Russian Rage
"The anti-constitutional coup in Kyiv and attempts to artificially impose a choice between Europe and Russia on the Ukrainian people have pushed society toward a split and painful confrontation."
Russian President Vladimir Putin
Associated Press photo Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko, center, poses Friday with European
Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, left, and European Council
President Herman Van Rompuy.
Some things have gone as planned, for Vladimir Putin. His and the Kremlin's fury over the removal of Viktor Yanukovych, their man in Kyiv, led Russia to provoke and slander the Ukrainian government, one of Mr. Putin's chief aides going so far as to denounce Ukrainians as "Nazis". Which certainly goes a long way to establishing diplomacy in the deteriorating relations between the two countries.
Of course, it has been the Russians who have behaving like fascists, for the most part, infiltrating their provocateurs and security agents and military personnel across the border into Ukraine to incite the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine in the eastern sectors to agitate for autonomy and even secession in a broadstroke counterattack responding to their loss of command of the situation where Ukraine has been steadily moving toward linking with the European Union.
A rejection that Moscow has not taken lightly. With the signing of the trade treaty, establishing President Petro Poroshenko's pre-election promises as reality, Russia has been beside itself with inchoate fury. As though they have more to feel injured over than Ukraine which has seen its stronger, pugnacious neighbour unilaterally annex Crimea, an act of international piracy.
That Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine remain mired in turmoil and defiance, claiming themselves to have declared themselves to be officially a state of their own prepared to join with Russia, presents the depth of the harm that Russia has deliberately forced upon Ukraine. The newly signed trade pact is expected to create billions of dollars in income for Ukraine eventually, though it will have to conform to more rigorous Western production standards in return.
Russia is witnessing its domination of Ukraine's economy seeping away into the reality of Ukraine's new partnership with the EU. The European Union leaders had taken care to insist that nothing in the deal would be harmful to Russian interests, but the very fact is that Mr. Poroshenko has stated that trade is just the first step. Full membership in the EU
"would cost the European Union nothing, but would mean the world to my country", he stated unequivocally.
A Moscow spokesman set aside the possibility that the split would lead to immediate retaliation on the Kremlin's part in reflection of a painful confrontation. Consequences, he said darkly however, would follow
"as soon as negative consequences arise for the economy". Undeterred, President Poroshenko is determined to free Ukraine from Russian oppression. While at the same time maintaining that there is no reason why the two countries could not continue trade and reasonable discourse.
Other than the fact that Moscow does not tend to be reasonable when it sees its power structure slipping beyond its control, and it does not take kindly to former satellites defying its will.
Labels: Aggression, Conflict, European Union, Russia, Secession, Trade, Ukraine
Regaining Confidence...?
"Tikrit has become a ghost town because a lot of people left over the
past 72 hours, fearing random aerial bombardment and possible clashes
as the army advances toward the city."
"The few people
who remain are afraid of possible revenge acts by Shiite militiamen who
are accompanying the army. We are peaceful civilians and we do not want
to be victims of this struggle."
Muhanad Saif al-Din, Tikrit resident
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Iraqi security forces take part in an intensive security deployment on
the outskirts of the city of Samarra, June 24, 2014. (REUTERS/Stringer)
In full anticipation of a government assault, many residents of Tikrit fled the city beforehand. Muhanad Saif al-Din said the city had been without power or water since Friday night. The Iraqi military carried out three airstrikes as well on the ISIS-held city of Mosul early on Saturday. South of Baghdad, clashes between security forces and ISIS along with Iraqi Sunni insurgents in the town of Sunni-majority Jurf al-Aakhar located 50 kilometres outside the capital killed 21 troops and dozens of militants, according to police and hospital officials.
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Iraqi security officials confirmed the arrival of five Russian Suohoi jets, purchased second-hand from Russia. The previously-ordered U.S.-manufactured planes the government of Iraq had ordered were delayed in their delivery until early fall; not much help in the current desperate situation. But the big news was that Iraqi soldiers backed by tanks and helicopter gunships started their offensive Saturday to retake Tikrit. Conflicting reports belying government claims it had retaken Tikrit have been going the rounds, with the Islamists claiming the city remained in their hands.
Residents of Tikrit reported that the militants still retained control of the city, even while Iraqi officials claimed troops had reached the outskirts, then pressed deep into Tikrit itself. The picture the regime is desperately trying to paint is the reverse of the reality that saw Iraq's large American-trained and -equipped military fading away when faced with the terrorist presence. Public confidence in the military is at a deep ebb. Should the Tikrit operation succeed, a degree of faith could be restored both in the security forces and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
"He gave a fatwa the Shiites never had for 90 years of more. He will not retreat. He wants to have a role. It would be seen as irresponsible for him to pull back after issuing such a fatwa", commented a Western diplomat of the country's clerical establishment leading the hugely revered 83-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to demand that politicians select a new government without delay; implicitly stating Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's disastrous administration come to an end.
The Grand Ayatollah called on Iraqis to take up arms against the Sunni insurgency, a call representing the first fatwa of its kind in a century; motivated, insisted other clerics, by his fear that the country faced collapse. Tens of thousands of Iraqi men have responded to the call, in support of the army that has seemed to be teetering on implosion. Ayatollah Sistani's appeal for an inclusive government is interpreted as a rebuke of Mr. al-Maliki, a situation difficult to ignore.
According to Iraqi military spokesman Lt.Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, helicopter gunships carried out airstrikes before dawn on Islamist militias who were attacking troops at a university campus on Tikrit's northern outskirts. A bridgehead had been established by government forces on the sprawling grounds of the university after being airlifted into the city the day before. Clashes continued sporadically throughout the day at the university.
Simultaneously, several columns of troops pushed north from Samarra, a city along the Tigris River banks, home to an important Shiite shrine, heading toward Tikrit. By sundown, Lt.Gen Ahmed Abu Ragheef, commander in the Salahuddin Operational Command, said as well that a column of troops had reached the edge of Tikrit, and another had secured an airbase known as Camp Speicher, used as an American military facility previously.
This, while residents reached by telephone on Saturday evening described militants as being still in control of the city, a Sunni-predominant city of over 200,000. While confirming the clashes around the university and fighting between ISIS and Iraqi forces to the southeast of the city as well, they described black smoke rising from a presidential palace complex located at the edge of the Tigris River after army helicopters opened fire on the compound.
The next few days will demonstrate whether the government's plan to restore confidence by portraying itself responding finally to the forward momentum of the Islamists has a true basis in describing what is occurring. After two weeks of demoralizing defeats at the hands of a conquest-seeking horde of Islamists for whom no atrocities are too vicious to send the message that nothing will stop them, it was time for Iraq to begin defending itself.
Labels: Conflict, Iraq, Islamists, Shiite, Sunni
Jordanian Bedouin hoist Al Qaeda flag in Ma’an - 104 km from Eilat. US, Israeli forces on the ready
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report June 29, 2014, 8:44 PM (IDT)
Ma'an raises ISIS flag of revolt
“Ma’an is the Falluja of Jordan!” shouted thousands
of Bedouin Saturday, June 28, in the southern Jordanian town of Ma’an.
This legend was inscribed on the placards and flags they bore aloft with
one hand in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIS). In the other, they waved automatic rifles.
Ma’an (pop: 50,000) is in a sensitive location: 218 km south of
Amman, it also lies 104 km from the Israeli port town of Eilat and some
60 km from the main artery cutting south from northern Israel to the
south.
But although pro-Al Qaeda riots have been going on for days in Ma’an,
capital of the southern province of the Kingdom of Jordan, military and
security personnel have not been seen in its vicinity.
The town has a history of violent unrest. It has in the past suffered
curfew and was even, when the rioting got out of hand, stormed by
soldiers firing live rounds and leaving dozens dead.
For now, King Abdullah is conferring urgently with his army and
intelligence chiefs on how to suppress the Islamist revolt in Ma’an
without it spilling over into other Jordanian towns, especially Salt,
Irbid and Zerka, which have large clusters of Al Qaeda followers.
There was anxious talk in Washington Sunday about the prospect of
Abdullah’s throne being rocked by an Islamist revolt, in which case the
Obama administration would have no option but to approve the
intervention of American and Israeli special operations forces to defend
the king, and push back against an Al Qaeda-ISIS invasion. However the
domestic Islamist peril may be more immediate and acute than the
external one.
A US military source consulted by
debkafile
revealed that the Jordanian army is now concentrated in three sectors:
The Syrian border in the north, the Iraqi border in the east and the
capital.
In the first case, Jordanian troops are ranged to head off a possible
incursion by ISIS forces concentrated in eastern Syria. They are also
prepared to withstand a possible Syrian army assault to dampen Jordan’s
military support for the Syrian rebels operating in southern Syria in
defense of the Jordanian and Israeli borders.
In the second case, the Jordanian army is deployed directly opposite
the ISIS forces which have seized control of most of Iraq’s Anbar
province adjacent to the Jordanian border.
The army’s third sector is the capital, Amman, where it acts as the guardian of the royal regime.
Should the Islamist conflagration spread from Ma’an to other corners
of the kingdom, its army will be short of fighting manpower for
simultaneous defense against internal and external threats.
Our Washington sources report that Brig. Gen. Dennis McKean, commander
of the joint US-Jordanian-Israeli underground Centcom-Forward war room
established near Amman, has already received instructions to place the
12,000 US soldiers and USAF F-16 fighter squadron positioned in Jordan
on the ready.
They also disclose that Brig. McKean is in direct communication with
Israel’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, the commander of Israel’s
Deep Operations command, Maj. Gen. Shay Avital and Israel Air Force
chief Maj. Gen. .Amir Eshel.
The Deep Operations command was established in case it was necessary to
launch operations against Iran or the Lebanese Hizballah in alien
territory. This unit may find itself operating against Al Qaeda’s ISIS
in Jordan instead
Washington, Jerusalem and Amman are mulling over whether to wait for
the trouble in Jordan to escalate further before intervening, or to act
preemptively before matters get out of hand by punching hard at ISIS
forces concentrated along the Iraqi-Jordanian border. In the latter
case, there would have to be a second decision as to which army would
inflict the punch, its location and a forward estimate of the potential
repercussions on Jordan’s internal security.
Labels: Al-Qaeda, Conflict, Defence, Islamists, Israel, Jordan, Security, United States
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Breaking News
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Sunni Islamists push Iraqi forces back from Tikrit
DEBKAfile
June 29, 2014, 6:00 PM (IDT)
Iraqi government
forces trying to retake the town of Tikrit from ISIS and Sunni rebels
were pushed back Sunday to a nearby town. They launched their
counter-offensive Saturday against the Islamist State of IRaq and the
Levant with tanks, armored vehicles and helicopter gunships. Heavy
fighting led to casualties on both side. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
has counted on recovering Sunni Tikrit 120km north of Baghdad to boost
his struggle to remain in power against rising demands for him to step
down.
Labels: Conflict, Iraq, Islamists
Tangled Webs
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) gets around, they really do. They obviously believe in getting things done expeditiously without too much fuss. Capture a thousand or so military of an opposition and dispatch them to the nether world and then there's no concern about having to guard them. They've marched from Iraq into Syria to oppose the Syrian Shia-Alawite regime, then turned about and marched right back into Iraq to unseat the Iraqi Shia-led regime with disaffected Sunnis aiding them at every turn.
Saudi Arabia has not only armed and financed the Sunni insurgents in both Syria and Iraq, but it has assembled its forces to protect its own borders; ISIS is like those army ants that stride imperviously through miles and miles of crops and forests to ravenously swallow everything in their path, to stifle and smother whatever cannot move swiftly enough out of their way. In Jordan ISIL/ISIS, the terrorist Islamist group with a double name; Al-Sham/Levant, strides toward Amman.
It appears to be pre-established within Ma'an, a tranquil southern Jordanian city where bearded men in military camouflage jackets and other men wearing long black tunics, the colour of choice for Islamists, shout "Allahu akbar!", unfurling the black flag bearing the symbol of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
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Members of the Al-Abbas brigades, who volunteered to protect the Shiite
Muslim holy sites in Karbala against Sunni militants fighting the
Baghdad government, parade in the streets of the Shrine city on June 26,
2014. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki conceded that political measures
are needed alongside military action to repel a Sunni insurgent
offensive that is threatening to tear Iraq apart. AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED
SAWAF MOHAMMED SAWAF/AFP/Getty Images |
Earlier this week Jordanian troops rushed to the border with Iraq to reinforce defences with convoys of tanks, troops and rocket launchers just as the Sunni ISIL militias took control of the official border post on the Iraq side. Radical factions within Jordan's largely Sunni society sympathizing with ISIL's push to depose Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Shiite oppressor of Iraq's Sunnis are prepared to join the disintegration of the Middle East.
That disintegration has been brought to the fore courtesy of many circumstances, none more responsible than the flowering of the "Arab Spring", which the West so applauded, believing it to herald in a new era of democracy and civil rights and freedoms that countries of the Muslim Middle East's citizens so eagerly clamoured for, believing that it would being them wealth and security, as it appeared to when watching U.S. television.
What it did was free sectarian tensions on a low boil to intensify to immensely fiery proportions igniting old resentments and antagonisms that nothing could forestall, thanks to some interventions removing old tyrants whose firm grasp of their societies held them together in mutual fear and traditional loathing. Learning to share never was a high priority in tribal societies for whom the 'other' presented as a provocation and potential risk to their own advantage.
