LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
February 12.2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
“Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child. Children will rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all men for my name’s sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved.
’Matthew/10:16-23/ “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you. Yes, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations. But when they deliver you up, don’t be anxious how or what you will say, for it will be given you in that hour what you will say. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. “Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child. Children will rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all men for my name’s sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee into the next, for most certainly I tell you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel, until the Son of Man has come.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 11-12/2020
Lebanon gov't wins Parliament's confidence vote despite protests/Timour Azhari/Al Jazeera/February 11/2020
Lebanese Parliament passes vote of confidence in the new government amid violent clashes/Sunniva Rose/The National/February 11/2020
Mired by controversy, Diab's government secures vote of confidence/Georgi Azar/Annahar/February 11/2020
Lebanon government wins confidence vote as protesters, security forces clash/Finbar Anderson and Lauren Holtmeier, Al Arabiya EnglishTuesday, 11 February 2020
Diab from House of Parliament: This government is not politicized
373 Injured as Protesters Clash with Security Forces around Parliament
Berri Affirms Quorum Secured at Confidence Vote Session
Diab Vows to Get Lebanon Out of Crisis
Diab's Government Wins Parliament Vote of Confidence
Aoun receives Head of Association of Banks
Bassil Urges Govt. to 'Impose Plan', Resist 'Politicians, Protesters Blackmail'
Raad to Parliament: Govt. Doesn't Resemble Our Political Camp
MP Geagea Slams Officials Impotence, PSP MP Blasts 'Govt. of Advisers'MP Saadeh Addresses Parliament after Being Injured in Protesters Attack
Officer Killed, Inmates Flee as Gunfire Erupts in Ouzai Police Station
Diab commenting on Ouzaei shooting: Security red line
New U.S. Ambassador to Replace Richard
Berri Says Lebanon Needs IMF ‘Help’
The Syrian women and girls sold into sexual slavery in Lebanon/Daniela Sala by Daniela Sala//Al Jazeera/February 11/2020
Iran-backed Hezbollah steps in to support Iraqi militias after Soleimani’s death
Beirut 1958 and Its Lessons/Michael Young/February 11/2020

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 11-12/2020
Abbas Warns U.N. on Trump's 'Swiss Cheese' Peace
Arab Israeli Village Vandalised by Suspected Jewish Extremists0
Iraq Commemorates Top Commander Killed in U.S. Strike
Syria Regime Helicopter Downed as Ankara Threatens Damascus
Iranians Rally on 41st Anniversary of Shah's Ouster
Meet the two women who spread Christianity to hundreds in Iran’s Evin prison
Ecuador Arrests Iranians Travelling With Fake Israeli Passports
US accuses Iran of developing missiles through satellite bid
France Condemns Iran’s Ballistic Missile Violations
UNHCR in Lebanon under fire for not addressing Syrian refugees demands
Senior Iranian Official Mohsen Rezaee: We Are Looking For An Excuse To Raze Tel-Aviv To The Ground; As U.S. Foothold In Region Weakens Regimes Of KSA And Gulf Countries Will Fall/MEMRI/February 11/2020
Debate Renews between Iran, US at IAEA Meeting
Kata'ib Hezbollah commemorate Mohandes, Soleimani’s deaths with Trump effigies
Iran Begins Trial of Opposition Figure Ruhollah Zam
Soleimani’s Legacy Spurs Controversy among Revolutionary Guard Officials
Fate of jailed Iran protesters remains unknown, families fear death: Report/Yaghoub Fazeli, Al Arabiya English/February 11/2020
Top EU diplomat urges Israel not to annex Jordan Valley, warns of violence
Qatar-backed International Union of Muslim Scholars: A history of extremism/Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English/February 11/2020
Turkish-backed opposition forces fight against Syrian gov't march through Idlib
Syrian government forces exit town of Nairab in Idlib: Turkey
Syrian regime airstrike kills at least 12 civilians in Idlib: Monitor
Putin, Erdogan to discuss Syria by phone on Tuesday: TASS

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 11-12/2020
Palestinians: The Dangers of Singing/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/February 11/2020
Why Iran’s satellite launch failure still threatens Israel, US - analysis/Yonah Jeremy Bob/Jerusalem Post/February 11/2020
Remember, Iran’s Terror Network Is Global/Behnam Ben Taleblu/FDD/February 11/2020
Turkey’s Options for Pressuring Russia in Idlib Are Limited/Soner Cagaptay/The Washington Institute/February 11/2020
Latest Battle for Idlib Could Send Another Wave of Refugees to Europe/Fabrice Balanche/The Washington Institute/February 11/2020
Critics should think twice before abandoning UNRWA/Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/February 11, 2020
IMF predicts GCC economic doomsday by 2034/Abdel Aziz AluwaishegArab News/February 11/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 11-12/2020
Lebanon gov't wins Parliament's confidence vote despite protests
Timour Azhari/Al Jazeera/February 11/2020
Parliament backs cabinet and financial plans of PM Hassan Diab in vote held despite attempts by protesters to block it.
Beirut, Lebanon - Lebanon's Parliament has backed a new cabinet and the government's financial rescue plan in a vote of confidence held despite attempts by protesters to block it.
Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri congratulated the legislators who sat through a nine-hour session on Tuesday before holding a vote that saw 63 of 84 MPs present give their confidence to the new government formed last month. Twenty MPs voted against the government and one abstained. Hezbollah and its allies - the Free Patriotic Movement and the Amal Movement - backed the government while the Future Movement of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri voted no confidence along with its allies, the Lebanese Forces and the Progressive Socialist Party. Speaking before the vote, Prime Minister Hassan Diab said his government's priority was preserving foreign currency needed for imports and that all options for dealing with Eurobonds maturing this year were being studied. Diab, a little-known academic and former education minister, was tasked with forming a government in December after Hariri was forced to resign.
Protesters tried to block vote
However, for months, thousands of Lebanese had been protesting against the proposed cabinet, saying it would not be able to rescue the country's ailing economy. On Tuesday, more than 350 people were injured in clashes around the Lebanese Parliament building in the capital as protesters attempted to prevent the MPs from participating in the confidence vote. "We don't have confidence in a single one of them," Suzie Jumaa, a 49-year-old media professional told Al Jazeera, as she blocked a main thoroughfare in downtown Beirut. "We're not giving them a chance, we have tried for 40 years, we have gotten old and we are going to die giving them chances. There isn't any more time." Despite the protesters' efforts to block the vote, a quorum was achieved in the parliamentary session, which began around 11:45am (0945 GMT) on Tuesday. Several MPs made their way to the Parliament on the backs of motorcycles, allowing them to slip through protesters, while others arrived in heavily-guarded convoys. Security forces, including the Lebanese army, riot police and SWAT teams used batons, tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets to clear the roads of protesters. The Lebanese Red Cross said it transported 45 people to hospitals and treated 328 at the scene.The blockade forced several MPs' vehicles to retreat under a hail of stones and projectiles that shattered car windows. MP Salim Saadeh, a representative of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, was taken to hospital and received stitches after protesters wrecked the car he was travelling in. "I am fine, thanks for all the people's love," he said in a video from his hospital bed.During the televised parliamentary session, Diab read the new government's policy statement, laying out measures aimed at addressing the worst financial crisis in Lebanon's history. He said the government would undertake fiscal and administrative reforms, fight corruption, tax evasion and smuggling, and seek to establish the independence of the judiciary within 100 days.
Parliament shutdown
Protesters tore down metal and cement barricades put up around Nejmeh Square, the seat of the Parliament. A group of people also set fire to a bank next to the parliament's entrance. Running street battles ensued, lasting several hours in downtown Beirut before calming down some nine hours after protesters took to the streets on Tuesday. In October, the entire parliamentary area was closed off to the public after unprecedented protests broke out in the country, bringing down Hariri's government. Since then, large demonstrations have occurred regularly, demanding the removal of a political class that has ruled Lebanon since its civil war ended in 1990. Protesters demand a government consisting of independent experts to lead the country out of its financial crisis, fight corruption and hold early elections. Many feel that Diab's government of 20 ministers, picked mostly by Hezbollah and its main allies, the Free Patriotic Movement and the Amal Movement, has failed in meeting their demands for change. "They were chosen by the same people. How can we expect anything different?" Aline Germani, a 47-year-old professor told Al Jazeera. Despite the protesters' failure to prevent the Parliament's no-confidence vote from going forward, Germani said they had made gains. "They are scared of us now. If they weren't scared, they wouldn't have gone in like rats... that alone is a victory."

Lebanese Parliament passes vote of confidence in the new government amid violent clashes
Sunniva Rose/The National/February 11/2020
More than 300 people were injured as protesters tried to stop MPs approving new government
The Lebanese Parliament passed a vote of confidence in the new government on Tuesday evening after hundreds were injured during violent clashes between protesters and security forces. Eighty-four of 128 MPs attended the Parliament session on Tuesday despite thousands of protesters trying to stop them.
Sixty-three MPs voted for the new government, 20 voted against and one abstained, the state-run National News Agency reported. Many Lebanese people reject the new government announced in late January after three months of protests against a collapsing economy. Carrying banners that read “no trust”, protesters were pushed back by riot police and the army with tear gas and water cannon. Some retaliated with stones and attacked a concrete barrier that had been set up to block roads leading to Parliament. The Lebanese Red Cross reported that 373 people were injured in downtown Beirut. The turnout for the confidence vote was “very poor”, said Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs. “Confidence votes usually exceed 90 or 100 votes,” Mr Nader told The National. A confidence vote can be passed with only half of the MPs present. “If those who voted against did not attend, Parliament would not have established quorum today. Game-changing," Lebanese journalist Kareem Chehayeb said on Twitter.Those who voted against the government included former prime minister Saad Hariri’s Future Movement bloc and the Progressive Socialist Party’s Democratic Gathering. Protesters reject the new government because they believe it is affiliated with the political establishment they say caused the country’s economic crisis.But Prime Minister Hassan Diab claims it is a government of independent ministers. Mr Hariri’s government fell on October 29 because of the protests. After the vote, Mr Diab said that his government was “non-politicised” even though some ministers had “political inclinations”.“No one can challenge the legitimacy of the MPs elected by large segments of the Lebanese people," he said. "No one can challenge the legitimacy of the uprising, which represents a large segment of the Lebanese people, too. "Here is the complex equation: how can a combination of both be found?”Lebanon is going through its worst economic crisis in living memory, with severe liquidity shortages and rising unemployment. “We have to be honest and admit that the risk of falling is not an illusion,” Mr Diab said. “We want to preserve public money, foreign currency assets and depositors’ money, especially in the central bank, to serve the priorities of the people in terms of food, medicine, medical materials, wheat and fuel.”Meanwhile, two men were killed in a shootout at a police station in a southern Beirut suburb on Tuesday.

Mired by controversy, Diab's government secures vote of confidence
Georgi Azar/Annahar/February 11/2020
“No confidence,” chanted some of the protesters outside Parliament.
BEIRUT: Mired by accusations of constitutional violations, Prime Minister Hassan Diab's Cabinet managed to win Tuesday a vote of confidence from Parliament. 84 lawmakers made their way to Parliament, with 63 MPs voting in favor of Diab's government and its policy statement.
Speaker Nabih Berri kicked off deliberations over the new government's policy statement Tuesday noon despite accusations that the number of lawmakers fell short of the required quorum when the session began. As protestors clashed with security forces outside Parliament, Diab took center stage, outlining his government's policy statement and vowing to implement reforms, a recurring theme with previous governments that have failed to deliver on the promises of their own policy statements. As the session kicked off, Berri stopped short of confirming the number of lawmakers present, gesturing to Diab to read out his government's policy. "I spoke with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and members of the Lebanese Forces who told me they’ll be joining us, " Berri said.
Kataeb leader and MP Sami Gemayel blasted the move, labeling it a blatant "violation of Lebanon's constitution” while calling on his fellow lawmakers to boycott the session. "Initiating the session without a quorum is unconstitutional and represents a blow to Lebanon's democracy," he tweeted.
An hour before Berri kicked off the session, LF member Strida Geagea maintained that her party would only participate once the quorum was secured. “In line with our beliefs, we will not secure the quorum,” she said, before joining the session shortly after.
Following Diab's closing remarks, Berri sought to quash the accusations claiming that 67 lawmakers were present once he kicked off the session. As lawmakers began making their way to Parliament, clashes broke out between Lebanese protesters and security forces near the parliament building in central Beirut. The meeting is being held amid a crippling economic and financial crisis, Lebanon’s worst in decades. Police threw a tight security dragnet around the area, and special forces and riot policemen quickly opened roads that were closed by protesters trying to prevent Cabinet ministers and legislators from reaching parliament. “No confidence,” chanted some of the protesters while others carried held signs blasting officials. Lebanon has been gripped by anti-government protests since October. Demonstrators are calling for sweeping reforms and an end to a political class they deem as corrupt and incompetent, blaming it for the rapidly worsening financial crisis. The protests forced the resignation of the former prime minister, Saad Hariri. The new government’s policy statement includes a rescue plan to try to get Lebanon out of its economic and financial crisis, the worst since the end of the country’s 1975-90 civil war. A group of protesters surrounded the car of one Cabinet minister, Demianos Kattar, as he was on his way to the nearby government headquarters, pelting it with eggs pounding it with their fists before an army and police force pushed them away. Salim Saade, a prominent member of Lebanon's Syrian Social Nationalist Party who's serving his third term as a lawmaker, had his car pummeled with rocks and windows smashed. He was injured in the attack and transported to a nearby hospital. Security forces fired tear gas in another street leading to parliament, where protesters were able to remove part of a giant concrete wall. In other streets, troops forced protesters from the middle of the street to allow traffic to flow.The policy statement includes an “emergency rescue plan” and outlines reforms in the judicial, financial and administrative fields. Lebanon has one of the highest debt ratios in the world, standing at more than 150 of the GDP and worsening over the past years with no economic growth and high unemployment.--- With AP

Lebanon government wins confidence vote as protesters, security forces clash
Finbar Anderson and Lauren Holtmeier, Al Arabiya EnglishTuesday, 11 February 2020
Lebanon's new cabinet won a vote of confidence in parliament on Tuesday based in part on a financial rescue plan it put forward for grappling with a deep financial crisis. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri congratulated the lawmakers who sat through an eight-hour session before holding a vote that saw 63 out of 84 MPs present give their confidence to the new government. Members of the Lebanese Parliament from Hezbollah, Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), Amal, Marada and Karameh groups voted to back the government while the Lebanese Forces, Future Movement and Progressive Socialist Party groups voted for a no confidence. Thousands of protestors clashed with security forces in central Beirut on Tuesday morning as they tried to prevent the confidence vote in Lebanon’s new government from going ahead. Army troops deployed tear gas and water cannon against protestors at multiple points close to the Parliament building on a clear but cold winter morning.
Lebanese Forces member of Parliament Sethrida Gaegea said she refused to grant confidence to the new government.
She said the policy statement, adopted by Cabinet last week that says the country needs to take “painful steps” to pull it from the grips of economic and financial crisis, did not live up to the aspirations and expectation of the people, and therefore she refused to grant confidence to Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. Some protestors expressed little hope that they would change anything, but felt an obligation to demonstrate against a government they feel does little to meet their demands.New government not want Lebanese protesters wanted
Many Lebanese supporting the revolution were hoping the new government would be comprised of experts with no political ties. However, the 20-member cabinet, which includes six women, is chock-full of fresh faces with familiar political ties, albeit most with technical expertise.
“Government or no government, nothing is going to change,” said Rafic, a young protestor who acknowledged with a wry smile that as a banker he made an unlikely revolutionary. “The guys who are supposedly new ministers, new faces – they are puppets because they used to be the adviser of this one, or the secretary of this one, or the spouse of this one.”“We just ask for an independent government of experts,” Rafic said. He voiced his concern that politicians were trying to pin blame for Lebanon’s severe economic crisis on its five-month-old protest movement, and argued that the country’s financial collapse had been in the making long before as a result of policies implemented by the political class. MPs managed to make the necessary quorum of 65 out of the total 128 members for the morning session, despite lawmakers from Saad al-Hariri’s Future Movement showing up late. Sixty-eight members were present at the session, local Lebanese outlet the Daily Star reported. Some MPs were assisted by pro-government protestors on scooters in order to bypass those trying to prevent the session going ahead. Sryian Social Nationalist Party MP Salim Saade was hospitalized after his car was attacked on the way to the session, while the Lebanese Red Cross reported that it had transported 45 protestors to hospital, with 328 treated at the scene. Elie, a 44-year-old doctor, stressed the need to show the international community that the government was serious about reform in order to unlock financial aid packages. The 2018 CEDRE conference in Paris, for example, required heavy reform to the electricity sector, a huge drain on state coffers that nevertheless fails to provide citizens with 24/7 power. “The least that needs to be seen is a clear economic project that makes sense not only to us but to the global community,” Elie said, carrying a sign that read, “Leave so we can live: NO CONFIDENCE.”
Nothing has changed
“Nothing serious has come from them,” he added. “They will get elected and the system will collapse.”
The new cabinet was selected January 22 after more than a month’s delay. New Prime Minister Hassan Diab was appointed in mid-December amid ongoing anti-government protests that have swept across the country since October 17. Although the cabinet is smaller than the previous 30-member cabinet, with 20 members it is still larger than the 18 Diab had originally called for. Some have said the government is of “one color,” referring to the fact that it is made up of those loyal to the March 8 Alliance, which includes Iran-backed Hezbollah. The party, which lost one seat, will now hold two seats, but six pro-Hezbollah Sunni Muslim members will also sit in cabinet. Tuesday’s events left some considering their future in the country. “I want to leave,” said Kholoud, a 41-year-old dance choreographer, seeing few prospects of success for the protest movement. “It’s very idealistic,” she explained, voicing her doubt that the political elite could ever be persuaded to step down. “I believe in it but I know that it’s not realistic, but at the same time I can’t accept this situation.” Kholoud acknowledged the privilege afforded her by her husband’s French passport - an advantage not enjoyed by her Lebanese family. “I don’t want to leave them in this situation but I have a kid,” she said, adding that she saw no way for Lebanon to return to its former status quo. “It’s scary and unsure, but we can’t go back.”

