LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
March 13/2019

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth
Matthew12/38-45: Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here. “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on March 12-13/2019
Lebanon: 3 Candidates May Run in Tripoli Parliamentary By-Elections
Lebanon’s STL Reiterates Commitment to Bring Rafik Hariri’s Assassins to Justice
Lebanon president asks France for help in refugee issue
Hariri Slams Gharib's Statement, Says 'Press Conferences' Can't Fight Corruption
Rifi Backs Jamali after Meeting Hariri at Saniora's House
Kanaan Denounces 'Campaigns' Against CIB
Affirmation on Continued Cooperation with New Govt. during Aoun Meeting with Lacroix, Del Cole
Strong Lebanon Says Govt. Must be '1 Team' on Refugee File
Zakka Announces Nomination for Vacant Tripoli Seat
Gunmen Abduct Lebanese Worker in NW Nigeria
Khalil Promises Speedy Budget, Says Seeking to Lower Deficit
Report: Lebanon Reeling Under ‘Endless’ Refugee Burden
Pompeo set for talks this week in Beirut on oil, aid, Hezbollah
The women who shaped Lebanon
Iran wants to turn Iraq into another Lebanon

Litles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 12-13/2019
British MPs Reject Brexit Deal for Second Time
Several Nations Ground Their Boeing 737 MAX Planes
Algerians Take to Streets Despite Bouteflika Concessions
Netanyahu: Allowing Fund Transfer to Gaza Prevents Establishment of Palestinian State
US-backed SDF says 38 ISIS fighters killed in Syria enclave
Syrian Opposition Coalition Backs Renewed Anti-Regime Daraa Protests
As ISIS Fight Nears End, Violence Flares on Other Syrian Front
SDF Says Assault on ISIS Pocket Almost Over
Shtayyeh Begins Consultations to Form Fatah-dominated Government
After Assuming Office, Raisi Pledges to Fight Corruption in Iran
Experts to Asharq Al-Awsat: Iran Will Not Drag Iraq in its Battle against US
Iran: UK diplomatic protection of jailed mother will not ‘make things easier’
Iran: Human Rights Lawyer Sentenced to 38 Years in Prison, 148 Lashes
Former US Navy Veteran Tried in Iran on Security Charges
OCHA: Thousands Trapped in Yemen's Northern Flashpoint

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 12-13/2019
Pompeo set for talks this week in Beirut on oil, aid, Hezbollah
Hussein Dakroub/The Daily Star/March 12/19
NAYA| The women who shaped Lebanon/Maysaa Ajjan and Hala Mezher/Annahar/March 12/19
Iran wants to turn Iraq into another Lebanon/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Arab News/March 12/2019
US Is a Rich Country With Symptoms of a Developing Nation/Noah Smith/Bloomberg/March 12/2019
Ethiopian Crash Throws the Spotlight Back on Boeing/Chris Bryant/Bloomberg/March 12/19
The World Really Is Getting Richer as Poor Countries Catch Up/Noah Smith/Bloomberg/March 12/19
Rouhani is in Baghdad to harness Iraq’s banks for beating US anti-Iran oil sanctions'/DEBKAfile/March 12/19
Armed Opposition Groups in Iran/Dr. Jonathan Spyer/JISS/March 12/19

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on March 12-13/2019
Lebanon: 3 Candidates May Run in Tripoli Parliamentary By-Elections
Beirut - Mohammed Shuqair/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/ Three candidates are expected to run in next month’s parliamentary by-elections in the Lebanese northern city of Tripoli, sources told Asharq Al-Awsat. The elections are set to fill the vacant Sunni legislative seat after Lebanon’s Constitutional Council annulled last month the parliamentary membership of Dima Jamali, of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Mustaqbal Movement. “The electoral battle will take place between Jamali, former minister Ashraf Rifi and Samer Qabbara, the nephew of MP Mohammed Qabbara,” the sources said. A fourth candidate, Taha Naji, could join the race if the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects (AICP), known as al-Ahbash, decides to back his candidacy. Naji told Asharq Al-Awsat on Monday that the al-Ahbash is expected to take a decision in this regard in the coming two days. Barring an unexpected development, Rifi will make an official announcement over his candidacy on Thursday, revealed sources from Tripoli. Qabbara is expected to announce his candidacy on Wednesday. They said that the Mustaqbal Movement insists on renewing its support for Jamali. Rifi had suggested that he would withdraw from the race if the Mustaqbal Movement finds a substitute for Jamali. However, the sources said that the Movement does not want to “break the word” of Hariri, who renewed his support for her last month shortly after the Constitutional Council’s ruling. The sources said former PM Najib Mikati, MP Qabbara and former minister Mohammed Safadi decided to back Jamali’s candidacy. These official doubt however, that they could convince their supporters to head to polling stations on the day of the elections. Head of Lebanon’s Constitutional Council Judge Issam Sleiman said last month that by-elections in Tripoli must be conducted within two months, as per article 41 of the Constitution.

Lebanon’s STL Reiterates Commitment to Bring Rafik Hariri’s Assassins to Justice
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/The Special Tribunal for Lebanon that is looking into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri stressed on Monday that it is committed to bringing the perpetrators to justice. In its tenth annual report, it said that “the closing arguments affirmed the important and incomparable role the Tribunal plays in ensuring the perpetrators of the February 14, 2005 attack are not shielded by impunity.”The STL submitted the report to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Lebanese government. Hariri was killed in a massive bombing in Beirut in February 2005. The UN Security Council classified his murder as a "terrorist" crime, appointed an international commission of inquiry, and then established the STL for the prosecution of the accused. Four Hezbollah members have been indicted in the crime. Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hassan Habib Merhi, Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra currently facing trial in absentia. They are charged with conspiracy to commit a terrorist act, along with a number of other related charges. The annual report details the activities of the Tribunal from March 1, 2018 to February 28, 2019, its objectives for the coming year and highlights the achievements of the four organs: Chambers, Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), Defense Office and Registry, said the STL in a press release. Chambers report that the trial proceedings in the Ayyash et al. case constituted their main public judicial activities. The Trial Chamber is now reviewing the evidence before it and deliberating as to whether the Prosecution had proven its case against the four Accused beyond reasonable doubt. It also mentions that the precise timing of the judgment will depend upon the complexity of the legal and factual issues subject to the Trial Chamber’s confidential deliberations. Following the conclusion of the evidence, the Prosecution filed a Final Trial Brief and presented its closing arguments in the Ayyash et al. case against the individuals accused of criminal responsibility for the attack against Hariri. The Office of the Prosecutor is prepared to move forward quickly when the updated confidential indictment is refiled. STL President Judge Ivana Hrdličková concluded that the STL's focus for the next year is on the judicial deliberations and the preparation of the judgment awaited by the victims of the February 2005 attack, the Lebanese public and the wider international community.

Lebanon president asks France for help in refugee issue
BEIRUT, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Michel Aoun asked on Tuesday France to help Lebanon in its efforts of facilitating Syrian refugees back to their homeland, the National News Agency reported.
"We wish France and other European countries to help refugees Lebanon return to the secure areas in their country," Aoun was quoted as saying during his meeting with a French parliamentary delegation. Aoun said that around 167,000 Syrian refugees had returned to Syria from Lebanon by now, while quoting the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Chief Filippo Grandi as saying that the returning refugees are "safe and secure." Aoun also emphasized the importance of maintaining balance in the Lebanese community. The French delegation assured Aoun that France is keen on supporting Lebanon's efforts in issuing new legislations in addition to the president's aims of achieving further development and growth in thuntry.

Hariri Slams Gharib's Statement, Says 'Press Conferences' Can't Fight Corruption
Naharnet /March 12/19/Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Tuesday blasted a statement issued by State Minister for Refugee Affairs Saleh al-Gharib over the Brussels conference, as he noted that those “protecting corruption” are the ones holding “press conferences.”“We are encouraging Saudis to return to Lebanon,” Hariri said after meeting President Michel Aoun following a visit to Saudi Arabia. “As for Brussels, we're heading there because we have a refugee crisis. We want the refugees to return as soon as possible... and there will be an essential chance to talk to the relevant parties,” Hariri added. As for the controversy over excluding Gharib from the delegation that will represent Lebanon in Brussels, Hariri said: “The prime minister will represent Lebanon and speak in Lebanon's name.”“Some controversy has happened but this doesn't mean that I want or don't want the minister to go,” the premier added. He however noted that he “does not accept the statement that has been issued” by Gharib.“It is prohibited to have political disputes over this issue,” Hariri added referring to the refugee file. Gharib had on Sunday issued a stern statement, lamenting that “some political parties are acting against the desired patriotic approach and there is insistence on returning to the policies of the previous government on the refugee file.”“All norms have been breached in the issue of the Brussels conference invitations,” the minister said. “Overlooking the role of the State Ministry for Refugee Affairs regarding the Brussels conference is not disregard for me as a person but rather for the alternative way of thinking and serious approach that we have adopted in addressing this file in order to secure the return” of the refugees to their country, Gharib added. “We will not tolerate this at all,” the minister warned. As for the corruption file, Hariri said Tuesday that he shares “the same stance” with Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri regarding “the fight against corruption.”“No one will be covered whoever they may be, even if some individuals may be close to some parties,” Hariri said. He added: “There is no politicization and we don't want anyone to politicize this file. Those who accept bribes do not belong to a certain sect.”Asked about the OGERO employment file, Hariri said Parliament “will look into the alleged wrongdoing.”As for the controversy over the issue of the “missing” $11 billion, the premier said “the final accounts have been accomplished and those talking have realized that the previous claims were politicized.”“It is no longer a political challenge between the parties. All political parties are seeking to resolve these issues without politicization,” Hariri reassured. “The press conferences are behind us and today there is calm... Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal Movement will not confront each other but rather want to put an end to corruption,” he said. “Any press conference discussing corruption would be protecting corruption,” he noted, pointing out that “those who want to fight corruption should work silently.”

Rifi Backs Jamali after Meeting Hariri at Saniora's House
Naharnet /March 12/19/Prime Minister Saad Hariri, ex-minister Ashraf Rifi and ex-PM Fouad Saniora held a meeting Tuesday evening at the latter's residence in Beirut's Bliss area. Saniora announced after the meeting that Rifi has decided to pull out of the race for Tripoli's vacant Sunni seat and to support the nomination of al-Mustaqbal Movement's candidate Dima Jamali, whose membership of parliament was recently revoked by the Constitutional Council. The meeting was held in the presence of ex-minister Rashid Derbas. “Today a new chapter has been opened and we should close ranks,” said Hariri after the meeting. “God willing, the page has been turned on the past and all the consensus and unanimity we are witnessing today is in Tripoli's interest,” the PM added. “Tripoli needs all its sons and we must work to pull it out of the poverty it is living in,” Hariri went on to say. Rifi for his part said: “We are rising above trivial things because the country is in danger and the priority is for confronting the challenges.”Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3) had reported that the meeting began with “a frank exchange and a reconciliation” between Hariri and Rifi. The radio network said Saniora, Derbas and several figures who have ties to Hariri and Rifi had exerted efforts to see the meeting happen. The meeting comes in the wake of a confrontation over corruption allegations between Saniora and Hizbullah.

Kanaan Denounces 'Campaigns' Against CIB
Naharnet/March 12/19/Head of the Finance and Budget Parliamentary Committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan on Tuesday denounced campaigns targeting the Central Inspection Bureau noting the efforts exerted by the Bureau in order to achieve reforms. In a press conference he held after the Committee meeting, Kanaan said: “Instead of valuing the efforts it is exerting, the CIB is being subject to campaigns,” he said, noting that the Bureau is carrying out “great effort and delicate work.”“Why target the inspection apparatuses? How can we impose reform while attacking these agencies,” denounced Kanaan. On the other hand, the MP called for increasing the budget allocated for the Central Inspection Bureau. “To promote the budget for the CIB and the inspection apparatuses instead of random political employment,” he concluded. The Central Inspection is a Public Administration Connected to the council of Ministers, and handles numerous tasks according to its rules and law of construction.

Affirmation on Continued Cooperation with New Govt. during Aoun Meeting with Lacroix, Del Cole
Naharnet/March 12/19/President Michel Aoun held a meeting at Baabda Palace on Tuesday with Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix, UNIFIL Commander Stefano Del Cole and an accompanying delegation, the State-run National News Agency reported. Lacroix affirmed continued support for the new Lebanese government and said: “I came with my UN colleagues to visit President Aoun, who reiterated Lebanon's support for FINUL's work. “Cooperation between the Lebanese authorities and the international force is essential.For decades, we have been in southern Lebanon, and this has helped calm the situation there,” said Lacroix. Lacroix added: “We have assured President Aoun of our willingness to continue cooperation with the new government, an opportunity to re-launch several important projects for Lebanon and to work together to strengthen the Lebanese military forces in southern Lebanon and to gradually strengthen their maritime capabilities so that there is a gradual shift in work between the presence of the international naval force and the Lebanese army.”

