Category Archives: Lands

Malala Yousafzai meets President Obama, asks him to stop drone attacks

Gawker: Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani woman who was shot in the head by the Taliban for believing that women have a right to education, met with President Obama on Friday, thanking him for his support of education and asking him to stop drone strikes in Pakistan.

Passed over for a Nobel Peace Prize on Friday morning, Yousafzai met with the President, the First Lady, and their 15-year-old daughter, Malia, on Friday afternoon. While thanking the President for his support of education and assistance to Syrian refugees, Yousafzai pressed the President on the issue of drone strikes, a counterterrorism method he supports.

“I thanked President Obama for the United States’ work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees,” Yousafzai said in a statement after the meeting. “I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact.”

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Air raids and clashes near Syrian chemical weapons site

Reuters reports: Syrian air force warplanes bombarded rebel-held targets close to a major chemical weapons facility on Friday in fighting that highlights the perils facing an international mission to eliminate President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical arsenal.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, is due to visit 20 sites across Syria to verify the destruction of 1,000 tons of chemical agents and precursors.

The mission in the midst of a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people is an unprecedented challenge for the OPCW, whose members came under fire near Damascus in August.

The OPCW experts have visited three undisclosed sites in their first week of operation and say that Syrian authorities have been cooperating. But they will face great challenges reaching locations in rebel-held or disputed territory.

The air raids struck the town of Safira, on the edge of a sprawling military complex believed to hold chemical weapons production facilities, after overnight clashes between rebel fighters and Assad forces in a nearby village, activists said.

The army has fought hard to retain control of the Safira military complex and is now trying to recapture the town from rebel brigades including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

Unless they succeed in pushing those fighters back, any attempt by the OPCW experts to visit Safira would be risky.[Continue reading…]

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Obama administration’s Egypt policy is missing in action

Jonathan Guyer writes: In early July, Apache helicopters roamed low above Cairo, an expression of force following the military’s overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi. Early this month, sixteen F16s flew in formation over the city, practicing for the commemoration of the October 1973 war. Since Morsi’s ouster, U.S. military hardware has been a stark feature of Cairo’s skyline. But American policy — the reason for that military aid to Egypt — remains ambiguous.

This week Washington announced a downgrading of aid to Cairo, which flows annually to the tune of $1.3 billion. The U.S. will withhold $260 million in cash funding and halt deliveries of military hardware, as part of a “recalibration” overseen by President Barack Obama. Despite the cuts, most security cooperation persists. In a conference call with journalists on October 9, a senior U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity said that Washington would “continue assistance that advances our vital security objectives like countering terrorism, countering proliferation, and ensuring security in the Sinai. We will also continue support like military training and education, and will continue spare parts, replacement parts, and related services for the military equipment that we provide.” The freezing of aid was merely a symbolic gesture, and another example that the Obama administration’s Egypt policy is missing in action.

Washington has been unsure of how to address a post-Mubarak Egypt from the get-go. In January 2011, the Obama administration was slow in acknowledging the popular uprising underway in Tahrir Square. In January 2012, Obama’s deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes told me, “We’re supporting the government as they take steps to implement the transition, and we want to see them follow that road map.” What’s amazing is that nearly two years later, statements from official quarters are equally bereft of substance. Moreover, the U.S. has gone through pains to avoid discussing whether Morsi’s ejection can be called a coup—a word with legal implications for Washington, as U.S. law forbids aid to countries whose elected governments are ousted by the military. My favorite example of such rhetorical acrobatics came from an unnamed U.S. official speaking to the New York Times in July: “We will not say it was a coup, we will not say it was not a coup, we will just not say.” Orwell would scoff at Washington’s reliance on the most “ugly and inaccurate” aspects of the English language. It’s no substitute for strategy. [Continue reading…]

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Netanyahu takes a lonely stance denouncing Iran

The New York Times reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the son of a historian, often complains to his inner circle that “people have a historical memory that goes back to breakfast.”

But when Mr. Netanyahu has recently tried to focus the world on the Iranian nuclear program, using ancient texts, Holocaust history and a 2011 book by Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, he has sometimes come off sounding shrill. As six major world powers convene next week to negotiate on the nuclear issue with Iran’s new leadership, the Israeli leader risks seeming frozen in the past amid a shifting geopolitical landscape.