Diab from House of Parliament: This government is not politicized
NNA/February 11/2020
Prime Minister Dr. Hassan Diab stressed that his Cabinet is not politicized but rather a government of non-partisan specialists. "This government is not politicized, despite the political sentiments of its ministers, but they are in line with the general frames that I have set since the first day of my assignment... It is a government of non-partisan specialists," Premier Diab asserted in his reply to deputies' entries during the Parliament vote of confidence session on Tuesday. "The government will carry the demands of the Lebanese and will launch the course of salvation," Diab corroborated, stressing that the government will be working for all the Lebanese and seeking salvation and the service of people. "Lebanon is going through an unprecedented difficult period and crossing into the safe shores is almost impossible without an external and internal impetus." The Prime Minister also pledged that the government shall face challenges "with a plan, methodology and firmness." "Our prime concern now is how to protect people's deposits in banks and preserve monetary stability," the PM concluded.

373 Injured as Protesters Clash with Security Forces around Parliament
Agence France Presse/Associated Press/Naharnet/February 11/2020
Lebanon's parliament met Tuesday for a confidence vote on a new government as protesters clashed outside with security forces who used teargas and water cannon to disperse them. The Red Cross said a total of 373 people were treated for teargas exposure and other injuries, including 45 who were taken to hospital. The new prime minister, Hassan Diab, a little-known academic and former education minister, was tasked with forming a government in December after premier Saad Hariri was forced to resign by pressure from the street. But more than three months on, angry demonstrators charge that his proposed new cabinet fails to address their demands and won't be able to rescue Lebanon's ailing economy. Before the session started in an area cordoned off by riot police and soldiers, protesters mobbed the tinted-glass vehicles of lawmakers and lobbed water bottles at them in a bid to stop them reaching parliament for the vote. Sixty-eight out of the 128 lawmakers however made it in, meeting the required minimum to proceed with the session. A group of protesters surrounded the car of one Cabinet minister, Demianos Qattar, as he was on his way to parliament, pelting it with eggs and pounding it with their fists before soldiers and police pushed them away. The protesters also attacked legislator Salim Saadeh in his car. "Thank God I am good. I thank everyone for their love," Saadeh said in a video posted on his Twitter account, his shirt tainted with blood and his left eye blue and swollen. "Does the protest movement approve of the attack on colleague Salim Saadeh?" Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said during the parliament session. Saadeh later went to parliament with a bandaged head and gave a speech in which he criticized widespread corruption in the country. Protesters also attacked a cameraman working for the local OTV TV station run by loyalists to President Michel Aoun. Since the protests began nearly four months ago, journalists have been attacked by both government supporters as well as opponents. The protesters later smashed fronts of the Le Gray Hotel close to parliament causing significant damage. Near one of the entrances, supporters of the AMAL Movement attacked some protesters to force them to open the way. Security forces separated the two sides. Earlier, security forces used tear gas and water cannon to break up groups of demonstrators who hurled rocks over the blast walls erected to block off roads leading to parliament. "I'm here to say 'no confidence' in the government because the way it was formed shows that it cannot be trusted," said one protester who gave her name as Carole. A group of protesters later set fire to a bank in the downtown area.
'Emergency rescue plan'
Demonstrators draped in Lebanese flags and chanting "no confidence" had started gathering early in the morning before parliamentarians were set to arrive for the vote. Some lawmakers had spent the night in parliament to thwart protesters who have successfully prevented several previous sessions since they launched their campaign in October. Lebanon's cross-sectarian protest movement has pushed for the wholesale removal of a hereditary political elite widely seen as corrupt and incompetent. While Diab has vowed to carry the hopes of the protesters, portfolios in his government were shared out through the same partisan and sectarian gamesmanship that has been the trademark of Lebanon's political class for decades. Inside parliament, Diab said his cabinet was determined to draw up an emergency rescue plan for the country by the end of the month. With the economy badly hit, he warned that "we could reach a complete collapse from which it will be hard -- if not near impossible -- to get out."The international community has pledged more than $11 billion in desperately needed financial aid, but made it conditional on the speedy implementation of economic reforms.
'People have no confidence'
But in the street, one of the protesters, 26-year-old Christopher, said he had little faith in the new leadership. "We are here to reject Diab's government and to say that the Lebanese people have no confidence in it -- even if lawmakers vote to support it." He said the new ministers may appear to be qualified but they still depended on "the parties that destroyed the country."Nearby, water cannon aimed cold jets at protesters trying to scale the perimeter wall. Demonstrators had traveled to Beirut from as far as Sidon, Tripoli and Tyre. Human Rights Watch condemned the use of force against demonstrators. "Security forces were throwing tear gas and beating people up" said Aya Majzoub, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. If approved by parliament, the new government will face one of the worst crises in the county's recent history. The protests spell the biggest popular challenge to the power-sharing system that emerged from the 1975-1990 civil war. Lebanon is also on the brink of defaulting on its debt and the impact is being felt by all social classes, with tough restrictions on cash withdrawals and a de-facto devaluation of the national currency. One placard at Tuesday's protest carried the sarcastic message: "Of course we are confident -- that they will help the banks to the detriment of the people." The World Bank has warned that if no solution is found swiftly to the crisis, the poverty rate may shoot up from a third to half of the population.

Berri Affirms Quorum Secured at Confidence Vote Session
Naharnet/February 11/2020
Speaker Nabih Berri stressed on Tuesday that the Parliament session dedicated for a Cabinet confidence vote and discuss the Policy Statement secured quorum with 67 lawmakers attending at the opening. He said lawmakers of the Strong Republic bloc, MP Setrida Geagea, of the Lebanese Forces party joined after that. In a tweet, Kataeb MP Sami Gemayel said the session was unconstitutional because it convened without securing quorum. “Opening the confidence session without quorum violates internal laws, is unconstitutional and draws a blow to democracy and challenges Lebanese protesters,” he said. A two-thirds quorum of Lebanon's 128-seat Parliament is needed to push through major initiatives such as a Cabinet confidence vote.

Diab Vows to Get Lebanon Out of Crisis
Associated Press/Naharnet/February 11/2020
Prime Minister Hassan Diab on Tuesday vowed during a Cabinet confidence vote session to get Lebanon out of its economic and financial crisis, the worst since the end of the 1975-90 civil war, as protesters clashed with security forces outside the Parliament. In the Policy State read by Diab, the prime minister said “painful” measures are needed now and that it would be difficult to extricate Lebanon from the crisis once “we reach total collapse.” No plan would succeed unless interest rates are reduced in order to revive the economy and reduce the debt," he said.
He read the 16-page government statement as protesters rallied outside the Parliament and clashed with security forces. According to a copy, the government's "emergency rescue plan" includes reforms in the judicial, financial and administrative fields, as well as fighting corruption and fixing the country's finances. “Mistaken are those who believe they can evade an economic collapse and people's anger. We must admit that restoring confidence can only be achieved through deeds and tangible achievements,” Diab said. “The Policy Statement focuses on an emergency work plan, and we are committed to expedite its implementation. The government will serve Lebanon and will be independent, honest and transparent with direct communication with the people mainly the Movement,” he added. He assured depositors that “the government will put in place a mechanism to protect depositors.”

Diab's Government Wins Parliament Vote of Confidence
Associated Press/Naharnet/February 11/2020
Lebanon’s new government won parliament’s vote of confidence on Tuesday, as 63 MPs voted in favor, 20 voted against and one MP abstained. The MPs of Hizbullah, the Free Patriotic Movement, the AMAL Movement and their allies granted confidence to Hassan Diab’s government as those of al-Mustaqbal Movement, the Progressive Socialist Party and the Lebanese Forces withheld it. MP Michel Daher of the FPM-led Strong Lebanon bloc meanwhile abstained from voting. Eighty-four out of 128 MPs attended the session, which was boycotted by several opposition blocs and MPs.
“No matter the number of accusations, this is a cabinet of nonpartisan specialists and our hearts are outside, beating alongside the people,” Diab said told parliament in a speech that preceded the vote. “The government will carry the demands of the Lebanese and launch the course of salvation,” he pledged.
Diab added that he fully realized the massive task ahead but was confident it was still possible to rescue Lebanon's economy from complete collapse -- and that his government would get to work immediately. "The ball of fire is spiraling quickly and if the flame is not controlled by this government then it will burn everyone," Diab said. "We will do all we can to put Lebanon on track of reforms," he added. The meeting was held amid a crippling economic and financial crisis, Lebanon's worst in decades, and an ongoing protest movement against the country's hated political class. Amid a spiraling financial crisis, Lebanese banks have imposed informal withdrawal limits and halted transfers abroad. Demonstrators are calling for sweeping reforms and an end to a political class they deem as corrupt and incompetent, blaming it for the rapidly worsening financial crisis. The protests forced the resignation in October of the former prime minister, Saad Hariri. Diab, a former professor at the American University of Beirut, was picked by the militant group Hizbullah and its allies after negotiations to bring back Hariri, who was insisting on a government of technocrats, failed. That will make it difficult for him to gain the international community's trust and unlock badly needed assistance for the country. Friendly nations, including France, have made clear they will not support the heavily indebted nation before a reform-minded Cabinet is formed. Diab urged the international community, and local opponents, to give his government a chance. "Lebanon is passing through a very difficult and unprecedented time. Overcoming this period peacefully is close to impossible without assistance from abroad, as well as from the inside," he said. The parliament session began with Diab reading the 16-page government statement on a rescue plan to get Lebanon out of its economic and financial crisis, the worst since the end of the 1975-90 civil war. The plan includes reforms in the judicial, financial and administrative fields, as well as plans fighting corruption and fixing the country's finances. Lebanon has one of the highest debt ratios in the world, standing at more than 150% of GDP and worsening over recent years with no economic growth and high unemployment. In the statement read by Diab, the prime minister said "painful" measures are needed. He said slashing interest rates were among measures that needed to be taken in order to revive the economy and reduce the debt."Those who think they can survive the collapse of the economy are mistaken," Diab said.

Aoun receives Head of Association of Banks
NNA/February 11/2020
President Michel Aoun met with the Head of the Association of Banks, Dr. Salim Sfeir, and discussed with him banking and financial affairs. The President was briefed on the current banking conditions and on the results of Sfeir’s visit to the United States, and the meetings which he had with US State Department officials, in addition to a number of bankers. Dr. Sfeir’s Advisor, Mr. Antoine Habib, also attended the meeting.—Presidency Press Office

Bassil Urges Govt. to 'Impose Plan', Resist 'Politicians, Protesters Blackmail'
Naharnet/February 11/2020
Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Jebran Bassil on Tuesday urged the new government to “impose a monetary plan” and resist what he called the “blackmail” of both politicians and protesters. “If the government wants to overcome the crisis and this is still possible, it has to raise its voice… and it should not bow to the blackmail of politicians seeking to keep their privileges nor to the blackmail of street protesters voicing unjustified political demands,” Bassil said in a speech before parliament as MPs debated Cabinet’s policy statement ahead of a confidence vote. Bassil called on the government to “impose a comprehensive monetary plan in coordination with the central bank governor” and “end the policy of blind borrowing for high interest rates.”He also urged it to “end the policy of pegging the (dollar) exchange rate,” noting that “it is costly and a big lie” and that “the lira’s price has been illusory since a long time.”
And calling on the government to “legalize and regularize the capital control, recover the stolen funds and expose the culprits,” Bassil called for “restructuring debt after negotiating and conducting a comprehensive study and survey.” Bassil also urged protecting small depositors, merging some banks and recovering “the funds of the central bank’s financial engineering operations.”“We will give a chance and if the government does not act quickly and differently without bowing to blackmail, we will be the ones who will topple it and we won’t wait for anyone. We will act against it in parliament and on the streets. Beware because the time is tight and the options are clear, so do not waste the time or the chance,” Bassil went on to say.

Raad to Parliament: Govt. Doesn't Resemble Our Political Camp
Naharnet/February 11/2020
The head of Hizbullah’s parliamentary bloc MP Mohammed Raad on Tuesday announced that his party will grant confidence to Hassan Diab’s government although it “does not resemble” the Hizbullah-led political camp. “With all due honesty and clarity, this government does not resemble our political camp, but we all accepted it to facilitate the formation mission and we are confident that the visions can be reconciled among its components,” Raad said in a speech before parliament. Raad also criticized the government’s “lengthy” policy statement, saying “convincing the Lebanese of transparency and integrity cannot be achieved through the policy statement but rather through practice.”“Winning people’s confidence hinges on the implementation of serious anti-corruption measures,” he said.

MP Geagea Slams Officials Impotence, PSP MP Blasts 'Govt. of Advisers'
Naharnet/February 11/2020
The parliamentary blocs of the Lebanese Forces and the Progressive Socialist Party on Tuesday attended a parliamentary session to debate Cabinet’s policy statement but announced that they will not grant confidence to the new government. “The economic and social situations were much better during the war and certainly no one wants war’s return, but is it acceptable to face what we’re facing during peacetime?” MP Sethrida Geagea of the LF said in a speech before parliament. It blamed the dire situation on officials’ “continued deeds and their failure to find solutions.” “We will not grant confidence to this government, but we will continue to wait for its decisions and steps. We will eventually support it should it launch drastic and quick steps to rescue the country, or else we will be among its fiercest opponents,” Geagea added. MP Hadi Abu al-Hosn of the PSP meanwhile said the formation of the new government was “disappointing,” noting that “some of its ministers are advisers who are loyal to their parties’ policies.” “We have major reservations over the poetic policy statement that does not contain any plan, that’s why it is needed to approve the law on the judiciary’s independence before pursuing corrupts,” Abu al-Hosn added, calling for “activating the central inspection authorities.”

MP Saadeh Addresses Parliament after Being Injured in Protesters Attack
Naharnet/February 11/2020
Lawmaker Salim Saadeh was injured and hospitalized on Tuesday when his car came under an attack by protesters in Downtown Beirut. Saadeh was injured in the head when protesters attacked his vehicle as it was making its way through to the Parliament in Nejmeh Square for the Cabinet confidence vote. In a video from the hospital that circulated on social media, Saadeh appeared with a bruised eye and stitches on his forehead. He assured that he was in good health. Protesters in Beirut tried to stop a confidence vote in parliament on a new government. They mobbed the tinted-glass vehicles of lawmakers and lobbed water bottles at them in a bid to stop them reaching parliament for the vote. Protesters hurled stones at Saadeh’s vehicle breaking its windows and injuring the Syrian Social Nationalist Party MP. At the beginning of the session, Speaker Nabih Berri denounced the incident and all other attacks at lawmakers, noting that Saadeh was in good health. Saadeh later arrived in parliament where he delivered a sarcastic speech about the economic crisis. Lawmakers clapped as the MP entered parliament's hall. They later erupted in laughter as Saadeh began his speech by apologizing for being "late due to health reasons." The MP blasted the central bank and the economic policies in his trademark humorous fashion as he called for abolishing the ministries of information and the internally displaced.

Officer Killed, Inmates Flee as Gunfire Erupts in Ouzai Police Station
Naharnet/February 11/2020
The Ouzai police station witnessed deadly mayhem on Tuesday that left an Internal Security Forces officer dead and several policemen wounded. The station’s commander, Captain Jalal Shreif, was killed in the incident as the shooter, Lebanese national Hasan al-Hussein, shot himself dead after opening fire at the ISF members. LBCI television said around 20 inmates escaped during the chaos and that the army later arrested seven of them. Media reports said the slain captain is the son of Brig. Gen. Ali Shreif, the army’s deputy intelligence chief. Citing preliminary investigations, MTV said al-Hussein had entered the police station along with his mother to visit his jailed brother and was not carrying any weapon. “A fistfight ensued between him and his brother, which prompted the intervention of the station’s commander and other policemen, after which he snatched the firearm of one of the policemen and shot dead the officer Jalal Shreif,” MTV reported. “An adjutant from the al-Attar family was seriously wounded as another policeman was injured in the leg before al-Hussein shot himself dead,” the TV network added.

Diab commenting on Ouzaei shooting: Security red line
NNA/February 11/2020
Prime Minister Hassan Diab commented via Twitter on the recent Ouzaei shooting, tweeting: "Once again, the prestige of the State is under attack, as martyrs and wounded of the Internal Security Forces have fallen in an insidious attack. Security is a red line, and the prestige of the State will in no way be weakened. The security forces are the image of the State, and it is necessary to rally around the State and protect its institutions in order to protect the country. May God have mercy on the martyrs of the security forces and grant their loved ones patience and solace. We also wish the wounded a speedy recovery."

New U.S. Ambassador to Replace Richard
Naharnet/February 11/2020
The new U.S. ambassador to Lebanon will arrive soon to Lebanon to replace Ambassador Elizabeth Richard after serving four years in office, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Tuesday. Diplomatic sources told the daily that the new ambassador, Dorothy Shea, is expected to arrive “soon” in Beirut. She is a “staunch supporter” of US President Donald Trump's policy, said the sources. Shea was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. According to information, Trump seeks to “change the performance of the Lebanese embassy with Lebanese parties by appointing an ambassador close to his hard-line policy.”The “Lebanese will see a different and stricter approach than before,” according to sources. The new ambassador speaks both French and Arabic languages

Berri Says Lebanon Needs IMF ‘Help’
Naharnet/February 11/2020
Speaker Nabih Berri sees a need for help from the International Monetary Fund to draw a rescue plan for Lebanon’s crippling economy, media reports said on Tuesday. “Lebanon needs technical assistance from the International Monetary Fund to formulate an economic rescue plan,” Berri was quoted as saying. He was also quoted that the “IMF should advise on Lebanon’s $1.2 billion Eurobonds due to mature in March.”Berri visitors quoted the Speaker as saying that he also believes that Lebanon can not “surrender” itself to the IMF because “it can not bear its conditions,” An-Nahar daily said.

