Category Archives: Lands

ISIS defectors try to escape from Raqqa headquarters

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently: The execution of two fighters from Saudi nationality has puzzled a lot of ISIS fighters, while others decided to return to their homes, especially the fighters from Arabic Gulf nationalities.

A source from within the organization told the campaign of “Raqqa is being slaughtered silently” that on January 19 ISIS has executed two immigrant fighters from Saudi nationality on the hands of who named “Abu Islam Anbari” in the camp of “Alekershi” on charges of looking for their passports more than once.

Other immigrant fighters started questioning the sudden disappearance of their companions, but the leaders of the organization didn’t justify the reason, after that unjustified disappearance, dozens of immigrants mostly carrying Saudi nationality have left the city, ISIS announced full alert all over the city and its countryside to look for them.

Facebooktwittermail

Can Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hold Iraq together?

Christian Science Monitor reports: The challenge facing Abadi was always going to be herculean: how to overcome years – even decades – of sectarian divisions in Iraq, made worse by the unabashedly Shiite-first policies of his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki.

“I think everybody now, in the political spectrum and the country, recognizes this is the last chance for Iraq to survive as we know it,” says Vice President Ayad Allawi, himself a former prime minister. And yet that realization, he adds, hasn’t focused Iraq’s political minds enough.

“Until now, this inclusivity is theoretical rather than actual,” says Mr. Allawi, a secular Shiite who served as interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 and whose Iraqiya bloc has included top Sunni politicians.

“In parallel with this military effort, we need a political effort, which is not existing until now,” says Allawi. The areas where IS is operating need to be “immunized” by ensuring equal citizenship for Sunnis and mobilizing them to fight IS themselves, “not to be disenfranchised, ignored, and punished. And unfortunately this is not happening.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

If EU opposes Islamophobia, it must accept Turkey as member, says Erdogan

Hurriyet Daily News: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that the European Union “must admit Turkey” as a member if it opposes Islamophobia.

Erdoğan became the first Turkish President who visited Djibouti on Jan. 24, one day after he interrupted his Horn of Africa tour to attend King Abdullah’s funeral in Saudi Arabia. Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh welcomed his Turkish counterpart at the Djibouti City airport.

Turkish President, who had visited Ethiopia as the first stop of his tour, touched upon a number of foreign policy issues during his joint press conference with Guelleh, which was attended by the members of the large Turkish delegation that included cabinet members such as Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.

Stressing that the past decade saw the deaths of thousands of Muslims in the region, Erdoğan slammed the “coup-makers” in Egypt. “3,000 Muslims were killed in one day. It is unprecedented in recent history,” Erdoğan said, criticizing the Egyptian government for the crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We host 1,700,000 Syrians. We spent $5.5 billion so far,” Erdoğan continued, before stressing that the international community contributed with just $250 million. “The total number of Syrian refugees in Europe is 130,000” he added. “The world watches [Syria] as a spectator. The dominant powers, the EU, they all just watch it. And whom they strike at? Muslims…”

Facebooktwittermail

Turkish ministry paves way for trial of 16-year-old boy over ‘insulting’ president

Hurriyet Daily News: Turkey’s Justice Ministry has approved the trial of a 16-year-old boy, who was detained on charges of insulting the president, in a controversial case that sparked national outcry when he was detained in December.

The teenager, identified only by his initials M.E.A., will appear in a juvenile court on March 6 in the Central Anatolian province of Konya, facing one to four years of jail time.

A member of an online youth group calling themselves Democratic High School Students, M.E.A. is accused insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for reportedly saying that he considered him “the leader of corruption, bribery and theft” during a public speech delivered in his hometown Konya.

Facebooktwittermail

Former Miss Turkey, 26, facing trial after being arrested for posting satirical poem that criticised Erdogan

The Daily Mail: A former Miss Turkey is facing trial for posting a satirical poem on social media that criticised her country’s president.

The arrest of Merve Buyuksarac, 26, follows a crackdown in the country on critical media in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris.

Armed Turkish police last week stopped delivery lorries leaving a newspaper’s offices to make sure that they had not included section of the French satirical magazine that might be offensive to Muslims.

Although officially Turkey is secular, 99.8 per cent of the population are registered as Muslim and there has been heated debate over freedom of expression in the wake of the Paris massacres.

Now it appears the Turkish crackdown is extending not just to monitoring the media, but also to its readers.

Officials confirmed that the model had been taken before prosecutors and questioned over the social media posting that they said had insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Merve, an educated young professional who works as an industrial designer and writer, ended up in court in the Caglayan neighbourhood of the western city of Istanbul.

Facebooktwittermail

How the Republicans in Congress will help Netanyahu get re-elected

Nahum Barnea writes: The invitation Netanyahu received from United States House of Representative Speaker John Boehner, to address a joint session of the two houses of Congress, is a brilliant electoral trick.