Strong Lebanon Says Govt. Must be '1 Team' on Refugee File
Naharnet/March 12/19/The Free Patriotic Movement-led Strong Lebanon bloc on Tuesday said the government should act as “one team” on the thorny issue of Syrian refugees. “There should not be conflicting goals for those working on the refugee file and the objective is the safe return of Syrian refugees to their country,” MP Ibrahim Kanaan said after the bloc's weekly meeting. “The efforts must converge and the government should be one team in this regard,” Kanaan added. “All disputes are irrelevant in the face of this national goal that is strategic at the political, economic, demographic and security levels. This should be our top priority,” the lawmaker went on to say. He also urged all parties and components of the government and parliament to rise the level of the “major challenge that we are all facing as Lebanese.”The country has witnessed controversy in recent days over the issue of the exclusion of State Minister for Refugee Affairs Saleh al-Gharib from a delegation that will represent Lebanon at the Brussels conference on refugees. Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Tuesday blasted a statement issued by Gharib, adding that “it is prohibited to have political disputes over this issue.” Gharib had on Sunday issued a stern statement, lamenting that “some political parties are acting against the desired patriotic approach and there is insistence on returning to the policies of the previous government on the refugee file.”“All norms have been breached in the issue of the Brussels conference invitations,” the minister said. “Overlooking the role of the State Ministry for Refugee Affairs regarding the Brussels conference is not disregard for me as a person but rather for the alternative way of thinking and serious approach that we have adopted in addressing this file in order to secure the return” of the refugees to their country, Gharib added. “We will not tolerate this at all,” the minister warned.

Zakka Announces Nomination for Vacant Tripoli Seat
Naharnet/March 12/19/Nizar Zakka, who has been jailed in Iran since 2015, on Tuesday announced his nomination for the vacant Sunni parliamentary seat in Tripoli under the slogan “The Freedom Solution for Lebanon”. “I'm Nizar Zakka, the ordinary Lebanese citizen who has been kidnapped in Iran since September 2015. I ask my people in each of Tripoli -- my mother's city -- and Qalamoun -- my hometown -- to grant me their confidence to be their roaring voice in parliament -- the voice of every ordinary citizen whose voice is absent or deliberately stifled,” Zakka said in a letter from his prison in the Tehran area of Evin. “I'm an ordinary Lebanese who is looking forward to representing every ordinary citizen whose right has been lost in the state of no justice, whose voice has been usurped in the state of oppression, whose dignity has been lost in the state of clientilism and whose bread has been stolen in the state of the rich,” Zakka, who also holds a U.S. green card, added. “My state has abandoned me and conspired against me as I lie kidnapped in one of the world's ugliest detention centers where I've been living since four years, in an underground grave surrounded by sewers and rats. My weak state is the same one that has abandoned you, my people in the Tripoli district... It has left you to deprivation, poverty, tyranny and agony,” Zakka went on to say.And noting that his political views are largely in line with those of al-Mustaqbal Movement, Zakka said that “those who truly want to stand in the face of any hegemony will know very well whom to vote for.”Zakka has been detained in Iran since 2015 over spying allegations. He was sentenced in 2016 to 10 years in prison and a $4.2 million fine. Zakka, who lived in Washington and held resident status in the U.S., was the leader of the Arab ICT Organization, or IJMA3, an industry consortium from 13 countries that advocates for information technology in the region. Zakka disappeared Sept. 18, 2015, during his fifth trip to Iran. He had been invited to attend a conference at which President Hassan Rouhani spoke of providing more economic opportunities for women and sustainable development.
On Nov. 3, Iranian state television aired a report saying he was in custody and calling him a spy with "deep links" with U.S. intelligence services. It also showed what it described as a damning photo of Zakka and three other men in army-style uniforms, two with flags and two with rifles on their shoulders. But that turned out to be from a homecoming event at Zakka's prep school, the Riverside Military Academy in Georgia, according to the school's president.

Gunmen Abduct Lebanese Worker in NW Nigeria
Naharnet/March 12/19/Unidentified gunmen abducted a Lebanese construction engineer in the northern Nigerian city of Kano on Tuesday, in an attack that left one dead, police and witnesses said. Four gunmen stormed a road construction site in the city at about 7:40 am (0640 GMT), seizing the engineer who was supervising work on the site. "There was a kidnapping incident at Dangi Roundabout this morning and the victim is a Lebanese engineer," Kano state police spokesman Abdullahi Haruna told AFP. "One person was killed and another injured in the attack," said Haruna. The victim was at the site without any assigned security, he added. Police have opened an investigation to identify the gunmen and rescue the victim. Witnesses said a Nigerian construction worker was killed and another injured, after they tried to prevent the gunmen from entering the site. Kidnapping for ransom is widespread in the oil-rich southern delta region, where criminal gangs seize expatriate oil workers and wealthy Nigerians in exchange for hefty payments. The trend has also been on the rise in the north in recent years, flourishing as the economy has struggled, particularly in rural areas with inadequate security provision. In April last year gunmen kidnapped a German construction engineer in Kano after killing his police escort in an attack the police blamed on a gang of armed robbers. In Birnin Gwari, an area in Kaduna state, also in the northwest, entire villages have been deserted for fear of raids and kidnapping by criminal gangs. The gangs often roam on motorcycles and are known to operate in northern Kaduna and neighboring Zamfara states. Abductees are often released within days if the ransom is paid but residents say they can be killed if no money is forthcoming. The attacks in the northwest have been a challenge to recently re-elected President Muhammadu Buhari, who enjoys mass support in the region. He has pledged to tackle insecurity from kidnappers and criminal gangs but with few details.

Khalil Promises Speedy Budget, Says Seeking to Lower Deficit
Naharnet/March 12/19/Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil on Tuesday pledged that the draft state budget will be finalized “as soon as possible,” as he declared that the ministry is seeking to slash the budget deficit. “We are committed to finalizing the state budget as soon as possible and we are committed that it reflects the Lebanese keenness on what we pledged in the Cabinet's Policy Statement,” Khalil tweeted. In another tweet, he added: “We are working on lowering the budget deficit through a reform plan and drastic and structural decisions and we're before a real test in this regard.”

Report: Lebanon Reeling Under ‘Endless’ Refugee Burden
Naharnet/March 12/19/On the eve of the donor Brussels conference on Syria, Speaker Nabih Berri reiterated that the Syrian refugees must return to their homeland noting a need for coordination with the Syrian government to achieve that end, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Tuesday. Moreover, a political source said the file is taking a negative turn, “the outside world has its own perception regarding the file and apparently does not care about the return, but only cares that this burden is kept away from them,” he told the daily on condition of anonymity. In Lebanon, political parties are sharply divided over the return issue and the means to be adopted. In light of the aggravating burden, “the Lebanese side must prove seriousness in addressing the file rather than complying with regional or international considerations that impede this return,” the source told the daily. The international community has its own considerations in addressing the return file, but Lebanon is bearing the greatest burden of more than two million displaced people which requires a quick and effective measure. The sources said that the Vatican has already issued a warning message to Lebanon that the international community has no desire to return the displaced to Syria. Foreign delegates who visited Lebanon and the reports from major countries all confirm that the file won’t be addressed anytime soon, said the source. The above raises concern of attempted resettlement of displaced Syrians in their places of refuge, something that was considered by some officials of major powers. “Shall this turns out to be serious, it means bringing Lebanon into a very dangerous zone that threatens its future and its entity,” concluded the source. Lebanon hosts an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees that impact its already ailing economy and infrastructure. The Brussels Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region is set on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday aimed to raise financial aid for the 11.7 million Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance. Lebanon will present a plan, it presented two years ago, to reduce its burden of around 1.5 million Syrian refugees.

Pompeo set for talks this week in Beirut on oil, aid, Hezbollah
Hussein Dakroub, The Daily Star/March 12/19
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to visit Beirut this week for talks with Lebanese leaders expected to focus on bilateral relations
BEIRUT: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to visit Beirut this week for talks with Lebanese leaders expected to focus on bilateral relations, U.S. military aid to the Lebanese Army, and Hezbollah’s “growing role” in internal Lebanese politics, political sources said Sunday. Pompeo’s visit to Beirut, to take place either on March 14 or 15, would be part of a regional tour that would also take him to Israel and Kuwait. During his quick visit, the top U.S. diplomat will meet separately with President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri, Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, an official source said. The source said the marine border dispute between Lebanon and Israel would also figure high in Pompeo’s talks with Lebanese officials.
MTV said in its news bulletin Sunday night Pompeo was carrying with him “a list of conditions” that Lebanon must meet in order to curb Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon.
Acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Satterfield, who visited Beirut last week to prepare for Pompeo’s trip, last year unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a deal on the disputed maritime border between Lebanon and Israel, in light of Lebanon’s discovery of potential offshore oil and gas reserves and fears that Israel would drill in these waters.
As a result of tough sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Hezbollah as well as on its main backer Iran, in an attempt to dry up the group’s financial sources, party leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah called last Friday for donations after acknowledging the party was facing financial difficulties due to Western sanctions. The U.S. and Gulf states brand Hezbollah a “terrorist organization.” During his visit to Beirut last week, Satterfield warned in meetings with senior Lebanese officials Lebanon against toeing pro-Iran policies by urging the new government to make “national choices,” not choices imposed by “external parties,” in a clear reference to Tehran’s influence in the country through Hezbollah. Contrary to custom, Satterfield did not meet with Aoun, fueling speculation that Washington might have wanted to express its disapproval of the president’s political stances, viewed by many as favoring Hezbollah, and especially his support for normalizing ties with the Syrian regime. Satterfield also did not meet with Berri, who was reported over the weekend to have said he would have rejected a meeting with the U.S. official had he requested it. Berri recalled a stormy meeting with Satterfield last year focusing on the marine border dispute between Lebanon and Israel. In Berri’s view, Satterfield did not play the role of a mediator in the dispute but adopted Israel’s position and sought to exert pressure on Lebanon to accept an American proposal for a solution to the border crisis that would eventually serve the Jewish state’s interest.
Pompeo’s visit also comes a few weeks after U.S. Ambassador Elizabeth Richard warned Lebanon of Hezbollah’s “growing role” in the new Cabinet, saying this threatened the country’s stability.
Despite growing U.S. concerns over Hezbollah’s role in Lebanese politics, the U.S. continues to support the Lebanese Army.
Since 2005, the U.S. has given the Army over $2 billion. This year, the country is expected the give the Army more than $350 million in military aid.
Pompeo’s visit to Beirut comes less than two weeks before Aoun’s planned two-day trip to Russia. While in Moscow on March 25-26, his first since his election as president in 2016, Aoun will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on bilateral relations, the Syrian refugee crisis and the stalled Russian initiative aiming to secure the return of displaced Syrians in Lebanon to their country, the official source said. The source added that the offshore oil and gas issue would be discussed during the meeting. Russian company Novatek is part of a consortium that includes France’s Total and Italy’s Eni and is expected to begin exploring Lebanon’s potential offshore oil and gas reserves later this year.
Meanwhile, the issue of fighting corruption continued to reverberate across the country, dominating the political scene over the weekend. Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdel-Latif Derian, the head of Lebanon’s highest Sunni religious authority, threw his weight behind former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora for the second time in less than a week, rejecting corruption accusations again him. “The indirect accusations against [former] Premier Fouad Siniora are fabrications, a premature verdict and an act of injustice,” a statement issued Saturday after a meeting of the Higher Islamic Council chaired by Derian at Dar al-Fatwa, the seat of the Sunni mufti, said. The statement called for a “relevant and honest judiciary” to do its job in investigating corruption charges made by politicians and lawmakers over the past few weeks. The statement called for fighting corruption within a legal framework and for holding corrupt people accountable on the basis of official documents that do not stem from “political spitefulness.”
Derian had said Siniora, whose government had been accused of illegally spending $11 billion in extrabudgetary expenditures during his tenure from 2005 to 2009, was a “red line.”Hezbollah has launched a self-proclaimed campaign against corruption rampant in public administrations and ministries. Nasrallah said the campaign would continue to the end. Siniora has denied the $11 billion in extrabudgetary spending during his tenure was illegal, lashing out at Hezbollah for reviving the controversy.
Copyright © 2019, The Daily Star. All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