Increasingly alone abroad and at home, where he has lost several trusted aides and cabinet colleagues, Mr. Netanyahu has stubbornly argued that if people would just study the facts, they would surely side with him.

“You use history to understand the present and chart the future — history is a map,” Mr. Netanyahu explained in an interview on Thursday night. “You know what a map is? A map is a crystallization of the main things you need to know to get from one place to another.”

With a series of major speeches — three more are scheduled next week — and an energetic media blitz, Mr. Netanyahu, 63, has embarked on the public-diplomacy campaign of his career, trying to prevent what he worries will be “a bad deal” with Iran. Insisting on a complete halt to uranium enrichment and no easing of the economic sanctions he helped galvanize the world to impose on Iran, Mr. Netanyahu appears out of step with a growing Western consensus toward reaching a diplomatic deal that would require compromise.

But such isolation is hardly new to a man with few personal friends and little faith in allies, who shuns guests for Sabbath meals, who never misses a chance to declare Israel’s intention to defend itself, by itself. [Continue reading…]

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Libya’s attempted coup: Inside the kidnapping of Prime Minister Ali Zidan

The Daily Beast reports: They came in the dead of night in pick-up-trucks and battered cars, surprising a police checkpoint and moving quickly in a precise military-style configuration befitting fighters who helped to bring down Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorial rule.

Their target this time wasn’t a despot but the elected leader of post-Gaddafi Libya, Prime Minister Ali Zidan, whose brief abduction on Thursday marked yet another low for a country struggling to establish order and stricken by a spate of kidnappings and assassinations over the past year—including the razing of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the death of American ambassador Christopher Stevens. On Friday, a day after the Prime Minister’s abduction, a car bomb exploded outside of the Swedish consulate in Benghazi, damaging the building and nearby houses.

The militiamen, angry over a U.S. Special Forces team seizing of suspected al-Qaeda bigwig Abu Anas al-Liby in Tripoli seven days ago, used pick-up trucks equipped with anti-aircraft guns to block entrances to the luxury Corinthia Hotel in downtown Tripoli where Zidan resides in a suite on the 22nd floor.

Witnesses, including guards assigned to the hotel by the Interior Ministry, say about 400 gunmen were involved in the abduction and that the leaders marched into the cavernous, marble-floored lobby demanding to know from alarmed nighttime staff the whereabouts of the Prime Minister. A receptionist was hauled off when he refused to say. The gunmen brandished a warrant for Zidan’s arrest on national security and corruption charges, signed by the Prosecutor General, says Khalil Yahia, the head of the government security team at the Corinthia, which also houses several foreign missions.

“I was shocked,” he says. “I was thinking, ‘How could they have an arrest warrant for the Prime Minister?’” The militiamen grabbed most of the hotel’s surveillance equipment and tapes. “There was no gunfire—we only had about half-a-dozen guards on duty. There wasn’t anything we could do. I didn’t call for reinforcements, because these people—the ones waving the warrant—would have been the people detailed to be the reinforcements.” [Continue reading…]

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Bashar al-Assad steered 2013 Nobel Peace Prize selection

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2013 is to be awarded to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons.

During World War One, chemical weapons were used to a considerable degree. The Geneva Convention of 1925 prohibited the use, but not the production or storage, of chemical weapons. During World War Two, chemical means were employed in Hitler’s mass exterminations. Chemical weapons have subsequently been put to use on numerous occasions by both states and terrorists. In 1992-93 a convention was drawn up prohibiting also the production and storage of such weapons. It came into force in 1997. Since then the OPCW has, through inspections, destruction and by other means, sought the implementation of the convention. 189 states have acceded to the convention to date.

The conventions and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law. Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons. Some states are still not members of the OPCW. Certain states have not observed the deadline, which was April 2012, for destroying their chemical weapons. This applies especially to the USA and Russia.

Disarmament figures prominently in Alfred Nobel’s will. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has through numerous prizes underlined the need to do away with nuclear weapons. By means of the present award to the OPCW, the Committee is seeking to contribute to the elimination of chemical weapons.

The committee offers no credit to Bashar al-Assad.