The Syrian women and girls sold into sexual slavery in Lebanon
Daniela Sala by Daniela Sala//Al Jazeera/February 11/2020
Syria's refugee crisis has shone a light on sex trafficking in Lebanon, where victims are often treated as criminals.
Beirut, Lebanon - "How do I know most of the women working as prostitutes are controlled?" asked Paul, a volunteer for the Jesuits, a religious order of the Roman Catholic Church, before answering his own question. "[Because] the last time I tried to help one of them get in touch with an NGO, I got beaten and threatened by her captors."
Everyone in Lebanon's "sex trade" seems to be involved in trafficking in one way or another: Sources at both the Internal Security Forces (ISF) and the General Directorate of General Security (GS) in Beirut told Al Jazeera that even pimps working further down the chain of command ultimately report to a bigger network of organised traffickers.
Paul has learned the ins-and-outs of Lebanon's trafficking world over the years. Beirut, the Lebanese capital, and Jounieh, a coastal town about 10km (6.2 miles) north of it, are where most victims of sex trafficking end up in Lebanon.
A GS officer estimated that there are at least 800 women and girls who have been forced into prostitution in these areas. But the numbers are hard to verify because of the hidden nature of the problem.
While the ISF formally identified 29 victims - 10 of whom were Lebanese and 13 Syrian - of sex trafficking in 2017, the most recent year for which there is data, other sources, including officers at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and NGOs, put the number in the thousands.
The law
The plight of these women is compounded by the way the law is applied in Lebanon. Article 523 of the Lebanese Penal Code criminalises "any person who practices secret prostitution or facilitates it". The punishment is a prison sentence of anything from a month to a year.
It is not illegal to work as a licensed prostitute but seeing as the government has not issued any such licences since the 1970s, those working as prostitutes are vulnerable to being arrested and punished.
Beirut is no stranger to the sex industry. Prostitution was legalised in Lebanon after World War I when the government decided that concentrating prostitutes in one area - Mutanabbi Street, which became Beirut's downtown red-light district before it was destroyed in the Civil War - would protect Lebanese women from French and Senegalese soldiers.
According to the Lebanese Prostitution Law of 1931, brothels were divided into two groups: public brothels and escort houses. The law also set conditions for those working outside the brothels, dividing them into groups of workers; cafe girls, mistresses and "artistes".
After Lebanon's Civil War, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, secret - meaning unlicensed - prostitution became a crime.
But hundreds of women enter Lebanon each year, particularly from Eastern Europe and Morocco, with an "artiste" visa, to work as dancers in clubs. "Artiste" is widely understood to be a euphemism for "prostitute".
Life on the streets
It is about 8pm on a Saturday, close to the Daoura intersection near Bourj Hammoud in Beirut's Armenian district, on a crowded road full of busy shops and cafes. From his car, Paul has just spotted a woman leaning towards a black SUV. She and the driver talk for a few minutes. Eventually, she gets in the car. The transaction is quick, and people passing by do not even seem to notice.
"They found a deal," explains Paul's wife, Ray. The couple, both in their 40s, have been volunteering for the church for years. Paul first got involved 20 years ago when he discovered that one of his neighbours was being forced into prostitution. He says he considered it his "Christian mission" to help. Ray decided to join him soon after they met in 2010.
We meet women who are Lebanese, East Africans and a lot of Syrians. They all want to leave the job, but the only ones I have seen leaving a trafficker was because they were handed to another [trafficker].
Paul and Ray are Armenian-Lebanese and asked that their real names be withheld because of the sensitivity of their work. For the past 10 years, they have distributed food and medicine once a week to "people in need", the couple's term for the homeless, drug addicts, beggars and women exploited into prostitution in Beirut.
As they drive around Doura, in the eastern suburbs of Beirut, the main road is still crowded. Two policemen are patrolling the area. But right around the corner, Ray spots another woman sitting in a car with a man. They have seen her here before, waiting on the street corner.
"We meet women who are Lebanese, East Africans and, in recent years, a lot of Syrians, of course," says Paul. "In my experience, they all want to leave the job, but the only ones I have seen leaving a trafficker - it was because they were handed to another [trafficker]."
The Chez Maurice case
It came as no great shock to Paul when, in 2016, news broke that 75 Syrian women had been trafficked and held captive in a Jounieh brothel for years.
What became known as the "Chez Maurice case", after the brothel in which they were held, only came to light because four women managed to escape.
Legal Agenda, a Lebanese NGO that collected several testimonies from survivors of the Chez Maurice brothel, described the place as a "torture chamber".
"I didn't think there was a state [law and order] in Lebanon," one of the trafficked women told Legal Agenda. "[One of the traffickers] told me that he bought the state with his money. I believed him the moment I was detained in the General Security building for 24 hours and then released scot-free."
Despite the media uproar surrounding the case, the owner of the brothel, a Lebanese businessman, was soon released on bail. Hearings into the case have been postponed multiple times and, three years on, the trial is only just about to begin.
'No trust in the system'
In 2011, the US State Department had placed Lebanon on its tier 2 watchlist of countries not fully complying with standards to combat human trafficking. Following pressure from civil groups such as Legal Agenda, Lebanon passed a new anti-trafficking law.
Since then, however, the Syrian crisis has precipitated a mass influx into Lebanon. Many of the refugees are women and children who have already suffered trauma and may be particularly vulnerable to exploitation.
Al Jazeera heard accounts of several scenarios in which Syrian women and children ended up in the hands of traffickers. One involved marriages, either in Syria or Lebanon, where the "husband" later revealed himself to be a trafficker. Another involved groups of women and children being trafficked across the border. There are also cases of women and girls being forcibly recruited within refugee camps or even sold by their families to traffickers.
However they arrived in Lebanon, human rights groups and aid workers say not enough is being done to protect them. Ghada Jabbour, head of the anti-trafficking unit at NGO Kafa ("enough" in Arabic), which focuses on gender-based violence, explains: "There is no trust in the system. Victims do not ask for help and do not report. And, at the same time, there is no outreach programme for the victims."
When the numbers do not add up
According to Lebanon's ISF, the number of identified victims of trafficking - including those forced into begging, labour exploitation and prostitution - has remained steadily low: 19 in 2015, 87 in 2016 (mainly the Chez Maurice survivors) and 54 in 2017. Most were Syrian.
However, Dima Haddad, programme officer at the IOM, says the official statistics do not come close to conveying the magnitude of the problem.
From her office at the IOM headquarters in Beirut, she coordinates a regional taskforce to counter human trafficking in Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan - the countries most affected by the Syrian refugee crisis. Sitting at her desk, surrounded by charts showing the dozens of tasks her team has planned for the next few months, she says: "Wherever there is a crisis, there is human trafficking.
"Vulnerability is increasing, hence trafficking is increasing."
Asked whether there are gaps in the system for identifying the victims, Haddad answers immediately. "Absolutely. If I have to be more diplomatic, I would say there is a lot of work to do. It is urgent, as we consider anti-trafficking a life-saving intervention."
There are also great obstacles to women being able to tell their stories. Aside from the shame and stigma that prevent victims from coming forward, it can also be difficult to access them. Approaching women on the street is dangerous - as Paul has found over the years - as they are watched by their traffickers.
In researching this feature, Al Jazeera tried to speak to survivors through NGOs, local journalists and local refugee camp leaders. However, those who were prepared to speak asked for money in exchange, requests that appeared to come from husbands and other relatives. Permission to access Baabda female prison - where many of the women arrested for prostitution are held - was not granted.
During 2017, the ISF adopted a policy of trying to root out all cases involving potential trafficking victims through its Human Rights Unit. As of 2018, at least 108 training sessions had been given to the 37 law enforcement agents attached to the unit to help them identify and deal with suspected trafficking cases. But, according to Alef, a human rights watchdog based in Beirut, and other organisations, these training sessions are rarely given to those on the front lines and are, therefore, missing their target.
Ashraf Rifi, who served as minister of justice between 2014 and 2016, and who was ISF director-general from 2005 to 2013, says it could take 10 to 15 years before there are significant changes in how cases of human, and specifically sex, trafficking are identified and combatted.
"It is a cultural problem," he explains in his office, referring to the low numbers of women - and particularly Syrian women - identified as victims of trafficking. "It's not unusual, because of stigma and discrimination, that Syrian women are considered 'just' prostitutes."
The ISF is also responsible for investigations into exploitation networks. And yet, Rifi adds, one of the main challenges is the "high level of corruption", including within the ISF itself.
In August 2018, the head of the ISF's Human Trafficking and Moral Protection Bureau, Johnny Haddad, was arrested on charges of corruption in connection with a prostitution ring. To date, he is still under investigation by the ISF's ethics committee, meaning that all information related to the case is classified.
Meanwhile, hundreds of women continue to fall through the cracks - treated like criminals instead of victims.
In 2016, 304 women were arrested on charges of prostitution, according to the ISF's data. More than half of them were Syrian. All were placed in prison.
The only support available to these women after they are released comes from charities. Dar Al Amal, a local NGO, helps women recuperate in its sparse offices in Sin el Fil, in the eastern suburbs of Beirut.
Here, the volunteers provide emotional and practical support to women who were forced into prostitution, trying to address their legal, medical and psychological needs.
Ghinwa Younes, a social worker who regularly visits the Baabda women's prison, says: "All the women I met want to quit this life. Most of them are in fact trafficking victims - but ISF did not understand they were victims. As soon as they leave the prison, they rarely get any kind of support and they are immediately back in the network of their exploiters."
When Al Jazeera spoke to Joseph Mousallem, a spokesman for the ISF, he acknowledged that the difference between prostitution and trafficking is not well understood by police officers. "But it is a cultural issue involving the whole of society, not only the security forces," he says.
"Countering trafficking is a priority, but we do have thousands of priorities: the whole system is under pressure. We do our best, but not have the means or the resources to track the victims."
'Of course they are victims'
Lawyer Hasna Abdulreda meets dozens of these women during detention visits. For 10 years, she has provided legal support to women in jail, and she is currently the head of the legal department at the Lebanese Centre for Human Rights, a local NGO.
"In the past five years, every month at least two or three [women] reach out to me, after being arrested as prostitutes," she says. "Most of them are Syrians and, of course, they are victims of trafficking."
But there is little she can do.
"The trials are very fast and if the judge is given any reason to think that the woman is consenting to prostitution (for example because she keeps a share of the money), then he will just send her to prison without any further investigation," Abdulreda explains.
This is despite the fact that both the UN Convention on Human Trafficking and Lebanese law state that the victim's consent should be considered irrelevant.
"The only thing I can do is to give [detained women] my phone number and ask them to call me once they leave so that I can refer them to a shelter or an NGO. In prison, they do not have a phone, so I can't contact them once they are released," Abdulreda adds.
Despite many women asking for help, in 10 years nobody has called back.
For Syrian women, it is more complicated. Because they are foreigners, they are held by the GS for up to two days after being released from Baabda, Abdulreda says.
"I'm not allowed to access their files. I just lose every contact with them."
'Double standard'
Even when trafficking cases go to court, the odds appear stacked against victims of sex trafficking.
Legal Agenda analysed the 34 trafficking cases that made it to court in Lebanon between 2012 and 2017. According to lawyer Ghida Frangieh, who put that report together: "There is a clear double standard in the judges' attitude towards prostitution and begging.
"While in all cases involving forced begging, judges were quite fast in ruling that it was a trafficking case, when it comes to prostitution, they were digging deeper into the means of exploitation, asking for proof that the woman was actually forced into it. In certain cases they ruled that the woman was not to be considered a victim of trafficking as she consented, at least to some extent."
[Chez Maurice] became the victim paradigm. If you do not fit into this stereotype, you are hardly considered as a victim of trafficking.
GHIDA FRANGIEH, LAWYER
Frangieh says that as well as reflecting a general prejudice against women in prostitution, this view has also been influenced by the Chez Maurice case.
"[Chez Maurice] became the victim paradigm. If you do not fit into this stereotype, you are hardly considered as a victim of trafficking," she explains.
But this is not how trafficking works.
According to a former senior GS officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, sex trafficking generally happens in one of two ways: through highly organised rings operating in brothels (such as Chez Maurice) or through so-called "free agents".
But, despite their name, free agents still operate under the protection and control of a trafficker. "There is no prostitution that is not linked to the main traffickers," the former officer says.
'Long-term solutions'
"Alone, we cannot do much," says Jabbour from Kafa.
Along with the Catholic NGO network Caritas, Kafa runs a shelter for female survivors of violence, mainly domestic workers who have been abused by their employers. The ISF occasionally refers trafficking victims to them.
But their resources are limited: Since 2015, Kafa has been able to offer protection to approximately 100 women, 20 of whom (all Syrians) were sex-trafficking survivors.
"These shelters are just a starting point," says Jabbour. "What we need are long-term solutions."
Where are the investigations? We are talking about organised crime. This is not something you can expect NGOs to deal with.
Some of these women were relocated overseas, some got married, but others, without a proper support mechanism, simply went back into prostitution - either forced or out of desperation.
"Countering trafficking and identifying victims is something that cannot be done by NGOs. It is a state's responsibility," says George Ghali, director of Alef.
According to Ghali, the problem is not the law but rather in the implementation of the law. "Where are the investigations? We are talking about organised crime. This is not something you can expect NGOs to deal with."
Back in Doura, Paul and Ray keep providing basic help to people in need. They do not have success stories to share.
Paul says he has not received any further threats from the traffickers. "[Why? Because] we make no change in the situation. And even if a girl manages to quit, they would have another one."
He admits that lately, he has considered stopping his volunteer work because of the emotional toll it has taken.
But, giving up is not an option, he concludes.
*Daniela Sala is an Italian freelance journalist and photographer, focusing on the Middle East and women's rights.

Iran-backed Hezbollah steps in to support Iraqi militias after Soleimani’s death
Reuters/Wednesday, 12 February 2020
Shortly after Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq, the Tehran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group urgently met with Iraqi militia leaders, seeking to unite them in the face of a huge void left by their powerful mentor’s death, two sources with knowledge of the meetings told Reuters. The meetings were meant to coordinate the political efforts of Iraq’s often-fractious militias, which lost not only Soleimani but also Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, a unifying Iraqi paramilitary commander, in the January 3 attack at Baghdad airport, the sources said.
While offering few details, two additional sources in a pro-Iran regional alliance confirmed that Hezbollah, which is sanctioned as a terrorist group by the United States, has stepped in to help fill the void left by Soleimani in guiding the militias. All sources in this article spoke on condition of anonymity to address sensitive political activities rarely addressed in public. Officials with the governments of Iraq and Iran did not respond to requests for comment, nor did a spokesperson for the militia groups.
The discussions shed light on how Iran and its allied groups are trying to cement control in the unstable Middle East, especially in the wake of the devastating US attack on a revered Iranian military leader.
The Tehran-backed militias are critical to Iran’s efforts to maintain control over Iraq, where the US still maintains some 5,000 troops. The country has experienced years of civil war since US forces toppled Saddam Hussein and more recently, the government - and the militias - have faced growing protests against Iran’s influence in the country. Iran helped found some Iraqi militia groups.
In the months ahead of his death, Soleimani had waded ever deeper into the Iraq crisis, holding meetings with the Iraqi militias in Baghdad as Tehran sought to defend its allies and interests in its power struggle with the United States, one of the two Iraqi sources said.
Hezbollah’s involvement marks an expansion of its role in the region. The Shi’ite group, founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982, has been at the heart of Iran’s regional strategy for years, helping Soleimani to train paramilitary groups in both Iraq and Syria.
One pro-Iran regional official said Hezbollah’s guidance of the militias would continue until the new leadership in the Quds Force – a unit of the Revolutionary Guards led by Soleimani since 1998 – gets a handle on the political crisis in Iraq.
The meetings between Hezbollah and Iraqi militia leaders began in January, just days after Soleimani’s assassination, the two Iraqi sources said. Reuters couldn’t confirm the number of meetings or where they took place. One source said they were in Beirut and the other said they were either in Lebanon or Iran.
Cardboard cutouts of the late Iran's Quds Force top commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis who were killed in a U.S. air strike at Baghdad airport, are seen during the forty days memorial in Baghdad, Iraq February 11, 2020. (Reuters)
Sheikh Mohammad al-Kawtharani, the Hezbollah representative in Iraq who worked closely with Soleimani for years to guide the Iraqi militias, hosted the meetings, the Iraqi sources said.
Kawtharani picked up where Soleimani left off, the Iraqi sources said. The sources said Kawtharani berated the groups, as Soleimani had done in one of his final meetings with them, for failing to come up with a unified plan to contain popular protests against the Baghdad government and the paramilitaries that dominate it. The government and militia groups have killed hundreds of protesters but not managed to contain the rebellion. Kawatharani also urged a united front in picking a new Iraqi prime minister, the Iraqi sources said. Since then, former Iraqi communications minister Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi has been named - a development welcomed by Iran and accepted by the militia-linked parties it backs but opposed by protesters.
Big shoes to fill
For now, Kawtharani is seen as the most suitable figure to direct Iraqi militias until a permanent Iranian successor can be chosen, although he possesses nowhere near Soleimani’s clout and charisma, according to the two Iraqi sources and a senior Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim leader. “Kawtharani has connections with the militia groups,” the Shi’ite leader said, noting that he was born in Najaf, lived in Iraq for decades and speaks Iraqi dialect. “He was trusted by Soleimani, who used to depend and call on him to help him in crises and in meetings in Baghdad.”One of the Iraqi sources close to the militias said that Kawtharani also met with the Iraqi populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a powerful but unpredictable figure, to convince him to support the new Iraqi prime minister. As Reuters has reported, Sadr has given Allawi his support. Kawtharani will face serious - perhaps insurmountable- challenges in filling the shoes of the leaders killed in the drone attack, the Iraqi sources close to the militias told Reuters. “A lot of faction leaders see themselves as too big and important to take orders from,” one Iraqi source said. “For now, because of pressure from Iran, they’re cooperating with him, but I doubt that will continue and the Iranians know that.”
One of the pro-Iran sources, a military commander, said Hezbollah’s involvement would consist of political guidance but stop short of providing manpower and materiel to retaliate for the Solemani killing. The militias “do not need Hezbollah’s intervention because they have the strength in numbers, combat experience, and firepower,” the commander said.
Those groups are difficult to control while Hezbollah is seen as more disciplined. But like the rest of Iran’s network, Hezbollah risks stretching itself thin, a senior US official in the region and an Iraqi political leader said.
In recent years, Hezbollah’s role has grown considerably. It has fought in support of President Bashar Al-Assad in Syria and extended political support to the Iran-allied Houthis of Yemen in their war with a Saudi-led military alliance. Iran is likely to rely partly on the clout Nasrallah, a figure who commands deep respect among Iran’s allies across the region, the US official said. Nasrallah is seen as overseeing Kawtharani’s efforts, according to a senior Shi’ite Iraqi leader. “I think ideologically, religiously, he’s seen as a charismatic figure to many of the Iraqi Shia militias,” the US official said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. In two lengthy televised addresses, Nasrallah has paid homage to Soleimani and vowed to avenge his death. He has also declared it a goal of Hezbollah and its allies to eject US forces from the region once and for all. US forces have been in Iraq since 2014 as part of a coalition fighting against Islamic State.If the Iraqi militias have their way, sources close to them say, these troops will be the first to depart.