NAYA| The women who shaped Lebanon
Maysaa Ajjan and Hala Mezher/Annahar/March 12/19
The women’s liberation movements in Lebanon date back to the 1920s, when the Women’s Union was established in Lebanon and Syria. The union focused on cultural and social issues, was registered with the French system in 1927, and held conferences in Beirut in 1927, 1928, and 1930.
After Lebanon gained its independence in 1943, four feminism scenes emerged. All those differed in their demands, political discourses, and temporality.
While the core values that united advocates of women’s rights were almost the same, each advocate had a voice of her own that distinguished her from the rest.
Whether it was using politics to their advantage or protesting through the pen, these women were certainly the unsung heroes of Lebanese history.
NAYA| Looking back on 2018: Lebanon's headlines for the "Year of the Women"
After digging into the history and evolvement of women’s rights in Lebanon, NAYA came up with a list of heroes that she believes did not get the credit they deserved.
May Ziade (1886– 1941)
May Ziade was a Lebanese-Palestinian poet, essayist and translator.
Known as a prolific writer, she wrote for Arabic newspapers and periodicals and she wrote a number of poems and books. She was a key figure in the early 20th-century Arab literary scene and is known for being a pioneer of oriental feminism. Her personal life, however, was marred by tragedy.
After suffering a series of personal losses, beginning with the death of her parents and a number of her friends, Ziadeh was placed in a psychiatric hospital by her relatives to gain control over her estate.
Ziade was profoundly humiliated and incensed by this incident; she eventually recovered and left after a medical report proved that she was of sound mental health. She returned to Cairo where she died on October 17, 1941.
Rose Al Yusuf (1897 - 1958)
The Lebanese-born Rose Al Yusuf played an instrumental role in shaping Egyptian theater. She acted with prominent groups and directors such as Iskandar Farah and Mohammad Abdul Kodoos.
She later left theater and founded “Rose Al Yusuf,” the first art magazine to be published by a woman in Egypt, if not in the whole region. The magazine ran for 10 years but was severely opposed and boycotted by political opposition, which led to its eventual bankruptcy. Nevertheless, it marked Al Yusuf’s name in the Arab literary world.
Emily Nasrallah (1931 – 2018)
Novelist, journalist, freelance writer, teacher, lecturer, and women's rights activist are only some of the titles bestowed on the award-winning writer Emily Nasrallah.
She started her journalistic and writing career while she was still in college. Her first novel “Birds of September” was published in 1962. This novel was followed by six novels, eight children's books, thirteen short story collections, and eleven non-fiction books that explore themes such as family roots, Lebanese village life, the war in Lebanon, and the struggle of women for independence and self-expression.
She is one of many Lebanese women authors who stayed in Beirut, wrote about the conflict, and shared their experiences of the war.
Nazirah Jumblatt (1890–1951)
Nazira Jumblatt was one of the earliest Druze leaders and the mother of Lebanese politician Kamal Jumblatt.
Upon the assassination of her husband Fouad Jumblatt in 1921, Nazira took on the political role and leadership of the Jumblatt family, becoming the first Druze woman to do so in an era that completely prohibited women from taking an active role in politics. She learned the English and French languages during her rule of three decades under the French mandate.
Anbara Salam Khalidi (1897 - 1986)
Khalidi was born into a prominent political family under Ottoman rule and was able to acquire an education. She later on became a writer and translator. As a teenager, Khalidi participated in establishing an Arabic Women’s society, which was aimed at financing girls’ education and became one of the founders of the Society of Women’s Renaissance.
Through her articles, she encouraged Arab women to take on more active political roles and was the first Lebanese woman to publicly discard the veil. She published her story “Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist: The Life and Activism of Anbara Salam Khalidi” in 1978, which was translated in 2013.
“What sin have I, the Arab girl, committed in God's sight, to deserve as punishment a life filled with repression and denial?'' Expressed Khalidi to Prince Faisal in a conversation. Khalidi is believed to have been instrumental to the women’s liberation movement in Lebanon.
Anissa Rawda Najjar (1913 - 2016)
Najjar made it her life’s mission to improve the status of women in rural areas. To that end, she advocated for accessible healthcare and education for people living in remote areas and co-founded the first ‘Village Welfare Society’ in 1953 in order to empower women economically and promote literacy.
Najjar represented Lebanese women in several international conferences and became Editor-in-Chief of the magazine “Al-Urwa Al Wuthqa.” She also acted as secretary of both the Lebanese Council for Women and the Druze Orphanage. She was awarded on several occasions for her unmatched contributions.
Nazik Al-Abid (1898 - 1959)
Known for being a vocal opponent of Ottoman and French Control, Abid was given the title “Joan of Arc of the Arabs.” Abid grew up in a wealthy Damascus family, but was exiled from the country four times for her controversial views. Abid was outspoken about her aspirations for secularism and women’s liberation.
She is the founder of the Red Star Society and had a prominent role in the famous Battle of Maysalun, for which she was honoured by Prince Faisal. Abid also founded a magazine, a school for girls and the ‘The Working Women’s Society’.
She eventually fled to Lebanon in 1921 after a clash with the French authorities, where she met and married Muhammad Jamil Bayhum and continued to relentlessly fight all forms of injustice.
Laure Moghaizel (1929 - 1997)
The legal authority and advocate of human rights was known for her unprecedented work in pursuit of gender equality. Moghaizel was motivated by the belief that women’s rights were an irreducible part of human rights.
Moghaizel launched several campaigns that aimed to educate Lebanese citizens on their rights and the laws and participated in organizing peaceful demonstrations to protest the excessive violence of war. She co-founded the Non-Violence Movement, the Human Rights Association, and the Lebanese Democratic Party in 1970.
In 1996, Moghaizel became the first Arab woman in the United Nations Committee for Human Rights and led the effort of pushing the Lebanese Government to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).-

Iran wants to turn Iraq into another Lebanon
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Arab News/March 12/2019
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/72916/%d8%b9%d8%a8%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b1%d8%ad%d9%85%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%b4%d8%af-%d8%a5%d9%8a%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%86-%d8%aa%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%82-%d9%84%d8%a8/
The visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Baghdad this week — his first since he took office six years ago — comes amid heavy pressure on the Iraqis exerted by the Tehran regime, which wants to use Iraq as an escape route away from American sanctions. Given these pressures and threats, do we have to worry that Iraq will become an Iranian satellite?
Tehran succeeded in entering the Iraqi arena following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Since then, it has participated in marginalizing the US presence through its support of Sunni and Shiite armed groups.
Iran now intends to turn Iraq into another “banana republic,” just like Lebanon; subsequently exploiting it with the recruitment of militants who would fight on its behalf around the world, as they are currently doing in Syria under Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s command. It also wants Iraq to become its financial agent, funding Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Bashar Assad’s Syrian government with billions of dollars.
Iran does not wish Iraq to have a strong authority, but rather be a weak state like Lebanon, governed by militias like Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq. However, Iraq is a big country that has its own interests and aspirations, which are incompatible with the interests and ideas of the extremist religious regime in Tehran.
Furthermore, Iran is a country under siege, while Iraq is open to the world. Today, Iraq enjoys its best relations and circumstances since 1990, and is in a transitional phase of development that will drive it to become one of the wealthiest countries in the region. It can play an independent, sovereign and free role without being subservient or subordinate to any other country.
Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi is well aware of Iraq’s status, and he knows well the available options. Abdul-Mahdi knows that Rouhani wants him to give up his country’s interests after he said in Tehran on Monday: “We have supported the Iraqi people in their difficult days.” However, Iran would have escaped the US siege had it agreed to abandon its nuclear project, and stopped exporting chaos and rebellions, as well as its foreign military interventions. So why should the Iraqis pay for Tehran’s extremist policies?
Tehran is now more besieged than ever: Its oil tankers are abandoned in the middle of oceans, it cannot use the US dollar when selling its carpets, pistachios and vegetables, and it has been deserted even by China and Russia, the two countries on whose support it was counting in its preparations for the confrontation with the US. Indeed, Iran was not forced to fight these battles: Rather, its regime is the one that chose to play the role of the villain in the region, which is why it is facing this situation and a siege like the one Saddam faced in the past.
Iraqis must now realize that what is going on is an international battle, and they will lose all that they have achieved since stability and state authority returned to Baghdad.
Rouhani, Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, Soleimani and all Iran’s senior officials who have visited Baghdad want Iraq to become a subordinate satellite state. Lebanon is a clear example, as it has been fighting and suffering on behalf of Iran since the 1980s. Iraq will not be luckier than the current, divided Lebanon if it falls under Iranian control.
*Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran columnist. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya news channel, and former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat. Twitter: @aalrashed

Latest LCCC English Miscellaneous Reports & News published on March 12-13/2019
British MPs Reject Brexit Deal for Second Time
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 12/19/British MPs overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal for a second time on Tuesday, pitching Britain into the unknown just 17 days before it is due to split from the European Union. The House of Commons voted by 391 to 242 to reject the divorce deal, even after May secured further guarantees from Brussels over its most controversial elements. The move risks unleashing economic chaos, as Britain is scheduled to end ties with its biggest trade partner after 46 years on March 29, no matter what. Appealing to MPs in a voice half-breaking due to a cold, May had urged them to avoid the "economic shock" of leaving without an agreement. But she also warned euroskeptics, many of whom have campaigned to leave the EU for their whole careers, that if her deal failed, so might Brexit. May has promised to allow MPs to vote on a "no deal" option on Wednesday and if that is rejected, to decide on Thursday whether to ask the EU to delay Brexit. "If this vote is not passed tonight, if this deal is not passed, then Brexit could be lost," she said before the vote. However, euroskeptics believe the deal is so bad it is worth the risk of leaving with no plan. "We must take what now seems to be the more difficult route but in the end the one that preserves our self-respect," said former foreign minister Boris Johnson, a favorite to succeed May if she steps down. "It is to leave on March 29 as required by law and to become once again an independent country able to make our own choices."
Not a single change
After MPs first rejected the 585-page Brexit deal in January, May promised changes to the hated backstop plan which is intended to keep open the border with Ireland. Weeks of talks failed to make a breakthrough, but May made a last-minute trip to Strasbourg to meet EU leaders on the eve of the vote. She announced she had secured the promised "legally binding changes" to the backstop, which would keep Britain in the EU's customs union if and until a new way was found to avoid frontier checks. But hours later, however, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said the additions would not completely allay MPs fears of being trapped in the arrangement forever.It did not take long for Brexit-supporting MPs in May's Conservative party, and her allies, Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), to declare their opposition. Opposition Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn also urged parliament to vote down May's plan. "After three months of running down the clock, the prime minister has, despite very extensive delays, achieved not a single change to the withdrawal agreement," he said. Some euroskeptics changed their mind, however, urging their colleagues not to risk everything. Former minister Edward Leigh said: "You may not like the deal, it's not perfect, but it delivers Brexit and let's go for it." The pound, which has been highly volatile since the 2016 referendum which saw Britons narrowly vote to leave the EU, made gains against the euro after May's deal on Monday but fell sharply on Tuesday as it became increasingly clear the deal would be defeated.
'No third chance'
The backstop is designed to protect the peace process in Northern Ireland, which involved the removal of border checks with EU member Ireland. Brexit supporters wanted a unilateral way out of it, or a time limit to the arrangement, but the EU said this would make it worthless. But leaders across Europe also united behind a message that this was the best and final offer Britain could expect. "There will be no third chance," European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said after his talks on Monday with May. If MPs vote against a "no deal" exit on Wednesday, and want to postpone Brexit, the other 27 EU nations would need to agree. Their leaders will meet in Brussels for a summit on March 21-22. But any postponement may have to be short-lived. Juncker on Monday said Brexit "should be complete before the European elections" at the end of May.