But suppose John Kerry had not unwittingly initiated the process leading towards Syria giving up its chemical weapons stockpile, and suppose Russia had not seized on the political opportunity the the U.S. provided for removing the threat of military action, and suppose the Syrian government had not quickly recognized that it would be strengthening its own grip on power by giving up CW. Would the OPCW have just received the Peace Prize? Almost certainly not.

The crucial decision in the process leading to that choice was made by Assad.

Just as George W Bush once honored another war criminal, Ariel Sharon, as a “man of peace,” it surely won’t be long before Nobel laureate Barack Obama offers the same praise to Syria’s president.

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New York City’s secret police

Jim Dwyer writes: It may not have occurred to people that New York City needed to deploy an undercover detective to spy on Occupy Sandy, a relief operation run by activists that delivered food and supplies to parts of the city ruined by the hurricane. But Detective Wojciech Braszczok, who embedded with the Occupy Wall Street forces under the nom de activist Albert, was putting posts on Twitter last November about the Sandy operation, which, by the way, received consistently high grades from people for its nimble, effective work.

The city now has a sturdy legion of undercover officers who have taken up residence in many surprising regions of civic life. Much of this began in early 2003, when a federal judge lifted many restraints on spying by the Police Department. The city had been failed by the federal intelligence services, and thousands died on Sept. 11. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg created an independent intelligence capacity.

So before and during the Iraq War, the organization of antiwar rallies was regarded as a fit matter for police surveillance; so were the monthly Critical Mass bicycle rallies, as well as groups protesting at the Republican National Convention in 2004, and a range of Islamic facilities, from mosques to college student clubs. Undercover New York police officers showed up at activists’ meetings all over the country, carrying guitars and knapsacks. Handlers left money for them in the wheel wells of cars. Field reports were stamped “NYPD Secret.” Anyone who left a scrap of paper on the desk at the Intelligence Division’s headquarters in Chelsea was apt to get his or her knuckles rapped by the commander, a former Central Intelligence Agency man who brought that agency’s custom of fastidiousness to the mess of the city.

The unrestrained surveillance in New York public life is the physical embodiment of what has been taking place online over the last decade under operations of the National Security Agency revealed by Edward J. Snowden. To borrow the title of a 1918 novel about nosy Irish villagers, we have become The Valley of the Squinting Windows.

But it was all O.K. because the mayor and the police commissioner said so, though from the outside, no one could really say what they were up to. [Continue reading…]

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Executions, indiscriminate shootings, and hostage taking by Islamist factions outside Latakia, Syria

The New York Times reports: Before dawn on Aug. 4, Raed Shakouhi, an olive and walnut farmer in a government-held hilltop village near the Syrian coast, just across a valley from rebel territory, was woken by gunshots and cries of “God is great.”

Mr. Shakouhi, 42, hid among nearby trees with his wife and four young children. The next day, he emerged to find his uncle shot dead, his family’s possessions stolen or destroyed, and the streets littered with bloodstains and the carcasses of farm animals, he recalled last month in an interview in the state-run shelter where he now lives. Many of his neighbors here in Latakia and in the surrounding villages, mostly members of Syria’s minority Alawite sect, fared even worse.

In a coordinated attack, numerous rebel groups fought off a small garrison of government troops and swept into the villages, killing 190 people, according to a Human Rights Watch report to be released on Friday. At least 67 of the dead appeared to have been shot or stabbed while unarmed or fleeing, including 48 women and 11 children, the report said. More than 200 civilians are still being held hostage.

“This is the first time that we have documented opposition forces actually systematically targeting civilians,” said Lama Fakih, the group’s deputy director in Beirut, Lebanon, who last month visited five of the villages, which the government had recaptured by Aug. 19. She also reviewed medical records and interviewed 19 witnesses as well as doctors, military officials and opposition members for the 113-page report.

“We have up to now not documented anything approaching this scale of abuse” by opposition fighters, Ms. Fakih said, adding that the number and methodical nature of the killings constituted a “crime against humanity.”

There have been reports of smaller-scale atrocities by rebel forces, including the videotaped execution of seven Syrian Army soldiers last year. Human Rights Watch has documented some of those attacks, as well as what it calls “egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity” by government forces, including the killing of nearly 250 people in the mostly Sunni towns of Banias and Bayda in May, and a widespread policy of detaining and torturing opposition activists. [Continue reading…]

Joanna Paraszczuk writes: While HRW document in detail the killings and hostage-takings that took place, the report fails to determine definitively which particular groups or factions within these groups were responsible for killing civilians.

