Rival second Libyan assembly chooses own PM as chaos spreads

Rival second Libyan assembly chooses own PM as chaos spreads

    Tuesday, August 26, 2014   No comments

By Feras Bosalum and Ulf Laessing

The Libyan parliament that was replaced in an election in June reconvened on Monday and chose an Islamist-backed deputy as the new prime minister, leaving the chaotic country with two rival leaders and assemblies, each backed by armed factions.

As political unrest mounted, U.S. officials said two series of air strikes in the past week on armed Islamist factions in the capital, Tripoli, were the work of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.


The officials said the two countries, both of which have cracked down on Islamists, used aircraft based in Egypt and acted without consulting Washington. The details were first reported by the New York Times.

Egypt has denied conducting air strikes or other military operations in Libya.

At a meeting of Libya's neighbours on Monday in Cairo, Libya appealed for international protection of its oilfields and airports, saying it lacked the power to stop armed groups.

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Can a religious/ethnic state be democratic? Can a religious state be anything but genocidal?

Can a religious/ethnic state be democratic? Can a religious state be anything but genocidal?

    Tuesday, August 26, 2014   No comments

 




Can a religious/ethnic state be democratic? Can a religious state be anything but genocidal?
Are there "small potatoes" and "big potatoes' in the context of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, ...

German minister accuses Qatar of funding Islamic State fighters

German minister accuses Qatar of funding Islamic State fighters

    Sunday, August 24, 2014   No comments

German Development Minister Gerd Mueller accused Qatar on Wednesday of financing Islamic State militants who have seized wide areas of northern Iraq and have posted a video of a captive American journalist being beheaded.

"This kind of conflict, this kind of a crisis always has a history ... The ISIS troops, the weapons - these are lost sons, with some of them from Iraq," Mueller told German public broadcaster ZDF.

"You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops. The keyword there is Qatar - and how do we deal with these people and states politically?" said Mueller, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the center-right Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

Mueller did not elaborate and presented no evidence of a Qatari link to Islamic State. A German government spokesman said he was checking whether Mueller's remarks reflected the official view of Berlin.

Officials at the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, a wealthy Gulf Arab state, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on his accusation.

Qatar has denied that it supports Islamist insurgents in Syria and Iraq. Diplomats and opposition sources say that while Qatar supports relatively moderate rebels also backed by Saudi Arabia and the West, it also has backed more hardline factions seeking to set up a strict Islamic state.

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Also read:

America's Allies Are Funding ISIS

Qatar condemns Islamic State and rejects funding accusations

Saudis Must Stop Exporting Extremism; ISIS Atrocities Started With Saudi Support for Salafi Hate

Saudis Must Stop Exporting Extremism; ISIS Atrocities Started With Saudi Support for Salafi Hate

    Saturday, August 23, 2014   No comments

Founder of Wahhabism

ALONG with a billion Muslims across the globe, I turn to Mecca in Saudi Arabia every day to say my prayers. But when I visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the resting place of the Prophet Muhammad, I am forced to leave overwhelmed with anguish at the power of extremism running amok in Islam’s birthplace. Non-Muslims are forbidden to enter this part of the kingdom, so there is no international scrutiny of the ideas and practices that affect the 13 million Muslims who visit each year.

Last week, Saudi Arabia donated $100 million to the United Nations to fund a counterterrorism agency. This was a welcome contribution, but last year, Saudi Arabia rejected a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council. This half-in, half-out posture of the Saudi kingdom is a reflection of its inner paralysis in dealing with Sunni Islamist radicalism: It wants to stop violence, but will not address the Salafism that helps justify it.

Let’s be clear: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram, the Shabab and others are all violent Sunni Salafi groupings. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has been the official sponsor of Sunni Salafism across the globe.

Most Sunni Muslims around the world, approximately 90 percent of the Muslim population, are not Salafis. Salafism is seen as too rigid, too literalist, too detached from mainstream Islam. While Shiite and other denominations account for 10 percent of the total, Salafi adherents and other fundamentalists represent 3 percent of the world’s Muslims.
Unlike a majority of Sunnis, Salafis are evangelicals who wish to convert Muslims and others to their “purer” form of Islam — unpolluted, as they see it, by modernity. In this effort, they have been lavishly supported by the Saudi government, which has appointed emissaries to its embassies in Muslim countries who proselytize for Salafism. The kingdom also grants compliant imams V.I.P. access for the annual hajj, and bankrolls ultraconservative Islamic organizations like the Muslim World League and World Assembly of Muslim Youth.

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Was Putin right about Syria?

Was Putin right about Syria?

    Friday, August 22, 2014   No comments

Now, the U.S. is contemplating extending airstrikes on Islamic State militants operating in Iraq in Syria — fighters belonging to a terrorist organization that is leading the war against Assad. The Islamic State's territorial gains in Iraq and continued repression and slaughter of religious minorities there and in Syria have rightly triggered global condemnation. "I am no apologist for the Assad regime," Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, told NPR. "But in terms of our security, [the Islamic State] is by far the greatest threat."