Several Nations Ground Their Boeing 737 MAX Planes
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 12/19/ Wave of Countries Ban Boeing 737 MAX Jets after Ethiopia Crash. Britain, France and Germany joined a growing list of countries to ban Boeing 737 MAX planes from their airspace on Tuesday as airlines around the world grounded the jets following a second deadly accident in just five months. On Sunday a new Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 went down minutes into a flight to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board, from 35 countries. In October, a Lion Air jet of the same model crashed in Indonesia, killing 189 -- but no evidence has emerged to link the two incidents. The widening airspace closures puts pressure on Boeing, the world's biggest planemaker, to prove 737 MAX planes are safe as increasing numbers of fleets have been grounded. Turkish Airlines was among the latest to announce it was suspending its 12 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft from flying from Wednesday, until "uncertainty" was clarified. Low-cost airline Norwegian Air Shuttle, South Korea's Eastar Jet and South Africa's Comair also said they would halt flights, but the full extent of the impact on international travel routes was unclear. On Twitter, U.S. President Donald Trump weighed in on the probe investigating the Ethiopian Airlines crash, writing: "Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly.""Pilot are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT," he wrote, referring to the prestigious university in Massachusetts.
U.S. carriers have so far appeared to maintain confidence in Boeing, which has said it is certain the planes are safe to fly. U.S. federal aviation authorities, the FAA, have not grounded Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft but have ordered the manufacturer to make design changes. The move was not enough to reassure the UK Civil Aviation Authority, which said in a statement headlined "Boeing 737 MAX Aircraft" that it was banning the planes from UK airspace "as a precautionary measure."Global air travel hub Singapore, as well as Australia, Malaysia and Oman were among the other countries to ban all 737 MAX planes from their airspace. China, a hugely important market for Boeing, had already ordered domestic airlines to suspend operations of the plane on Monday, as did Indonesia. Elsewhere Argentina's flag carrier also grounded five MAX 8 aircraft on Tuesday, as did airlines in countries including Brazil and Mexico. But several airlines said they were not canceling MAX 8 flights. "The Boeing 737 MAX is a highly sophisticated aircraft," said India's SpiceJet, which has 13 of the MAX 8 variants in its 75-strong fleet. "It has flown hundreds of thousands of hours globally and some of the world's largest airlines are flying this aircraft," it said in a statement.
'Significant industry impact'
Boeing has described the MAX series as its fastest-selling family of planes, with more than 5,000 orders placed to date from about 100 customers. But not since the 1970s -- when the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 suffered successive fatal incidents -- has a new model been involved in two deadly accidents in such a short period. The weekend crash sent Boeing shares nosediving as much as 12 percent on Monday, wiping billions of dollars off the market value of the company. "I think the impact for the industry is significant," said Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based aviation analyst. "We have a new type of aircraft -- that type of aircraft has only been in service for two years -- and... we have two accidents with seemingly similar circumstances." The plane involved in Sunday's crash was less than four months old, with Ethiopian Airlines saying it was delivered on November 15. It went down near the village of Tulu Fara, some 40 miles (60 kilometers) east of Addis Ababa. Inhabitants of the remote area looked on from behind a security cordon as inspectors searched the crash site and excavated it with a mechanical digger. Ethiopian Airlines said the pilot was given clearance to turn around after indicating problems shortly before the plane disappeared from radar. The airline's chief executive Tewolde GebreMariam said the plane had flown in from Johannesburg early Sunday, spent three hours in Addis and was "dispatched with no remark," meaning no problems were flagged. Investigators have recovered the black box flight recorders, which could potentially provide information about what happened, depending on their condition.
The crash cast a pall over a gathering of the U.N. Environment Program as it opened in Nairobi -- at least 22 staff from several U.N. agencies were on board the doomed flight. Delegates hugged and comforted one another as they arrived at the meeting with the U.N. flag flying at half-mast. Other passengers included tourists and business travelers. Kenya had the highest death toll among the nationalities on the flight with 32, according to Ethiopian Airlines. Canada was next with 18 victims. There were also passengers from Ethiopia, Italy, the United States, Britain and France.

Algerians Take to Streets Despite Bouteflika Concessions
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/Algerians took to the streets of the capital Algiers Tuesday to protest against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's decision to delay presidential elections indefinitely. His announcement Monday to withdraw his candidacy for a fifth term cheered his opponents. But on Tuesday, there was more skepticism over his decision to delay an April 18 election without setting a new date, which opponents say could leave him in power indefinitely. Many protesters are now demanding that Bouteflika step down April 18 instead of waiting for a new vote. More student protests are planned in other cities and nationwide protests are expected Friday. Bouteflika, 82, abandoned his bid for a fifth term, bowing to weeks of rallies against his 20-year rule by people demanding a new era of politics in a country dominated by an old guard. Protesters question Bouteflika's fitness for office after a 2013 stroke that has left him largely hidden from public view. Veteran Algerian diplomat, Lakhdar Brahimi, and protest groups will join a conference planning the country’s future after Bouteflika’s announcement, a government source said on Tuesday. Brahimi, a former foreign minister and UN special envoy, is expected to chair the conference, the source told Reuters. It will oversee the transition, draft a new constitution and set the date for elections. After meeting the president on Monday, Brahimi praised protesters for acting responsibly, saying on state television that it was necessary to “turn this crisis into a constructive process”. French President Emmanuel Macron said Bouteflika’s decision opened a new chapter and called for a “reasonable duration” to the transition period. Algeria’s powerful military is expected to play a behind-the-scenes role during the transition and is currently considering several civilians as candidates for the presidency and other top positions, political sources said.

Netanyahu: Allowing Fund Transfer to Gaza Prevents Establishment of Palestinian State
Ramallah- Kifah Zboun/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that allowing Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza was part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority divided, preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu explained that, in the past, the PA transferred the millions of dollars to Hamas in Gaza, a source in Monday’s Likud faction told the Jerusalem Post. He argued that it was better for Israel to serve as the pipeline to ensure the funds don’t end up in the hands of terrorists. “Now that we are supervising, we know it’s going to humanitarian causes,” the source said quoting Netanyahu. “Whoever is against a Palestinian state should be with” transferring the funds to Gaza because maintaining a separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, Netanyahu further noted. Netanyahu’s comments followed Qatar’s announcement on Monday of sending the fourth batch of its funds to poor families in Gaza. A total of 55,000 families in the Strip receive $100 payment each. The aid is part of a $150 million Qatari grant, some of which was used in the past to pay salaries to Hamas employees before the dispute.Head of Qatar's National Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza Strip Mohammad al-Amadi arrived in the strip on Sunday to oversee the distribution of $5.5 million to Gaza's poorest families. He arrived one day before UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov. They both oversee specific aspects of stabilizing calm in the Gaza Strip. While Egypt has been working on establishing a ceasefire in Gaza for weeks now. An Egyptian security delegation visited Gaza and Israel several times last week in order to establish a new agreement between the two sides. Hamas demanded Qatari funds be transferred as salaries as well as expanding the fishing area and allowing entry of certain prohibited items to Gaza.

US-backed SDF says 38 ISIS fighters killed in Syria enclave
Reuters, Beirut/Tuesday, 12 March 2019/The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Tuesday 38 ISIS fighters were killed in a US-backed offensive against the extremists’ only remaining enclave in eastern Syria, after the area was pounded in a bombardment overnight. Calm returned to Baghouz with no sign of fighting on Tuesday morning after Reuters TV footage showed the fierce bombardment, during which the enclave was targeted with rockets and fires raged inside. The enclave is the last shred of territory held by the extremists who have been driven from territory in Iraq and Syria over the past four years by an array of enemies, including a US-led international coalition. The SDF has been laying siege to Baghouz for weeks, but repeatedly postponed its final assault to allow the evacuation of thousands of civilians, many of them wives and children of ISIS militants. It finally resumed the attack on Sunday, backed by coalition air strikes. Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF media office, said the SDF command had confirmed 38 ISIS fighters had been killed. Three SDF fighters were killed and 10 wounded, he wrote on Twitter. The extremists had fired two rockets, he added, an indication of continued ISIS resistance.
US-led coalition jets mounted 20 air raids that had destroyed ISIS military vehicles, defensive fortifications, two ammunition stores and a command post. Washington does not believe any senior ISIS leaders are in Baghouz, assessing they have gone elsewhere as part of the group’s shift towards an insurgency, a US defense official has said. The group still operates in remote territory elsewhere and it is widely assessed that it will continue to represent a potent security threat. The bulk of the people evacuated from the diminishing ISIS territory have been transported to a camp for internally displaced people in al-Hol, in northeastern Syria, where the United Nations says conditions are “extremely dire”. The camp, designed to accommodate 20,000 people, is now sheltering more than 66,000, the UN said. Obdurate support voiced by many evacuees for ISIS, particularly among foreigners, has posed a complex security, legal and moral challenge. Those issues were underscored on Friday with the death of the newborn son of Shamima Begum, a British woman who left to join ISIS when she was a schoolgirl.

Syrian Opposition Coalition Backs Renewed Anti-Regime Daraa Protests
Amman, London – Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces hailed the “brave” anti-regime popular protests in the southern Daraa province following the erection of a statue of late President Hafez Assad in the area. Protesters took to the streets of Daraa city on Sunday to call for the overthrow of the regime. Daraa was where peaceful protests against 40 years of autocratic Assad family rule began in 2011, and were met by deadly force, before spreading across the country. The coalition praised the renewed protests, saying Daraa was once again expressing its commitment to the demands of the revolt and the sacrifices of the Syrian people. “The illegitimate regime will not be able to impose itself on the consciences of the free Syrian people,” it stressed in a statement. The Syrian people’s struggle against oppression and injustice is a national duty, it added. The Syrians will continue this struggle through all possible means until they witness the rise of a democratic civil state. “This state refuses to be a symbol of oppression and criminality. It refuses to be a center for the export of terrorism,” said the coalition. Residents of the city of al-Bab in the Aleppo province voiced their solidarity with Daraa, with dozens of locals taking to the streets to protest against the regime. They also took to social media to back the rallies. Social media users throughout Syria also stressed that the “Daraa flame will never be put out,” expressing their commitment to the revolt until the regime is overthrown. The Syrian regime, aided by Russian airpower and Iranian militias, retook control of Daraa from opposition forces in July. But since then, residents of Daraa say disaffection has been growing as Assad’s secret police once more tighten their control and a campaign of arrests has sowed widespread fear. The regime had given schools and regime employees a day off on Sunday to attend a pro-regime rally to inaugurate the new bronze statue of late president, erected on the site of the previous statue felled by protesters. That rally broke up after gunfire from near the square caused panic among attendees, a witness said. A group of youths protesting in Daraa’s old quarter carried a placard reading: “It will fall. Your statue is from the past, it’s not welcome here.” Lawyer and activist Adnan Masalma said: “People have gathered without organization and to peacefully demonstrate over just demands.”“The country has been destroyed and, instead of reconstruction, we place memorials,” read another protest placard.

As ISIS Fight Nears End, Violence Flares on Other Syrian Front
Beirut- Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/While the final battle to retake the ISIS group's last pocket of territory rages in eastern Syria, violence is escalating in the country's northwest, pitting al-Qaida-linked militants against Syrian regime forces.
The alarming violence in the Idlib region threatens to unravel a truce reached between Turkey and Russia last year that averted a bloody assault by regime forces to retake the province, the last major rebel stronghold in war-torn Syria. The escalation raises fears once more of a major assault by the forces of President Bashar Assad. Idlib has been in the hands of opposition forces for years, even as Assad's military has succeeded in retaking other rebel enclaves one after the other. The province is now home to some 3 million people, many of them displaced from other former opposition territory. Earlier this year, al-Qaida-linked militants took over the province, squeezing out most other factions after clashes with Turkey-backed opposition fighters.
Since then, government forces have intensified airstrikes and bombardment of Idlib towns. Since mid-February, some 100,000 people have been displaced, largely by government bombardment, and have fled to villages deeper in rebel-held territory, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights. The group said that around 140 people, including 69 civilians, have been killed.The mounting violence points to how Syria's nearly 8-year-long civil war still has the capability to burst once more into major bloodshed. The focus of the US and other countries has been on defeating the ISIS group, which once held eastern and northern Syria, and Assad's conflict with his opponents has quieted in recent months after government victories and the truce. But the root of that conflict remains. The militants, from an al-Qaida-linked group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, Arabic for the Levant Liberation Committee, have also stepped up their attacks - in retaliation, they say, for the government bombardment. In the early hours of a cold morning earlier this month, militants attacked several Syrian army positions and checkpoints on the edge of Idlib in the village of Masasneh, killing nearly two dozen soldiers - one of the most serious attacks on government forces since the truce reached in September. The attack triggered hours of fighting and bombardment that killed and wounded dozens of insurgents.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry warned afterward that the military was in "full readiness" to deal with repeated violations of the truce.
Russia, which backs Assad, and Turkey, which supports opposition factions, put together the truce in September. They agreed to establish a 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles) deep demilitarized zone in Idlib in which they said militants will not have a presence. The deal also offered the Syrian government and Russia one of their main demands - opening two key highways that pass through Idlib and link northern Syria with Damascus and other cities. But neither provision was implementing despite a deadline for opening the roads by the end of 2018.
Still, the truce has been vital to keeping a degree of calm and preventing an all-out battle for Idlib that could be extremely bloody and drag in Russia and Turkey. The US deputy ambassador at the United Nations, Jonathan Cohen, last month expressed American concern over the increase in government airstrikes and other violence in Idlib. "Terrorism cannot be used as a pretext for targeting civilians," he said in a reference to al-Qaida-linked group's control of the area. "Any major military operation in Idlib would be a reckless escalation of the conflict and would result in a humanitarian catastrophe far beyond what we've witnessed." The main immediate aim of the government operations appears to be to eventually force open the key highways crossing though Idlib - the M5 that links southern and northern Syria and the M4 that links the coastal city of Latakia with the northern city of Aleppo, said Akram al-Ahmad, a Turkey-based Syrian opposition activist who heads a monitoring group called the Syrian Press Center. The towns most targeted by government bombardment have been Khan Sheikhoun, Saraqeb, and Maaret al-Numan, which control the M5 highway. An HTS military commander known as Abu Khaled al-Shami released a video statement Wednesday expressing pride for killing government soldiers and vowing more attacks. "Hayat Tahrir al-Sham will retaliate forcefully if regime forces try to advance toward liberated areas," he said. The leaders of Russia and Turkey held another summit in mid-February after which both leaders said there will be no offensive by Syrian government forces on Idlib and promised to work together to prevent the province from becoming a "stronghold of terrorists."On Friday, Turkey's defense minister said Turkey and Russia will begin patrols in the demilitarized zone in Idlib - though violence continued over the weekend despite some patrols.
Turkey has struggled to rein in HTS.
According to al-Ahmad and Rami Abdurrahman who heads the Observatory, there appears to be a split within HTS. On one side is its leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who has gotten closer to Turkey, and on the other is an Egyptian religious figure in the group known as Abu al-Yaqzan al-Masri, who represents hard-liners in HTS opposing Turkey's role. Al-Masri defected from the group in February along with other hard-liners. Another militant group in Idlib, Horas al-Din, is also resisting the Turkish mediation. The group, made up mostly of non-Syrian al-Qaida-linked fighters, rejected the demilitarized zone, calling it a "great conspiracy." The Syrian regime has repeatedly vowed that its forces will eventually retake the whole country. The regime "is determined more than ever to regain control of its land and liberate from terrorism and illegitimate foreign presence," said the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja'afari.

