Islamic Societies Review WEEKLY

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Susan Rice blasts Israel for criticizing Kerry

Tuesday, February 04, 2014 No comments

U.S. national security advisor says 'personal attacks' against Kerry are 'totally unfounded and unacceptable.'

Susan Rice — the national security adviser who rocked headlines by repeating the White House message that Benghazi’s fatal terror attack was started by an anti-Muslim video — has now jumped to the administration’s defense once again.

This time with a series of tweets perceived by some as unnecessary public criticisms of Israel, Breitbart.com reported.

Her defense comes as Israeli leaders have openly denounced what they perceived as a veiled threat from Mr. Kerry to boycott the nation if peace talks with Palestinians fail.

Sunday, February 02, 2014

Shia fighter beheaded by Syrian rebels,Video shows footage of public execution of a man believed to have been a pro-government Shia fighter

Sunday, February 02, 2014 No comments

Rebels in Syria with ties to al-Qaida have decapitated a man believed to have been a pro-government Shia fighter, an amateur video of the public [executions] posted to the internet on Saturday showed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group which posted the video, said the [war crime] was conducted by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a foreign-led group fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and establish an Islamic emirate in Syria.

The footage shows armed men in black standing outdoors in a circle around a man who is lying on the grass. One of the militants leans over the victim and appears to

[ ... ]

The remainder of the three-minute video shows the crowd, which includes several children, talking, laughing and taking photographs of the scene.

The Britain-based Observatory, which opposes Assad and has an extensive network of sources across Syria, said the video was taken in the central province of Homs. Its authenticity could not be independently verified.

Hard-line Islamist rebels with links to al-Qaida have come to dominate the largely [Salafi] Muslim insurgency against Assad, who is supported by members of his minority Alawite sect – an offshoot of Shia Islam – as well as Shia fighters from Iraq and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Both sides in Syria's nearly three-year conflict have been implicated in torture, killings and other war crimes.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/02/shia-fighter-beheaded-syrian-rebels-video?CMP=twt_fd

Saturday, February 01, 2014

President Abdullah Gül: Damascus ‘got upper hand thanks to Iran’

Saturday, February 01, 2014 No comments

Damascus is in a much better position today vis-à-vis its opponents in Syria thanks to the help it has received from Iran, President Abdullah Gül has said.

“For Iran, Syria is a matter of life and death. For us, it is a humanitarian issue. For Russia, it is a matter of warm seas, the only stronghold issue. It keeps saying ‘I will end the war.’ I had said earlier that the rhetoric of the Western world was strong but that would not be reflected on the field; it was only valor,” he said while returning to Turkey from a trip to Rome.

“[Today], it is Damascus which has the stronger hand. How did it come to Geneva?” he said.

Speaking about Turkey’s security risks in Syria, Gül said: “There is no [place] to be very optimistic about Syria’s future. If a transitional government with power had come out of Geneva, maybe that could have fuelled hope for the future. That didn’t happen. The next aspect we need to focus on are the threats and risks for Turkey that are being created in the environment that has emerged. Many groups have emerged in this uncertain environment,” he said.

“The issue there is not the clash of the regime and the opponents. There are so many groups among the opposition that there are clashes among themselves,” he said, noting that this was also happening right along Turkey’s 900-kilometer border with Syria. “You never know where this will lead you. These kinds of situations instigate and create radicalism, extremism.”

‘A threat similar to Afghanistan’

Ankara alarmed over Qaeda threat in Syria: Ankara has woken up to the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Syria, reportedly taking measures against potential suicide bombing inside Turkey

Saturday, February 01, 2014 No comments

With no end in sight to the civil war in neighboring Syria, Turkey is expressing increasing alarm over al-Qaeda threat amid the growing presence of the group in northern Syria and skirmishes with Turkey’s army this week along the frontier.

A report prepared jointly by the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MİT), the gendarmerie and the Police Department indicated that al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was preparing to attack targets inside Turkey using car bombs and assassinations.

The report and necessary measures were discussed during the weekly meeting of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel in Ankara.

The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) said Jan. 29 that it had opened fire on a convoy of vehicles in northern Syria belonging to the ISIL jihadist group. The army said the attack, carried out Jan. 28, came after two Turkish military vehicles had been fired upon at the Çobanbey border post.

“A pick-up, a truck and a bus in an ISIL convoy were destroyed,” read the statement.

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Friday, January 31, 2014

Australia Vs. Indonesia Approaches A Flashpoint

Friday, January 31, 2014 No comments

Indonesia

It’s not just China and Japan bumping heads over sea borders in Asia, there are signs that a showdown is looming between two countries with a normally friendly relationship: Indonesia and Australia.

For major powers outside the region, such as the U.S., there is nothing to be gained by becoming involved in a situation which has its roots in the cross-border movement of asylum seekers from troubled parts of the Middle East and Africa, or illegal immigrants as they have also been called.

Fence Sitting Not Always An Option

However, sitting on the fence might not be an option for outsiders if the current war of words between Jakarta and Canberra heats up and patrol boats from both countries which are operating in the Timor Sea and Indian Ocean come face-to-face.

An extreme example of third parties being forced to choose a side in a territorial dispute was the brief war between Argentina and Britain in the early 1980s when both sides appealed to their friends with the U.S. forced to choose its NATO ally, Britain – but only after weeks of agonizing.

Indonesia v Australia has not reached that point, but there is a history of hostility that goes back to a hot war in Borneo in the 1960s and when Australia had troops on the ground in East Timor after it won independence from Indonesia.

