Turkey 'aided Islamist fighters' in attack on Syrian town: Rebels and eye-witnesses claim that Turkish authorities allowed fighters to enter Syria through a strategic border post to carry out assault on Armenian town of Kasab

Turkey 'aided Islamist fighters' in attack on Syrian town: Rebels and eye-witnesses claim that Turkish authorities allowed fighters to enter Syria through a strategic border post to carry out assault on Armenian town of Kasab

    Tuesday, April 15, 2014   No comments

Turkey facilitated an attack carried out by Islamist fighters against the Armenian town of Kasab inside Syria, eyewitnesses have told the Telegraph.

In an operation that was months in the planning, Turkish authorities gave rebel groups the mandate they needed to attack, allowing them access through a heavily militarised Turkish border post, whose location was strategically vital to the success of the assault.

"Turkey did us a big favour," said a Syrian activist with the rebel group, whose name the Telegraph knows but has been asked not to reveal. "They allowed our guys to enter from their border post.

"We needed to hit the regime from different sides and this was the only way from near the coast, so it was a big help."

Kasab, the ancestral home of the Armenian ethnic minority in Syria, which had remained relatively sheltered from the conflict in Syria.

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Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and other "moderate" Arabs meeting Israeli officials

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and other "moderate" Arabs meeting Israeli officials

    Monday, April 14, 2014   No comments

Saudi foreign minister

Israel is holding secret talks with some Arab states that do not recognise it, looking to establish diplomatic ties based on a common fear of Iran, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Monday.

   

Amongst the countries he was in contact with were Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Lieberman told newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth - the first such disclosure by a senior Israeli official.

   

Saudi Arabia denied having any talks with Israel. Kuwait was not immediately available for comment.

   

Both these states, along with most other Arab nations, have traditionally been highly hostile towards Israel, which has only signed peace deals with two neighbours - Egypt and Jordan.

   

However, anti-Israeli sentiment was being superseded by a growing concern over Iran's nuclear programme, Tehran's regional allies, and the menace of Islamist militancy, Lieberman said.

   

"For the first time there is an understanding there that the real threat is not Israel, the Jews or Zionism. It is Iran, global jihad, (Lebanese Shi'ite guerrilla group) Hezbollah and al Qaeda," the foreign minister said.

   

"There are contacts, there are talks, but we are very close to the stage in which within a year or 18 months it will no longer be secret, it will be conducted openly," added Lieberman, who is a far rightist in the coalition government.

   

Lieberman said he was in touch with "moderate" Arabs - a term Israelis often use for Sunni states in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East that align with U.S. interests. He also said he would have no problem visiting Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.

   

"I have spent more than a few years of meetings and talks with them. As far as they are concerned, there is only one red rag and that is Iran," he said.

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Gül-Erdoğan meeting inconclusive on top leaders' presidential plans

Gül-Erdoğan meeting inconclusive on top leaders' presidential plans

    Saturday, April 12, 2014   No comments

A meeting on Thursday between Turkey's two top public officials, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Abdullah Gül, did not yield a decision on who will run in the nation's first popular election for president.
Turkish media reported after the meeting that the president and prime minister will sit down once again in late April or early May to come to an agreement on who will run for the presidency in elections to be held in August.

Earlier, both Erdoğan and Gül had said they would reach a joint decision on the presidency; both are considered likely contenders for the spot. Gül, answering a question on Tuesday from a journalist at a reception for Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, said: “I will sit down and talk with my colleagues, together with the prime minister. I have said that we will draw our roadmap according to our talks. Of course, what I think and will say about issues that concern me is important.”

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Inside the FBI’s secret relationship with the military’s special operations

Inside the FBI’s secret relationship with the military’s special operations

    Friday, April 11, 2014   No comments

When U.S. Special Operations forces raided several houses in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in March 2006, two Army Rangers were killed when gunfire erupted on the ground floor of one home. A third member of the team was knocked unconscious and shredded by ball bearings when a teenage insurgent detonated a suicide vest.

In a review of the nighttime strike for a relative of one of the dead Rangers, military officials sketched out the sequence of events using small dots to chart the soldiers’ movements. Who, the relative asked, was this man — the one represented by a blue dot and nearly killed by the suicide bomber?

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Despite a New Constitution, the Fight for Gender Equality in Tunisia Continues

Despite a New Constitution, the Fight for Gender Equality in Tunisia Continues

    Friday, April 11, 2014   No comments

After more than two years of arguments and concessions between Islamic and secular parties, on January 26, the Tunisian National Constituent Assembly ratified the country’s new Constitution.