SDF Says Assault on ISIS Pocket Almost Over
Beirut- Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/The ISIS group was close to defeat in its final pocket on Tuesday after ferocious bombardments overnight and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said the offensive to capture the area was nearly over. The besieged enclave of Baghouz is the last shred of territory held by the militants who have been driven from roughly one-third of Iraq and Syria over the past four years by its enemies, including a US-led international coalition. “The operation is over, or as good as over, but requires a little more time to be completed practically on the ground,” SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel told al-Hadath TV. ISIS was still putting up resistance with weapons including car bombs. The Baghouz enclave was targeted with barrages of rockets overnight and fires raged inside, but the bombardments ceased on Tuesday morning. The SDF has been laying siege to Baghouz for weeks but repeatedly postponed its final assault to allow the evacuation of thousands of civilians, many of them wives and children of ISIS militants. It finally resumed the attack on Sunday, backed by coalition air strikes. Gabriel said 25 ISIS militants had been confirmed killed so far in clashes, in addition to an unknown number of militants killed by air strikes. Another SDF official earlier said 38 jihadists had been confirmed killed. The SDF, which is spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, has been advancing slowly into Baghouz to minimize its losses from sniper fire and landmines. Three SDF fighters have been killed, Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF media office, said on Twitter. Besieged by SDF, ISIS called on supporters across the world to stage attacks in their defense, according to a newly released audio recording. The brief, minute-and-a-half recording, released by ISIS supporters on social media and reported by the SITE Intelligence Group late on Monday said that men, women and children in Baghouz are being subjected to a "holocaust by the Crusaders," which is militant jargon for the US-led coalition against ISIS. In the audio, an unidentified ISIS militant calls on Muslim "brothers, in Europe and in the whole world" to "rise against the Crusaders and ... take revenge for your religion." As the man speaks, cracks of gunfire can be heard in the background, apparently meant to suggest that he is in Baghouz. ISIS' defenses include extensive tunnels and its most hardened foreign fighters are holed up inside the enclave, the SDF has said. However the United States does not believe any senior ISIS leaders are in Baghouz, assessing they have gone elsewhere as part of the group’s shift toward an insurgency, a US defense official has said. The group still operates in remote territory elsewhere and it is widely assessed that it will continue to represent a potent security threat. The bulk of the people evacuated from the diminishing ISIS territory have been transported to a camp for internally displaced people in al-Hol, in northeastern Syria, where the United Nations says conditions are dire.The camp, designed to accommodate 20,000 people, is now sheltering more than 66,000, the UN said. Obdurate support voiced by many evacuees for ISIS, particularly among foreigners, has posed a complex security, legal, and moral challenge.

Shtayyeh Begins Consultations to Form Fatah-dominated Government
Ramallah - Kifah Ziboun/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/Palestinian Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Shtayyeh started consultations on the formation of his new government with contacts within the Fatah movement.The new government is expected to be significantly dominated by Fatah, with the participation of factions in the PLO and independents. Well-informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that Shtayyeh would meet with his colleagues in the Central Committee for internal discussions and then meet PLO factions, civil society organizations and independents to form a political government within two weeks. The Palestinian law grants the prime minister-designate two weeks to form his government. He may be granted another week, if he does not complete his task within the deadline. Sources in the Fatah movement told Asharq Al-Awsat: “Fatah will form this government with those who attend, or more accurately, those among the Palestinian factions and the independents, who want to participate in the government that aims to face the challenges.”The "Popular" and "Democratic" fronts are expected to boycott the government, while other factions such as the People’s Party, the Popular Struggle Front, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Arab Front, and the Fida Party will likely participate in the new cabinet. Deputy-head of Fatah movement, Mahmoud al-Alloul, said that Shattiyeh began his contacts with all sides, stressing that the new government should be supported at this special and difficult period. He added that the government’s first task was to “withstand and meet all the current challenges.”The new cabinet will be formed amid growing disagreements between Fatah and Hamas over government sponsorship of the Gaza Strip, in addition to a deepening financial crisis in light of a US decision to cut off funds and Israel’s retention of tax revenue funds after a dispute over a deduction of money paid by the PA to families of prisoners and fighters.

After Assuming Office, Raisi Pledges to Fight Corruption in Iran
London - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/New head of the Iranian judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, pledged to fight corruption, calling on the government and parliament to reform “the structures that generate corruption in the country.”Appointed to his post last week, Raisi assumed office on Monday, replacing Sadeq Larijani. In a speech on the occasion, he noted that the regime’s structure yields corruption. “No one, regardless of his status, has the right to circumvent the law and commit legal transgressions,” he said, expressing his intention to confront corrupt judges, who “want to harm the reputation of the judiciary.”His remarks came as the judiciary began prosecuting officials responsible for embezzling USD6 billion from the sale of petrochemical products during the term of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The move sparked mixed reactions among Iranians. Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, appointed Raisi to the post through an official decree on Thursday, naming him as the successor to Larijani, who served in the position for more than nine years. Meanwhile, Larijani, who is currently chairman of the Expediency Council, revealed that 17 million files of corruption are compiled annually by the judiciary. He denied, however, any role played by the judiciary in the formation of these files, and said that they were “the outcome of external problems.”

Experts to Asharq Al-Awsat: Iran Will Not Drag Iraq in its Battle against US
Baghdad – Hamza Mustafa/ Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/Iranian President Hassan Rouhani kicked off on Monday an official visit to Iraq in what Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif had described as a “historic” trip, while Iraqi President Barham Salih deemed it as “very important.”
Zarif had held talks with his Iraqi counterpart Mohammed al-Hakim in Baghdad on Sunday to prepare for Rouhani’s visit. He announced that Rouhani will hold talks with Shiite authority Ali al-Sistani, even though the top cleric has since 2015 been refusing to meet with politicians, Iraqi or otherwise. The only officials he is willing to meet are United Nations humanitarian representatives. Meanwhile, Iraqi experts noted to Asharq Al-Awsat that Baghdad is unlikely to be dragged into Tehran’s standoff with the United States. MP Abdullah al-Khraybit said that Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s stances reveal that he refuses to become part of any development that contradicts with Iraq’s interests. “No harm can therefore come from Iraq signing as many agreements as possible with Iran without having to fear that it will be harmed by the sanctions imposed on Tehran,” he added. “Abdul Mahdi is driven by politics, not emotions, knowing that Iraq needs Iran’s gas and electricity. There is no substitute for these resources in the near future,” he remarked. “Regardless of the conflict between the US and Iran, all sides in the region must realize that Iraq is beginning to recover” and it can stand on its own two feet without having to be affiliated to any power, he stressed. “Rouhani will therefore not be able to drag us with him” even though he will address the US sanctions during his talks with Iraqi officials, he continued. In fact, Iraq can take advantage of the standoff to achieve its interests, remarked Khraybit. Head of the “Political Thinking Center”, Dr. Ihsan al-Shammari said that Rouhani’s visit was a “turning point” in Iraqi-Iranian relations, noting that it was taking place amid escalating international tensions against Tehran. “This is why Iran is throwing is weight on the Iraqi internal scene on all levels, as demonstrated in the frequent visits by its officials to the country,” he said.“Iraq is no longer Iran’s economic window, but its political one. It has become a meeting point for several of Iran’s opponents,” he stated. “Tehran is thinking about using this window to normalize ties with the US. Baghdad may become the destination for negotiations between Washington and Tehran over the latter’s nuclear program.”Iraqi economic expert Dr. Abdulrahman al-Shammari remarked that Baghdad was not qualified to become part of the economic war between the US and Iran because it needs Washington. He explained that despite the active trade between Iran and Iran, these relations yield no more than $7 billion. Some $2.9 billion go in Iraq’s purchases of gas and electricity and the rest is limited to private sector trade. The situation is completely different with the US, he noted. Washington grants Iraq more than $2 billion in for its Defense Ministry in the form of training and equipment. Iraqi oil also makes up 16 percent of oil imported by American companies, he revealed.

Iran: UK diplomatic protection of jailed mother will not ‘make things easier’
AFP, Tehran/Tuesday, 12 March 2019 /Iran’s foreign ministry warned the UK on Tuesday that giving diplomatic protection to a British-Iranian mother jailed in Tehran would not make the situation “easier”, state news agency IRNA reported. Britain on Friday extended the status to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was arrested in Tehran in 2016. “What is certain is that the British government’s move lacks goodwill and is in no way constructive or positive,” said ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi on Tuesday. “If it does not make the situation more complicated, it will surely not make things easier.”Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who worked for the Thomson Reuters Foundation -- the media organization’s philanthropic arm -- is serving a five-year jail sentence for sedition. She has denied all the charges against her. Diplomatic protection is a rarely-used mechanism allowing governments to seek protection for their citizens on the grounds that they have been wronged by another state. Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Friday that London would take the “extremely unusual” step of extending diplomatic protection to the jailed mother. This would signify the “formal recognition by the British government that her treatment fails to meet Iran’s obligations under international law”, he said. But Ghasemi denied this, saying Zaghari-Ratcliffe is “enjoying all legal and citizenship rights -- both throughout her trial proceedings and during the conviction period”, including medical care. Tehran was informed of the UK’s decision via official channels, and is currently studying the legal and political implications, the spokesman said.Ghasemi dismissed the move as “merely reflecting a political decision by the UK” and said that it would not “in itself bring about a new legal status internally or internationally.”Iran’s envoy to London said last week that the UK’s decision “contravenes international law”, as governments can only exercise such protection for their own nationals. Writing on Twitter, Hamid Baeidinejad said Iran does not recognize dual nationality. “Irrespective of UK residency, MS Zaghari thus remains Iranian,” he wrote.

Iran: Human Rights Lawyer Sentenced to 38 Years in Prison, 148 Lashes
London - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/Nasrin Sotoudeh, an internationally renowned human rights lawyer jailed in Iran, has been sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes, announced her husband, while judiciary authorities said she was sentenced to 7 years. Judge Mohammad Moqiseh at a revolutionary court in Tehran, said on Monday that Sotoudeh had been sentenced to five years for assembling against national security and two years for insulting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Agence-France Presse reported Iranian news outlets. Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, wrote on Facebook that the sentence was decades in jail and 148 lashes, unusually harsh even for Iran.The news comes days after Chief of Judiciary Sadeq Larijani appointed a hardline new head of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi. Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron  invited Sotoudeh to give recommendations to the Group of Seven (G7) nations. Macron, along with a group of human rights advocates, gathered on February 19 at Elysees Palace in Paris to discuss potential strategies that the G7 could employ to reduce violence and discrimination against women. Macron's official letter was delivered to Khandan on March 7 via the lawyer of the French Embassy in Tehran. A copy of the invitation has been sent to the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the Iranian Bar Association. Khandan was previously sentenced to five years in jail for security-related charges, and one year for propaganda against the regime. State agencies reported one of Sotoudeh's lawyers as saying that she chose not to be represented in court because the case did not adhere to the “principles of a fair trial.” Last June, Sotoudeh was arrested and told she had already been found guilty in absentia of espionage charges and sentenced to five years by the court. In 2012, she was awarded the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov Prize for her work on high-profile cases, including those of convicts on death row for offenses committed as minors. Sotoudeh had previously served about half of a six-year jail sentence imposed in 2010 for spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security, charges she denied before being freed in 2013. Last year, Sotoudeh represented a number of women who have removed their headscarf, or hijab, in public to protest against Iran’s mandatory Islamic dress code for women, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group. Sotoudeh, who has represented Iranian opposition activists, embarked on a 50-day hunger strike in 2012 against a travel ban on her daughter, reported Reuters. Her case then caused an international outcry in which the United States and the human rights group Amnesty International criticized Iran.