Beirut 1958 and Its Lessons
Michael Young/February 11/2020
In an interview, Bruce Riedel discusses his recent book on the deployment of U.S. Marines to Lebanon 62 years ago.
Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, as well as a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy. He retired in 2006 after 30 years of service at the Central Intelligence Agency. He was a senior advisor on South Asia and the Middle East to the last four presidents of the United States in the staff of the National Security Council. He was also deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Near East and South Asia at the Pentagon and a senior advisor at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels. Diwan interviewed Riedel on his most recent book, Beirut 1958, published late last year to explain how the U.S. intervention in 1958 might inform U.S. behavior in the Middle East today.
Michael Young: Why publish a book in 2019 on the long-forgotten U.S. intervention in Lebanon in 1958?
Bruce Riedel: The United States’ intervention in Lebanon in 1958 was the first combat operation by U.S. forces in the Middle East. Today Americans are engaged in dangerous combat operations across the region, the so called “endless wars.” The operation in 1958 was massive—three aircraft carrier battle groups were offshore in the Mediterranean Sea, troops in Europe and America were on alert to go to the landing zone, and nuclear weapons were en route to Lebanon. British paratroopers landed in Jordan in a closely coordinated operation. It was a prototype for later operations such as Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom.
President Dwight Eisenhower was the first U.S. president to identify the Middle East as vital to the interests of the United States, citing its vast oil resources and role as the birthplace of three religions (though he did not cite Israel’s survival as one such vital interest). So Beirut in 1958 is the place to understand why Washington has become entangled in the Middle East and perhaps how to get out.
MY: You derive lessons from the intervention in Lebanon, some of which can be applied today to the Trump administration. Could you outline which ones?
BR: The first lesson is don’t panic. In 1958, the Eisenhower administration was surprised by a bloody coup in Baghdad that decimated the Iraqi Hashemite royal family. The president’s senior advisers, including his secretary of state and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, warned that the coup would lead to the collapse of all pro-Western governments in the region and a communist takeover. Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser was the Soviet Union’s stalking horse, they wrongly claimed. The next day the Marines landed to prop up a Christian president in Lebanon who was facing a civil war. The Middle East is full of surprises, but all but a few are not harbingers of the apocalypse for the United States. Await further developments before rushing to use force.
Second, engage your opponents and look for compromise. The Beirut operation was short-lived because the Americans quickly accepted an outcome to the Lebanese civil war that satisfied the Muslim opposition without jeopardizing the Christian minority. Only one American died in combat in 1958, largely because the Marines agreed to partner with the Lebanese armed forces and avoided patrolling rebel-held parts of Beirut. In the end Eisenhower abandoned the Maronite Christian president Camille Chamoun, who had invited the Marines into country, in favor of Fouad Chehab, the Maronite army commander who was the Muslims’ and Nasser’s choice.
MY: The U.S. Marines returned to Beirut in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In what way might the lessons of 1958 have prevented the problems associated with that second intervention?
BR: In 1982, the U.S. intervention was widely seen in the region as supportive of Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon and its war to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The U.S. claimed that it had sent a peace-keeping force but was perceived as siding with the Israelis, and for good reason. The PLO was still an organization with which the United States refused to deal and Syria was considered a Soviet client state. Therefore, engagement was all but impossible for the Reagan administration in 1982.
Belatedly president Ronald Reagan understood that he needed to address the underlying Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Reagan Plan, which he presented at the time, promoted the Jordanian option—whereby the West Bank and Gaza would be joined in a confederation with Jordan—which proved unacceptable to all the parties, including Jordan’s King Hussein. The Iranians created a new proxy using the neglected Shi‘a community to drive American forces out. To his credit, Reagan had the good sense to quit after the Marine barracks bombing in October 1983.
MY: The two U.S. military deployments in Lebanon, a country the United States has never really considered of vital interest, appear to show that despite Washington’s uncertainty about military involvement in the Middle East, the region almost naturally provokes outside intervention. What’s the message here?
BR: The Middle East has become progressively more divided and violent since 1958. Today there are more than 50,000 U.S. troops in the area. President Donald Trump has increased the troop numbers, including in Iraq, despite his promise to end the endless wars. After more than a decade U.S. combat troops have also returned to Saudi Arabia, this despite America’s energy independence and Israel’s unchallenged military dominance over the region.
America does have interests in the area, but much less so than in previous years. Engagement and negotiations are much better suited for protecting both U.S. interests and values. The diplomats who kept the Marines out of a quagmire in 1958 should be the role models for more successful U.S. engagement in the future.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 11-12/2020
Abbas Warns U.N. on Trump's 'Swiss Cheese' Peace
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 11/2020
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday urged the UN Security Council to reject President Donald Trump's Middle East plan, saying it would splinter Palestinian lands and never bring lasting peace. Brandishing a large map of a future Palestine as laid out by Trump, Abbas denounced it as a "Swiss cheese" deal that would give the Palestinians only a "fragmented state" without control of their airspace, sea or East Jerusalem. "Who among you would accept such a state?" Abbas asked, as he warned that Israel would create an "apartheid" situation if it moves ahead with annexation. "I would like to say to Mr Donald Trump that his plan cannot achieve peace and security as it cancels international legitimacy," Abbas said. "It cancels all the rights of the Palestinians. This does not meet the aspirations of a two-state solution," he said. "If you impose peace it will not last, it cannot last." The Palestinians have sought to rally international support against the plan, which Trump unveiled alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 28. But in a setback, the Palestinians dropped plans for a vote on a resolution Tuesday that would denounce the proposal. Diplomats said that the United States has put heavy pressure, including threats of financial repercussions, on Security Council members and that even some European nations were hesitant. Abbas said that peace with Israel remained "achievable" and said: "I have come to build a just partnership."
"This deal is not an international partnership. This proposal was from one state, supported by another state to be imposed."
Israel wants Abbas out
The veteran 84-year-old leader, long considered a moderate among the Palestinians, rejected the use of violence but said that street protests showed the deep opposition to Israeli occupation. "Our entire people is saying 'No, no, no' to this deal," he said. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, replied that Abbas stood in the way of a solution. "Only when he steps down can Israel and the Palestinians move forward," Danon said. "He is trying to blame the lack of progress on Israel. Complaining instead of leading is not leadership," he said, calling on the Palestinians to find a "realistic solution."Trump's plan would establish a Palestinian state but grant Israel sovereignty stretching to the Jordanian border, including over settlements built since the Jewish state captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War. The plan would recognize contested Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel but allow the Palestinians to establish a capital on the holy city's eastern outskirts. Hours after Trump unveiled the plan, Netanyahu began to move forward with plans to annex much of the West Bank. Despite the Palestinians' refusal to deal with Trump, Abbas said that his first impressions of the billionaire turned president had been favorable. Trump, whose evangelical Christian base is strongly supportive of Israel, has taken a series of landmark steps such as recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ending assistance to the U.N. body that helps Palestinian refugees. "I do not know who gave him this advice. The President Trump I met was not like that," Abbas said.
Europeans critical of plan -
The Palestinians previously won support from the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the African Union which have all rejected Trump's plan. On Tuesday, the four European Union members of the Security Council -- France, Germany, Belgium and Estonia -- as well as Poland, which left the council at the end of last year, jointly said that any Middle East solution needs to be based on pre-1967 lines. Trump's plan "departs from these internationally agreed parameters," they said in a joint statement, while applauding "all efforts" to reach a peaceful resolution. The European Union earlier failed to issue a similar joint statement among all members due to resistance from a handful of countries including Hungary, led by right-wing populist Viktor Orban. Kelly Craft, the US ambassador to the U.N., said that Trump's plan amounted to an "opening offer" and called for talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. "My fervent hope is that after the smoke of today's rhetoric clears, Palestinian leaders will see this plan for the opportunity it is, roll up their sleeves, and seize this chance to sit down with the leaders of Israel to begin a new conversation," she said.

Arab Israeli Village Vandalised by Suspected Jewish Extremists
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 11/2020
Dozens of cars in an Israeli Arab village were vandalised overnight, police said Tuesday, with slogans sprayed on a mosque indicating the involvement of Jewish extremists. The slogans "Jews awaken" and "Stop assimilating" were scrawled on a mosque and another building in Jish, a small village in the Galilee just south of Israel's border with Lebanon. Police said they were investigating the incident, which they condemned along with "all nationalistic hate crimes". Jish council head Elias Elias told AFP that the tyres of more than 150 cars were punctured. He said it was not the first time the mixed Muslim and Christian village had been targeted and asked what the reaction would have been if the place of worship defiled had not been a mosque. "I can only imagine what would happen if things like this would have been sprayed on a synagogue in the US or Europe," he said. "The whole world would be in an uproar."
The incident bore the hallmark of a "price tag" attack -- a euphemism for Jewish nationalist-motivated hate crimes targeting Palestinians and Arab Israelis and their property, as well as Muslim and Christian holy sites. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "firmly condemned" the Jish vandalism and slogans, vowing to "find the outlaws and bring them to justice. "We won't tolerate any attacks on our citizens," he said in a statement. The head of the Arab-led Joint List, Ayman Odeh, condemned the attack and blamed the prime minister's rhetoric for stoking such hatred. "For weeks Netanyahu is sending us one message -- you're not wanted," Odeh said of Israel's Arab minority. "Today we see the results." Netanyahu has been accused of using anti-Arab rhetoric ahead of Israel's March 2 election, the country's third vote in a year. Israel has seen a rise in acts of vandalism against Israeli Arabs in recent months, and in December, the tyres of 160 cars were slashed in annexed east Jerusalem. Last month, Israeli police launched a manhunt after an apparent arson attack on an east Jerusalem mosque accompanied by Hebrew-language graffiti.

Iraq Commemorates Top Commander Killed in U.S. Strike
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 11/2020
Iraqi officials on Tuesday commemorated Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the senior commander killed in last month's U.S. drone strike on Baghdad that targeted powerful Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. Muhandis was the deputy head of the Hashed al-Shaabi, a loose network of paramilitary groups formed in 2014 to fight jihadists that has since been absorbed into the Iraqi state. He, Soleimani and eight others were killed in the January 3 U.S. strike outside Baghdad's International Airport that Iraq's government slammed as a violation of its sovereignty. To mark 40 days since their deaths, a tradition in the Middle East, top officials held a memorial service in Baghdad's high-security Green Zone.  Hashed chief Faleh Fayyadh, who also serves as Iraq's national security adviser, attended as did the country's military chief of staff and interior minister. "The great crime committed near Baghdad airport against the commanders of victory (was) a crime against humanity, against Iraq, against our sovereignty and the defense of our children," Fayyadh told those gathered. "The blood of these martyrs, in my opinion, will re-establish this Hashed ... May we be a thorn in the eye of anyone wishing to deprive Iraq of its sovereignty."He later told a larger gathering that the Hashed would not be daunted by "a misleading media campaign or by targeting people." Notably absent were the country's outgoing premier Adel Abdel Mahdi, the prime minister designate Mohammad Allawi and the Hashed's leading commanders. According to Hashed sources, the network's military elite have been hiding out in Iran since the U.S. strike out of fear that they, too, may be targeted.
Close to Iran
Soleimani, as head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force, ran Iran's overseas military operations and was Tehran's pointman on Iraqi affairs. Muhandis was close to Iran and worked with his mentor and friend Soleimani to broker deals among Iraq's fractured political elite. Born Jamal Jaafar al-Ibrahimi in 1953, Muhandis had both Iraqi and Iranian citizenship and spoke fluent Farsi. In the 1980s, he was a leading commander in the Badr Corps, a unit of Iraqi fighters founded in Iran in opposition to then-dictator Saddam Hussein. After the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam, Muhandis helped found Kataeb Hezbollah -- a hardline Iran-backed faction that targeted U.S. troops -- and was sanctioned as a "terrorist" by the U.S. His portrait was hung up across Baghdad neighborhoods and at the airport, where a small memorial has been set up on the roadside where the strike took place. The attack so outraged Iraq's parliament that it swiftly voted to oust all foreign forces, a longstanding demand of the Hashed and its political arm, Fatah. Some 5,200 American troops are based in Iraq, leading the international coalition fighting the remnants of the Islamic State group.  The U.S. embassy in Baghdad had issued an alert to its citizens on Monday not to approach the facility due to the risk of rallies as part of the commemorative day. A day earlier, Kataeb Hezbollah hung effigies of Trump and American soldiers across the Iraqi capital. During the speeches on Tuesday, the audience briefly broke out into chants of "No to America!" but there were no incidents of note and none of the speakers made specific threats of retaliation against the U.S.

Syria Regime Helicopter Downed as Ankara Threatens Damascus
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 11/2020
Tensions escalated Tuesday between Syria's regime and rebel-backer Turkey as a Syrian military helicopter was shot down and Ankara warned of a "heavy price" for any attacks on its forces. The new flare-up, a day after regime shelling killed five Turkish troops, came as government forces battling rebels in northwestern Syria took full control of a key highway linking the country's four largest cities. The advance marked another step in President Bashar al-Assad's campaign to retake Syria's last rebel-held pocket, where nearly 700,000 civilians have fled violence since December in the largest exodus since the start of the war. Shortly after the M5 motorway was recaptured, a rocket attack downed a Syrian regime helicopter in Idlib province, killing both pilots, an AFP correspondent and a war monitor said. Syrian state news agency SANA confirmed the downing of the aircraft and the killing of its crew, saying it was caused by a rocket fired from a part of Idlib where Turkey-backed rebels operate. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the helicopter was hit by a rocket fired by Turkish forces, though Ankara did not claim responsibility. An AFP correspondent saw the bodies of the two pilots and the mangled remains of the helicopter at the site of the crash near the village of Qaminas, southeast of Idlib city. Regime forces later shelled areas near a Turkish observation post in the same village, said the Observatory and an AFP correspondent who saw plumes of smoke rising following a large fiery blast.
The Observatory said the attack killed at least three people but it was unclear if they were Syrian rebels or Turkish troops.
'They will pay'
Turkey, which has troops deployed in several locations in northern Syria, continues to support rebel groups battling the Assad regime or acting as proxies against Kurdish forces. Along with regime ally Russia, it is the key foreign broker in northern Syria, but a 2018 deal aimed at averting a major offensive has failed to take hold. On Tuesday, Erdogan said Turkish troops would continue to respond to Syrian regime attacks. "The more they attack... our soldiers, they will pay a very, very heavy price," he told a televised ceremony in Ankara. Erdogan said he would reveal his next steps on Wednesday. The Syrian army hit back in a later statement saying it was "ready to respond to the aggressions of the occupying Turkish army", accusing Ankara of targeting its positions with rockets. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington would work with Turkey on its response to Monday's attack. "The ongoing assaults by the Assad regime and Russia must stop," Pompeo said on Twitter. He said he had sent US special envoy for Syria James Jeffrey to Turkey "to coordinate steps to respond to this destabilizing attack."Earlier Tuesday, Syria regime forces retook full control of the key M5 highway from jihadists and allied rebels in the northwest for the first time since 2012, the Observatory said. That highway links the capital Damascus to the second city of Aleppo through Homs and Hama, and has been a key target for the government as it seeks to rekindle a moribund economy. Its recapture also helps secure Aleppo, the country's former industrial hub, which still comes under sporadic rocket fire from holdout rebel groups. In Idlib city on Tuesday, Syrian air force strikes killed at least 12 civilians, the Observatory said. Half of those killed were minors, according to the monitor.
Unprecedented exodus
Turkey, which already hosts more than three million refugees, fears a massive fresh influx from Syria and has kept its border closed to the newly displaced people in Idlib. The exodus, which has seen endless convoys of families with their mattresses stacked on trucks criss-cross the war-torn province, is the biggest of the nine-year-old conflict, the UN said on Tuesday. "In just 10 weeks, since 1 December, some 690,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Idlib and surrounding areas," a spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. "This is, from our initial analysis, the largest number of people displaced in a single period since the Syrian crisis began almost nine years ago," David Swanson said. The Idlib region is a dead-end for hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to flee or were evacuated from formerly rebel-held territory elsewhere in Syria. Some have moved four times or more since the start of the war but there is nowhere for them to go after Idlib, with the Turkish border to the north and government forces in the other three directions. "Existing camps and settlements of internally displaced persons are overcrowded, and shelter in existing houses is getting scarce," the UN refugee agency said Tuesday.

Iranians Rally on 41st Anniversary of Shah's Ouster
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 11/2020
Thousands of Iranians massed on Tuesday for commemorations marking 41 years since the Islamic Revolution, in a show of unity at a time of heightened tensions with the United States. Waving flags of Iran and holding portraits of the founder of the Islamic republic, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, they converged on Tehran's Azadi Square despite chilly temperatures. "Death to America" and "We will resist until the end," read some of the banners carried by those in the crowd. "Iran is looking forward to creating another epic," read the news ticker on state television, which called for a massive turnout. The celebrations mark the day that Shiite cleric Khomeini returned from exile and ousted the shah's last government. The state has appealed for a strong turnout as a show of solidarity after a year in which Iran has been shaken by protests and military tensions with the United States. "Securing our country and our region depends on our unity, and participation in this rally is a symbol of this unity," Hadi Khamenei, brother of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television. Iran's economy has been battered since US President Donald Trump in 2018 abandoned an international nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions and a stated campaign of "maximum pressure". When Iran raised petrol prices in November, nationwide protests erupted and turned violent before security forces put them down amid a near-total internet blackout. Tensions with Washington escalated in early January when a US drone strike killed powerful Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. Iran retaliated by targeting US forces but then accidentally shot down a Ukrainian airliner, killing all 176 people on board, in a tragedy that sparked anger at home and abroad. Soleimani's daughter Zeinab was to address the crowd at Azadi Square on Tuesday, followed by President Hassan Rouhani. This year's anniversary also comes ahead of crucial parliamentary elections in Iran. The alliance of moderates and reformers that propelled Rouhani to power in 2013 is scrambling to avoid losing its majority in the February 21 election. Rouhani's government has come under intense pressure from conservatives for agreeing the 2015 nuclear deal that has unravelled since Trump's decision to withdraw from it and reimpose crippling sanctions.