Specifically, the report fails to distinguish between attacks carried out by ISIS/ Jaish and the offensive carried out by Free Syrian Army brigades, instead using the blanket term “armed opposition groups” to refer to those responsible for the killings. The report conflates the FSA’s “Operation to Liberate the Coast” with the offensives by Islamist factions — even though the Islamist factions operated independently rather than in conjunction with the FSA.

The HRW report takes information and eyewitness testimony from local residents in the villages to document the circumstances of civilian deaths. However, the report is problematic because it relies heavily on information from a regime Military Intelligence officer, as well as regime military personnel, the police, National Defense Force members, and regime media outlets.

In contrast, HRW do not appear to have obtained responses or information from the Supreme Military Council to ascertain the movement of FSA brigades in relation to the Islamist groups accused of perpetrating the mass killings of civilians. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt surprised by planned U.S. aid cut

The Wall Street Journal reports: Egypt bristled over Washington’s plan to reduce military aid to Egypt, saying the country would consider altering certain agreements with the U.S.

Some accords, such as American ships’ special access to the Suez Canal, should be “adjusted,” said Col. Ahmed Ali, the spokesman for the Egyptian military. “The U.S. is abandoning Egypt as it fights a serious war against terror,” he said. “This is a stance that doesn’t coincide with such a strong, long-standing relationship.”

Col. Ali said he wouldn’t comment further until after talking with Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, Egypt’s minister of defense and commander of the armed forces, who was informed of the decision by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

The planned cuts come after a weekend in which more than 60 supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi were killed in street-level fights with security services. More than 1,000 Muslim Brotherhood supporters have now been killed by security forces and hundreds more arrested since the military ousted Mr. Morsi on July 3.

The crackdown on the Brotherhood showed no signs of abating on Wednesday, as prosecutors said Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first-ever freely elected president, would face trial on Nov. 4 for inciting his followers to kill protesters against his rule late last year.

The announcement of the aid censure marks a new low point in the already frosty relationship between the U.S. and Egypt, once one of America’s closest security partners in the Middle East.

It is also emblematic of the shortfalls in U.S. messaging that have left both sides of Egypt’s tense political divide bitter over Washington’s role in the country, said Egyptian diplomats, analysts and policy makers.

The move was unlikely to exert strong pressure on Egypt’s military to abide by human-rights norms, experts say. At the same time, as news of the decision emerged late on Tuesday it reinforced the impression among many Egyptians that the Obama administration was supporting the ousted leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, while not winning any points with Brotherhood supporters, either.

“What the U.S. is doing is the worst of both worlds right now,” said Shadi Hamid, an Egypt expert and head of research at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center. “They’re not putting pressure on the military but they’re still going to anger the Egyptian population and make it seem like they’re punishing the military and suspending aid.” [Continue reading…]

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How Libya can deal with the problem of militias

Ranj Alaaldin writes: Libya is back in the headlines after a powerful Islamist-dominated militia group abducted the country’s prime minister, Ali Zeidan, amid anger over a US special forces raid on Saturday during which a Libyan al-Qaida suspect, Abu Anas al-Liby, was seized. The impunity with which militia groups are able to operate in the country puts it on par with the lawlessness that has been seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, where even some of the most audacious and organised of militants are unable to reach as sensitive and important a target as a sitting prime minister.

Libya is different for the reason that it has no national army. It has a series of disparate autonomous militia groups who are heavily entrenched in Libya’s politics, economy and society. In other words, they are now a part of the daily routine and have become inseparable from the state and broader Libyan society. The independence this gives them has worsened Libya’s security environment, given that various militia groups are at odds with one another, often resulting in clashes between them, as well as with the state itself.

Post-conflict states like Libya are generally required to, first and foremost, develop a strong state and centralise authority in the country, if indeed a centralist political and constitutional process is preferred. In Libya, the failure to disarm militias has only bought them more time to consolidate their hold on the country. Elections last year, the country’s first in decades and its first since the former regime was ousted, compounded the militia problem by allowing prominent, well-organised and armed groups to consolidate their positions, legitimise their influence as well as cement their newfound status and power.