Netanyahu will deliver the speech on February 11, five weeks before Election Day. The room will be filled to the brim. The audience will interrupt the speech with rapturous applause 23 times, and diligent spokespersons will stress that this is a number which has not been seen since foreign leaders began addressing the Congress. Senators will praise and glorify the man and the speech, and will glance as they speak at the gallery of distinguished guests, to make sure that the billionaire writes the check.

Will the Israelis who watch the show on television, live from Washington, be impressed? Of course they will. Netanyahu knows how to impress. One of the Likud leaders once told me that even when Netanyahu had reached a low point, both among the broad public and in his own party, people were amazed when they heard him speak clear American, with all the manners. “Listen to that English,” they said. “Listen to that English. Just like an American.”

Netanyahu is not the first prime minister to be aided by the American political system on his way to the polls. It’s wrong and it harms the purity of the democratic process, but it’s the reality. There are pressing interests on both sides, and there is a lot of temptation. One can only take comfort in the fact that in most cases these attempts fail.

But Netanyahu is taking it one step further this time. There has never been a deal like the one struck here: The American Republican Party is intervening in our elections, and in return an Israeli party is intervening in their politics. They are helping Netanyahu beat his rivals here, and he is helping them humiliate their rival there. It’s dangerous. It’s poisonous. It’s not so amusing anymore. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Yemen chaos threatens U.S. counterterror efforts, including drone program

The Washington Post reports: The White House’s strategy for fighting al-Qaeda in Yemen — repeatedly presented as a model by President Obama — was left in tatters Thursday by the resignation of the man who personally approved U.S. drone strikes in the country and the collapse of its central government.

U.S. officials struggled to sort out a melange of reports about who, if anyone, is in charge in Yemen. The prospect of continued chaos cast doubt on the viability of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policy for Yemen and whether it can still count on local help against al-Qaeda.

“A dangerous situation just went from bad to worse with grave implications for our counterterrorism efforts,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “Our relationship with the Yemen government has been vital in confronting [al-Qaeda] and keeping the pressure on its leadership, and every effort must be made to continue that partnership.”

As recently as September, Obama had cited his Yemen strategy as a template for confronting jihadist threats in other places, including Iraq and Syria. Instead of sending large numbers of troops to fight al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the country directly, the Pentagon has limited its presence to a small number of trainers to teach and equip Yemen’s security forces. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

France admits soldiers have deserted to ISIS, including ex-elite special forces and French foreign legionnaires

The Telegraph reports: Several French former soldiers have joined the ranks of jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq, the country’s government confirmed on Wednesday, as it outlined a series of new anti-terrorism measures following the Islamist attacks in Paris.

Most of the ex-soldiers, reportedly numbering around 10 and including former paratroopers and French foreign legionnaires, are said to be fighting on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Most worrying is the reported presence of an ex-member of France’s elite First Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment, considered one of Europe’s most experienced special forces units and which shares the “Who Dares Wins” motto of the SAS.

The unnamed individual, of North African origin, had received commando training in combat, shooting and survival techniques. He served for five years before joining a private security company for which he worked in the Arabian peninsula, where he was radicalised before heading for Syria, according to L’Opinion, a news website. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Amid mourning, a new generation enters line to Saudi throne

The Associated Press reports: Saudi Arabia’s newly enthroned King Salman moved quickly Friday to name a future successor to the crown in his oil-rich kingdom, a significant appointment that puts the kingdom’s future squarely in the hands of a new generation.

King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud’s actions came as the Sunni-ruled kingdom mourned King Abdullah, who died early Friday at the age of 90 after nearly two decades in power.

He was buried Friday afternoon in an unmarked grave, his body shrouded in a simple beige cloth without a coffin. The austere, subdued burial was in line with Islamic tradition that all people — even kings — are equal in death before God.

A royal decree affirmed Crown Prince Muqrin, 69, as Salman’s immediate successor. After Muqrin, Salman named Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, 55, as deputy crown prince, making him second-in-line to the throne. Mohammed is the first grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, to be named as a future heir.

King Salman promised in a nationally televised speech to continue the policies of his predecessors.

“We will continue adhering to the correct policies which Saudi Arabia has followed since its establishment,” Salman said.

For more than six decades, power has passed among the sons of King Abdul-Aziz, from brother to brother, since his death in 1953. But ranks of that generation, largely in their 70s and 80s, are thinning. [Continue reading…]

Middle East Eye adds: Salman is one of the “Sudairi Seven” – a powerful alliance of seven sons of King Abdelaziz named after their mother Hassa bint Ahmad al-Sudairi. Abdullah was not from the Sudairi seven and Salman’s immediate appointments appear to reassert the alliance’s power over the throne.