The minority Shiite populations within majority Sunni countries will always be disadvantaged as lesser creatures within the Islamic scale of justice and balance. They simply chose the wrong heir to back and back then, as right now that was rigorously recognized as blasphemy leading to apostasy. The Sunnis who live as minority populations within majority Shiite regimes will never be granted equal citizenship, for they are undeserving, following the wrong Islamic path.
ISIS/ISIL is on the rampage, eager to behead as many Shiites as they can before their scimitars become too dulled to cut through human flesh, sinew and bone. Of course there is always the potential for the United States to intervene, to attempt to halt the slaughter that will continue regardless of what outsiders do or say or threaten. Should outside intervention favour either sect, the terrorist jihadis representing either sect will see it as an invitation to heap their scorn and lethal attacks where it will hurt the intervenors most, at home.
In Pakistan, senior Al-Qaeda would be delighted to disabuse the United States of the notion that they will successfully apprehend all the terrorists that attempt to enter North America and reprise 9/11. In Iran, the Ayatollahs will give additional thought and instruction to Hezbollah and Hamas who have both proven their mettle in infiltrating North American and European society, enabling them to strike should they so desire, anywhere.
So, go ahead make their day; choose carefully, either Sunni or Shiite, and remember the choosing was a matter of free will, and for every action there will be reaction. Caution: wring hands, stay home, send treasure.
Labels: Conflict, Iran, Iraq, Islamism, Jihad, Jordan, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Violence
Mid East is sizzling: Armed US drones over Baghdad, Saudi, Jordanian tanks deploy
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis June 28, 2014, 8:23 PM (IDT)
The Obama administration announced Friday, June 27, that unmanned
aerial vehicles flying over Baghdad would henceforth be armed in order
to defend the US Embassy in the Green Zone. The embassy was originally
assigned the tasks of guardian of Iraq’s central government and symbol
of post-Saddam national unity. These roles have remained out of reach
ever since the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003. Today, the armed drones
overhead are reduced to holding back the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIS) and its local Sunni allies from overrunning the Green Zone
and seizing the embassy, most of whose 5,000 staff were evacuated as a
precaution.
President Barack Obama has again decreed that no US soldiers will
take part in combat in Iraq. Therefore, American military personnel on
the ground will be there to guide the drones to their targets.
Those targets were defined Saturday, June 28, by Gen. Martin Dempsey,
Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as striking at ISIS leaders
and defending Iraq’s strategic facilities. He did not elaborate.
debkafile
reports that he was referring to the Haditha dam on the Euphrates. ISIS
fighters have been battering the town of Haditha on and off for some
days.
Its dam is the key to the water supply of most of Iraq, including
Baghdad. With its capture, Al Qaeda’s affiliates will have gained
control of northern Iraq’s oil refineries and pipeline networks.
US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jordan Friday laid out another
piece of the Iraq-Syria imbroglio. He estimated that the Syrian rebel
recruits enlisted from among the nearly one million Syrian refugees
sheltering in Jordan could be deployed in Iraq for fighting ISIS.
His words were accompanied by the Obama administration’s application to
Congress for half a billion dollars to arm and train such a force.
President Obama is therefore in the midst of yet another U-turn on the Syrian-Iraqi war scene – this one involving Israel too.
Until now, the Syrian rebels undergoing training by US instructors in
Jordan were sent into southern Syria to hold a line up to the outskirts
of Damascus and act as a buffer between the Syrian, Iranian, Hizballah
and Iraqi Shiite militia units and the Israeli and Jordanian borders.
Their presence in this sector of the Syrian warfront was to have
provided Washington with a bargaining chip against the Assad regime.
This operation was run from an underground US-Jordanian-Israeli war room situated not far from the Jordanian capital of Amman.
Kerry’s latest statement gave this bunker-command a new war focus and
diverted Jordan-based Syrian rebel forces from their mission south of
Damascus to contesting the rapidly-advancing Sunni Islamists in Iraq.
Our military sources note that these forces – albeit with full
US-Jordanian-Israeli intelligence and logistical back-up - were not an
outstanding success in their Syrian mission and should not be expected
to do much better in Iraq.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Lebanese army and Hizballah militia
are bracing against the latest round of ISIS-engineered suicide bombing
attacks, which was in fact launched last week with two explosions in
Beirut – one by a female bomber.
To the south of Lebanon, Israel’s unusually mild military retaliation
against “terrorist targets” in Gaza for the swelling hail of rockets
aimed day by day at Ashkelon, Hof Ashkelon and the Eshkol District ,
points to a decision by Israel’s government military leaders to avoid
being dragged into the cauldron boiling up around its borders.
Israel’s armed forces and three intelligence services, the Shin Bet,
Mossad and AMAN, are in fact nursing the blow to their prestige from
the failure of their massive, all-out hunt of two weeks discover the
three teenagers abducted on June 10.
Some serious soul-searching is taking place about the wisdom of
throwing all of the IDF’s deterrent strength against the kidnappers, who
have since been identified as a pair of Hamas operatives, who
outsmarted Israel’s mightiest resources and vanished off the face of the
earth with their captives.
Israel’s conduct in this episode appears in retrospect to have been ruled less by sense than by emotions.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was sidetracked by his fixed desire
for a reckoning with Hamas and with the Palestinian Authority Chairman
Mahmoud Abbas for dealing with this extremist group – notwithstanding
their near-irrelevance to the main stream of events in the region.
Three months after Israel’s National Intelligence Estimate judged the
prospect of a conventional war close to nil, Al Qaeda’s cohorts are
grabbing wide stretches of Iraq and knocking on the doors of Jordan and
Saudi Arabia.
Iran, Hizballah - and now ISIS - must be wondering what makes Israel
tick in view of this behavior. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s jihadis are
fighting under the flag of the Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant.
For them, the Levant is not just Syria and Lebanon and Jordan, but also
“Palestine” i.e. Israel.
Jerusalem had better wake up fast. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have deployed
tank divisions on their borders against ISIS encroachments. The two
kingdoms are Israel’s eastern and southern next door neighbors.
Labels: Iraq, Islamism, Middle East, Societal Failures, Syria, Terrorists
Stuck In Conflict Mode
"We're in full agreement that it is critical for Russia to show in the next hours, literally, that they're moving to help disarm the separatists, to encourage them to disarm ... and to begin to become part of a legitimate process."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
"Instead of them calling back their mercenaries, even more new, well-equipped and motivated fighters are arriving from the Russian Federation."