Former US Navy Veteran Tried in Iran on Security Charges
Tehran- Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/Mashhad prosecutor said Monday that the verdict in the case of former US Navy veteran, who was arrested in the summer of 2018, has been issued. He didn’t reveal the verdict and only said the convict had been indicted on security charges as well as a complaint filed by an individual. Gholamali Sadeghi, the Mashhad prosecutor, told ISNA news agency on Monday that “a verdict for this case has been issued,” adding that he faced unspecified security charges, AFP reported. Sadeghi's remarks contradict a February statement by Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Panahi-Azar, who said the convict faces no security or espionage charges. Micheal White, 46, a former US Navy Veteran from California, was arrested in July 2018 in Iran, when he was paying a visit to his girlfriend, according to remarks by his mother to the New York Times. Iran announced the arrest of the US citizen after few months, and on January 9, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasimi confirmed his arrest and denied him being ill-treated. “The US government has been informed of this arrest through its Interests Office in Tehran,” Qasimi stressed, denying "wrong" US media information about abusing White. US lawmakers began working last week to legislate a new law that puts pressure on Iran to release US detainees. White is the first American known to be detained since Donald Trump became president. Trump has pursued a maximalist campaign against Tehran that includes US withdrawal from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. Joan White, Michael's mother, also revealed to the US newspaper that her son had visited Iran “five or six times” to meet his Iranian girlfriend. She had asked Switzerland, which represents US interests in Iran, to visit the consulate to where her son was being held. There are at least three other US citizens detained in Iran, two of them are Iranians. US-Iranian relations deteriorated sharply last year after Washington unilaterally withdrew from the international agreement on Iran's nuclear program and again imposed sanctions on Iran.

OCHA: Thousands Trapped in Yemen's Northern Flashpoint
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 12 March, 2019/A UN humanitarian agency says thousands of Yemeni civilians caught in fierce clashes between warring factions are trapped in an embattled northern district. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, says the number of displaced in the district of Hajjah has doubled over the past six months, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Tuesday's report by OCHA says the impoverished governorate is home of Yemen's most recent flashpoint district of Kusher where "thousands of civilians are reportedly trapped between conflicting parties."According to AP, Yemen's Houthi rebels are trying to gain control of Kusher after local tribesmen took up arms against the Houthis.

Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 12-13/2019
US Is a Rich Country With Symptoms of a Developing Nation
Noah Smith/Bloomberg/March 12/2019
The other day I was late to dinner, but it wasn’t my fault. Traffic was backed up throughout the city of San Francisco, because chunks of concrete had started falling from the upper deck of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Unfortunately, this wasn't a particularly unusual occurrence -- in 2016, the Bay Bridge was shut after concrete chunks began to fall from the walls of a tunnel. Nor are such issues limited to bridges -- the $2.2 billion Transbay Transit Center was closed in late 2018 when cracks were discovered in the beams.
These little examples are the kind of incidents that one might expect to see in a developing country where things are built cheaply or badly. But California has ruinously high construction costs; Governor Gavin Newsom recently canceled most of the state’s high-speed rail plan after the price tag ballooned from $45 billion to $75 billion. And these problems aren’t limited to California; across the country, construction costs for both the public and private sectors have swelled as productivity has stagnated or fallen. It costs much more to build each mile of train in the US than in heavily unionized France. No one seems to be able to put their finger on the reason -- instead, the US simply seems riddled with corruption, inefficient bidding, high land-acquisition costs, overstaffing, regulatory barriers, poor maintenance, excessive reliance on consultants and other problems. These seemingly minor inefficiencies add up to a country that has forgotten how to build. Unsurprisingly, much of the country’s infrastructure remains in a state of disrepair.
All of this raises a disturbing question: Is it possible for a rich, industrialized country to fall back into the middle ranks? The United Nations classifies countries as developed, developing and a middle category called “in transition.” But it’s generally assumed that the economies in transition are on their way up, not down.
The US is still a very rich nation -- richer than countries such as Germany, Sweden, Japan, Canada or Denmark. But that wealth masks a number of glaring areas where the US looks more dysfunctional than its peers. Construction costs are one of these. Another is health care -- the US’s hybrid public-private system ends up costing much more than other countries’ government-dominated systems.
And this number is rising steadily. But for all this lavish spending, the US tends to get worse health outcomes on many measures. Some alarming recent trends highlight just how much the system is failing. Five years ago, life expectancy, which is still rising in most other countries, began to fall in the US.
Most countries have also seen declines in maternal mortality. But in the US, the rate has risen in recent years.
And thanks in part to high construction costs and in part to restrictions on housing development, the country is facing a housing-affordability crisis.
It also has a tragic opioid epidemic. Suicide rates have risen substantially. Whole cities have had their drinking water contaminated with lead. Measures of corruption are rising. The list goes on. Other dysfunctions are more long-standing. The US has an incredibly large prison population, and a violent crime rate much higher than other developed nations. It also has more poverty and hunger.
Some have suggested that the US is actually two countries in one -- a developed nation for the rich and a developing one for the poor. But recent trends like the fall in construction productivity and the rise in health costs suggest that inequality isn't the whole story here. The US is simply becoming less efficient along a broad spectrum of measures.
How long can this loss of efficiency go on without hurting the country’s overall wealth? Nobody knows, but if the US does eventually backslide in terms of gross domestic product, it wouldn’t be the first rich country to have done so in recent years. Italy has already traveled that path.
Italy has been politically dysfunctional and divided for a long time. For almost a decade, a corrupt, divisive, populist president, Silvio Berlusconi, made the situation worse. The comparison with the US certainly doesn’t look encouraging.
The US shouldn’t wait and see if current trends persist. Instead, there needs to be a national focus on reducing excessive costs in key industries, improving the population’s health, increasing density in the country’s sprawling cities, upgrading public transit, and reducing corruption and waste in both the public and private sectors. If the US wants to remain a developed country, it should try to look and act more like one.

Ethiopian Crash Throws the Spotlight Back on Boeing
Chris Bryant/Bloomberg/March 12/2019
These are worrying hours for Boeing Co. – and tragic ones for 157 families. The second crash of a 737 Max jet in five months raises inevitable questions about the safety of the US manufacturer’s flagship single-aisle aircraft, even though it’s still not known what caused the latest disaster. The company must respond with total transparency and hope there was nothing it could have done to have avoided Sunday’s crash in Ethiopia.
We don’t know whether what happened to the Ethiopian Airlines plane was the same thing that brought down a Lion Air jet in October and a rush to judgment helps nobody, including the people who’ve lost their lives and their loved ones.
Superficially, there are similarities: Both jets were almost brand new, both experienced difficulties shortly after takeoff and asked to return to the airport. But the details are absolutely crucial here.
In the wake of the Lion Air crash in Indonesia, it emerged that the 737 Max contains software that forces the plane’s nose down in certain circumstances to prevent it stalling. Some pilots weren’t aware of the safety system and felt they should have been told. The New York Times reported that the manufacturer wanted to keep additional pilot training to a minimum (the 737 Max competes with Airbus SE’s 320neo).
Boeing insisted, however, that all pilots know how to override the plane’s automated systems. In view of the Lion Air disaster, it would be surprising if the Ethiopian Airlines pilot was unaware of this procedure. So it’s quite possible the causes of these two crashes are unrelated.
Until there is clarity about the circumstances of the latest disaster, though, passengers will be anxious about flying on the aircraft. Airline owners of the 737 Max, which include Southwest Airlines Co. and American Airlines Group Inc., are monitoring the investigation closely. That the two crashes of a new model of aircraft happened so closely together will add to the sense of urgency.
Given China’s and Ethiopian Airlines’ grounding of Boeing 737 Max planes after the latest crash, there are naturally questions about whether this will now be extended to the global fleet. Such a scenario would obviously be a huge reputational blow to Boeing, which delivered more than 250 Max planes last year and is ramping up production to fulfill more than 5,000 orders. The plane is sold out until 2023.
The jet’s sales success is a big reason why Boeing’s shares are close to a record high and analysts expect it to generate about $15 billion of free cash flow this year.
But all of that is secondary to Sunday’s tragedy. Up until now, it was to the credit of Boeing, Airbus and the airlines that passengers could board a commercial aircraft knowing that a crash was incredibly unlikely. While this remains the case, that there’s even a sliver of doubt about a top-selling aircraft type is a shocking development. Passengers and airlines need answers, quickly.

The World Really Is Getting Richer as Poor Countries Catch Up
Noah Smith/Bloomberg/March 12/2019
Last month, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates touched off a high-profile debate about global poverty after tweeting out a graph from the website Our World in Data showing that the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day (adjusting for inflation and price difference between countries) has fallen dramatically.
Anthropologist Jason Hickel, writing in the pages of the Guardian, took exception, disputed the graph and denied Gates’s assertion. Two of Our World in Data’s creators, Joe Hasell and Max Roser, defended their methodology for measuring poverty, which Hickel then criticized more. The debate was well summarized by Dylan Matthews in Vox.
It’s understandable that some people in the UK and the US would want to embrace a narrative of increasing global immiseration. These rich countries are struggling with their own economic problems — inequality, reduced mobility and wage stagnation — and no doubt those in Hickel's camp also feel guilty for the imperial conquests of past centuries. But that narrative is false. Hickel is wrong, and Gates, Hasell and Roser are correct — global poverty has indeed been dropping at a dramatic and unprecedented rate.
One of Hickel’s main arguments is that the poverty threshold used by Our World in Data — $1.90 a day in 2011 international dollars — is too low. Hickel suggests instead using a threshold of $7.40 a day to measure extreme poverty. If this higher threshold is used, the total number of poor people in the world rose steadily in the 1980s and 1990s, and only began to fall very gradually in the late 2000s. Thus, Hickel declares, global poverty has risen rather than fallen.
But this argument is both economically and morally flawed. Although higher poverty thresholds are important to look at, the lower thresholds are actually more important. A person living on less than $1.90 a day is in danger of starving to death, has no access to life-saving medical care, proper sanitation or basic education. Let's imagine her income rose to $7.39 a day. That increase would be utterly life-changing — still poor, but out of immediate danger and the grueling daily struggle just to stay alive.
But by Hickel’s accounting, this gain in income would represent no reduction in poverty, since $7.39 a day is still less than his chosen threshold of $7.40. This is reflects an analytical failure because he doesn’t appreciate one of the basic tenets of economics — the diminishing marginal utility of consumption, meaning that the less money you have, the more each small increase matters.
In other words, by dismissing the use of very low poverty thresholds, Hickel is willfully ignoring the most important improvement in living standards — the ones that move people away from utter destitution.
Hickel’s second argument is that the poverty graph inaccurately measures the past. Our World in Data’s poverty numbers for 1820 through 1980 are taken from a paper by economists François Bourguignon and Christian Morrisson, although the data from 1981 on come from the World Bank’s PovcalNet database. Hickel notes that simply pasting together two different data sources is inappropriate for drawing comparisons between the recent past and the distant past. He suggests that the true income of people in pre-industrial societies was higher than the economic historians estimate, since they had access to communal lands and other natural resources that measures of market activity miss.
This may or may not be true; as Roser and Hasell note, economic historians do try to account for these non-market sources of production. But even if Hickel is right, that would hurt his argument instead of help.
The basic story of the Our World in Data graph is that the total number of people in poverty rose steadily from 1820 through 1980 and then began to fall. If Hickel is right, colonialism impoverished the world even more than the graph would suggest. But if that’s true, the drop in poverty since 1981 — which is based on World Bank data that Hickel doesn’t dispute — is even more impressive, because it represents such a dramatic reversal of past trends.
But perhaps the biggest flaw in Hickel’s case is that it ignores all the other data corroborating the story that poverty has fallen. Gates didn’t just tweet that one graph — he tweeted a set of six. Two of the other graphs show dramatic increases in literacy rates and years of education. A third shows a steep fall in infant mortality. Still other graphs that Gates didn’t tweet show declines in hunger and undernourishment. If global poverty had really increased, these improvements would almost certainly not have been possible.
The truth is that the past 25 years have seen dramatic improvements in the lives of the poor in many parts of the world. China has outperformed the field, of course, but India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and other populous developing nations have experienced steady growth in recent years. People will no doubt argue endlessly over whether to credit market liberalization or deliberate industrial policy with this miracle — some poor countries used the former, some the latter, and others (such as China) used a mix of both.
But one thing seems clear — it was decolonization that ultimately made it possible for poor countries to start catching up. Free from the crushing burden of producing resources and crops for their colonial masters, many of these countries were able to pursue their own destinies and to experiment with economic policies until they found a mix that worked. The triumph of decolonization is a story that even Hickel should be able to feel happy about.