Australian Snooping Upset Indonesia

Relations between the two near-neighbors worsened in November when leaks from runaway former CIA analysts, Edward Snowden, revealed Australian spying on the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and, worse still, his wife.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

U.S. spy chiefs: More than 7,000 foreign militants are fighting for the rebels in Syria's civil war and some are being trained to return home and conduct attacks

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 No comments

More than 7,000 foreign militants are fighting for the rebels in Syria's civil war and some are being trained to return home and conduct attacks, U.S. spy chiefs told lawmakers on Wednesday.

The estimate, given at a Senate intelligence hearing, was much higher than earlier figures of 3,000 to 4,000 foreign fighters in Syria, and came after news emerged this week that Congress had secretly approved more funding to send weapons to "moderate" rebels.

"We estimate, at this point, an excess of 7,000 foreign fighters have been attracted from some 50 countries, many of them in Europe and the Mideast," James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, told the hearing.

"And this is of great concern not only to us, but to those countries," he said at the Senate Intelligence Committee's annual hearing on global security threats.

U.S. spy agencies had not previously made the figure of 7,000 public, though it has appeared in classified intelligence reports, a U.S. official said.

Is Blogging Unscholarly? the International Studies Association unveiled a proposal to bar members affiliated with its scholarly journal from blogging

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 No comments

By Carl Straumsheim

The political science blogosphere has erupted in protest after the International Studies Association unveiled a proposal to bar members affiliated with its scholarly journal from doing just that -- blogging.

“No editor of any ISA journal or member of any editorial team of an ISA journal can create or actively manage a blog unless it is an official blog of the editor’s journal or the editorial team’s journal,” the proposal reads. “This policy requires that all editors and members of editorial teams to apply this aspect of the Code of Conduct to their ISA journal commitments. All editorial members, both the Editor in Chief(s) and the board of editors/editorial teams, should maintain a complete separation of their journal responsibilities and their blog associations.”

The Governing Council of the ISA, which consists of about 50 voting members, will debate the proposal the day before the association’s annual meeting in Toronto on March 25. Should the council adopt the proposal, it would impact five journals: International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, International Studies Perspectives, Foreign Policy Analysis and International Political Sociology, as well as International Interactions, which the association co-sponsors.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Syria's road to peace is littered with our errors; The Geneva II peace conference has noble aims, but its flaws are obvious with Iran, Hezbollah and Russia absent

Monday, January 27, 2014 No comments

Editorials from the Observer

The third anniversary of the start of the Egyptian revolution is an appropriate moment to consider the lessons of what was once – too hopefully, perhaps – dubbed the "Arab spring". It was briefly hailed as the region's equivalent of the fall of communism in Europe in 1989; these days the closest historical equivalent seems like 1848 – the so-called Year of Revolutions.

That is certainly most true in Egypt, where the revolution that started three years ago this weekend has been followed in quick order by counter-revolution – as occurred across Europe in 1848 – with the reimposition by the military and its supporters of the same autocratic "deep state" over which Hosni Mubarak once presided.

The view from Cairo is grim. On Friday a wave of bombs struck the capital, bringing the simmering violence already visible in the northern Sinai to the country's very centre. The present regime has fostered a climate of fear that has seen activists, Muslim Brotherhood leaders, and journalists targeted and thrown in jail, often on trumped-up charges.

The picture is also grim in Libya and Syria. The western-led intervention that toppled Libya's Colonel Gaddafi has produced a weak, violent and fractured state whose problems led to the dangerous destabilisation of a neighbour, as happened in the case of Mali.

Syria too has become embroiled in a long and bloody civil war that has led to a massive displacement of refugees to neighbouring countries, fuelled a proxy conflict between Shia and Sunni in the region and been an exacerbating factor in the increasing violence in neighbouring Lebanon and Iraq.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Egypt: protesters killed on anniversary of anti-Mubarak revolt; at least 54 reported dead in clashes across the country as thousands also rally in support of army-led authorities

Sunday, January 26, 2014 No comments

At least 54 people have been reported dead in clashes with anti-government protesters in Egypt on the third anniversary of the uprising that culminated in the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak as president.

Thousands of Egyptians also rallied in support of the army-led authorities, underlining the country's deep political divisions.

The majority of the deaths were in Cairo, according to the health ministry. Security forces lobbed teargas and fired in the air to try to prevent anti-government demonstrators from reaching Tahrir Square, the symbolic heart of the 2011 uprising, where government supporters called for the head of the military, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, to run for the presidency.

Armoured personnel carriers were deployed to try to keep order and anyone entering Tahrir had to pass through a metal detector.

Friday, January 24, 2014

The two sides in the Syria talks are bringing the process close to collapse even before full sessions have formally started

Friday, January 24, 2014 No comments

Syria's first peace talks were on the verge of collapsing on Friday before they had properly begun, with the opposition refusing to meet President Bashar al-Assad's delegation and the government threatening to bring its team home.

The opposition said it would not meet Assad's delegation unless it first agreed to sign up to a protocol calling for a transitional administration. The government rejected the demand outright and said its negotiators would return home unless serious talks began within a day.

"If no serious work sessions are held by (Saturday), the official Syrian delegation will leave Geneva due to the other side's lack of seriousness or preparedness," Syrian state television quoted Walid al-Moualem, the foreign minister, as saying.

Friday was meant to be the first time in three years of war that Assad's government and foes would negotiate face to face.

But plans were ditched at the last minute after the opposition said the government delegation must first sign up to a 2012 protocol, known as Geneva 1, that calls for an interim government to oversee a transition to a new political order.