"Without that [Russia stopping rebels crossing into Ukraine], we cannot talk about peace. Support the peace plan with deeds, not words, because with these deeds we will stop the killing."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko
The shooting down of a
military transport helicopter, killing nine soldiers, puts the
ceasefire in Ukraine on shaky ground. Photograph: Shamil
Zhumatov/Reuters
Vladimir Putin is playing his usual darkly sinister game of telling it, but not doing it. He feels rather ill disposed toward Ukraine set on its Western-oriented trajectory, and punishing the country is the sole option he feels justified in pursuing. Why go out of his way to aid Ukraine when there's little in it for Moscow, after all. Ukraine had the opportunity to move closer to Moscow and spurned it. They must now continue to pay the costs for that betrayal.
So while Mr. Poroshenko condemns Russia's failure to help it bring a halt to violence in the rebellious east, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warns the Kremlin it has "hours to act", to save the ceasefire from utter failure. It was, after all, set to expire at the end of this very day. However, Mr. Poroshenko did extend it for another few days; not that anything of value will likely result from that extension. But hope dies hard.
Even while thousands of ethnic Russian Ukrainians are streaming across the border into Russia claiming that the government of Ukraine has betrayed them, Ukraine's President expressed his dismay over the rebels using the ceasefire to rearm and regroup. The pro-Russian rebels shot down yet another Ukrainian army helicopter killing another nine servicemen, in a demonstration of just how valuable they've held the ceasefire to be.
The very day the ceasefire was set to expire was the day that Ukraine signed a deal on closer trade ties with the European Union, in Brussels. It was this agreement that former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych had rejected, that caused the backlash removing him from power and unleashing the reaction in eastern Ukraine, leading to Russia annexing Crimea after dispatching Russian agents to covertly agitate for separation.
Should the Kremlin continue to refuse to defuse the violence in Ukraine that they are themselves wholly responsible for, several European countries along with the United States threaten new sanctions against Russia. Access to oil and gas technology may be among those issues that will crop up, reflecting a kind of reverse energy pain contrasting with the situation on gasflow from Russian to Ukraine.
Labels: Aggression, Conflict, Russia, Secession, Ukraine
Counter-Attack in Tikrit
"I saw one of the helicopters land opposite the university with my own eyes and I saw clashes between dozens of militants and government forces."
Ahmed Al-Jubbour, professor, Tikrit University, College of Agriculture
The Human Rights Watch reported that hundreds of captured Iraqis have been executed by ISIS. (Photo: AP)
An Iraqi counterattack has finally taken place against the jihadist advance, with the intention of returning Tikrit to government rule. An airborne assault with three helicopters loaded with commandos landed in Tikrit stadium, resulting in clashes with members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. Even taking into account the Sunni Iraqis fighting for the time being alongside ISIS terrorists against Shiite Iraqi rule, the numbers don't quite compute.
There are so many more Shiites in Iraq than there are Sunnis, logic would have it that the Iraqi military should have no problems in their conflict with the thousands of ISIS militias, even if the Kurdish Peshmerga has deigned not to fight alongside the Shiite military. Yet ISIS, aided by Iraqi Sunnis, has managed to take over a huge swathe of the country with little resistance, the regime's forces melting away in terror at their approach.
Witnesses in Tikrit now say that battles are raging in the city, the result of the lightning offensive by government forces. Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has confirmed that Syrian warplanes have targeted ISIS terrorists inside Iraq. The Iranian al-Quds force is well represented within Baghdad; there is little risk that the capital will fall to the Sunni Islamists. Saudi Arabia is provisioning the Iraqi Sunnis contesting their Shia Iraqi regime, and Iran is equipping the Shias.
"We believe the urgent priority must be to form an inclusive government ... that can command the support of all Iraqis and work to stop terrorists and their terrible crimes", stated Britain's foreign Minister William Hague, visiting Baghdad. A clear enough message calling for Prime Minister Al-Maliki to step down, in echo of the Obama administration; a message that Mr. Al-Maliki has characterized as an interfering, Western malicious "coup" attempt.
The country is in danger of disengaging into fiefdoms controlled by different sects and militant factions, according to Mr. Hague. More likely there will result three divisions, one each for the Kurds, Iraqi Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis. As the only feasible prospect to stem the murderous millennial hatred the latter two harbour for one another.
The U.S. administration is counting on Jordan and Saudi Arabia to use their cross-border tribal networks to aid the Sunni militias to eventually do battle with the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, through financing or weapons-provision. Twelve people were killed in a bombing in a Shiite neighbourhood in Baghdad with another eight bullet-riddled bodies discovered south of the capital; an increasingly familiar sight in Baghdad.
Labels: Conflict, Iran, Iraq, Islamists, Saudi Arabia, Syria
King Abdullah calls up Saudi armed forces on high preparedness. Egyptian troops ready to fly to kingdom
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report June 26, 2014, 6:49 PM (IDT)
Saudi special operations force on the ready
Thursday, June 26, the day before US Secretary of
State John Kerry was due in Riyadh, King Abdullah summoned a National
Security Council meeting “upon the current security events in the
region, especially in Iraq,” and ordered “all necessary measures to
protect the kingdom against terrorist threats.” This meant a general
call-up of military units for a high level of preparedness.
debkafile’s
military sources disclose that Egypt is assembling an expeditionary
commando force to fly to Saudi Arabia and bolster its border defenses.
This flurry of Saudi-Egyptian military steps comes in the wake of
intelligence gathered by Saudi reconnaissance planes showing Iraqi Al
Qaeda-linked Sunni fighters (ISIS) heading for the Saudi border and
aiming to seize control of the Iraqi-Saudi crossing at Ar Ar (pop:
200,000).
ISIS and its Sunni allies are still on the march after capturing
Iraq’s border crossings with Syria and Jordan earlier this week.
On Wednesday, Kerry warned Mideast nations against taking new military action in Iraq that might heighten sectarian divisions.
By then, he had been overtaken by a rush of events, as
debkafile reported this morning.
When the first of the 300 military advisers US President Barack Obama
promised the Iraqi government arrived in Baghdad Wednesday, June 25,
Iranian and Saudi Arabian arms shipments were already in full flow to
opposing sides in embattled Iraq,
debkafile’s military sources report.
At least two cargo planes from bases in Iran were landing daily at
Baghdad’s military airport, carrying 150 tons of military equipment.
More than 1,000 tons were flown in this past week alone. Tehran has
replicated for the Iraqi army the routine it established for Bashar
Assad’s army, furnishing its needs on a daily basis as per its
commanders’ requests. Those requests come before a joint Iranian-Iraqi
headquarters set up at the Iraqi high command in Baghdad for approval
and the assigning of priorities for shipment.
At the same time, Saudi arms are flowing to the Iraqi Sunni tribes
fighting alongside the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)
against the Iraqi army and the Shiite Nouri al-Maliki's government.
They are coming in both overland and by airlift.