In other words, Libya cannot move forward, stabilise and become the democratic state most Libyans and the international community hoped it would be when Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in November 2011. [Continue reading…]

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The Obama administration and the press: Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America

In a report for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Leonard Downie Jr., former editor of the Washington Post, writes: In the Obama administration’s Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press. Those suspected of discussing with reporters anything that the government has classified as secret are subject to investigation, including lie-detector tests and scrutiny of their telephone and e-mail records. An “Insider Threat Program” being implemented in every government department requires all federal employees to help prevent unauthorized disclosures of information by monitoring the behavior of their colleagues.

Six government employees, plus two contractors including Edward Snowden, have been subjects of felony criminal prosecutions since 2009 under the 1917 Espionage Act, accused of leaking classified information to the press — compared with a total of three such prosecutions in all previous U.S. administrations. Still more criminal investigations into leaks are under way. Reporters’ phone logs and e-mails were secretly subpoenaed and seized by the Justice Department in two of the investigations, and a Fox News reporter was accused in an affidavit for one of those subpoenas of being “an aider, abettor and/or conspirator” of an indicted leak defendant, exposing him to possible prosecution for doing his job as a journalist. In another leak case, a New York Times reporter has been ordered to testify against a defendant or go to jail.

Compounding the concerns of journalists and the government officials they contact, news stories based on classified documents obtained from Snowden have revealed extensive surveillance of Americans’ telephone and e-mail traffic by the National Security Agency. Numerous Washington-based journalists told me that officials are reluctant to discuss even unclassified information with them because they fear that leak investigations and government surveillance make it more difficult for reporters to protect them as sources. “I worry now about calling somebody because the contact can be found out through a check of phone records or e-mails,” said veteran national security journalist R. Jeffrey Smith of the Center for Public Integrity, an influential nonprofit government accountability news organization in Washington. “It leaves a digital trail that makes it easier for the government to monitor those contacts,” he said.

“I think we have a real problem,” said New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane. “Most people are deterred by those leaks prosecutions. They’re scared to death. There’s a gray zone between classified and unclassified information, and most sources were in that gray zone. Sources are now afraid to enter that gray zone. It’s having a deterrent effect. If we consider aggressive press coverage of government activities being at the core of American democracy, this tips the balance heavily in favor of the government.”

At the same time, the journalists told me, designated administration spokesmen are often unresponsive or hostile to press inquiries, even when reporters have been sent to them by officials who won’t talk on their own. Despite President Barack Obama’s repeated promise that his administration would be the most open and transparent in American history, reporters and government transparency advocates said they are disappointed by its performance in improving access to the information they need.

“This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times.

The Obama administration has notably used social media, videos, and its own sophisticated websites to provide the public with administration-generated information about its activities, along with considerable government data useful for consumers and businesses. However, with some exceptions, such as putting the White House visitors’ logs on the whitehouse.gov website and selected declassified documents on the new U.S. Intelligence Community website, it discloses too little of the information most needed by the press and public to hold the administration accountable for its policies and actions. “Government should be transparent,” Obama stated on the White House website, as he has repeatedly in presidential directives. “Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing.”

But his administration’s actions have too often contradicted Obama’s stated intentions. “Instead,” New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote earlier this year, “it’s turning out to be the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.”

“President Obama had said that default should be disclosure,” Times reporter Shane told me. “The culture they’ve created is not one that favors disclosure.” [Continue reading…]

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Syrian Electronic Army attacks linked to Obama’s mentions of Syria

Mashable reports: The frequency of attacks that the infamous Syrian Electronic Army carries out may correlate with the number of President Obama’s public statements about Syria and its civil war.

Researchers at Recorded Future, a firm that analyzes publicly available data to assess and predict cyberattacks, call the link a “remarkable correlation.”

To put it simply, the more Obama talks about Syria, the more the Syrian hackers strike American media targets. It’s a full-blown propaganda war.

In fact, when Obama discussed military action in retaliation against the alleged chemical attack in Damascus, the SEA ramped up its campaign against American media, hitting the New York Times, Twitter and others.