Rouhani is in Baghdad to harness Iraq’s banks for beating US anti-Iran oil sanctions'
DEBKAfile/March 12/19
Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani started a visit to Baghdad on Monday, March 11, for the main purpose of harnessing Iraq’s banks as Tehran’s main mechanism for beating the US sanction on its oil sales. This is revealed exclusively by DEBKAfile. Rouhani will formalize the deal, which has been in discussion for more than a month between Tehran and Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi. They agreed in principle to set up a mechanism for enabling Iran’s foreign clients to purchase oil and gas, in defiance of President Donald Trump’s sanctions, by registering the transactions as purchases of Iraqi oil. Payment is to be deposited in Iraqi banks in Baghdad and Basra, then quietly transferred in euros to banks in Tehran.
Prime Minister Mahdi does not expect the Trump administration to make trouble over this subterfuge. He is under enormous pressure from Iran and the Iraqi Shiite militias under the thumb of Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani to order US forces to withdraw from Iraq. He therefore believes he holds over Washington’s head a threat to give into Iran’s pressure and order the 5,200 American troops to pack up and leave their bases, should the US take action against the Iraqi banks which collude in busting US sanctions.
This order would undermine the Trump administration’s strategy in the Middle East and the Gulf. The US grants substantial financial and military support to Baghdad to secure a linchpin for this strategy against Tehran’s grab for dominant influence in the Iraqi capital.
However, the deal is in the bag. On Feb. 6, the governor of the Iraqi central bank Abdolnasser Hemmat and his Iranian counterpart Ali Mohsen Ismail al-Alaq reached an agreement in principle. Rouhani, who is accompanied on his three-day visit to Baghdad by foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif and oil minister Bijan Zangeneh, is to add the government’s seal to the transaction.
Meanwhile, Washington warned the Mahdi government against conniving with Tehran to beat America’s anti-Iran sanctions. On Friday, March 8, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo phoned the Iraqi prime minister with a caution. If Iraqi banks go through with the sanctions-busting deal with Tehran, the US will block their access to the international financial markets ruled by the US dollar.
Washington and Baghdad are on the brink of a showdown. It is marked by the impending activation of Iraqi banks for breaking the US embargo on Iranian oil sales, plus Baghdad’s threat to demand the removal of US forces. This impasse is the reason why the US has in recent days sent additional forces to fortify its bases in Iraq, as DEBKAfile’s military sources first reported on March 9. The extra units have been drawn from US bases in Israel and Jordan.