Saudi arms convoys are crossing the border into Iraq with Saudi and
Jordanian air force cover and heading north up to the Al-Qa'im district
near the Syrian border. There, Sunni and ISIS fighters, after capturing
this key Anbar district, have begun refurbishing the bases and runways
at H-2, once one of Saddam Hussein’s largest airbases. Situated 350
kilometers west of Baghdad, this air base has two long runways and
hangars for fighter planes and helicopters.
debkafile's
military sources disclose that, on Tuesday June 24, unmarked civilian
cargo planes landed at the base, bringing arms shipments from Saudi
Arabia.
The response was swift. Syrian warplanes, on their first bombing
mission inside Iraq, tried to damage the partially repaired runways at
H-2 to prevent any more Saudi air shipments from landing.
Military sources in Washington confirmed Wednesday June 25 that those
air strikes were conducted by the Syrian Air Force “in Anbar province”
and left at least 57 people dead and 120 wounded - most of them Iraqi
civilians. They declined to say what was attacked, referring only to
ISIS-related targets.
That incident was a striking demonstration of the tight operational
sync between the Iranian command centers in Damascus and Baghdad, which
are attached respectively to the high commands of the Syrian and Iraqi
armies. This coordination offers Tehran the flexibility for its command
centers in both Arab capitals to send Iranian drones aloft from Syrian
or Iraqi airbases to feed those centers with the intelligence they need
for the strategic planning of military operations to be conducted by the
Syrian and Iraqi armies.
Iranian command centers in Baghdad and Damascus are fully equipped
therefore to decide which Syrian, Iraqi or Hizballah force carries out a
planned operation in either Syria or Iraq. Both are now pushing back
against further ISIS advances towards its goal of a Sunni caliphate
spanning both countries.
This is just what US Secretary of State John Kerry meant when he said
in Brussels Wednesday June 25, after two days of talks in Iraq, that
"the war in Iraq is being widened."
He had good reason to sound worried. Shortly before he spoke, the
first group of US military personnel, out of the 300 that President
Obama had promised, had arrived in Baghdad. But neither Tehran nor
Riyadh had consulted Washington before they organized heavy arms
shipments to their respective allies in Iraq.
The Iraqi battle arena is become a veritable Babel of war. So far,
six countries are involved in varying degrees: the US, Iraq, Iran,
Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Labels: Conflict, Iran, Iraq, Islamism, Munitions, Saudi Arabia, Syria
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UN Watch
BriefingLatest from the United
Nations |
Vol. 495 | June 25,
2014 |
|
|
U.N. Dictatorships Fail
to Stop Critique of Inaction on Human
Rights
Iran, Cuba, China, Pakistan, Egypt, Venezuela Urge
Silencing of UN
Watch |
The 2014 Catalog of U.N.
Inaction on Global Human Rights
Abuses
Testimony before U.N. Human
Rights Council, delivered by UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer, 19 June
2014, in the debate under Agenda Item 3, "Promotion and Protection of All Human
Rights"
Thank you, Mr. President.
The members of this Council have been
mandated by the international community to protect victims of human rights
violations around the world. Is the Council living up to its mandate?
Let us consider the most fundamental of
all human rights—the right to life—by examining what has happened in the world,
over the past 12 months:
July 2013, Turkey: Doctors
report that in the Gezi Park protests, police killed 5 people, wounded 8,163 and
used chemical riot control weapons against more than 10,000.
August, Egypt: Authorities
crush the sit-in held by supporters of deposed president Morsi, killing 1,000
people.
September, Iran: One month
after President Rouhani’s inauguration, amid promises of human rights reforms,
Iranian officials ignore UN appeals, and hang a record 50 individuals.
Did the council respond with any
resolutions, urgent debates, or inquiries to determine the facts, and hold
perpetrators accountable? No. Its response was silence.
October, Afghanistan:
Terrorists bomb a minibus, killing 14 women and a child who were on their way to
celebrate a wedding.
November, Libya: Militia kill
31 during protests in Tripoli, injuring 235.
December, South Sudan: BBC
reports mass ethnic killings, including 200 shot by security forces.
January, Pakistan: 236
civilians killed by terrorist attacks.
This Council’s response? Silence.
February, Ukraine: Police kill
75 protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square.
March, China: Activist Cao
Shunli, who was arrested for trying to travel to Geneva and participate this
Council, mysteriously dies in prison.
April, Iraq: 750 Iraqis
killed, 1,541 injured by terrorism and other violence.
May, Venezuela: Troops arrest
243 student protesters and kill one of their own, bringing the death toll to 42
since the start of the opposition protests.
Finally, June -- a few weeks ago -- in
Nigeria: Boko Haram massacres 200 civilians while still holding the 276 school
girls it abducted in April…
President: Please can I ask you to wait? There is a point of order
from Venezuela...
Venezuela: I think this speaker is out
of order and I would ask that he confine himself to the agenda items under
consideration. He’s also mentioned my country and I will take the floor later on
that...
France: France attaches great
importance to the voice of civil society which should be able to speak freely in
the work of the council and contribute to her work...
USA: Along
the same lines as my colleague from France, we firmly believe that NGOs and
civil society be heard... What the speaker was saying is consistent with the
topic of this agenda item so we urge you to let him continue.
Cuba: I
am looking at the agenda, [and] we were never talking about countries as far as
I understood. We do not understand why the NGO has been spending its entire time
talking about country situations. This is not the agenda item for this...
Ireland: We do believe that the speaker
was speaking to the agenda item by providing concrete examples linked to those
thematic issues and therefore we would kindly ask that he be allowed to
continue.
China: China requests
the president to make a ruling to end the speech by this NGO.
Canada: Canada, much like others who
have spoke before us, firmly believes that accredited NGOs must be permitted to
speak at the council... It is essential to respect the council’s emphasis on
open dialogue. This is a question of freedom of speech... The statements that
were being made were pertinent to the agenda items that were being
discussed.
Norway: This statement
should not be interrupted because an NGO mentions concrete examples of human
rights violations so we therefore ask you to let the speaker continue the
statement.
Iran: My delegation would like to
support the point of order made by the delegation of the
Venezuela.
Pakistan: My delegation also
supports the point of order raised by Venezuela. It is important that we should
respect and adhere to the rules of procedure and discuss relevant issues under
the relevant agenda items.
United Kingdom: The UK supports the
right of accredited NGOs to speak at the UN Human Rights Council... We request
that the speaker be allowed to finish their statement.
Egypt: We just want to also add our
voice to other speakers who spoke about the appropriateness of speaking under
the right agenda item. We don’t believe that what was mentioned in the statement
of the NGO here relates to our discussion.. there are certain rules and
regulations for this council all of us have to stick to.
President:
What I can say is that already I’ve noted that you agree that NGOs do have the
right to speak. The issues relating to human rights don’t take place in an
abstract context... If a speaker were to refer to relevant human rights issues
under the agenda item under consideration, it is possible that the speaker may
give examples or illustrations from specific examples from specific
situations... I give the floor back to the speaker.