After the United States and Russia agreed on a diplomatic solution to the crisis, which requires Syria to destroy its chemical arsenal, the SEA backed off and remained relatively quiet. [Continue reading…]

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Britain and Iran pave way for reopening of London and Tehran embassies

The Guardian reports: Britain and Iran have taken a significant step toward reopening their respective embassies in Tehran and London by appointing chargés d’affaires and holding talks about staffing on the eve of new negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme.

William Hague, the UK foreign secretary, revealed to MPs that on Tuesday that talks with the Iranian government had taken place last week in a much more positive atmosphere following intensifying diplomatic contacts in the wake of the election of the moderate President Hassan Rouhani last June.

Progress would have to take place on a “step-by-step reciprocal basis”, Hague said, but he made clear he hoped the moves would pave the way to reopen the British embassy. “We are open to more direct contact,” he said, adding that the coming months “may be unusually significant” in British-Iranian relations.

A non-resident diplomat is to be appointed by both countries and talks have already been held about the key issues of numbers and conditions for local staff – often harassed in the past by the Iranian authorities. Inspection of premises was another matter being addressed. [Continue reading…]

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Iran readies offer to limit its nuclear program

The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran is preparing a package of proposals to halt production of near-weapons-grade nuclear fuel, a key demand of the U.S. and other global powers, according to officials briefed on diplomacy ahead of talks in Geneva next week.

Tehran in return will request that the U.S. and European Union begin scaling back sanctions that have left it largely frozen out of the international financial system and isolated its oil industry, the officials said.

“The Iranians are preparing to go to Geneva with a serious package,” said a former Western diplomat who has discussed the incentives with senior Iranian diplomats in recent weeks. “These include limits on the numbers of centrifuges operating, enrichment amounts and the need for verification.”

The package from the new government of President Hasan Rouhani could revitalize long-stalled negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and underpin an emerging diplomatic thaw between Washington and Tehran.

But it also stands to test the unity of the U.S. and other international powers meeting with Iranian diplomats in Geneva in a bid to reach an accord to curtail Iran’s nuclear work.

By falling short of a complete shutdown of enrichment, the anticipated Iranian offer could divide the U.S. from its closest Middle East allies, particularly Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who have cautioned the White House against moving too quickly to improve ties with Tehran, according to American and Mideast officials.

In an opening salvo in the negotiations, Tehran is expected to offer to stop enriching uranium to levels of 20% purity, which international powers consider dangerously close to a weapons-grade capability.

Iran is also expected to offer to open the country’s nuclear facilities to more intrusive international inspections, the officials said. And Iran is considering offering the closure of an underground uranium-enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom, which the U.S. and Israel have charged is part of a covert Iranian weapons program, which Tehran denies. [Continue reading…]

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Saudis brace for ‘nightmare’ of U.S.-Iran rapprochement

Reuters reports: When Saudi Arabia’s veteran foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, made no annual address to the United Nations General Assembly last week for the first time ever, his unspoken message could hardly have been louder.

For most countries, refusing to give a scheduled speech would count as little more than a diplomatic slap on the wrist, but for staid Saudi Arabia, which prefers backroom politicking to the public arena, it was uncharacteristically forthright.

Engaged in what they see as a life-and-death struggle for the future of the Middle East with arch-rival Iran, Saudi rulers are furious that the international body has taken no action over Syria, where they and Tehran back opposing sides.

Unlike in years past, they are not only angry with permanent Security Council members China and Russia, however, but with the United States, which they believe has repeatedly let down its Arab friends with policies they see as both weak and naive.

Like Washington’s other main Middle Eastern ally, Israel, the Saudis fear that President Barack Obama has in the process allowed mutual enemies to gain an upper hand. [Continue reading…]

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Libyan PM freed after being seized over U.S. raid

Reuters reports: Former rebel gunmen freed Libya’s prime minister on Thursday after holding him for several hours in reprisal for the capture by U.S. forces at the weekend of a Libyan al Qaeda suspect in Tripoli, officials said.

“The prime minister has been released,” a government official confirmed. A security source also said Zeidan was free.

A Reuters journalist outside the Interior Ministry building where the prime minister was held by militiamen linked to the government said people demanding his release had opened fire at one point. Zeidan was seized at dawn from a luxury hotel where he lives under tight security and was held for about six hours.

Two years after a revolution ended Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule, Libya is in turmoil, with its vulnerable central government and nascent armed forces struggling to contain rival tribal militias and Islamist militants who control parts of the country.