The irony of the moment is tragic. But to some, it doesn't come as much of a surprise. Many cautioned against the earlier insistence of the Obama administration (as well as other governments) that Assad must go, fearing what would take hold in the vacuum.

One of those critics happened to be Russian President Vladimir Putin, who warned against U.S. intervention in Syria in a New York Times op-ed last September. He wrote:

    A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Some of the crises Putin catalogs have worsened anyway, no matter American action or inaction. But Putin's insistence was couched in a reading of the conflict in Syria that's more cold-blooded than the view initially held by some in Washington. "Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country," Putin wrote, suggesting that the nominally secular Assad regime, despite its misdeeds, was a stabilizing force preferable to what could possibly replace it.

Putin decried the growing Islamist cadres in the Syrian rebels' ranks:

    Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria?

That's a concern very publicly shared now by U.S. and European officials, who are alarmed by the considerable presence of European nationals among the Islamic State's forces. A British jihadist who spoke with a London accent is believed to have carried out the shocking execution of American journalist James Foley this week.

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James Foley 'beheading': West condemns 'barbaric' murder

James Foley 'beheading': West condemns 'barbaric' murder

    Wednesday, August 20, 2014   No comments

UK, France and other Western governments implicitly and explicitly supported jihadists in Syria, or looked the other way as Gulf rulers supported Nusra and ISIL to expedite the overthrow of Assad. They also looked the other way when their own citizens traveled to Syria to join ISIL. Nusra, and other violent groups. Listening to a likely British citizen carrying out this horrible crime highlights the gravity of that policy. We can now see the fruits of that short-sided, foolish policy. However, it is journalists, civilians, women, and minorities who are paying the heavy price. It is clear now that the West cannot fight ISIL in Iraq and support it or ignore it in Syria. It is about time that they develop a comprehensive strategy to overcome this global threat.


James Foley 'beheading': West condemns 'barbaric' murder

The US, UK and France have expressed abhorrence at the apparent beheading of American journalist James Foley by an Islamic State (IS) militant.

The jihadist group released a video of Foley, missing in Syria since 2012, saying his killing was revenge for US air strikes on its fighters in Iraq.

France said, if confirmed, it was barbaric; the UK said it was depraved.

Foley's mother Diane said he "gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people."

President Barack Obama is due to give a statement later. But White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said: "If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist."

Foley, 40, has reported extensively across the Middle East, working for US publication GlobalPost and other media outlets including French news agency AFP.

In a statement, GlobalPost asked for "prayers for Jim and his family", adding that it was waiting for the video to be verified.
British accent

In the video, titled A Message to America, a man identified as James Foley is dressed in an orange jumpsuit, kneeling in desert-like terrain beside an armed man dressed in black.

He gives a message to his family and links his imminent death to the US government's bombing campaign of IS targets in Iraq.

Clearly under duress, he says: "I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the US government, for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality."

Then the masked militant, who speaks with a British accent, delivers a warning to the US government: "You are no longer fighting an insurgency. We are an Islamic army and a state that has been accepted by a large number of Muslims worldwide.
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The apparent murderer speaks with a British accent, as the BBC's Frank Gardner reports. Some listeners may find parts of this audio disturbing.

"So any attempt by you Obama to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people."

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Saudi Top Cleric and Salafi Wahhabi authority: Qaeda, ISIL “Enemy No 1” of Islam

Saudi Top Cleric and Salafi Wahhabi authority: Qaeda, ISIL “Enemy No 1” of Islam

    Tuesday, August 19, 2014   No comments

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh on Tuesday blasted Al-Qaeda and the Takfiri group, ISIL, as "enemy number one" of Islam, in a statement issued in Riyadh.

"The ideas of extremism, radicalism and terrorism... have nothing to do with Islam and (their proponents) are the enemy number one of Islam," the kingdom's top cleric said. Saudi Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh

He cited Takfiris from the Islamic State, which has declared a "caliphate" straddling large parts of Iraq and Syria, and the global Al-Qaeda terror network.

"Muslims are the main victims of this extremism, as shown by crimes committed by the so-called ISIL, Al-Qaeda and groups linked to them," the mufti said, quoting a verse in the Quran urging the "killing" of people who do deeds harmful to Islam.

"In the circumstances the Islamic nation is living through, several countries have been destabilized" by extremists, who "divide Muslims" in the name of religion, the mufti said.

He warned: "In Islam, after heresy, dividing Muslims is the greatest crime."
The mufti urged "tolerance, which was at the origin of Islam's growth and longevity."

The ISIL had pronounced its “caliphate” last June. The Takfiri group has been widely known for its brutal crimes against civilians in Iraq and Syria.

Damascus has repeatedly accused the Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states of destabilizing Syria through funding and arming Takfiri groups like ISIL and Nusra Front.

Last Week, Hezbollah Secretary General, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah warned that several countries, including Saudi Arabia fear the threat of ISIL.