UN Watch (Hillel
Neuer): Thank you. Mr. President, if it “inappropriate” to speak
about the urgent need to take action for victims of human rights violations
around the world, then why are we here?
|
Labels: Fraud, Human Rights, Hypocrisy, Sanctimony, UN Watch, United Nations
Star Wars/Earth Wars
Then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien,
studying the popular polls, stated in 2005 that Canada would not
participate in the United States' ballistic missile defence program.
This was a hugely popular decision on the part of the government,
reflecting the majority opinion of Canadians who shrank at the very
notion of 'weaponizing space'. The United States was puzzled by the
decision, but then they were accustomed to Canada riding the free ferry.
Strangely
enough up until that final decision Canada had indicated its interest
in taking part and was in fact participating through agreeing that
warning information collected through the North American Aerospace
Defense Command (NORAD), be utilized in Ballistic Missile Defence. So
Canada was the spoiler, the outlier, the sardonic onlooker agreeing in
the potential of BMD but strategically and ethically it just wasn't on the Canadian playbill.
|
2013 Aegis photo / US Navy |
Scooting
forward a decade, and viewing the volatile insanity of the world gone
berserk from North Africa to Asia, the Middle East to Eastern Europe,
suddenly BMD
as a defensive measure looks fairly appropriate. Even if the
much-vaunted potential hasn't lived up to the initial public relations
enthusiasm. Intervention success rate was nothing to write home about.
But it was, assuredly, better than nothing at all.
It
is a system intended to offer protection against a limited ballistic
missile attack by a state like North Korea, or like Iran, partners in
both nuclear architecture and ballistics delivery. It's hard to say
which of the two regimes is more threatening; the delusional lunacy of
North Korea, or the cold calculation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As
far apart as they appear rooted in their ideology, they do have a
common goal and they share their technical research expertise.
The
program doesn't militarize space. It barely manages to fend off
experimental attacks, but the intention is there to perfect the system,
and should Canada decide, after all, to throw in its lot, there is a
good possibility that advanced Canadian technical expertise could lead
to improvement in the success rate of stopping missiles as they enter
our airspace.
|
First SM3 Launch US Navy |
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence feels the time has arrived for the reassessment of Canada's BMD
policy. Time to set aside Chretien's cynical manipulation of the
electorate for a realistic look at Canada's self-protection needs.
Sanctimony aside, there's national pride in acknowledging that the free
ride incumbent on sharing a continent with the United States has its
perquisites, but also its responsibilities.
NATO has fully embraced BMD
within its New Strategic Concept. Australia, South Korea and Japan have
agreed to participate in the eventual global network of regional BMD systems. Should Canada continue its rejectionist
stance, it would be embracing self-delusion bordering on a penchant for
masochism. The contradiction of Canada's explicit support for NATO
allies protected by BMD but not Canada is rather absurd.
Hearing
from The Deputy Commander of NORAD, Lieutenant General Alain Parent,
the committee learned that Canada should not assume its territory will
be under default protection within the existing American BMD system for it is optimized to protect American territory and the U.S. military command that operates it.
USNORTHCOM is legally contracted to respect this prioritization. With Canada not a full BMD participant, when critical decision-making takes place on how to handle an incoming missile NORAD's binational command hands the decision making over to USNORTHCOM,
co-located with NORAD, commanded by the very same general officer who
when the decision must be made favours the signatory U.S.
Labels: Armaments, Canada, Defence, NATO, Security, United States
Cleaning Up
"This is a critical moment for Iraq's future. It is a moment of decision for Iraq's leaders and it's a moment of great urgency."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
"[Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi leadership face a test, whether] they are able to set aside their suspicions, their sectarian preferences for the good of the whole."
"And we don't know. The one thing I do know is that if they fail to do that, then no amount of military action by the United States can hold that country together."
U.S President Barack Obama
Brendan Smialowski
/ AP U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, meets with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Monday
Two men who appear to have come a little late to the game. Examining the score to date, it's rather late to be positing that there is any opportunity remaining for Iraq to pull itself together again. But then miracles do happen, and in the volatile Middle East the strangest things are pulled off. Take, for example, an powerful outside agency looking in and deciding that they would remove the tyrant that keeps tribal/sectarian antipathy from self-devouring.
What a surprise when the chimera began devouring itself, starting with the tail and ending with its eyeballs. The stiff-upper-lip friendly confrontation appears to have left Prime Minister Al-Maliki silent about whether he might consider stepping down from a position that has clearly imperilled the country he represents in promoting the interests of Shiites over Iraqi Sunnis. Ham-fisted governance at best, idiotically oppositional in reality, confusing tyranny with good administration.
The spillover from the swift takeover of over one-third of the country by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham has certainly left its neighbours in a quandary. There are rumours that there is a new league of ISIS Islamists calling themselves the Islamic State of Saudi Arabia.... As for Jordan, its army has dispatched reinforcements to the border with Iraq to boost security. In Lebanon, heavily armed police took custody of a sleeper cell linked to the group in raids on two hotels in central Beirut.
Syrian Information Minister Omran Al-Zoubi warned on Monday that events in Iraq pose dire threats to
"the entire Middle East", undermining security in Europe and beyond. Syrian rebel factions recruit teenagers of 15 to fight, using them as soldiers and snipers, as stretcher bearers and suicide bombers. Rebel groups of all types, 'moderate' and Islamist, are using children in the conflict. And that includes the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front and the Nusra Front, along with ISIS.
The United States is being warned by Iran not to interfere.
"We are strongly opposed to U.S. and other intervention in Iraq. ... We don't approve of it as we believe the Iraqi government, nation and religious authorities are capable of ending the sedition", stated Iran's Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"American authorities are trying to portray this as a sectarian war, but what is happening in Iraq is not a war between Shiites and Sunnis. The U.S. is seeking an Iraq under its hegemony and ruled by its stooges", he charged knowledgeably.
Not a war between Shiites and Sunnis. Well, that clears that matter up to the satisfaction of all. How wrong could we be!
There was no statement with respect to whether the esteemed mullah was under the influence of drugs at the time of his statement. Iran does have a drug problem, imported from Afghanistan. Either that, or Ayatollah Khamenei knows something no one else does. Yes, yes, the Quds force is in Baghdad, its formidable general absorbing Iraqi forces among the trained and battle-ready Quds militias, to defend the Baghdad fortress, its electrical grid, its water system, its nearby oilfields.
To retain at the very least, a vestige of the geography that once marked out Iraq's vast territory now in full dispute and hostile hands. Where ISIS has consolidated its firm control of Iraq's vast western region. The crossing at Turabil providing a gateway to ISIS beyond Iraq and Syria, into Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The advance by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham following on its seizure of Qaim allows it to move fighters and supplies at will between those areas it controls in both Syria and Iraq.