The militia, which had been hired by the government to provide security in Tripoli, said it “arrested” Zeidan after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Libya had a role in the weekend capture in the city of Abu Anas al-Liby.

“His arrest comes after … (Kerry) said the Libyan government was aware of the operation,” a spokesman for the group, known as the Operations Room of Libya’s Revolutionaries, told Reuters.

Geoff Porter of North Africa Risk consulting said: “His kidnapping clearly indicates that his government is not cohesive, and that not only is his government not in control of the country, but that he is not in control of his government.” [Continue reading…]

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The Assad smokescreen

In an interview with Der Spiegel this week, Bashar al-Assad was questioned about the August 21 chemical weapons attack outside Damascus:

SPIEGEL: President Obama said after the investigation into this crime by the United Nations that there was “no doubt” that your regime used chemical weapons on Aug. 21 in an attack that killed more than 1,000 people.

Assad: Once again, I dare Obama to give a single piece of evidence, a single shred. The only thing he has is lies.

SPIEGEL: But the conclusions of the UN inspectors …

Assad: What conclusions? When the inspectors came to Syria, we asked them to continue the investigation. We are hoping for an explanation of who is responsible for this act.

SPIEGEL: Based on the trajectory of the rockets, it is possible to calculate where they were fired from — namely the positions of your Fourth Division.

Assad: That doesn’t prove anything, because the terrorists could be anywhere. You can find them in Damascus now. They could even launch a missile from near my house.

SPIEGEL: But your opponents are not capable of firing weapons containing Sarin. That requires military equipment, training and precision.

Assad: Who said that they are not capable? In the 1990s, terrorists used Sarin gas in an attack in Tokyo. They call it “kitchen gas” because it can be made anywhere.

SPIEGEL: But you really can’t compare these two Sarin attacks — they aren’t comparable. This was a military action.

Assad: No one can say with certainty that rockets were used — we do not have any evidence. The only thing certain is that Sarin was released. Perhaps that happened when one of our rockets struck one of the terrorists’ positions? Or perhaps they made an error while they were handling it and something happened.

“… some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions” — remember that line?

It comes from the infamous Mint Press report that has since been disowned by Dale Gavlak, but whose name still appears in the byline.

So, here we have the Syrian president on the one hand asserting that there isn’t a “single piece of evidence” implicating his regime in the chemical attack, while on the other hand churning rumors about the attack first promulgated by a small website in Minnesota.

The Syrian state still retains significant power, yet apparently when it comes to the challenge of gathering evidence about the August attack it’s only tool of investigation is the internet.

Some observers might counter that in this case, since the location of the attack remains under rebel control, the regime can do no more than cite media reports, but this method of deflecting accusations by citing contrary claims from the media, long predates the revolution.

Back in 2007, after it was revealed in the Western media that on September 6, Israel had launched an attack on what was claimed to be a nuclear reactor under construction in the Deir ez-Zor region, the Syrian Vice-President Faruq Al Shara refuted the claim by asserting that the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid zones and Dry lands had in fact been the target. AFP quoted him:

“The images prove that the target that was attacked by air force jets in Syria was an academic research centre for the study of arid soil,” Shara told a news conference in Damascus.

“The last report appeared in European, American, and also a few Arab media outlets, and it noted that the attack was carried out at a research centre in Deir Ezzor.

“When I saw the photograph, it became evident that we were talking about the Desert Lands Research Center, a center that belongs to the Arab League. This is the picture, you can see it, and it proves that everything that was said about this attack was wrong.”

When the center itself denied that it had been attacked, Assad — in an interview with the BBC — claimed that the target had been an unused military building.

But if the Syrian government genuinely had nothing to hide, it had no need to rely on second-hand evidence or unsubstantiated claims — it could have swiftly invited international media to visit the site of the Israeli attack and also brought in UN inspectors to confirm that a nuclear reactor had not been under construction. After all, the IAEA strongly objected to Israel’s unilateral action, arguing that Israeli and U.S. concerns should have triggered IAEA inspections while the facility was still intact.

But instead of jumping on an opportunity to show the world that Syria had been the victim of unprovoked aggression, Assad sent in bulldozers to bury the evidence.

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