Meet the two women who spread Christianity to hundreds in Iran’s Evin prison
Emily Judd, Al Arabiya English/Tuesday, 11 February 2020
When Iranian authorities sentenced two women to death in 2009 for spreading the message of Christianity, international observers feared the worse from the regime’s latest attempt to crush religious freedom in Iran.
But the regime’s punishment backfired when Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh evangelized hundreds of fellow prisoners, and even prison guards, in the 259 days before they were released following intense international pressure. The women’s story is just one example of how the Islamic Republic’s severe attempts to suppress its own people, especially religious minorities, have failed.
Evangelizing behind bars. Rostampour and Amirizadeh initially prayed for a quick release after being sent to Tehran’s Evin prison, which is notorious for cruel and prolonged torture, using methods such as threats of execution or rape, sleep deprivation, electroshock, and severe beatings.
However, the friends soon realized “God had a purpose for being in that dark place,” according to Amirizadeh.“At first we were praying for our release. But after a few days we realized that by meeting other women in the prison - some who  were homeless or addicts - God had given us an opportunity to share the message of Christianity with people who needed to hear it the most,” said Rostampour in an interview with Al Arabiya English. The women educated hundreds of fellow prisoners about Christianity and led Christian prayers. “We were not allowed to have a Bible, but we lived out its teachings in the prison,” said Amirizadeh in an interview with Al Arabiya English. Some of the prisoners initially expressed disdain for the women, calling them ‘dirty Christians,’ according to Amirizadeh, but later accepted the women and apologized for the comments.
Even some of the prison guards came to trust them.
“A female guard came to my cell and asked me to pray for her, but to keep it confidential. She said she believed that if I prayed for her, she would overcome fertility issues and become pregnant,” said Amirizadeh.
The duo gained a reputation in the women’s ward and men’s ward for their steadfast faith in the face of persecution by prison authorities. “In prison in Iran, people don’t have any rights and it was worse for us because of our Christian faith,” said Rostampour, adding that she and Amirizadeh were physically threatened by guards and refused medical care by prison doctors. “Whenever we got sick and went to the clinic, the doctors would first ask what our charge was before they asked how we were feeling. As soon as we said that our charges were because of our Christian faith, they would refuse to give us medication,” said Amirizadeh.
More free in prison. Despite the oppressive circumstances, Amirizadeh said she felt more free in prison than on the streets of Tehran.
“The guards couldn’t stop us from talking to prisoners about Christianity and that made them furious. We were already in prison, so what more could they do to us?” said Amirizadeh.
In the three years before their imprisonment, Rostampour and Amirizadeh had held church services in their apartment in Tehran and distributed over 20,000 Bibles to Iranians. Both acts are illegal under Iranian law.
Christians in Iran are sentenced to prison terms for holding private Christmas gatherings, organizing and conducting house churches, and constructing and renovating houses of worship, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2019 report.
In Iran, suppression for all
Rostampour said the victims of Tehran’s persecution are not just religious minorities, but all Iranians, who have been oppressed by the government since its start in 1979.
“After over forty years of oppression, the time for suppression is over. Today people in Iran understand their rights. They are tired of the Islamic regime and are standing up for freedom, going to the streets, and fighting for rights,” said Rostampour. Anti-government demonstrations began to spread across multiple cities in Iran in November and Iran’s security forces have responded by killing about 1,500 protesters, according to Reuters.
Rostampour and Amirizadeh, who now live in the US after being granted asylum, continue to speak out against Iran’s leadership. Amirizadeh said she supports the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign, which is “really working” to help the Iranian people and stop the malign behavior of the regime. “My message to the Iranian regime is: you can’t suppress 80 million people. You can’t prosecute everyone against you in Iran. There aren’t enough prisons for that,” said Amirizadeh. “We believe that one day Iran will be a free country,” added Rostampour.

Ecuador Arrests Iranians Travelling With Fake Israeli Passports
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 11 February 2020
Authorities in the Ecuadorian capital Quito arrested two Iranians who were attempting to travel to Spain using fake Israeli passports. According to news reports, the pair – a man and woman in their 20s – attempted to leave the South American country for the Spanish capital Madrid but were discovered to be in possession of forged travel documents, which used personal information of two Israelis. The Iranians reportedly arrived in Ecuador using fake passports at the end of last month and attempted to travel a few days ago. Their original Iranian passports were also found in their possession. It is unclear why they were holding fake passports or whether they were affiliated to Iran’s intelligence services, although it might be because an Israel passport holder does not require an entry visa to visit Ecuador. In March of last year, Argentinian authorities apprehended two Iranians with forged Israeli passports that “were riddled with spelling mistakes in Hebrew”, according to local media at the time.

US accuses Iran of developing missiles through satellite bid
AFP, Washington/Tuesday, 11 February 2020
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday accused Iran of honing its ballistic missile skills through a satellite launch and vowed to exert more pressure. “The United States will continue to build support around the world to confront the Iranian regime’s reckless ballistic missile activity, and we will continue to impose enormous pressure on the regime to change its behavior,” Pompeo said in a statement.

France Condemns Iran’s Ballistic Missile Violations
Paris - Michel Abu Najm/Tuesday, 11 February, 2020
The gap between Iran and France is getting harder to bridge as the fate of French fellow researchers Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, who are detained in the north Tehran Evin prison, has provoked further controversy between the two countries. France, most recently, condemned a bid by Iran to put a satellite in space, urging Tehran to abide by international obligations on its controversial ballistic missile program. “France condemns this launch, which calls on technologies used for ballistic missiles and, in particular, intercontinental ballistic missiles,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement after Iran announced it “successfully” launched a satellite Sunday, but failed to put it into orbit. The statement reflects harsher stances from Paris, which at a point was a staunch supporter of the nuclear deal reached with Iran in 2015 and had exerted high profile diplomatic efforts to bring Tehran and Washington closer to each other. Recalling Iran’s obligations under a 2018 UN Security Council resolution, the ministry added: “Iran’s ballistic program hurts regional stability and affects European security. France calls on Iran to fully respect its international obligations in this matter.”The West believes that Iran's ballistic missiles endeavors are not only civilian in nature but also aim to reach missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads over long distances, something that Tehran denies. There is a Western conviction that the most recent Iranian missile can reach 2,000 km, meaning that it can reach Greek-European territory. Days before crucial parliamentary elections in Iran, Tehran on Sunday also unveiled a new short-range ballistic missile and its “new generation” of engines designed to put satellites into space. The Revolutionary Guards’ website said the Raad-500 missile was equipped with new Zoheir engines made of composite materials that make them lighter than previous steel models.

UNHCR in Lebanon under fire for not addressing Syrian refugees demands
Leen Alfaisal/Al Arabiya English/February 11/2020
The UN Commissioner for refugees is failing Syrian refugees in Lebanon, according to civil society organizations in the country, amid growing protests over their poor treatment. Nearly 1.5 million Syrian refugees are currently living in Lebanon, 916,000 of whom are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Refugees accuse the UN body of mistreatment, failing to provide medical care, injustice in distributing aid and failing to provide protection in their protests in front of the commissioner’s offices. One activist reported that a UNHCR official told a 16-year-old to work to feed her family after her mother asked for aid because her husband, the family’s breadwinner, could not join her in Lebanon. Twenty-five civil society organizations have issued “recommendations” for the UNHCR, requesting that it “develops a practical plan to provide refugees with legal protection and improve their living conditions.”Mohammad Hasan, founder and director of Access Center for Human Rights, said: “Lebanon’s political leaders are threatening [refugees] with forced deportations and random arrests, and the new government is one aligned with the Syrian regime. So we are very concerned about the status of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.” Following nearly four months of Lebanese protests, a new government headed by Prime Minister Hassan Diab was appointed in mid-January.
Forced deportations
“Many Syrians [in Lebanon] live in extremely dire and vulnerable conditions,” stated a field report by Sahar Atrache, a senior advocate for the Middle East at Refugees International, published last month. In 2019, the Lebanese Higher Defense Council announced that refugees who entered Lebanon illegally after April 24, 2019, would be deported. As a result, more than 2,700 Syrians were deported by Lebanon’s General Security Organization between May 21 and August 29, 2019, without being referred to a judge. Human rights institutions and civil society organizations argue that there are no means of knowing when a refugee entered Lebanon, making the process of deportation a random one. “There are people that have received death threats, people who defected from the Syrian regime, people who have problems with political parties here in Lebanon, these people are not protected [from deportation] although they are registered by the UNHCR under the protection cases,” said Syrian activist Nawar Baksarawi. Often, refugees, especially males, have limited their movement drastically for fear of random identity checks, arrest or deportation by security forces, according to the field report by Atrache. The UNHCR says it is “engaging with all concerned institutions” regarding the deportations “to ensure that people are able to express any concern they may have with regards to returning to their country of origin, and for their case to be duly assessed through an independent judicial review before a decision of deportation is taken,” the UNHCR’s Senior Strategic Communication and Advocacy Officer Omer Elnaiem said.
Civil society organizations say the UNHCR’s response is not enough.
“The UNHCR bears the responsibility of protecting Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and when such huge violations are happening and going unnoticed without the least form of defense such as a condemnation, the UNHCR should be held accountable,” Hasan whose center organized the signing of the recommendations, told Al Arabiya English.‘We just want justice in aid distribution’ The UNHCR’s system of providing aid to the refugees is through a red card, and those who qualify for aid can withdraw $170 every month. Through an annual re-evaluation of the refugees’ situation, the commissioner distributes aid among those who need it. “While we are working hard to further expand assistance, we remain severely constrained by funding limitations. This is forcing us and other humanitarian agencies to prioritize the most vulnerable refugees,” said Mireille Girard, UNHCR’s Representative in Lebanon, in a statement issued regarding the protests. The UNHCR has received 50 percent of the funding it has requested through the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan, an inter-agency humanitarian effort, according to a UNCHR statement. However, the Syrian protesters blame the UNHCR for “inefficiency in reevaluating the conditions of the refugees.” Some who have the red card and have left Lebanon have given the aid card to others who may not need it. “I personally know people who went back to Syria or traveled elsewhere like Sweden and still receive aid because the UNHCR hasn’t tracked their cases,” Baksarawi, who is one of the organizers of the protests in front of the commissioner’s offices said. In other cases, the Syrian refugees complain about not being “qualified” for aid. “Some people are living in tents in the camp and they still don’t qualify for aid. We demand transparency in the criterion of people who ‘deserve’ aid and we want to know what they base their decisions on,” Baksarawi added. “We just want justice in distribution.”

Senior Iranian Official Mohsen Rezaee: We Are Looking For An Excuse To Raze Tel-Aviv To The Ground; As U.S. Foothold In Region Weakens Regimes Of KSA And Gulf Countries Will Fall
MEMRI/February 11/2020
Mohsen Rezaee, secretary of Iran's Expediency Council and former IRGC Commander-in-Chief, was interviewed on Mayadeen TV (Lebanon) on February 8, 2020. In the interview Rezaee said that Iran has precise information on American activity in the region. He said that all the American bases are under surveillance, all the aircraft carriers are under control and Iran has precise information on American activity in Iraq and the Gulf countries. Rezaee added that Iran even monitors American soldiers when they go to hotels in Kuwait or Bahrain, and it knows such things as the names of accomplices with the U.S. and the food sources of the U.S. troops. Rezaee said that Iran had targeted the American military base in Ayn Al-Assad because it knew that it was very important to the Americans.
Rezaee stated that he has no doubt that if the U.S. attacks Iran, Iran will "raze Tel-Aviv to the ground." He added that Iran has been looking for a pretext to attack Tel Aviv because Israel played a role in the "martyrdom" of IRGC Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani. Rezaee continued to say that the American presence in the region is volatile and the goal of the "Deal of the Century" was to give it a stable foothold in the region, to do away with the Palestinian cause, and take over Gaza and disarm Hamas. Rezaee said that he expects a significant weakening of the U.S. over the next decade. He added that once the people in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries realize that America is no longer as strong as it was, there will be a revolution in Saudi Arabia, followed by a revolution in other Gulf countries. He said that the global collapse of the U.S. will begin in "West Asia."
Mohsen Rezaee: "Naturally, we have precise information, thanks be to Allah. All the American bases are under our surveillance now. All the American aircraft carriers are under our control. We know the number of American ships in the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman, and where they are in the Persian Gulf, and what they have in Qatar and Bahrain, and [we know about] their activity in Iraq. Even when American soldiers go to a hotel in Kuwait or Bahrain – we monitor them. We know their hotel in Bahrain, and were they go to eat and rest in Dubai. For example, we know the precise number of American troops in Kuwait. We know the names of their friends and the translators they employ. We know exactly what they are doing in Iraq and in other countries in the region, and we know where they get their meat and food. Our information is very precise. We bombed the Ayn Al-Assad base on the basis of detailed calculations. We knew that it was a very important site for the Americans that we had to strike."
Interviewer: "We heard the commanders of the IRGC making threats: In case of a strike against Iran, Iran will strike Israel. Is there really such a decision? If the U.S. attacks you, will you really strike Israel?"
Mohsen Rezaee: "You should have no doubt about this. We would raze Tel-Aviv to the ground for sure. We have been looking for such a pretext. If they do something, we can use it as a pretext to attack Israel, because Israel played a role in the martyrdom of General Soleimani. It was the Israelis who reported about the martyr Soleimani's trip from Damascus to Baghdad. We were waiting for the Americans to give us a pretext to strike Tel-Aviv, just like we attacked Ayn Al-Assad.
"American hegemony in the region is in a state of disintegration and instability. By proposing the 'Deal of the Century,' they are looking for a firm and stable foothold on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, in order to do away with the Palestinian Cause once and for all, and in order to take over Gaza and disarm Hamas. "I expect a significant weakening of the U.S. over the next decade. If it does not leave the region completely, it will become very weak. As soon as the Saudi people and the peoples of the Persian Gulf feel that America is not what it used to be, there will be a revolution in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and it will be followed by revolutions in the other countries in the Persian Gulf."In a short time, everybody will be amazed to see the fall of the U.S. in the region. This means that the global collapse of the U.S. will begin in this region, West Asia. Iran will be the standard-bearer of America's exit from the region."
View The Clip senior-iran-rezaee-excuse-raize-tel-aviv-america-region-Saudi-Gulf-collapse

Debate Renews between Iran, US at IAEA Meeting
Vienna - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 11 February, 2020
Debate renewed Monday between representatives of the United States and Iran on the 2015 nuclear deal, during a meeting for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). According to Reuters, US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said that Tehran was still not offering the IAEA explanations regarding the discovery of uranium particles in a warehouse near Tehran. “We call on Iran to cooperate fully with the IAEA in monitoring and inspecting Iran's facilities, and in addressing all of the agency's questions,” Brouillette added. Separately, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi said the US killing of top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani has weakened the fight against ISIS in the region. The Associated Press quoted Salehi as saying that last month's drone strike that killed Soleimani showed “the US administration has not yet come to its senses in recognizing the realities on the ground.” He called him “the most instrumental element in combating ISIS.”Tehran retaliated by launching a barrage of missiles on two Iraqi military bases hosting American troops in Iraq. There were no fatalities. Salehi reiterated, however, that Iran was prepared to do more.
“Be it known as my country strongly retaliated once, it will never hesitate to strike back when necessary,” he said. The US last month added new sanctions on the AEOI and on Salehi himself, freezing any assets the director had within US jurisdiction.

Kata'ib Hezbollah commemorate Mohandes, Soleimani’s deaths with Trump effigies
Tuqa Khalid, Al Arabiya English/Tuesday, 11 February 2020
Kata'ib Hezbollah, a hardline pro-Iran faction in Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi military forces, will hold a commemoration on Tuesday, marking 40 days since the killing of deputy head of the Hashed, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qassim Soleimani. An official memorial service was held in the morning in Baghdad’s high-security Green Zone prior to the public commemoration. Kata'ib Hezbollah-- a faction of the Hashd al-Mohandes founded -- erected mock gallows at the entrances to the massive eastern district of Sadr City, and hung effigies of US President Donald Trump in Baghdad on Monday.Hanged in nooses were cut-outs of Trump with his tongue protruding and soldiers in US uniforms and enormous portraits of al-Mohandes and Soleimani were also erected elsewhere in the city. “Our people hung the gallows in preparation for the 40-day memorial service,” an official from Kata'ib Hezbollah, who declined to give his name, told AFP. Washington carried out a drone strike outside Baghdad International Airport in the early hours of January 3, hitting the two-car convoy in which Soleimani and al-Mohandes were travelling.
The strike took place just days after supporters of Kata'ib Hezbollah besieged the US embassy in the Green Zone. Read: Hundreds of Iraqis storm US Embassy in Baghdad following airstrikes. The US embassy in Baghdad issued an alert to its citizens on Monday not to approach the facility due to the risk of more demonstrations or rallies. Read: Timeline: How the killing of Iran’s Qassem Soleimani by US strikes unfolded With AFP.