When it was signed, assembly members spontaneously started to chant the national anthem and congratulated each other for the achievement. Indeed, there was cause for celebration. Tunisians signed one of the most progressive Constitutions in the Arab world, one that includes a commitment to gender equality. Yet, the celebratory media coverage failed to mention that other Arab countries, such as Algeria and Morocco, have also committed to gender equality in their Constitution.

Article 45 of the Tunisian Constitution guarantees “equality of opportunities between women and men to have access to all levels of responsibility and in all domains” and Article 46 seeks parity “between men and women in elected assemblies.” In an interview for UN Women, Sana Ben Achour, law student and women’s rights activist, explained that the Tunisian Constitution is the first one in the Arab world to ensure equal access to the presidency. Additionally, Article 20 states: “All male and female citizens have the same rights and duties. They are equal before the law without discrimination.” This accomplishment would not have been possible without the work of feminist activists and women’s organizations that have advocated for gender equality.

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Accepting the Other: Faith in Oman

Accepting the Other: Faith in Oman

    Wednesday, April 09, 2014   No comments

Accepting the Other: Faith in 

 Oman Episode 1 of 2
Duration: 29 minutes
First broadcast: Saturday 05 April 2014

 In the Islamically conservative Gulf region, Oman stands out for its religious tolerance. Members of other faiths – Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and others – enjoy freedom of worship. Interfaith dialogue is a government priority. All this puts the country in sharp contrast to its neighbour Saudi Arabia, where the public practise of any religion other than Islam is banned.

And, while the Arab Spring brought a deterioration of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in countries like Egypt, Oman appears almost untouched by either political upheaval or inter-religious tension.

In the first of this two-part series Mounira Chaieb, a journalist from Tunisia, examines what is at the root of Oman’s unusual attitude to other faiths, and questions whether the country’s tolerant attitude to religious minorities a matter of true religious conviction, or merely a way of keeping powerful allies like the United States on side?

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Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels: Erdoğan's men behind the chemical attack in Syria

Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels: Erdoğan's men behind the chemical attack in Syria

    Monday, April 07, 2014   No comments

In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.​ Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.

Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.

For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’

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Le Pen: "Let them eat pork!"Jewish and Muslim schoolchildren will not be offered alternatives to pork dishes in towns run by National Front

Le Pen: "Let them eat pork!"Jewish and Muslim schoolchildren will not be offered alternatives to pork dishes in towns run by National Front

    Saturday, April 05, 2014   No comments

France’s far-right National Front party will prevent schools from offering Muslim and Jewish pupils pork-free lunches in the towns where it won in recent local elections, its leader Marine Le Pen announced on Friday.

She said that arrangements catering to Muslim and Jewish, pupils who cannot eat pork according to religious restrictions, contradict the country’s secular values.

“We will not accept any religious demands in school menus,” Le Pen told RTL radio. “There is no reason for religion to enter the public sphere, that's the law.”

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Iran, Russia working to seal $20 billion oil-for-goods deal: sources

Iran, Russia working to seal $20 billion oil-for-goods deal: sources

    Thursday, April 03, 2014   No comments

Iran and Russia have made progress toward an oil-for-goods deal that sources said could be worth up to $20 billion and enable Tehran to boost vital energy exports in defiance of Western sanctions, people familiar with the negotiations told Reuters.

In January, Reuters reported that Moscow and Tehran were discussing a barter deal that would see Moscow buy up to 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil in exchange for Russian equipment and goods.

The United States has said such a deal would raise "serious concerns" and be inconsistent with the nuclear talks between world powers and Iran.


A Russian source said Moscow had "prepared all documents from its side", adding that completion of a deal was awaiting agreement on what oil price to lock in.

The source said the two sides were looking at a barter arrangement that would see Iranian oil exchanged for industrial goods including metals and food, but no military equipment was involved. The source added that the deal was expected to reach $15 to $20 billion in total and would be done in stages with an initial $6 billion to $8 billion tranche.

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Tunisian PM, Mehdi Jomaa, to visit the United States and meet Obama first week of April

Tunisian PM, Mehdi Jomaa, to visit the United States and meet Obama first week of April

    Tuesday, April 01, 2014   No comments

Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa started, Tuesday, a four-day official visit to the United States, at the invitation of President Barack Obama.

Jomaa will be received at the White House by President Obama, April 4.

"Mehdi Jomaa's visit to U.S.A. testifies to the solid friendship relations binding the American and Tunisian peoples and the Government's commitment towards the democratic transition," a White House statement pointed out.

The PM will have talks with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim.

He will also have a set of meetings with officials in the U.S. administration and the Congress, businessmen and heads of enterprises.

In the first stage of his visit in New York, Jomaa will notably meet with Google technology and Microsoft technology officials.

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