During an interview with Lebanese daily al-Akhbar, the resistance leader highlighted that some countries know what they have created and raised, and that's why their diagnosis of ISIL risk is the most accurate of others because they know what they have had, speaking about the "real horror" inside the Gulf countries and the Saudi Arabia because this thought have been taught for decades for people, schools and in the curriculum.

"Turkey and Qatar are backing ISIL, and I am convinced the Saudi Arabia's fear of it," Sayyed Nasrallah told al-Akhbar.

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The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race

The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race

    Monday, August 18, 2014   No comments

Will the recent rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, be a tipping point in the struggle against racial injustice, or will it be a minor footnote in some future grad student’s thesis on Civil Unrest in the Early Twenty-First Century?

You probably have heard of the Kent State shootings: on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on student protesters at Kent State University. During those 13 seconds of gunfire, four students were killed and nine were wounded, one of whom was permanently paralyzed. The shock and outcry resulted in a nationwide strike of 4 million students that closed more than 450 campuses. Five days after the shooting, 100,000 protestors gathered in Washington, D.C. And the nation’s youth was energetically mobilized to end the Vietnam War, racism, sexism, and mindless faith in the political establishment.

You probably haven’t heard of the Jackson State shootings.

On May 14th, 10 days after Kent State ignited the nation, at the predominantly black Jackson State University in Mississippi, police killed two black students (one a high school senior, the other the father of an 18-month-old baby) with shotguns and wounded twelve others.

There was no national outcry. The nation was not mobilized to do anything. That heartless leviathan we call History swallowed that event whole, erasing it from the national memory.

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David Cameron: [War on ISIL] is a battle against a poisonous ideology that is condemned by all faiths and by all faith leaders, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim

David Cameron: [War on ISIL] is a battle against a poisonous ideology that is condemned by all faiths and by all faith leaders, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim

    Sunday, August 17, 2014   No comments

 Stability. Security. The peace of mind that comes from being able to get a decent job and provide for your family, in a country that you feel has a good future ahead of it and that treats people fairly. In a nutshell, that is what people in Britain want – and what the Government I lead is dedicated to building.

Britain – our economy, our security, our future – must come first. After a deep and damaging recession, and our involvement in long and difficult conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is hardly surprising that so many people say to me when seeing the tragedies unfolding on their television screens: “Yes, let’s help with aid, but let’s not get any more involved.”

I agree that we should avoid sending armies to fight or occupy. But we need to recognise that the brighter future we long for requires a long-term plan for our security as well as for our economy. True security will only be achieved if we use all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess – to help bring about a more stable world. Today, when every nation is so immediately interconnected, we cannot turn a blind eye and assume that there will not be a cost for us if we do.

The creation of an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and extending into Syria is not a problem miles away from home. Nor is it a problem that should be defined by a war 10 years ago. It is our concern here and now. Because if we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain. We already know that it has the murderous intent. Indeed, the first Isil-inspired terrorist acts on the continent of Europe have already taken place.

Our first priority has of course been to deal with the acute humanitarian crisis in Iraq. We should be proud of the role that our brave armed services and aid workers have played in the international effort. British citizens have risked their lives to get 80 tons of vital supplies to the Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar. It is right that we use our aid programme to respond rapidly to a situation like this: Britain has given £13 million to support the aid effort. We also helped to plan a detailed international rescue operation and we remain ready and flexible to respond to the ongoing challenges in or around Dahuk, where more than 450,000 people have increased the population by 50 per cent.

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Maliki and other Iraqi policians are bickering about their rights to power while poor Iraqis are struggling to say alive; Yazidi victims of ISIS dying of thirst on mountains

Maliki and other Iraqi policians are bickering about their rights to power while poor Iraqis are struggling to say alive; Yazidi victims of ISIS dying of thirst on mountains

    Monday, August 11, 2014   No comments

ISR Comment: While thousands and thousands of Iraqis are victimized by ISIL and its affiliates, Iraqi politicians are fighting about who has the right to form a government. Those politicians should be sent to live in these mountains, not these poor, vulnerable people. Shame on you Maliki, shame on you all politicians.

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Yazidi victims of ISIS dying of thirst on mountains

Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst.

Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar two days earlier. But the mountain that had looked like a refuge is becoming a graveyard for their children.

Unable to dig deep into the rocky mountainside, displaced families said they have buried young and elderly victims of the harsh conditions in shallow graves, their bodies covered with stones. Iraqi government planes attempted to airdrop bottled water to the mountain on Monday night but reached few of those marooned.

“There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads,” said Marzio Babille, the Iraq representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by Islamic State. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.”

Most of those who fled Sinjar are from the minority Yazidi sect, which melds parts of ancient Zoroastrianism with Christianity and Islam. They are considered by the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State to be devil worshippers and apostates.
The dramatic advance of the extremist Sunni fighters has torn the ethnic and religious fabric of the country, with Christians and Shiites also uprooted from cities and towns.

The Islamic State’s takeover of Sinjar, the first major setback for Kurdish forces protecting the country’s north, sent about 200,000 people fleeing, according to the United Nations. Some 147,000 have arrived in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, flooding refugee camps.

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