Iran Begins Trial of Opposition Figure Ruhollah Zam
London- Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 11 February, 2020
Tehran court began the trial of opposition figure Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian in exile in France, who was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iraq last October, according to the French Press Agency (AFP).
Zam, a journalist-turned-activist who headed Telegram’s Amadnews with more than 1 million followers on social media, was based in France. Tehran accused him of carrying calls for violence on the channel during the protests in winter 2017-2018. In the three years before his arrest, Zam published leaks of major cases involving senior officials and their children. He is also accused of revealing sensitive intelligence information on the deployment and role of al-Quds Force in Syria and Iraq. Amadnews was suspended by the messaging app Telegram last year at the request of Iranian authorities, saying this channel incites violence, reported AFP. However, after the closure, Telegram gave Amadnews another opportunity to broadcast, which further highlighted Iranian violations against the demonstrators. Fars news agency, IRGC’s media platform, said that a representative of the public prosecutor read Zam indictment’s which includes 15 charges. Among the other charges, he was suspected of having “committed offenses against the country's internal and external security” and “espionage for the French intelligence service”. He was also accused of having insulted "the sanctity of Islam." IRGC arrested Zam in October, in mysterious circumstances and accused him of “working with French intelligence and receiving support from the US intelligence and the Zionist regime.”On Monday, Iranian state television announced it will broadcast a documentary revealing Zam’s connections. Zam's father was an official close to the office of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, making it easier for him to communicate with sources and children of officials to leak confidential information of decision-makers in Iran. Amnesty International has repeatedly called on Iran to stop broadcasting videos of “confessions” by suspects, saying they “violate defendants’ rights.”

Soleimani’s Legacy Spurs Controversy among Revolutionary Guard Officials
London, Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 11 February, 2020
Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard top commander, who was slain in Baghdad by a US drone strike some 40 days ago, has left behind a rather contentious legacy that has given rise to controversy among his comrades. Revolutionary Guard spokesman Ramazan Sherif maintained reservations about a controversial tweet by former commander Muhammad Ali Jafari about Soleimani's role in suppressing student protests in 1999 and the reformist Green Movement protests in 2009. “Qassem Soleimani was on the streets in the fight against the counter-revolutionary and took effective measures to control insecurity and riots in 1999 and 2009,” Jafari, who headed the Revolutionary Guard from 2007 to 2019, tweeted on Sunday. Jafari’s tweet refers to the Iranian student protests in 1999 and the protests that followed Iran’s controversial presidential election in 2009. In 1999, Soleimani was one of 24 Revolutionary Guard commanders who warned then-President Mohammad Khatami in a letter that if he did not put an end to the student protests, the IRGC would step in and do it itself. “Soleimani was at the Tharallah base on many occasions,” Jafari added in the same tweet. The Tharallah base is a Revolutionary Guard base in Tehran which oversaw the suppression of protests in the Iranian capital that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election. Revolutionary Guard spokesman Sherif, for his part, tried to distance Jafari from the tweet, saying that it plays part in “the psychological war that is targeting the Revolutionary Guards,” and stressing that what was published was not accurate. On another note, an Iranian rocket failed to put a satellite into orbit on Sunday, state television reported, the latest setback for a program the US claims helps Tehran advance its ballistic missile program. The launch happened at 7:15 p.m. local time at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran’s Semnan province, some 230 kilometers (145 miles) southeast of Iran’s capital, Tehran. A Simorgh, or “Phoenix,” rocket couldn’t put the Zafar 1 communications satellite into orbit, however, due to a low speed, Iranian state TV reported.

Fate of jailed Iran protesters remains unknown, families fear death: Report
Yaghoub Fazeli, Al Arabiya English/February 11/2020
The fate of thousands of Iranian protesters arrested since last November remains unknown, with their relatives fearing they are dead as they have not received any information from authorities, according to a report by the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran. Protests broke out across Iran last November after the government introduced gasoline rationing and price hikes. Thousands were reportedly arrested during the protests. Iranian authorities have not yet released an official death toll nor confirmed the number of detainees in current police custody nearly three months later.
At least 8,600 Iranians were arrested during the nationwide anti-government protests which took place last November, according to an investigation carried out by exile-run broadcaster Radio Farda. Detainees’ whereabouts unknown
Some of the detainees have not had any contact with their families since their arrest and their whereabouts remain unknown, the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said in a report. The detainees are believed to be held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Intelligence Organization, which is independent from and operates parallel to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence.“We have no information on some of the people who shared updates, images and videos of the protests, and neither do their families … we do not know where they are kept, we only know they are held by the IRGC Intelligence Organization,” Ahwazi human rights activist Karim Dehimi was quoted as saying in the report. Dehimi added that some of the missing detainees were arrested and taken away while receiving treatment in a hospital in the city of Shadegan in Khuzestan. “Their families are deeply concerned that they may have been killed,” he said, adding that authorities refuse to respond to the families’ inquiries about their loved ones.Overcrowded prisons and cases of torture. In the Iranian capital Tehran, the majority of detainees are held at Qarchak and Fashafuyeh prisons, where some were released on bail due to overcrowding, according to the report. “Due to the high number of detainees, an extra three branches of the Revolutionary Court which previously dealt with drug-related cases have been put in charge of the cases of the November detainees,” a Tehran-based lawyer representing some of the detainees told the rights group.
The number of detainees is so high that authorities have released some of the detainees with lesser charges on bail purely due to the lack of space in prisons, the lawyer said. Some of the detainees whom authorities have classified as the “leaders” of the protests have been denied any legal representation, the unnamed lawyer said. “We have no information about their status and their cases have not been sent to court,” the lawyer said. Iranian protesters gather around a fire during a demonstration against an increase in gasoline prices in the capital Tehran, on November 16, 2019. (AFP) Another Tehran-based lawyer told the rights group that the bail amounts are set so high that many of the detainees’ families cannot afford them. Some of the detainees released on bail told the rights group that they were tortured in order to force them to confess that they had links to foreign-based opposition groups. There have been at least 22 cases of forced televised confessions on Iranian state TV since the November protests, according to rights groups.

Top EU diplomat urges Israel not to annex Jordan Valley, warns of violence
Reuters, Strasbourg/Tuesday, 11 February 2020
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, urged Israel on Tuesday not to annex the Jordan Valley, a large swathe of the occupied West Bank, warning of Palestinian protests if it went ahead. “This may happen ... You can be sure it’s not going to be peaceful,” he told the European Parliament. Israel captured the West Bank in a 1967 war and the Palestinian Authority wants to make the area part of a future state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced his intention to annex the valley.

Qatar-backed International Union of Muslim Scholars: A history of extremism
Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English/February 11/2020
Qatar-backed International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has a history of extremist stances. The most recent being their response condemning the US Middle East peace plan and its calls for the Muslim world to “use all means” against it. As soon as the plan was announced by US President Donald Trump, the IUMS issued a statement and called on “all the free people of the world to oppose this eradication war by all means possible.”On its website, the IUMS also published an excerpt from its founder, controversial hardline cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi, who once wrote that it was every Muslim’s duty to “wage jihad and sacrifice their souls in defense of Jerusalem.”
Holocaust denial
This is not the first time the IUMS, which is financially backed by Qatar, has prompted backlash over its stances. Most recently, it opposed an historic high-level visit by the Mecca-based Muslim World League (MWL) to the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. IUMS President Ahmed al-Raissouni wrote that “it is a right and an obligation to question the Holocaust.”Last April, the IUMS urged Muslim preachers across the world to focus their weekly Friday sermons on calling for armed jihad against Israel.
IUMS civil beginnings, political present
When the union was established in 2004, its founding president Youssef al-Qaradawi stated its goals would be civil rather than political. Over the years, however, the body has grown political in nature, as evidenced by its statements following the coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2015. “Noble President Erdogan, go your righteous way and build Turkey as you wish, as we wish, lead the people toward the truth, call them to wisdom, help the oppressed and support the downtrodden and we will be with you,” the union statement at the time.
According to several international organizations, Turkey is among the top countries accused of systematically failing to investigate allegations of torture in police custody following the coup attempt against Erdogan in 2016. To date, no IUMS statement has been released on those still languishing in Turkish jails.
Raissouni also courted controversy over an article posted on his personal website in 2015, in which he wrote that ISIS was a product of the West. “The war against ISIS is first and foremost an American-Western product, and then an Iranian-sectarian [Shiite] product – while the Arab and Muslim peoples have nothing to do with it. They have nothing to do with making decisions or planning it, or with commanding [it]. They have no interest in it [at all],” Raissouni wrote.
Youssef al-Qaradawi’s violent rhetoric
IUMS founder Qaradawi, a Doha-based, Egyptian-born cleric, is banned from entry in several countries, including France and the UK since 2012, after he advocated for suicide bomb attacks against Israelis. He is also considered to be the spiritual leader of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
The former head of the IUMS has not only been banned by government, but the tech industry as well. Google removed an app with an introduction written by Qaradawi for containing anti-Semitic rhetoric. The app, called Euro Fatwa App, was launched by the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) in Dublin for the purpose of guiding “European Muslims to adhere to the regulations and manners of Islam.”Over the years, Qaradawi issued numerous fatwas (religious edicts) that have been considered extreme and violent, even by extremist group al-Qaeda’s radical standards. One of these fatwas came three years ago during Qaradawi’s show on Qatar-owned and Doha-based Al Jazeera channel when a viewer asked him about Syrian civilians in areas under regime control and whether it was permissible to kill them knowing that many of them would be supporters of Bashar al-Assad's government.
Qaradawi replied that anyone who did not oppose al-Assad should be killed.“We are not looking for intentions. Anyone who did not go out on Bashar al-Assad and remained under his authority must be fought and killed, whether civilian or military,” Qaradawi replied at the time.

Turkish-backed opposition forces fight against Syrian gov't march through Idlib
Reuters, Ankara/Tuesday, 11 February 2020
Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces on Tuesday struck back against Russian-supported government forces who had made gains in their campaign to eradicate the last opposition strongholds in northwest Syria. Earlier on Tuesday, the government forces seized control of the main Aleppo-to-Damascus highway running through Idlib province for the first time since 2012, a war monitor said.
In response, the opposition forces shot down a Syrian military helicopter and advanced toward the town of Nairab, which the Turkish defense ministry said had been been abandoned by Syrian government forces.A Turkish official said the opposition forces, supported by Turkish artillery, had begun “a full-fledged attack” on an area recently lost near Saraqib, a strategic crossroads town on the M5 highway. An opposition forces commander told Reuters they were pushing back the government forces there. The flare-up of violence has prompted some of the most serious confrontations between Ankara and Damascus in the nine-year-old war in which Moscow and Tehran back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Idlib’s fate may well be decided by Turkey and Russia as much as by Assad. Russian has officers on the ground advising the Syrians on the campaign and some ground forces, and Russian warplanes have carried out numerous air strikes.
Ankara has sent thousands of soldiers across the border to stem the Syrian offensive. Relief agencies meanwhile said an exodus of hundreds of thousands of civilians from the afflicted areas was the largest such movement in the war and marked a new humanitarian crisis. Turkey, which already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, says it cannot absorb any more. It said it will halt new refugee waves from Idlib and its military will remain there. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday the Syrian government would pay a “very heavy price” for attacking Turkish troops, including five killed on Monday and eight Turkish personnel killed a week earlier.“We gave the necessary responses to the Syrian side at the highest level. Especially in Idlib, they got what they deserved. But this is not enough, it will continue,” he said in Ankara, adding he would announce on Wednesday a detailed plan for Idlib.
Talks in Ankara between Turkey and a Russian delegation ended on Monday without agreement on halting the clashes, a Turkish diplomatic source said. Ankara told the Russians that attacks against Turkish posts must cease immediately and said it destroyed several Syrian government targets in retaliation. Erdogan has warned Turkey would drive back Assad’s forces unless they withdraw by the end of the month. The Kremlin said on Tuesday all attacks on Russian and Syrian forces in Idlib must stop. Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss the situation with Erdogan by phone later on Tuesday, TASS news agency said. The US envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, is set to meet senior Turkish officials in Ankara on Wednesday and the US Embassy there said they will discuss working together toward a political solution to the conflict.
Air raids
Since the new push began in December, government forces have recaptured more than 600 square km of territory and in recent days taken control of dozens of towns and villages. The opposition forces are a mix of nationalist factions and jihadists who have had deadly rivalries but are now closing ranks.
Last week government troops recaptured rebel-held Saraqib, where Turkey had several military personnel stationed. On Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the government forces drove opposition forces from a foothold near Aleppo to capture the entire length of the M5 highway that connects Aleppo in the north to the capital Damascus then on to southern Deraa. Aleppo, once Syria’s economic hub, was the scene of heavy fighting between 2012 and 2016 which saw large-scale death and destruction. Rescue teams said on Tuesday that Russian and Syrian war planes bombed several towns in Idlib, with most air raids in western Aleppo. At least 13 civilians were killed overnight in the air strikes, they said.
The rapid advances by Assad’s forces in Idlib have driven nearly 700,000 people – most of them women and children – from their homes towards the closed-off Turkish border in the past 10 weeks. “This is, from our initial analysis, the largest number of people in a single period since the Syrian crisis began almost nine years ago,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the United Nations’ OCHA humanitarian agency, told reporters in Geneva. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Andrej Mahecic said the harsh winter weather was making their suffering worse and shelter was hard to find. “Even finding a place in an unfinished building is becoming nearly impossible,” he said, adding that mosques were full. Witnesses and opposition forces said a new column of Turkish reinforcements, including tanks, rocket launchers, and armored vehicles, crossed the border into Idlib overnight. , One influential Turkish politician urged Erdogan to go further. “There will be no peace in Turkey until Assad is brought down from his throne. Turkey must start plans to enter Damascus now, and annihilate the cruel ones,” said Devlet Bahceli, chairman of Erdogan’s nationalist partner party.
The battle for Idlib is a crucial stage of a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of combatants and civilians, made millions refugees in their own country or overseas, and fractured the wider Middle East since it broke out amid the Arab Spring in 2011. Moscow’s military intervention in 2015 helped swing the war decisively in favor of Assad, Syria’s ruler for nearly 20 years, but he now presides over a devastated country.

Syrian government forces exit town of Nairab in Idlib: Turkey
Reuters, Ankara/Tuesday, 11 February 2020
Turkey’s defense ministry said on Tuesday that Syrian government forces had left the town of Nairab in northwest Syria’s Idlib region and that one Syrian helicopter was shot down in the area as the Turkey-backed opposition mounted an offensive. Syrian government attacks have killed 13 Turkish soldiers in Idlib over the past week, prompting retaliation from Ankara. A Turkish official said earlier that the Syrian rebels could regain territory they lost in the region.

Syrian regime airstrike kills at least 12 civilians in Idlib: Monitor
Al Arabiya English/Tuesday, 11 February 2020
A Syrian regime airstrike killed at least 12 civilians on Tuesday in the last opposition bastion of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Half of those killed in the strikes were minors, the Britain-based war monitor said. The Syrian regime launched a campaign against the region last month. With Russia’s support, it has been able to gain back strategic cities and roads which were under opposition control. The Idlib region is home to around three million people, half of whom were evacuated by regime forces from other parts of the country after they besieged cities controlled by the opposition and bombarded them with airstrikes. The Syrian war, which started with the regime’s deadly oppression of anti-government protests, has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced more than half the country’s population.