Mohammed bin Nayef is the son of a Sudairi, Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who died in 2012 and served as the country’s interior minister and crown prince.

Salman’s son – 34-year-old Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud – has been appointed defence minister and head of the royal court, according to the SPA official news agency. His appointment means Khalid al-Tuwaijri – a close advisor of the late King Abdullah and until Thursday officially head of the royal court – has been removed from his position.

The swift appointments appear to herald a shift in power within the famously secretive House of Saud, although King Salman was keen to stress continuity in his maiden speech as king. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The burden of being female in Saudi Arabia

Bayan Perazzo writes: In an interview with the LA Times, Haifaa al-Mansour (director of the first Saudi film, “Wadjda”) made a very simple comment about being a woman in Saudi Arabia that rang very true for me. Al-Mansour said, “for me it’s the everyday life (in Saudi Arabia), how it’s hard…things like that can build up and break a woman.” Despite what many in the international community may believe, there are no women being stoned to death in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, those outside the country are absolutely right to criticize the state of women’s rights in the Kingdom though they may not realize how subtle the oppression can be.

Yes, women in Saudi Arabia are banned from driving, subjected to an oppressive male-guardianship system and living on the unfortunate side of gender segregation. While these are major obstacles for women’s progress in the country, such an innately oppressive system naturally trickles down into smaller aspects of everyday life. These little indignities can indeed break a woman, and I confess I am a woman extremely close to being broken.

I never thought much about my gender identity until I moved back to Saudi Arabia as a young adult. Small instances of gender discrimination would take place regularly, but at some point in time those experiences built up to leave me feeling something I had never felt before: that being female is an absolutely exhausting burden to bear.

What exactly were these small everyday events that pushed me over the edge? [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Saudi Arabia is building a 600-mile ‘Great Wall’ to shield itself from ISIS

The Telegraph reports: When a raiding party from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant attacked a Saudi border post last week, it was no mere hit on a desert outpost.

The jihadists were launching an assault on the new, highest-profile effort by Saudi Arabia to insulate itself from the chaos engulfing its neighbours.

The Saudis are building a 600-mile-long “Great Wall” — a combined fence and ditch — to separate the country from Iraq to the north. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Prosecutor’s death was not suicide, says Argentina’s president

Reuters reports: Alberto Nisman was working hard preparing for a congressional hearing on his claim that Argentina’s president tried to whitewash Iran’s involvement in a bombing attack that killed 85 people, a make-or-break day in his career as prosecutor.

In the spotlight since leveling his hefty accusations last week, Nisman needed to make a convincing case, based on a decade of work with spy agencies around the world.

So he put in the extra hours at his Buenos Aires apartment on Saturday. Friends described him as upbeat and determined ahead of his appearance and he was scheduling interviews with journalists for the coming days. He also reportedly wrote up a list of groceries he would ask his maid to buy on Monday.

But Nisman, 51, never made it to Monday. He was killed by a bullet to the head and his body found on the floor of his bathroom on Sunday night.

Officials initially said he apparently committed suicide with a 22 caliber gun borrowed from a distant colleague, and a source close to the judicial investigation who visited the scene told Reuters there was so much blood that no one could have left it without leaving a trace.

But from day one, most Argentines, including his family and friends, refused to believe Nisman committed suicide. The timing was too suspicious, the circumstances of his death too mysterious, and they say he was simply not that kind of man.

“No one believes the suicide hypothesis,” said one person on Nisman’s investigative team, who declined to be named for fear of repercussions and preferred not to use his cellphone, believing it was tapped.

“He was very convinced of his ideas and prepared to see them through. He had received threats all his life and it never intimidated him,” he told Reuters.

Even President Cristina Fernandez [de Kirchner] has come around to that view, saying on Thursday that she was “convinced” it was not a suicide. People had led him astray in his investigation in order to smear her name and then “needed him dead”, she said.

She did not, however, say who ordered his death and no arrests have been made. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Air strikes killed 6,000 ISIS fighters, says U.S. ambassador to Iraq

Al Arabiya: The U.S.-led airstrikes have “taken more than half” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group’s leadership, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones told Al Arabiya News Channel in an interview aired Thursday.

Jones described the airstrikes as having a “devastating” effect on ISIS after Baghdad criticized Washington for not doing “enough” to eliminate the Islamist group.

“We estimate that the airstrikes have now killed more than 6,000 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq,” Jones said.
The U.S. ambassador added that the airstrikes have “destroyed more than a thousand of ISIS vehicle inside Iraq.”

Facebooktwittermail

Obama will not meet Netanyahu in March

BBC News: Barack Obama will not meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits in March to speak to Congress, the White House says.

Spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan cited a “long-standing practice” of not meeting heads of state close to elections, which Israel will hold in mid-March.

Mr Netanyahu was invited by House Speaker John Boehner in what is seen as a rebuke to Mr Obama’s Iran policy.

Facebooktwittermail

Mossad breaks with Netanyahu, warns U.S. not to impose new Iran sanctions

Josh Rogin and Eli Lake report: The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has broken ranks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling U.S. officials and lawmakers that a new Iran sanctions bill in the U.S. Congress would tank the Iran nuclear negotiations.

Already, the Barack Obama administration and some leading Republican senators are using the Israeli internal disagreement to undermine support for the bill, authored by Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Robert Menendez, which would enact new sanctions if current negotiations falter.

Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — supported by Republican Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain — is pushing for his own legislation on the Iran nuclear deal, which doesn’t contain sanctions but would require that the Senate vote on any pact that is agreed upon in Geneva. The White House is opposed to both the Kirk-Menendez bill and the Corker bill; it doesn’t want Congress to meddle at all in the delicate multilateral diplomacy with Iran.

Israeli intelligence officials have been briefing both Obama administration officials and visiting U.S. senators about their concerns on the Kirk-Menendez bill, which would increase sanctions on Iran only if the Iranian government can’t strike a deal with the so-called P5+1 countries by a June 30 deadline or fails to live up to its commitments. Meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister’s office has been supporting the Kirk-Menendez bill, as does the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, ahead of what will be a major foreign policy confrontation between the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government in coming weeks. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

If France is to build a new identity, it must address its apartheid

Francis Ghiles writes: Some French intellectuals and leading figures in the media argue that terrorism is the inevitable and extreme expression of a “true” Islam which entails the denial of the other, the imposition of strict rules in the guise of sharia law and ultimately jihad. Olivier Roy, a lucid analyst of his country’s politics, says that Muslims in France today are viewed as having Qur’anic software hardwired in their sub-conscious, which renders them incapable of assimilation into French society. Their only salvation lies in repeating their allegiance to France’s Republican values, preferably when pushed to do so on a live television show.

It is little understood, however, that the Republic’s cherished values of secularism and freedom of speech historically have a darker side. The civil liberties now idealised emerged during a period of colonial rule. As the historian Arthur Asseraf reminds us, France’s iconic freedom of the press law, passed in 1881 and still enforced today, was designed in part to exclude France’s Muslim subjects. The law protected the rights of all French citizens, explicitly all those in Algeria and the colonies, but excluded the subjects who were the majority of the population. In colonial Algeria, “citizens” were all those who were not Muslims, and the terms musulman or indigène usually overlapped. Muslim was a racialised legal category stripped of any religious significance.

Maybe the banlieues of today could be best understood as the Algeria of the 19th century: the legacy of French apartheid must be borne in mind when considering the problems of minorities. In the starkest indictment ever of French society by a senior government official, Valls said on Wednesday that “a geographic, social, ethnic apartheid has developed in our country”. The furious reaction to his remark hardly augurs well for a reasoned debate. Yet, in the banlieues of Paris, more than 50% of young people, often Muslim, are unemployed. They are hitting the glass wall between them and the workplace; prisoners with a north African father outnumber prisoners with a French father by nine to one for the 18-29 age group, and six to one in the 20-39 age group. This points to a massive failure of French society to integrate minority groups. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Phone calls detail Argentina’s efforts to shield Iran

The New York Times reports: Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994.

The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress.

But the intercepted telephone conversations he described before his death outline an elaborate effort to reward Argentina for shipping food to Iran — and for seeking to derail the investigation into a terrorist attack in the Argentine capital that killed 85 people.

The deal never materialized, the complaint says, in part because Argentine officials failed to persuade Interpol to lift the arrest warrants against Iranian officials wanted in Argentina in connection with the attack.

The phone conversations are believed to have been intercepted by Argentine intelligence officials. If proved accurate, the transcripts would show a concerted effort by representatives of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government to shift suspicions away from Iran in order to gain access to Iranian markets and to ease Argentina’s energy troubles. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Kurdish troops advance on Mosul on three sides

The Washington Post reports: Kurdish forces claimed to have pushed back Islamic State militants from a 300-square-mile area of northern Iraq on Wednesday and said they cut one of the extremist group’s key supply lines to the occupied city of Mosul.

The multi-pronged operation, which began in the early morning, involved about 5,000 Kurdish soldiers, known as peshmerga and was backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, according to a statement from the government of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

The offensive came amid speculation that Iraqi forces are preparing for an assault on Mosul, one of Iraq’s biggest cities, which was seized by Islamic State extremists in June as they swept across the north.

Under pressure from airstrikes and paranoid about informants, the militants have cut phone lines and Internet connections to the city in recent months. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail