared to be igniting sectarian war,” Yemeni Rights Activist Ali Al-Deilami told FNA in November.

He blamed the Saudi media for the exacerbation of conflicts between Salafis and Houthis, and said publication of the remarks uttered by some Saudi muftis who call for Salafis’ Jihad against the Shiites is threatening and dangerous.

Deilami called on the Yemeni people to keep united against the foreign meddling which seeks to wage a sectarian war in the country.

Sa’ada province is the base for a long-running Houthi fight against the government. Complaining of social, religious and economic discrimination in Yemen, the Houthis fought several battles with government forces between 2004 and 2010, when a truce was announced.

Houthis have been holding demonstrations since June 9, when National Security guards opened fire on a group of protesters, killing 13 of them and wounding 100 others during a demonstration outside the headquarters of the National Security Intelligence Agency in Sana’a. They demand justice for those members of their community who were killed by regime forces.

The protesters were demanding the dismantling of the agency because of its involvement in the suppression of political activists under ousted dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. The protesters were also demanding the release of the Houthis being held by the authorities.

Human Rights Watch has demanded an investigation into the killings.

Yemen’s Houthi population has long been protesting the oppression and discrimination by Yemen’s Saudi-backed government.

The Houthi movement draws its name from the tribe of its founding leader Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi.

The Free Syrian Army began as a simple group of fighters battling Assad. But Ruth Sherlock, in Antakya, finds their mission is now making millions from bribery and extortion

The Free Syrian Army began as a simple group of fighters battling Assad. But Ruth Sherlock, in Antakya, finds their mission is now making millions from bribery and extortion

    Sunday, December 01, 2013   No comments

The Free Syrian Army commander leant against the door of his four-wheel drive BMW X5 with tinted windows and watched as his men waded through the river on the Syrian border moving the barrels of smuggled petroleum to Turkey.

Feeling the smooth wedge of American bank notes he had just been given in exchange, he was suddenly proud of everything he had become.

In three short years he had risen from peasant to war lord: from a seller of cigarettes on the street of a provincial village to the ruler of a province, with a rebel group to man his checkpoints and control these lucrative smuggling routes.

The FSA, a collection of tenuously coordinated, moderately Islamic, rebel groups was long the focus of the West’s hopes for ousting President Bashar al-Assad.

But in northern Syria, the FSA has now become a largely criminal enterprise, with commanders more concerned about profits from corruption, kidnapping and theft than fighting the regime, according to a series of interviews with The Sunday Telegraph.

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