Armed Opposition Groups in Iran
د.جوناسن سبيِّر: المجموعات المعارضة المسلحة في إيران
Dr. Jonathan Spyer/JISS/
Expert on Syria, Iraq, radical Islamic groups, and Kurds
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/72921/dr-jonathan-spyer-jiss-armed-opposition-groups-in-iran%D8%AF-%D8%AC%D9%88%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%86-%D8%B3%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%91%D9%90%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AC%D9%85%D8%B9%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7/
Armed opposition groups emerging from the Kurdish, Baloch and Ahvazi Arab minorities have stepped-up attacks on regime assets in Iran. Tehran is responding by acting against these opponents, in Pakistan and Iraq and further afield. But these insurgencies are not capable by themselves of calling the regime’s viability into question, because of their relatively narrow bases of support.
In recent years, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Iran has emerged as perhaps the leading practitioner in the Middle East of proxy and irregular warfare. First in Lebanon, and later in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories, the IRGC and its expeditionary Qods Force have demonstrated peerless abilities in the field of the founding, organizing, training, financing and deployment of proxy militias, mostly but not exclusively Shi’a, in neighboring countries for the advancement of Iranian goals.
It is interesting, however, to note that the Iranian organs of state are today not the only instigators and aggressors in the field of irregular and paramilitary warfare. Rather, Iran is also the target of several domestic Iranian organizations which seek to foment insurgency against the revolutionary Islamic regime in Tehran. Most, but not all, of these organizations are based among Iran’s ethno-religious minorities.
This article profiles the most significant of these groups and concludes with an assessment of the extent and seriousness of armed opposition to the Iranian regime. The third part analyzes the Iranian response to the challenge of the armed opposition groups.
The article looks at armed opposition movements emerging from the Akhwazi Arab, Kurdish and Baluch minorities in Iran. It begins with a profile of the Mojahedin e-Khalq (MEK) organization, a non-sectarian leftist-Islamic group dedicated to insurgency against the regime.
MEK: The Peoples’ Mojahedin Organization of Iran
The best known and most veteran grouping engaged in armed activities against the Tehran regime is the MEK. A gathering of the movement in France was targeted by the Iranian regime in June 2018. The MEK was founded in 1965 and took an active part in the 1979 revolution against the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran, after which it was forcibly suppressed by the IRGC. MEK members helped guard the US embassy in Tehran during the period of the hostage crisis. The movement decamped en-masse to Iraq, where it supported the Saddam Hussein regime during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. The MEK is alleged to have helped the Saddam regime in its suppression of Shia and Kurdish uprisings.
Today, the MEK is widely regarded as Iran’s largest and most active external opposition group. It has continued a sporadic armed campaign which has included many acts of terrorism and assassinations. In the period 1999-2002 the MEK increased its paramilitary activities against the regime. In Operation ‘Bahman’ in 2000 the movement succeeded in carrying out a mortar attack in Tehran on the compound where the office of the Supreme Leader is located. At this time, the movement also carried out frequent attacks from across the Iraqi border.
This period of increased military activity came to an end, however, with the US invasion of Iraq. MEK ordered its members not to resist coalition forces during the invasion of 2003, officially renounced violence and subsequently surrendered its weapons to the Coalition. It was subsequently removed from the US list of terror organizations.
Following this, 3000 MEK members were permitted to live at Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad. They were resident there under the provisions of the United Nations. The MEK ceded its heavy weapons as part of this arrangement. The MEK was removed by the Iraqi authorities from Camp Ashraf in 2012. This move was seen as part of the growing closeness between the government of Iraq and the Iranian regime. Camp Ashraf later became a base for the Badr Corps – a pro-Iranian Shia militia. Subsequent to their removal from Camp Ashraf, the MEK shifted its main headquarters to Albania, where it remains today. MEK was able to go to Albania following a request from the Obama Administration that Albania accept the group.
MEK was instrumental in the earliest revelations concerning the Iranian nuclear program, which the group revealed in 2002. Specifically, they are credited with making public the existence of the Natanz enrichment facility. It has in the current period turned toward a greater emphasis on public political activity. MEK is active on social media, where its members seek to engage with regime supporters. The Iranian regime allege the existence of a ‘troll farm’ maintained by MEK in Albania, from where coordinated campaigns are launched on social media to discredit Iranian regime messages, harass officials etc.
MEK developed a syncretic ideology including elements of both Shia Islam and Marxism, influenced by the writings of the Iranian political theorist Ali Shariati – a revolutionary Islamist who rejected the concept of Vilayet Faqih, obedience to the religious leader, which is central to the present regime. The movement now claims – in open courtship of U.S. support – to have moved beyond this early outlook and to have abandoned revolutionary politics in favor of liberal democracy, human rights protection and Middle East peace. Many analysts identify an opportunistic and ‘mix and match’ element to the MEK’s current outlook. Some refer to the movement as a ‘cult’ because of the absence of democratic internal structures, and the adulation with which its members regard MEK founding leaders Masoud and Maryam Rajavi.
MEK is reckoned according to a US Department of Defense estimate to have somewhere between 5000-13,000 members. The membership consists almost entirely of Iranian emigres, and the movement has offices throughout Europe and north America.
The Iranian regime accuses MEK of being the recipient of assistance from the US and Israel, though both countries deny this. Iranian regime propaganda further claims that MEK has been involved in what it claims are Israeli assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists over the past decade. In September 2012, the US removed the MEK from its list of designated terrorist organizations. Prominent US figures, including current National Security Advisor John Bolton and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani have appeared at MEK events.
According to most estimates, MEK lacks significant support within Iran. Among other reasons, this is because of its support for Iraq during the traumatic and long Iran-Iraq War, and the Shia Islamist nature of its core ideology. Nevertheless, the movement retains a powerful (and wealthy) external infrastructure. While it is currently favoring political over paramilitary activity, it also, according to many reports, has a sophisticated network for intelligence gathering within Iran.
Regarding the sourcing of the MEK’s funds, little concrete information is available. It appears that the movement was supported by the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq prior to 2003. It also clearly maintains a number of charities and NGOs in the west which enable it to raise money legally, and testimony of former supporters indicate that members are heavily taxed as a requirement of membership. A 2012 article in the International Business Times mentioned the Iranian American Community of North Texas and the Iranian American Cultural Association of Missouri as two examples of community groupings associated with the MEK.
The less clear aspect is the issue of foreign government support for the MEK. The Iranian regime and its mouthpieces allege that the MEK receives support from Israel and Saudi Arabia. Specifically, pro-regime voices claim that Israel has made use of MEK militants and networks inside Iran in order to carry out the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. Such claims can of course by their very nature be neither refuted nor confirmed.
Kurdish Groups
Kurds number around 10% of the Iranian population, or roughly 8 million people. The majority of Iranian Kurds are resident within the area of northwestern Iran which includes Kordestan, Kermanshah and western Azerbaijan provinces. Notably, a significant minority of Iran’s Kurds are Shia Muslims. The population is economically deprived and subject to discrimination at the hands of the authorities. Iran, of course, presents itself as a state ruling in the name of Islam, and hence indifferent to the question of the ethnic identities of its citizens. Also, Kurds and their language are closely related to Persian. As a result, Iran has never made the crude attempts to forcibly and completely suppress Kurdish identity, language and culture in the way that both Kemalist Turkey and Baathist Arab states have.
Nevertheless, the regime is deeply suspicious of any hint of ethnic separatism, and responds to it with force and severe repression. For a short time, there was a Kurdish (Mahabad) Republic during WW2, alongside an Azeri entity, when all of northern Iran was conquered by the Soviet Union; but American pressure in 1946 forced Stalin to abandon it. The memory still feeds Iranian suspicions of both Kurdish and Azeri nationalism.
There are today two main Iranian Kurdish movements engaged in activity against the Iranian regime – namely PJAK (which is a franchise of the PKK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party, which is itself split into two factions – the PDKI and a splinter group, the KDP-I.
PDKI
The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) is one of the most veteran of the militarized political parties which characterize Kurdish political life. Founded in 1945, it was active against the Pahlvi dynasty in Iran, and cooperated with the leftist Tudeh party. As a result, it was the target of repression and attempts at disruption at the hands of the SAVAK security service.
The party took part in the 1979 revolution alongside Islamist and leftist elements, and was subsequently suppressed by the new regime, which rejected Kurdish separatist demands. The PDKI was supported and assisted by the Iraqi regime in the early 1980s and sought to establish an autonomous area around the towns of Nowdesheh and Qasr-e Shirin. This attempt was crushed by the Iranian regime.
The PDKI external leadership has been targeted in subsequent years by the Iranian authorities on a number of notable occasions. In July 1989, party leader Abd’el Rahman Ghassemlou and a number of his associates were assassinated by the IRGC in Vienna after being lured there to take part in talks with Iranian government representatives. In 1992, Ghassemlou’s successor, Sadek Sharafkandi was killed by the regime along with two other prominent PDKI figures, Fattah Abdoli, Homayoun Ardalan, and their translator Nouri Dehkordi in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin. A German court subsequently issued an arrest warrant for Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, accusing him of ordering the murders, with the knowledge of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The killings led to a long period of semi-paralysis by the PDKI. Having located itself in northern Iraq in the KRG-controlled area, it was prevented both by its own weakness, and by the opposition of the Kurdish authorities from carrying out attacks against Iran from this area. From 1996 until 2016, a formal ceasefire prevailed between Iran and the PDKI.
This long period of inactivity came to an end with the launching of the ‘Rasan’, the PDKI’s current campaign, that started in early 2016. The Rasan is not, however, an attempt to launch a general insurgency of the Kurds against the Iranian regime. Rather, it consists in the main of organizational, educational and propaganda activity carried out by PDKI cadres operating from across the border in northern Iraq, making regular forays into the Kurdish towns of western Iran. These cadres are armed. They defend themselves if facing capture at the hands of the IRGC, but they do not at this stage seek confrontation. Rather, they are seeking to recruit members, create networks of support and educate Kurdish young people toward support for Kurdish nationalism. The intention is to carry out the groundwork and create the frameworks for a future Kurdish insurgency against the regime.
The KDP (I) which split from the PDKI in 2006, also maintains its headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan. The split took place because of a dispute over the leadership succession in the party.
The PDKI has since 2016 been engaged in an attempt to lay the foundations for an insurgency among the Kurdish population of Iran, as detailed above On September 8, 2018 the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) launched a missile attack using Fateh 100 SRBMs on the facilities of the two Iranian Kurdish Organizations – the PDKI and KDP-I at Koya (KRG). Drones flown over Koya prior to the missile attack were launched from Kirkuk in Iraq, which is 40km from Koya, and where there is a presence of Shia militia forces associated with Iran.
The September 2018 attacks indicate that Tehran takes Iranian Kurdish insurgent activities seriously and is keen to deal a lethal blow to any putative Kurdish uprising. Tehran is presumably concerned about the possible knock-on effects of the growth of such a campaign. It remains to be seen if the PDKI can acquire the skill level and support which alone could turn its ‘Rasan’ campaign into more than an irritant for the Iranian regime.
Today, the PDKI has around 2000 fighters, based within Iran in the border area between Iraqi Kurdistan and south western Iran.
PJAK
PJAK (Kurdistan Free Life Party) is a franchise of the PKK organization. Founded in 2004, it has waged an intermittent armed struggle against the Iranian regime in subsequent years. Like the PDKI, PJAK operates within Iran, from the mountainous border area between Iraq and Iran. In the period 2004-11, the organization waged a determined insurgency against the Iranian authorities in Kordestan and Kermanshah provinces. Representative actions from this period included an attack on a police station in Kermanshah on April 9, 2009 in which 8 PJAK members and 18 policemen were killed, according to an official Iranian report.
On July 16, 2011, the Iranian armed forces launched a major counterattack against PJAK into the mountainous region of northern Iraq. After three months of fighting which saw around 180 PJAK fighters killed, PJAK retreated a kilometer from the border and a ceasefire was declared. Some Kurdish sources maintain that the ceasefire was agreed to by the Kurds as a quid pro quo for the Iranians permitting the establishment of the autonomous Kurdish area in Syria. While this cannot be verified with absolute certainty, it is plausible. Since this time, PJAK has remained on ceasefire. The organization has around 3000 fighters, however, and continues to maintain its bases in the Qandil area, presumably benefitting from the large infrastructure of support available to PKK-associated forces in that area.
PJAK’s ceasefire has come close to fraying on several occasions, and similarly to the PDKI, the group continues to conduct political and educational activities inside Iran, and to respond when attacked by Iranian state forces. This leads to casualties on both sides. For example, 10 IRGC members were killed by PJAK fighters in a clash in the Mariwan area in July ,2018. PJAK said it launched the attack in retaliation for the assassination of one of its members, the political activist Iqbal Muradi, in the Sulaimaniya province of the KRG.
A number of smaller Kurdish groups, including the PAK and Komala, maintain small armed capabilities against the Iranian regime. As is the case elsewhere in their region, the Iranian Kurds are handicapped by their factionalism and inability to unify. The factionalism is the product of old organizational loyalties and personal differences between leaders rather than major ideological disputes in the case of the various iterations of the PDKI and Komala. The ideological differences between PDKI and PJAK are substantive, however, in terms of strategy and goals. Both PJAK and PDKI are well organized groups with a considerable number of committed cadres.
The situation of the Kurdish organizations in the border area is further complicated by the fact that the eastern part of the KRG is dominated by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) which itself has a close if ambiguous relationship with the Iranian regime.
Baloch Groups
The Baloch are a small minority in Iran, constituting around 3% of the population. Sistan-Balochestan Province, adjoining the Iranian border with Pakistan, in the south east of the country is one of the country’s poorest provinces. In an interview published on Iranian state news agency, Aftab News, the representative of Zahedan in the Iranian Parliament, Alim Yar Mohammadi said: “More than 75% of the people in Sistan and Baluchestan do not have access to sufficient food. People live in circumstances of dire poverty, similar to that witnessed in parts of Africa.” Eighteen years have passed since a major drought hit the province. Its effects are still keenly felt.
Ali Asghar Mirshekari, the deputy security chief of Sistan-Baluchestan province confirmed recently that the unemployment rate in the province is about 40 percent. Sistan and Baluchestan is the youngest province in the country. 35 percent of its inhabitants are people under the age of 16. There are around two million ethnic Baloch in the province. They are Sunnis, in contrast to Shiite Persian affiliation. The combination of the province’s poverty, and the ethnic and religious discrimination faced by the Baloch by the state that is predominantly Shiite and Persian has led to widespread support for oppositional groups. The Baloch speak the Balochi language, which is related to both Persian and Kurdish. However, neither education nor administrative functions are permitted to take place in this language.
While a number of secular nationalist organizations exist, the armed Baloch opposition to Iran has taken Islamist and jihadi form. The Jundallah movement led by Abdelmalek Rigi was the first ethnic Baloch movement to launch armed attacks against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Formed in 2002, the organization began its campaign in 2005. Rigi was captured and executed by the Iranian authorities in 2010. Since his death, the movement, now commanded by Mohammed Dhahir Baluch, has sought to continue its attacks but the tempo has sharply declined. Jundallah is Sunni Islamist in nature. On a number of occasions Rigi denied that it had separatist goals, stressing instead that his fight was for the rights of Sunni Muslims inside Iran. Iran accuses the Pakistani state authorities, and the U.S., of direct involvement in Baluch terror attacks.
Jaish al-Adl
A number of other movements have emerged over the last decade. The most important of these is the Jaish al-Adl movement, which may be seen as the main Baloch insurgent group today. Iran claims that it is supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Founded in 2012, the group’s leader is Abdolmalek Mollazadeh (Salah al-Din al-Faruqi), a former member of Jundallah. The group has claimed responsibility for several attacks in the eastern Sistan-Balochistan province.
Jaish al Adl has three military branches, based on three regions in southeastern Iran. The organization operates close to the Iranian-Pakistani borderline to escape to Pakistan immediately after operations.
The military group Abdolmalek Mollazadeh, operates in the city of Sarbaz and Rask, the Sheikh Zia’i military group in the Saravan area and the Maulvi Nematollah Towhidi group in the area of ​​Miriwa and Zahedan. In its first operations, Nematullah’s group lost one of its main members, Zubair Ismaili.
The Abdolmalek and Sheikh Zia’i groups conduct the main operations of Jaish Al Adl. The organization has also set up an intelligence branch named after Zubair Ismaili, whose major mission is to identify Baluch Sunnis that are collaborating with the Iranian regime. The list of recent actions carried out in the province by Jaish l-Adl includes, according to the pro-regime, IRGC-associated Habilian website: the killing of 9 IRGC members by long range weapons fired from inside Pakistan, and the taking of 14 IRGC men as hostages on October 16, 2018. In addition to Jaish al-Adl, a group called Ansar al-Furqan was founded in December 2013, from a merger between two other groups – Hizb al-Furqan and Harakat al-Ansar. They are thought to have links to Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, which is the franchise of the al-Qaeda network in that country.
Ahvazi Arab groups
Constituting around 2% of the Iranian population, the Ahvazi Arabs are mostly resident in Khuzestan province in south west Iran along the Gulf, an area rich in natural resources. The majority of the Ahwazis are Shia Muslims similar to the Arabs in South Iraq. The area has a long history of separatist activity, dating back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution., demanding an autonomous status. A variety of nationalist and separatist organizations were formed in the pre-1979 period, including the “Arabistan Liberation Front” and the “Al Ahwaz Liberation Front”. An uprising took place in Khuzestan following the Islamic Revolution which was bloodily suppressed by the new regime. The Iranian embassy siege in London in 1980 was carried out by an Ahvazi Arab group demanding autonomy for Khuzestan.
ASMLA
After a period of quiet, Ahvazi activity against the Iranian regime recommenced in the late 1990s. In 1999, a new insurgent movement named the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Arabistan (ASMLA) was established in Khuzestan. Its goal is the independence of Khuzestan. Against a background of increased civil unrest, ASMLA began a military campaign in 2005, taking responsibility for the detonation of four bombs on June 12, 2005, in which 8 people were killed. Additional major bombings took place on January 24, 2006, at the Saman bank and the Environment Ministry offices in Ahwaz city. The armed wing of ASMLA which carried out the attacks is known as the Mohiuddin al Nasser Martyrs Brigade.
The bombing campaign of the ASMLA has continued sporadically over the past decade, and has included attacks on oil pipelines in the Khuzestan area. Broader unrest among the Arab population of Khuzestan has also been notable over the past decade. In 2005, and then again against the background of the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011, riots and demonstrations in Ahvaz and the surrounding area, followed by harsh government crackdown, arrests and executions have taken place. There are today two separate structures claiming to speak for ASMLA.
On September 22, 2018, a shooting attack was carried out on a parade of the IRGC in Ahvaz City. 25 people were killed, including both IRGC members and civilian bystanders. A group calling itself the Ahvaz National Resistance and claiming to be a wing of ASMLA claimed responsibility. ISIS also issued a separate claim of responsibility. Yaghub Hur Totsari, spokesman for one of the two groups that identify themselves as the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, said the Ahvaz National Resistance, an umbrella organization of all armed movements, claimed responsibility for the attack, but did not specify which group carried out the operation. A wave of arrests followed the attack, with over 600 Ahvazi Arabs detained. The location of many of these people remains unknown. According to a report by a human rights group, a number of those arrested have been executed. As of now, it appears likely that Ahvazi Arab actions against the Iranian state will continue, probably with some support coming in from anti-Iranian regimes in the Gulf and to some extent from Western intelligence services.
International Support for Iranian Armed Opposition Movements
Official Iranian new sites often include allegations of foreign support for armed movements engaged against the Iranian regime. Specifically, Israel and the US are accused of support for or involvement with the MEK and Kurdish groups. Pakistan is accused of support for Jaish al Adl among the Baloch, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE are accused of support for ASMLA among the Ahwazi Arabs. Is there any truth to these allegations? In all cases, what is alleged is not open political alliance or support at a strategic level. Rather, the allegations concern the activities of the intelligence services of the said countries, and the field of clandestine warfare. This is an arena about which by its very nature little is known. The Iranians have yet to produce conclusive evidence on any of these files. As such, little can be said with certainty in this regard.
On a clearer level, European countries are clearly deeply concerned at the recent evidence of renewed activity by the Iranian authorities against the organizations noted here, on European soil. The attempted assassinations in Denmark and the Netherlands led to new targeted EU sanctions against Iran in January 2019. These included the freezing of funds and assets of individuals associated with the Iranian Intelligence Ministry. There is no evidence, however, of European support for Iranian opposition movements beyond the granting of asylum and refugee status to some individuals associated with some of the movements profiled here.
The Iranian Response
In the first years of the regime, as noted above, Iran conducted a global struggle against those organized against it. This included assassinations on foreign soil and widespread harassment of Iranian opposition activists in exile. There is evidence that Teheran has now resumed activity of this type, and that the tempo of it is increasing. This in turn is a response to the increase in the volume of armed attacks against the regime from a variety of forces detailed above. Iran has done little to address the grievances of its ethnic and religious minority populations. These communities are not completely estranged from the regime.
In the presidential elections of 2013, Hassan Rouhani promised economic and social reforms and increased language rights, and as a result received 73% of the vote in the Sistan Baluchistan region and 70% in Kurdistan. Little of practical import, however, has come of these promises in subsequent years. The Islamic Republic is officially a non-sectarian, Islamic state. In practice, Persian is the language of education and administration. There is, however, no active desire for minorities to disappear, and no systematic effort to eradicate minority languages or identities, because of the notion of a common Islamic identity.
Recent attacks by Iran against militant opposition groups include: a plot to kill Adel Jubeir, then Saudi ambassador to Iran, using explosives in 2011, and a (thwarted) plan to attack a rally organized by the MEK in Paris in June 2018. More recently, the government of the Netherlands has accused Iran of carrying out two assassinations of Iranian oppositionists on Dutch soil: Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi of the MEK was shot dead in 2015, and Ahmed Molla Nissi, an Ahvazi Arab activist, was killed in a similar way in 2017. Also, the government of Denmark has accused Iran of a plot to kill three ASMLA activists resident in Ringsted, south of Copenhagen, in September 2018. In September 2018, Iran fired seven short-range ballistic missiles at the headquarters of the PDKI and a related party in Koya, in the Kurdish controlled part of northern Iraq. At least 15 people were killed and 42 others injured.
Conclusion
There is growing Iranian concern about the activity of armed opposition groups against it. This study suggests that the challenges the Iranians face in this arena are manifold. At the same time, because of the narrow ethnic nature of the armed groups (or, in the case of MEK, the only non-ethnic party engaged in armed against Iran, because of its limited popularity within Iran), the current uptick in armed activities against the regime should not be taken as an indication of an imminent general breakdown of order in the country.
What is more likely in the period ahead is a steady continued increase in armed activities, alongside continued low-level non-violent unrest. Meanwhile, the Iranian state will continue to disregard international norms and borders in its pursuit of its enemies. It is likely to act across the borders into Iraq and Pakistan and to seek out its enemies further afield, as it has done recently in Denmark, France and the Netherlands.
* Dr. Jonathan Spyer/Expert on Syria, Iraq, radical Islamic groups, and Kurds
*The Jerusalem Institute For Strategy and Security