Putin, Erdogan to discuss Syria by phone on Tuesday: TASS
ReutersTuesday, 11 February 2020
Russian President Putin and Turkish President Erdogan will discuss Syria by phone on Tuesday, TASS reported citing the Kremlin, after a Russian delegation visited Turkey and talks ended inconclusively. Moscow said earlier on Tuesday that all attacks on Russian and Syrian government forces in Idlib should stop and that agreements it had struck with Turkey on the conflict there had to be upheld.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 11-12/2020
Palestinians: The Dangers of Singing
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/February 11/2020
The only songs Hamas and its followers want are those that promote hate and violence.... "I will eat you alive, tastes best without salt, Zionist – Yes, yes, you."
The members of Sol Band did not call for "scattering the body parts" of Jews; that is probably why they are being targeted by Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip.
What is disturbing, however, is the silence of the international community, specifically the EU partners of Islamic University in Gaza, where Farra serves as a lecturer. Do the Europeans working with the university condone threats against musicians?... The EU countries and educational institutions are most likely ignoring such threats because they were not made by Israel.
The silence of the international community emboldens Hamas... and allows them to continue their repressive measures against Palestinians. It also allows Hamas and terror groups to continue calling for blowing up the skulls of Jews and eating them alive.
The only songs Hamas and its followers want are those that promote hate and violence.... "I will eat you alive, tastes best without salt, Zionist – Yes, yes, you." Pictured: Members of the Hamas "Protectors of the Homeland Police Band" practice in Gaza City on November 4, 2007.
Palestinian musicians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip are facing death threats after a Muslim scholar, Sheikh Mohammed Sliman al-Farra, published a fatwa (a legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar) prohibiting a local band from performing.
Farra works for Islamic University of Gaza, a member of four regional and international associations of higher education, and has project partnerships with more than 130 European universities and research centers located in 21 EU countries.
Published on November 23, 2019, the fatwa targets Sol Band, a Palestinian music group established in the Gaza Strip eight years ago:
"The music group Sol Band, which has been roaming the streets of the Gaza Strip, has been violating God's sanctities by promoting tabarruj (women dressing up immodestly in violation of Islamic teachings) and the mixing of the sexes... Their actions weaken the young men and encourage sinners. Indulging it leads to great corruption and evil and results in behavioral and intellectual deviation among young people. It is not permissible to promote or meet with them or listen to their songs, even if they are patriotic."
Shortly after the publication of the fatwa, the five members of Sol Band left the Gaza Strip for Turkey, apparently out of fear for their lives. Many Palestinians, meanwhile, strongly criticized the fatwa as a violation of freedom of expression.
"Such fatwas spread discord among our people, promote extremist ideologies and endanger the lives of musicians and artists," said Palestinian human rights activist Ahmed Shbair. "These fatwas are aimed at inserting politics into all aspects of our life. Palestinian law does not ban singing, which does not violate Islamic sharia laws."
Former Palestinian Authority Minister of Culture Ehab Bseiso commented on the fatwa by calling on "those who fear music and the creativity of the word to read history from an angel that promotes freedom of expression."
A post published on the Facebook page of Radio Nisaa, the first commercial women's radio station in the Middle East run by Palestinian women, complained that "some of our sheikhs and extremists have begun distorting the image of Sol Band and are fighting it by spreading rumors."
The post said that Islamic scholars who issue such rulings "turn a blind eye the real evils in society such as poverty, unemployment, divorce, injustice and misery."
"They don't talk about young people who burn themselves and commit suicide [in protest against economic hardship in the Gaza Strip]. These extremists don't talk about the university graduates who can't find jobs. They don't talk about justice and freedom of expression. Singing doesn't kill or corrupt people. Instead, injustice, oppression and repression corrupt society and kill its beautiful values. Don't fight signing; fight injustice. Don't kill our joy; kill tyranny and injustice."
Palestinian university student Ahmad Sha'ban also commented on Farra's fatwa:
"I want to assure you, Mr. 'mufti': The Sol Band group doesn't want to see your face. This beautiful band today left the Gaza Strip for Turkey, where your group is based."
According to the Beirut-based Samir Kassir eyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom (SKeyes), members of the Sol Band have received threats from people close to Hamas and its government in the Gaza Strip. "The security services affiliated with Hamas investigated the father of the band's founder, Said Fadel," SKeyes said in a statement, adding that all members of the band have received threats from some extremists. Another member of the band told the center that "it's difficult for us to return to the Gaza Strip after the threats and fatwa that prohibits our work."
The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), established in 1995 by a group of Palestinian lawyers and human rights activists, also weighed in on the threats against the band.
"This fatwa creates an atmosphere of incitement against the band and its members, which may amount to 'hate speech,'" PCHR warned in a statement.
"The Islamic preacher's statement, shared in his Facebook page, smeared the band members as infidels who promote obscenity and violate Islamic religious teachings in a manner that departs from tradition and culture. His speech explicitly attacked the Gaza authorities for being responsible for allowing the band to roam freely in the society. PCHR denounces this inciting speech and stresses that the Gaza Strip authority is obliged to respect the freedom of opinion and expression and protect this right from any assault. PCHR considers the statement issued by a member of Palestine Scholars Association as an attempt to impose certain ideology on the Gaza Strip, which is in violation of the Palestinian Basic Law."
The campaign of incitement against Sol Band did not surprise many Palestinians, particularly those living in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The only songs Hamas and its followers want are those that promote hate and violence.
One Hamas song, released in 2017, is titled "Zionist, You Will Perish in Gaza."
Another Hamas song threatens to eat Jews alive. "I will eat you alive, tastes best without salt, Zionist – Yes, yes, you." The lyrics and rhythmic beat are accompanied by animation, in which rockets are being fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel.
A recent Hamas song includes many images of violence and actual terror attacks. Among the scenes showed during the rendition are stabbings, car-ramming attacks and explosions. The lyrics include the following statements:
"Where are you, O rebel; wrap the explosive belt around [your waist]; blow up the Zionists, don't fear; scatter the enemies' body parts, make the skulls fly in the sky."
The members of Sol Band did not call for "scattering the body parts" of Jews, and that is probably the main reason why they are being targeted by Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip. The musicians would have been welcomed by Hamas had they called on Palestinians to "make the skulls of (Jews) fly in the sky." This is the only type of song that the Muslim extremists are willing to tolerate.
What is disturbing, however, is the silence of the international community, specifically the EU partners of Islamic University in Gaza, where Farra serves as a lecturer. Do the Europeans working with the university condone threats against musicians?
Or are the Europeans ignoring Farra's fatwa because it was issued by a Muslim against Muslims? The EU countries and educational institutions are most likely ignoring such threats because they were not made by Israel.
Had Sol Band been threatened by Israel, the Europeans and other international human rights organizations would have issued immediate statements condemning Israel.
The silence of the international community emboldens Hamas and scholars such as Farra, and allows them to continue their repressive measures against Palestinians. It also allows Hamas and terror groups to continue calling for blowing up the skulls of Jews and eating them alive.
*Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Why Iran’s satellite launch failure still threatens Israel, US - analysis
Yonah Jeremy Bob/Jerusalem Post/February 11/2020
Despite the failure of the Zafar satellite to reach orbit, Sunday's launch shows the Iranians are getting closer.
The good news is that Iran’s Sunday satellite launch failed to stay in orbit and eventually crashed.
The bad news is that Iran may be getting closer to getting it right.
This is bad news because Iran could be trying to use the same path which India took to developing a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile capability: moving from a space launch vehicle to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). In mid-January, IDF Chief-of-Staff Aviv Kochavi cited Iran’s need to learn how to fire and deliver a nuclear weapon as a key factor in the timing for when they might potentially develop nuclear weapons.
Kochavi believed Iran would be around two years away if it took a year to enrich sufficient uranium for a nuclear bomb and another year to master delivery of a nuclear weapon.
Yet, shortly after Kochavi’s statement on the issue, Tehran made claims that it had already enriched 1,200 kilograms of low-grade uranium.
While experts have disputed this number to The Jerusalem Post with many feeling that Iran is closer to 800 kilograms, this is far ahead of where the Islamic Republic was expected to be and closer to the 1,000 kilogram requirement it needs to reach.
The closer Iran gets to 1,000 kilograms, the more important it is to watch its progress with mastering the delivery process for a nuclear weapon.
In May 2018, nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis discussed with the Post the possibility of Iran using space launches to master the process in detail, after his Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey announced major new findings in a New York Times story.
In April 2019, David Schmerler wrote an extensive update on the issue in Arms Control Wonk, an arms control blog network. That update was based on high frequency three-meter imagery that Schmerler, Lewis and others are using to monitor certain Iranian sites of interests on a daily basis.
Collectively, the findings were that Iran might have been hiding an ICBM testing site in plain view, until Lewis and his group figured it out while watching public Iranian TV and obtained new photos of the area.
ICBMs could threaten Europe and the US. The Trump administration has tried to use the issue, mostly unsuccessfully, to unite more countries against Iran in the ongoing nuclear standoff.
The Post learned from Lewis and his team that there was strong evidence that tests were being carried out at the site near Shahrud in northeast Iran, which could lead to Tehran developing the ability to fire nuclear ICBMs globally. Previously, it was thought the site was either defunct or being used to test medium-range missiles.
Lewis told the Post that, “Iran was striving for a large space launcher like India’s PSLV [Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle] – and the test stands are for very large engines, consistent with a rocket that could deliver a nuclear weapons-sized payload to ICBM ranges.”
This was, Lewis noted, “the same path India took [to developing a nuclear ICBM capability]: Develop a large space launch vehicle, then transition to technologies for a smaller ICBM.”
Like many other technologies Iran has experimented with, this space launch testing has a dual use, one of them being a nuclear ICBM.
Unlike other dual-use technologies, no one knew the Shahrud site was being used for testing that could help Iran move much faster toward nuclear ICBM capability – until the discovery by Lewis’s team.
Iran nuclear experts have also noted to the Post that the Islamic Republic has had conventional rockets which could reach Israel for decades, so the only question is finding a way to deliver a nuclear weapon. The ICBM program is a concern for both delivering nuclear weapons and for giving Iran the range to strike the US in general.
Iran’s Sunday launch of the new Zafar satellite into outer space, which failed to achieve orbit, may be working on different aspects of the track of using space launches to learn about delivering nuclear weapons than some previous launches. But each activity can potentially advance that cause as a whole.
All stages of the Sunday launch took place correctly, and the failure only came when the satellite did not reach the speed needed to inject the satellite into the desired orbit, according to the Iranian Fars news.
NASA said that the launch appears to have failed during the second or third stage of the flight when the Simorgh rocket reached the 540 kilometer trajectory, and was about a thousand meters per second short of the velocity required to reach orbit.
After an August 2019 space launch, Peter Crail wrote in Arms Control Today that the rocket test did demonstrate the connection between Iran's ballistic missile program and its space program.
He said that the two-staged rocket, named Safir (Ambassador), is believed to make use of a modified version of Iran's most advanced ballistic missile system, the Shahab-3, as its first stage.
The Safir's second stage appears to use an indigenously developed propulsion system. Crail noted that Iran has not yet successfully tested a multiple-staged missile or rocket.
He noted that the August 2019 rocket test followed the launch of two suborbital sounding rockets designed to carry out scientific experiments at high altitudes. The two rockets, launched in February 2007 and February 2008, were also variations of the Shahab-3 missile.
A key element of Sunday’s launch and of the August 2019 launch, according to Iranian officials, has been the "home-grown" nature of their technologies.
Crail quoted former UN weapons inspector Geoffrey Forden saying that the second stage of the August test showed that “Iran, not North Korea, not Iraq, is the first country to break out of the Scud type of missile mold."
Many countries in the developing world acquired Scud missiles from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and Crail wrote that the missiles have served as the template around which several missile programs have centered. North Korea's Nodong-1, for example, is based on the Scud design.
None of this proves that Iran’s space program is definitely directed at helping it deliver a nuclear weapon, but the large amount of evidence gives Israel and the US serious reasons to worry.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this story.

Remember, Iran’s Terror Network Is Global
Behnam Ben Taleblu/FDD/February 11/2020
“They are warriors who have no borders… They are warriors who show their presence wherever needed.” That’s how Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the Qods Force, the special operations unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during a Friday Prayer sermon in Tehran in January. Despite its name meaning Jerusalem in Arabic, the “Qods” (Quds) Force (and Iran’s security services more broadly), have not limited the scope of their networks and operations to the Arab world or the Middle East.
As Washington thinks through escalation scenarios between the U.S. and Iran for the rest of 2020, Khamenei’s reference to the borderless nature of the Qods Force cannot be ignored.
It’s rare for Khamenei to address Iranians from the Friday Prayer pulpit; his previous sermon having taken place eight years ago in February 2012. Following a string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and escalating Western sanctions, Khamenei then claimed that Iran would respond to such threats with “our own threats… that when needed, God willing, will be applied.” Days later came attempted bombings of Israeli diplomats in Georgia, India, which Israel blamed on Iran and in Thailand, as well as attacks in Bulgaria by Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah that killed six people.
It’s likely that in the aftermath of the killing of Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani, Iran will revert to this tried and true terror playbook.
Already, IRGC officials in Iran, as well as a constellation of Shiite militias in Iraq, promised to exact vengeance for their slain commander. But these sympathies are not limited to the Middle East and can be found even in places where Iran lacks significant sectarian affinity, like in the Balkans, for instance.
This January in Kosovo, a women was briefly jailed for inciting violence online after the killing of Soleimani. Such individuals could hypothetically provide Iranian agents, who have shown a willingness over the past four decades to work with the diverse likes of Sunni terrorists, Mexican drug cartels, and even disaffected Americans, a vector to achieve their aims against the West.
In fact, Tehran’s preference for local actors in jurisdictions of weak central authority is consistent with its policy of using proxies, which in turn offers the regime a veneer of plausible deniability. To support this, Iran has marshaled its embassies as well as a series of cultural and religious institutions as fronts to finance and organize terror operations abroad as well as to carry favor with the local population. This is true for geographies like the Balkans and Latin America.
While Kosovo may seem like a stretch for Iran, the revolutionary regime is no stranger to the Balkans. A recent hardliner Iranian news outlet cited Bosnia as the first post-Iran-Iraq War theater where Qods Force operations took place. For several years during the early phases of the Yugoslav Wars, the Qods Force helped funnel weapons and advisors to Bosniaks. One retired IRGC general recently bragged that when in Bosnia, he trained fighters while clad in the uniform of an aid worker – specifically that of the Iranian Red Crescent.
Moreover, several figures who went on to occupy key political and military positions in the Islamic Republic were present in Bosnia during the conflict in the early 1990s. These include the likes of Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati who functioned as the Supreme Leader’s representative to Bosnia, and Commander Mohammad Reza Naqdi, who reportedly served as one of two Qods Force Field-Commanders in the country. Today Jannati leads two important Iranian political bodies, the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts, whereas Naqdi is now a Deputy Coordinator for the IRGC after serving for almost a decade at the helm of the Basij, Iran’s all volunteer paramilitary force.
According to a U.S. State Department Factsheet on the IRGC, Bosnia is listed among several other countries where Quds Force plots have been detected and/or thwarted. Iran’s embassy in Bosnia has predictably denied this allegation. But what is undeniable is Iran’s reversion to terrorism, and in particular assassination of dissidents, on the European continent. To date, the European Union has sanctioned Iran in response to these attacks, but Iran does not appear to have been deterred.
Reports as late as October of last year indicate that an “Iranian paramilitary network” was planning to attack an Iranian opposition group in Albania, once again bringing the Balkans into the spotlight. Albania has increasingly faced Iran’s ire for taking-in the group, and has had to expel a steady string of diplomats for reportedly transgressing their diplomatic immunity. In 2018, Iran’s Ambassador to Tirana was expelled from the country. This January, Khamenei called Albania, “a small and very treacherous European country.”
An astute observer of Iran-backed terror operations will note that be it the plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, or to bomb an opposition rally in Paris, Iran failed in its objectives, and operational sloppiness aided local law enforcement and intelligence. That may be true, and for some that might dampen the lethality of the Islamic Republic’s terror apparatus. But the fact that the Islamic Republic persists in these operations signals the regime’s intent to continue to make good on its threats. Iran can therefore be expected to poke and prod at allied defenses over time, hoping to exploit them with minimal cost while aiming for a maximum amount of damage.
Whether future terror attacks will be against U.S. persons, assets, interests, or allies and partners remains unknown. But what Washington can make clear is that it will spare no cost in detecting, deterring, and disrupting any potential attack, as well as responding to them. After all, it’s entirely likely that Iran’s next significant move will not take place in the heartland of the Middle East, but on its periphery.
*Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington D.C., where he covers Iranian political and security issues.

Turkey’s Options for Pressuring Russia in Idlib Are Limited
Soner Cagaptay/The Washington Institute/February 11/2020
Weighty domestic concerns and geopolitical fears will likely keep Erdogan from pushing too hard against the current Russian-Syrian campaign, but the parties may yet broker a temporary deal to carve the province in half.
Besides sending hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to the Turkish border, the ongoing military campaign against rebels and civilians in Idlib is undermining agreements reached between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Previously, they had envisioned the Turkish military and the Syrian rebel factions it backs coexisting in the province with Russian and Syrian forces. Yet Putin and Bashar al-Assad’s renewed military push has raised doubts about whether Erdogan can prevent them from seizing most or all of the territory. On February 4, the Turkish leader warned that “he would not allow Syrian forces to advance,” but his options for following through on this ultimatum are limited by a host of strategic and political factors.
ERDOGAN NEEDS TO GET ALONG WITH PUTIN
Although Erdogan is the most powerful politician in Turkey’s modern electoral history, the failed 2016 coup left him feeling vulnerable. Putin has played on these fears as part of his broader effort to cast himself as the protector of threatened leaders worldwide, from Assad to Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Shortly after the coup attempt, he reached out to Erdogan before any of Turkey’s traditional Western allies did, then continued to offer support in various sectors even as the post-coup crackdown made Erdogan broadly unwelcome in European capitals.
Historically, Russia is Turkey’s top geopolitical nemesis, but Putin has deliberately backed down from that posture in his eagerness to drive a wedge in the NATO alliance. As part of this shift (however temporary it may be), he and Erdogan have fostered detente, cut deals on security matters (e.g., Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 missile defense systems), and deconflicted their regional military efforts, first in Syria and later in Libya.
At the same time, Turkey’s long history of being bullied by Russia makes Erdogan hesitant to cross Putin. Among all its neighbors, there is only one that Ankara truly fears: Russia. Between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, the two peoples fought nearly twenty wars, all of them instigated and ultimately won by the Russians.
Turkey’s leaders are therefore keen to avoid escalating the current crisis in Idlib. Although Turkish forces have pushed back against local Syrian and proxy forces to a certain degree, Ankara will shy away from a broader military confrontation with Russia over Idlib.
ANKARA NEEDS MOSCOW IN LIBYA
Prior to last year, the festering conflict between Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli and the eastern-based forces of Gen. Khalifa Haftar had largely settled into a stalemate. This stasis, however fragile, was more or less acceptable to Turkey so long as the Tripoli government (which it supports) was not seriously threatened by Haftar (who has the backing of Erdogan’s regional adversaries, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt).
Yet as the year wore on and fighting broke out again in earnest, Russia changed the game by enhancing its own military support for Haftar. By providing him with critical materiel (e.g., nighttime warfare capability), additional well-trained mercenaries (i.e., “Wagner’s Army”), and the know-how to shoot down the Tripoli government’s Turkish-provided drones, Putin turned Haftar into a mortal threat against Ankara’s local allies. This forced Erdogan to deploy his own forces to Libya, and to seek Russia’s help in securing a ceasefire that could prevent Haftar from seizing Tripoli.
Although Putin failed to broker a conclusive ceasefire at a January summit in Moscow, he has decreased his most potent support to Haftar—for now. This gives him an opportunity to link his Syria policy with his Libya policy when dealing with Turkey. If Erdogan pushes back any harder in Idlib, Putin would likely renew his full-fledged support to Haftar, putting Tripoli within the general’s grasp.
That scenario is unacceptable to Ankara, not only because it would humiliate Erdogan regionally, but also because it would lead to Turkey’s encirclement in the East Mediterranean by adversaries old (Greece and Cyprus) and new (Egypt and Israel). Over the past few years, these four countries have launched various natural gas and security initiatives with each other, which Ankara believes will blossom into active strategic cooperation against Turkey. This fear played a major role in Erdogan’s November decision to sign a maritime boundary agreement with Libya, drawing a line that might allow him to cut into the emerging Cypriot-Egyptian-Greek-Israeli bloc while countering Egypt-Emirati pressure on Tripoli. But upsetting Putin in Syria could upend that strategy.
ERDOGAN NEEDS TO ACT ON REFUGEES
Turkey already hosts nearly 4 million Syrian refugees, and if Idlib province falls, the resulting mass displacements could overwhelm Ankara’s resources and cause further domestic backlash. Turkey’s political environment remains highly polarized between pro- and anti-Erdogan blocs, but resentment toward Syrian refugees is the rare issue on which popular opinion is united. After welcoming millions of fleeing Syrians and hosting them for nearly a decade, most Turks now seem to believe that their presence is impeding government efforts to address economic recession and other challenges. According to a recent Kadir Has University poll, nearly 70 percent of Turkish respondents are “unhappy” with the refugee presence.
Hence, if Russia and Assad continue their campaign to empty out Idlib, Turkey will not agree to absorb all of the resultant refugee flows on its own. Instead, Erdogan will likely try to steer the refugees toward Europe, either indirectly through third countries or by opening Turkey’s doors and allowing them to cross into Greece.
ERDOGAN DOES HAVE SOME LEVERAGE
Putin’s goal is to end the war in Syria on terms favorable to him and Assad, ultimately reaching a political settlement through the so-called Astana Process. Turkey’s participation in that process is key if the outcome is to have any sort of international legitimacy. Without Ankara’s imprimatur, the Astana Process would become a “Friends of Assad” club in the eyes of the world, since its only other current participants are Russia and Iran.
Putin also knows that turning the screws too hard in Idlib might push Erdogan back into Washington’s arms, thereby repeating Joseph Stalin’s misstep of 1945-6, when Soviet demands for Turkish territory spurred the country to join NATO and become a close U.S. ally. The Kremlin seems to realize that its long-term strategic interests may be better served by offering Erdogan a new deal in Idlib, even if it plans to renege on that deal later on. Putin may even allow Turkey to conduct symbolically powerful strikes on Assad regime targets.
In order to maintain balance, however, Moscow will not allow Erdogan to push Assad’s forces out of Idlib entirely. And given the asymmetrical nature of Turkey’s relationship with Russia and the real threat Moscow poses to Turkish interests in Libya, Erdogan will have to take an Idlib deal if Putin offers one.
This potential deal would likely stem from Assad’s core interests. His Alawite-led regime still wants to retake as much territory as possible, but with as few Sunni Arab residents as possible, since the 2011 uprising was born out of that constituency. This suggests that once Assad secures the strategic M4 and M5 highways running through east and south Idlib, he may acquiesce—at least temporarily—to letting Erdogan control the province’s western and northern sections abutting Turkey. Such an arrangement would press most of Idlib’s population (including around 2-3 million civilians) into an area around 1,000 square miles in size. But creating that humanitarian tinderbox may be a price they are willing to pay in order to kick the Idlib can further down the road.
*Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Fellow at The Washington Institute and author of Erdogan’s Empire: Turkey and the Politics of the Middle East.