After Qaim there was Rutba, Rawah, Anah; quite the catch. Enabling ISIS to focus on extending its grasp further north. Where the remaining Iraqi forces in Tal Afar west of Mosul, withdrew into Kurdish controlled geography; preservation being for them the preferred measure of valour, leaving the town to the Islamists.
Labels: Conflict, Iran, Iraq, Islamists, Syria, United States
Flooding Iraq
"As a tactical procedure to reopen the military forces in Al-Jazeera and Al-Badiyah security operation field, the security forces in Rawaa, Ana and Qaim withdraw from these areas to reinforce other troops in other areas."
Iraqi General Qassim Atta
"Around 50 vehicles full of militants and weapons came from Houran Valley and after sporadic clashes with police they took control over the central town. Then they left a group of them to secure the town and then headed toward the border."
Ratif Al-Ubaid, Rutba local council
General Atta's lengthy explanation could have been delivered in a more pithy manner; as, for example:
"Our troops decamped", leaving the field to the incoming rapid advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. While Mr. Al-Ubaid described the swift occupation of his town with the advance of ISIS militias which, having taken yet one more Iraqi town, moved on rapidly to another, leaving a scant few of their members to hold the town.
Iraqi army troops abandoned the Al-Qaim border post, and along with it, the towns of Rawaa and Ana. Under the pretense that the units which should have stood their ground and kept the Islamists from taking over, were responding to orders to join the battle in another area. General Atta failed to mention Rutba, where local officials spoke of ISIS militants burning the police station and briefly clashing with police before taking control.
|
The Associated Press -- Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham patrol in Fallujah, 65 kilometres west of Baghdad Saturday |
On the main highway from Baghdad to the two border crossings into Syria and Jordan, the capital's main land route to Jordan has now been cut off; a key artery whose deteriorating security has now become final. That was on Saturday. A day later police fled from the last post at the Syrian border remaining in the military's possession, at Al-Waleed. Frightened police explained the army had already left, leaving the police to scatter when the militias arrived in their trucks.
Another border post, the Turaibil crossing into Jordan was also taken as the Islamists methodically consolidate their hold on the Sunni provinces to the west and the north while the Iraqi army is left to focus on protecting Baghdad. Baghdad, it increasingly seems, may be all that will be left to the Shia government of Nouri al-Maliki. Or his immediate successors, involvement of the Iranian Quds force and Hezbollah, regardless.
Jordan suddenly finds itself and its capital in the crosshairs of ISIS forces. A situation that will draw in other forces, like the United States which has emphatically stated it will not put boots on the ground, but may deploy air strikes against the ISIS advance, as may Israel, alongside Jordanian fighter jets, as this war extends and explodes its presence beyond the borders that once existed between Syria and Iraq.
With the border post of Al-Qaim taken with a three-day conflict, along with nearby towns, ISIS and its allied Sunni forces will be enabled to move on to the city of Haditha and its major dam. Iraq has dispatched 2,000 additional troops to the area, to secure the dam. Seventy volunteers who had left Baghdad to join the fighting with the Iraqi army during the Qaim conflict were killed in an ambush. Travelling in food freezer trucks to remain undetected, the militants had knowledge of their arrival.
With control of the borders between Syria and Iraq, ISIS will now readily supply its fighters in Syria with weapons looted from Iraqi warehouses, reinforcing its battle ability against the Syrian government forces. As for the 300 military advisers that the U.S. planned to send on to Baghdad to assist Iraqi forces, negotiations relating to their legal protection still haven't been worked out.
And if memory serves that very issue was the final sticking point that led the Obama administration to pull out all its troops from Iraq.
Labels: Conflict, Iraq, Islamists, Jordan, Shiite, Sunni, Syria
Whose National Interests?
"A big country like Russia cannot be split from the rest of the world -- it is not the 19th Century."
"We will be barefoot and the inflation rate out of control."
Evgeny Gontmacher, economist
"Putin has to show that he is a strong leader who stands up for the national interests. On the other hand, he needs to send a message to the West that he is ready for a dialogue, to make it clear that he won't escalate the situation, that there is no need to impose sanctions."
Aleksei Makarkin, analyst Center for Political Technologies, Moscow
"It is important that this ceasefire open the way to a dialogue between all of the parties to the combat, so as to find solutions that will be acceptable to all sides."
"What is needed is for all military operations to stop."
Russian President Vladimir Putin
Pro-Russian militants take the military oath of allegiance
to the so-called People's Republik of Donetsk during a ceremony in the
centre of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on June 22, 2014.
Ukraine's new Western-backed leader agreed on Sunday to dialogue with
separatists not implicated in "murder and torture" as he laid out a
peace plan that Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to back. AFP
PHOTO/ ALEXANDER KHUDOTEPLY
Not a very difficult code to interpret. "Military operations" after all, refer singly to government actions. The violent provocations and atrocities committed by the Ukrainian pro-Russian militants on the other hand, are not "military operations", because they do not represent a state operation other than in their minds as members of the "People's Republik of Donetsk". From the Kremlin's point of view it is Kyiv that is responsible for the upheaval in Ukraine.
Kyiv that is responsible for the annexation of Crimea. For Kyiv's decision making, from the interim government to the present one, led to Moscow having no choice whatever but to respond through a buildup of Russian troops and armaments on the border between the two countries, the covert dispatch of Russian military operatives to eastern Ukraine to foment unrest and backlash, and to guide their Russian-Ukrainian civilian recruits into action.
It may be possible that Russian arrogance, convinced of their right to display their might to oppress and destabilize an ungrateful neighbour, felt that there would be no reaction on the part of the West and NATO to their outright bullying interference. The blow of diplomatic and economic sanctions does have a deep bite, giving the inconvenience of painful consequences to injudicial decision- making.
Presenting Russia with the bitter pill of having to balance its actions and policies toward Ukraine. Of course brute force has already cost Ukraine dearly, a lesson in humility that its new President, Petro Poroshenko resents and finds quite unacceptable. He has ample support within the international community and NATO for all the good that has done to date. Vowing he will not rest until Crimea is restored to Ukraine, he must administer a crippled economy and a bruised populace.
And President Putin, treading a narrow corridor must preserve as much as possible Russian influence over Ukraine's future, one that lies, as far as the Kremlin is concerned, with championing the separatist goal for autonomy, if not consolidation within Russia itself. Moscow would no doubt prefer maintaining the southeast as a separate entity; far less pain is involved in condemnation from NATO and the expenses involved in shoring up the southeast's economic straits.
All of this must be accomplished at a perceived arm's length; a minimum of noticeable involvement, that the initiative be seen to come directly and solely from the separatist camp, Russia merely an interested bystander, as it were. Anything perceived as Moscow mounting any military role in the situation would surely provoke even harsher Western sanctions. Washington did warn that tougher sanctions were under advisement with NATO's most recent revelations of Moscow supplying covert military aid; tanks and artillery, to the rebels.