Latest Battle for Idlib Could Send Another Wave of Refugees to Europe
Fabrice Balanche/The Washington Institute/February 11/2020
Various displacement scenarios may unfold as the fighting escalates, each carrying a high risk of negative humanitarian and economic consequences even if the parties live up to their promises.
The battle for Idlib province, the last stronghold of Syrian rebel forces, is heating up again. As Turkish troops clash with Assad regime forces and displaced civilians continue piling up along the border, various foreign and domestic players are considering moves that could send hundreds of thousands of refugees to other parts of Syria, northern Iraq, or Europe.
EUROPE’S FEARS, TURKEY’S LEVERAGE
The EU countries are very afraid of seeing a new wave of Syrian refugees sweep over the continent. Two of the countries that opened their doors so generously during the previous mass wave of 2015—Germany and Sweden—are now unwilling to do so again. France was not greatly affected by the previous wave, but President Emmanuel Macron is nevertheless trying to avoid becoming the next mass haven. Instead, he has proposed a mechanism that would distribute new refugees proportionally between all EU member states. Eastern European countries have flatly rejected this idea, however, especially Poland and Hungary.
One of the reasons why Europe is so hesitant to reopen its doors is because it has suffered multiple terrorist attacks in recent years, some of them perpetrated by jihadists who infiltrated the continent under mechanisms intended to help refugees. Last month’s arrest of Islam Alloush in Marseilles is a telling example of how European intelligence services are often unable to separate the wheat from the chaff when screening for violent radicals. A former official with the brutal Syrian Islamist rebel group Jaish al-Islam, he arrived in Europe last year on a student visa as part of an EU scholarship program, then resided there for months before being picked up on charges of torture and other war crimes.
The potential economic cost of hosting millions of new refugees has troubled Europe as well. Moreover, the continent is currently coping with a populist, xenophobic electoral wave. Combined with potential domino effects stemming from the battle for Idlib, these factors pose serious threats to EU cohesion on all issues and endanger the costly status quo Europe established with Turkey in 2015.
Turkey is well aware of the EU’s dilemma. Because Syrian refugees are not economic migrants, but rather a case of war migration by people in real distress, many European leaders have felt obligated to exhibit some degree of solidarity with them. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken advantage of this sentiment by essentially blackmailing the EU, which has financed the millions of Syrian refugees still residing in Turkey with a support plan of 6 billion euros since 2016. The EU also continues to subsidize Turkish agriculture, tourism, culture, and other sectors as if the country were still engaged in a serious effort to join the EU, even though both sides know that is no longer the case. Last but not least, European officials have been careful not to condemn or punish Ankara for human rights violations stemming from its military operations against Kurds in Syria, if only because they do not have an alternative plan at ready if Erdogan decides to retaliate by opening the Pandora’s box of mass migration.
DISPLACEMENT AND REFUGEE SCENARIOS
Since December, the Syrian army’s rapid advance in Idlib has prompted nearly 400,000 civilians to take refuge near the province’s northern border with Turkey, where approximately one million internally displaced persons are already gathered. In all, the fighting could wind up displacing around 2.5 million people in Idlib if the regime campaign is carried out to its fruition. Erdogan has built a wall to prevent these IDPs from crossing the border and adding to Turkey’s existing Syrian refugee population of 3.5 million—a number he now deems politically and economically unsustainable after years of generous hosting.
Although Erdogan has attempted to buy time by forcibly slowing the Syrian advance and delivering military ultimatums to Damascus, he will ultimately need to choose one of two solutions: let the IDPs cross Turkish territory toward their eventual goal of reaching Europe, or send them to other parts of Syria. If he takes the first approach, the EU would immediately cut off its massive financial aid to Turkey. Yet the second approach presents obstacles of its own. Most Syrian refugees do not want to return to a devastated country where many of them would be at risk of reprisal given their involvement in the rebellion. Even settling in areas of Syria controlled by Turkey would require massive economic development and heavy local security, neither of which is currently present. In contrast, the millions of refugees already in Turkey are content to enjoy much better living conditions and the persistent, if dim, hope of eventual EU accession.
Despite these hurdles, Erdogan believes that the threat of a new refugee wave is great enough to spur Europe into accepting and financing option two. The current version of Turkey’s plan is to establish a thirty-two-kilometer-deep buffer zone from the Tigris River in northeast Syria all the way to Idlib, and then move as many Syrian refugees as possible there. Yet that would require resuming stalled military operations against the Syrian Kurds, with the goal of taking the various border towns not already seized by Turkey and its proxy militias (all except for Qamishli, which would remain under the Assad regime’s sovereignty).
The ethnic repercussions of such a campaign would no doubt be serious. Since January 2018, the date of Turkey’s offensive against Afrin in northwest Syria, more than half of that canton’s Kurdish population (200,000 inhabitants) have left. Further east, all of the Kurds (70,000) between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain have fled due to subsequent Turkish incursions. Erdogan’s objective is to replace these Kurds with Sunni Arabs in order to establish a non-Kurdish buffer area along the entire border—an outcome that would align with his broader effort to suppress the violent Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) at home and its sister militia in north Syria, the People’s Defense Units (YPG).
This process is well underway in Afrin, with the families of Syrian fighters from the Turkish-backed “Syrian National Army” militia occupying the homes of Kurds who have fled. Some displaced Syrians have also been moved to Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain, though that effort has been slowed by the zone’s persistent insecurity and lack of territorial continuity with Idlib, the area most urgently in need of IDP resettlement. Most of the refugees in Idlib face deplorable humanitarian conditions and the fear of falling under the yoke of the Syrian army, which is moving inexorably closer.
If Erdogan succeeds in creating his entire buffer zone, 650,000 inhabitants of northeast Syria—three-quarters of whom are Kurds—would likely be displaced. Rather than move to other parts of Syria, most would presumably flee to the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq and then on to Europe, where they have readymade migration networks.
Currently, Russia and the United States oppose Turkey’s plan, partly because it would entail another offensive against the Kurds, and also because of the financial costs required by the proposed resettlement. Even if these two major obstacles are removed, the fact remains that the proposed buffer areas would not be able to absorb the roughly 2.5 million Syrians trapped in Idlib—at most, only a few hundred thousand could be supported. As such, the majority of Idlib’s civilians would remain stranded at the foot of Turkey’s border wall, threatened by a potentially revenge-minded Syrian army and subject to jihadist groups that would likely seek to profit from running the small remaining sanctuary.
The EU would then face a potential double wave of refugees. The first would be diffuse, composed of Kurds gradually transiting Iraqi Kurdistan en route to Europe. The second would likely be more sudden and brutal—Turkey cannot contain the pressure of 2.5 million people forever, so violent breaches of its Idlib wall would be inevitable.
Russia has sought to convince the Europeans that there is a third option: namely, Damascus issuing a broad amnesty and offering security guarantees to the province’s entire population, with these concessions facilitated by generous EU financial assistance and the lifting of sanctions against Damascus. Yet this idea has not gained any traction in Europe, in part because of the Assad regime’s known track record of breaking such guarantees and continuing its brutal treatment of displaced Syrians.
Until these questions are resolved, the threat of a new refugee march toward the EU will keep rising, leading some states to consider ways to fortify their frontiers—Greece, for example, has proposed the construction of floating walls in the Aegean Sea to block migrant boats. In this sense, the course of events in Idlib may play a decisive role in Europe’s most pressing dilemma: how to maintain its humanitarian principles while still preserving its security and unity.
*Fabrice Balanche is an associate professor at the University of Lyon 2, an adjunct fellow with The Washington Institute, and author of Sectarianism in Syria’s Civil War: A Geopolitical Study.

Critics should think twice before abandoning UNRWA
Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/February 11, 2020
Much of the so-called “deal of the century” — US President Donald Trump’s peace plan — ranges between an Israeli government wish list and some equally wishful thinking by the US and Israel. Both are under the delusion that they can impose their will and interests on the Palestinians, in the bad old and unsustainable tradition of might makes right. Among the plan’s numerous flaws, there is a continuing refusal to realistically and fairly address the ongoing injustices and suffering of millions of Palestinian refugees, many of them still languishing in camps.
Currently there are more than 8.7 million Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons, 5.6 million of them registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Most of them are descendants of the 750,000 refugees who were forced from their homes or fled the horrors of the 1948 war, which is officially known in Israel as the War of Independence, but which Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe) and which marked the beginning of their decades-long, ongoing period of dispossession and exile. Others lost their homes in Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War or due to internal disruptions in their host countries. In the absence of a political solution to this crisis of more than 70 years, UNRWA, which was established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly, is mandated to provide the refugees with human development and humanitarian services.
Yet, despite the devotion of its more than 30,000 employees, most of them Palestinian refugees themselves and often working in the most difficult of circumstances to ensure core services, UNRWA is a most unfairly maligned organization — coming under constant attack from Israel and the US, sometimes from the Palestinians, and even from within. Some of the criticisms are legitimate, but most are a reflection of the failure of those critics to address the root causes of the conflict and the refugee issue in particular, or of their complete lack of understanding of the complex environment and conditions that the organization operates in. After all, there is not exactly a queue of states or international organizations willing and able to replace UNRWA in providing services such as primary and vocational education, health care, relief and social support, infrastructure and camp improvements, microfinance, and emergency responses, including during situations of armed conflict, as its employees do day in and day out.
A major conundrum for UNRWA and, for all intents and purposes, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is that, in an ideal world, they would become surplus to requirements and be disbanded. But armed conflicts, externally and internally, are pushing people out of their homes and leaving them not just homeless and traumatized, but also stateless. Worse, what was expected to be a temporary status until it became possible to return home, has become in many cases a more permanent one, and has led to a generation of refugees who cannot go home.
It is left to organizations like UNRWA and UNHCR to pick up the pieces left by the warring sides and provide protection and dignity for refugees and displaced persons under the most difficult circumstances. For the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war and its aftermath, UNRWA became a lifeline in their places of exile in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. And, yes, the hope is that one day UNRWA won’t be needed and not a single Palestinian will remain stateless or live in a refugee camp. Nevertheless, as long as this is not even remotely likely, the constant attacks on this organization are not only unjustified and counter-productive — they are an assault on the Palestinian people as human beings and as a nation.
In recent years, attacks on UNRWA by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump have intensified, as part of their menacing plan to “solve” the Palestinian issue by denying the descendants of the original refugees their human rights: A position that contravenes international law, is immoral, and risks conflict and destabilization in those areas where refugees reside. To blame UNRWA, which has protected the refugees under the most testing of circumstances — civil wars, occupation and oppression — for perpetuating the Palestinian refugees issue is utter demagoguery. It is aimed at distracting from such politicians’ failure to reach a political solution and wind down the organization, which has the interests of these refugees at heart and serves as their best advocate. Without UNRWA, the Palestinian refugees would lack protection and the supply of their basic services would be exposed to the arbitrariness of others, let alone of wars and violent incursions.
One of the accusations leveled against the agency is that it is too costly. This is far from the truth and its projected $1.4 billion budget for this year, considering its mandate and the complex and difficult conditions under which it operates, is actually a testimony to the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of UNRWA. It is also the only UN organization that provides employment to the Palestinian refugees themselves.
The constant attacks on this organization are not only unjustified and counter-productive — they are an assault on the Palestinian people.
Despite the recent extension of its mandate to 2023, which was a vote of confidence in the role of UNRWA and its operations, this confidence hasn’t been matched by a budget to adequately reflect such trust. Inexcusably, and for its entire existence, the organization has been forced to plead with donor countries every single year. To make things worse, Washington, in a deliberate act of sabotage, in 2018 cut its entire contribution, which amounted to a third of UNRWA’s budget. Since then, the agency has been in crisis mode and, although in 2019 other countries came to the rescue, this year the budget is forecast to run out by April, which would have the horrendous implication of bringing all the organization’s services to a halt.
Those who proactively long for the demise of UNRWA, and those who by their inaction are letting this happen, should have second thoughts about the disastrous humanitarian and political implications of their folly.
*Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg

IMF predicts GCC economic doomsday by 2034
Abdel Aziz AluwaishegArab News/February 11/2020
Last week, the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a rather pessimistic report questioning the ability of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to manage their diversification from oil fast enough. In particular, “The Future of Oil and Fiscal Sustainability in the GCC Region” pointed to a growing gap between what it described as the slow rate of diversification compared to a faster-than-expected rate of switching to non-GCC sources of conventional and new fuel sources around the world.
It points out the fact that oil markets are undergoing unforeseen fundamental changes. On the one hand, new technologies are increasing oil supplies from old and new sources, while rising concerns over the environment are seeing the world gradually moving away from oil.
GCC countries hold about 40 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 20 percent of gas. GCC producers account for about a quarter of global oil exports and a significant share of natural gas trade. Oil and gas exports represent the engine of the GCC’s economic growth, as they are largely the main source of government revenue.
The GCC countries have long recognized the need to reduce their reliance on oil and gas. They are all implementing reforms to diversify their economic base and fiscal revenues.
However, the global picture is rapidly changing in many ways. First, new technological breakthroughs have reduced the cost of production and made shale oil a more serious rival to conventional oil. Second, international climate change advocacy has accelerated the switch to renewables at a rate faster than previously thought.
The IMF expects that, at the current diversification rates, GCC financial wealth could be depleted by 2034. As revenues from oil shrink, governments will be forced to rely on previous savings, which it estimates at about $2 trillion, or about $133 billion a year, on average, until then. The IMF is calling for diversification plans to move faster to meet those challenges. Otherwise, the IMF predicts that, by 2034, GCC countries will find themselves without significant savings, forced to borrow at high rates or drastically cut expenses.
The IMF also raised the moral dilemma of intergenerational justice: By drawing down all that accumulated wealth, new generations will be left with little wealth of their own, as the oil boom generations exhaust those savings.
The picture the IMF draws is quite gloomy. Some Gulf critics have said that it is also unrealistic and that, long before they run out of fiscal reserves in 2034, policymakers would switch gears and prevent such a calamity from taking place. The problem is that, according to the IMF, adjustments take time to provide the desired effects. Fiscal adjustments may be done quickly, but their economic, social and political repercussions are complicated. Taxes, for example, could slow down economic growth as they reduce disposable income and funds available for private investment. Diversifying the economic base is even harder. Retooling the workforce to meet the needs of the new diversified economies is probably the toughest challenge.
The 2034 doomsday is an average. Some GCC countries could face that challenge earlier; some are almost already there. Some have more time, but their economies will be affected if their neighbors run out of wealth and regional economic growth slows. They could also be called upon to help their less fortunate neighbors. As such, in all cases it is imperative to give greater priority to diversification in all GCC countries.
The next 14 years, until 2034, is a short time to diversify economies and government revenues, but it is not impossible. As the IMF itself recognizes in this report, GCC countries are moving in the right direction, but they need to go faster. International and local economists have long proposed measures that could speed up the achievement of diversification goals.
The current generation needs to make the necessary sacrifices for the sake of their children and grandchildren.
Managing a rapid diversification process will be a tough task, as the current generation has grown accustomed to an oil-based economic life: Low taxes, free education and health care, low energy prices, and easy, publicly funded employment. Individuals, government employees and businesses all need a new austere lifestyle if GCC countries are to meet the IMF’s challenge by 2034.
Rapid diversification will require sizable fiscal adjustments, including new non-oil revenues. However, those new revenues have to be calibrated so as not to contract the economy or reduce private investment and consumption. In addition, government spending needs to be rationalized by cutting waste and switching to productive expenditures, i.e., spending that could stimulate growth.
Not only is the present important, but the economic well-being of future generations should also be safeguarded. Their welfare would be helped by a strong early start with these reforms. The current generation needs to make the necessary sacrifices for the sake of their children and grandchildren. Rapid diversification, as required to meet the fast-approaching scarcity, could be expected to entail socioeconomic consequences affecting all aspects of life. As such, the process needs to be managed with the utmost care to preserve social cohesion while weaning GCC populations, economies and public coffers off their reliance on oil and gas revenues.
*Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg is the Gulf Cooperation Council’s assistant secretary-general for political affairs and negotiation, and a columnist for Arab News. The views expressed in this piece are personal and do not necessarily represent those of the GCC. Twitter: @abuhamad1