"Mr. Putin says that the only viable solution will be through dialogue", said Dmitri Peskov speaking for President Putin; no aid whatever has been given of a military nature to the insurgents. Mr. Putin's home base audience is enthusiastic for Moscow to demonstrate a firm hand in the dispute with Ukraine. And although much of Europe would far prefer continuing business as usual with Moscow, and some American, British and French corporations continue their business relations there as usual, investment in Russia has stalled and its institutions blacklisted.
President Putin placed his military on alert, announcing snap exercises with about 65,000 soldiers after shells from Ukraine blasted into a Russian border post on Saturday. At the same time, he blandly endorsed the peace plan while calling on both sides to halt the conflict. Taking pains nonetheless to criticize ongoing Ukrainian military operations taking place despite the unilateral cease-fire placed in effect on Friday by Kyiv, and rejected by the secessionists.
Labels: Conflict, Russia, Secession, Ukraine
Op-Ed: The Pretense of Moderate Islam
Scorpions can be called moderate, too, at least in comparison with rattlesnakes.
Published: Sunday, June 22, 2014 2:42 AM
We are to presume that Islamics are the same as we are. We supposedly share the same ideals and dreams.The
big news of the week is that Sunnis in yet another murderous onslaught
are attacking the Shi’ite dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki in
Iraq. The attacking organization, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS), now controls entire sections of Syria and Iraq, including the
major city of Mosul as well as Tikrit, Fallujah, and Kirkuk.
After
worldwide display of photos taken by ISIS purporting to show them
machine gunning to death some of the 1700 prisoners who had surrendered
to them, presumably former members of the Iraqi army, the brilliant
media pundits have described them as barbarians who were even too savage
for al-Qaeda.
Under this description of events, al-Qaeda assumes
the role of “moderate”, and, in fact, this new group, now advancing on
Baghdad, is so savage as to warrant our speaking with Iran about
possibly working together to eradicate it. Thus, not only is al-Qaeda
projected as “moderate,” but Iran is also being projected as more
moderate than they might normally be considered (“the enemy of our enemy
is our friend”).
Add to this that the new coalition government
of Palestinian Arabs combining the good offices (sic) of the Palestinian
Authority and Hamas will continue
to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid, despite the
illegality of that aid being provided (88 of 100 Senators have protested
and have been ignored). Thus, Hamas is now to be treated as more
“moderate” despite the fact that it is on our official State Department
list of terrorist organizations.
Three fine young men have been
kidnapped as the first public outrage by Hamas since the unification
government was formed, and the U.S. and Israel are seeking the
cooperation of the Palestinian Authority in finding those young men.
This search for cooperation also implies that the P.A. is sufficiently
“moderate” to cooperate just at the time when they have become more
extremist in their goals and methods.
Prior
to this sequence of events, the Muslim Brotherhood was being portrayed
as moderate and even democratic compared to the dictatorial government
of Hosni Mubarak. Also, the rebels of al-Qaeda and other jihadist
organizations in Libya were considered sufficiently moderate to warrant
overthrowing that extremist anti-American Muammar Gaddafi.
Also
the U.S. government is reportedly supplying weapons to rebel extremists
in Syria, but is claiming that the weapons are going to rebel moderates,
although whatever moderate factions there may have been were already
obliterated.
Then add to this picture that 19 jihadists were
quietly released during the past week from prison camps in Afghanistan,
that five Taliban leaders (we have been fighting the Taliban for 11
years) were set free in Qatar, and that the perpetrators of 9/11 have
still not been sentenced and we begin to see that the actors that were
considered dire, mortal enemies of the USA during the War on Terror are
now being minimized in terms of their existential danger to our lives
and well-being.
This orgy of pretend moderation is only the tip of
the iceberg of an epic public relations and policy shift in United
States’ relations with the Middle East. This policy shift began with
President Obama’s landmark speech in Cairo where he accepted U.S.
responsibility (sic) for tensions between the U.S. and the Muslim world,
especially the Arabs. Implied in that speech was that defense of U.S.
interests in the Middle East over many decades has not been as
defensive as it purported to be, but that our defense masked an
aggressiveness and hostility towards the Arab world that right thinking
people – i.e., people like himself – need to be sensitive to and reject.
Even
leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, over the objections of Pres.
Mubarak, were allowed to sit in the front row during the speech as
evidence of our new “openness.” Using the Presidential bully pulpit,
Pres. Obama gave his own sophisticated version of
Rodney King’s classic question when the Watts riots erupted in Los
Angeles, “Why can’t we all just get along.” Thus, our President began
his radical policy shift not with a clear vision of the future, but by
enunciating a fundamentally ignorant premise.
One other
development needs to be understood. The present power struggle in Iraq
is typically described as between Shi’ites and Sunnis, two different
branches of Islam. In portraying this conflict as a division within
Islam, journalists and politicians are acknowledging the powerful
influence of religious ideology in the Muslim world. Yet, when speaking
about terrorism in the U.S., the association of terrorists with Islamic
beliefs has been purged systematically, even from government documents
dealing with terrorism.
The report on Col. Hasan’s murderous
rampage at Fort Hood purposely excluded any mention of Hasan’s religious
views in its efforts to depict him strictly as a deranged individual. Additionally, the religious dimension of the terrorist mindset has been almost entirely expunged from FBI training manuals.
Thus,
Shi’ites and Sunnis throughout the Muslim world are literally fighting
to the death over the question of the proper line of succession to
Mohammed in terms of Qu’ranic authority; yet in their dealings with
Western infidels (that’s us), we are being told to totally discount the
religious significance of the threats, riots assassinations,
kidnappings, bombings, rocket-firings, street knifings and beheadings,
raping, and church burnings going on all over the non-Muslim world.
We are told that these people are bad, but they do not represent Islam. Why? Because Islam is inherently moderate.
Thus
not including the religious belief system of Islamics in explaining
Muslim immorality outside of the Muslim world, plus a conscious attempt
to project an image of the Muslim world as moderate, is the endgame of
the Obama presidency. If Islamic terrorists bomb us, kidnap and/or kill
the children of our allies, curse us at public meetings, and plot
mayhem and murder wherever it can be achieved, that is all to be seen as
negative or even criminal behavior only, not as religiously motivated
activity.
We are to presume that Islamics are the same as we
are. We supposedly share the same ideals and dreams. To the extent
that we do not accept that, our posturing is just defensive and
reactive. If we persist in seeing the Islamic world as alien and
hostile, we brand ourselves as hateful and intolerant. Our reaction in
that mindset causes us to become victims (because we are projecting
unnecessary hostility). Thus when we become victims, we deserve it.
This is why the “war on terror” as a rubric has been dropped.
Labels: Islamism