English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese,
Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For March 02/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/eliasnews21/english.march02.21.htm
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Bible Quotations For today
Strive side by side with one mind for the faith of the
gospel, and do not be intimidated by your opponents
Letter to the Philippians 01/21-30/:”For to me, living is Christ
and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for
me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my
desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in
the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I am convinced of this, I know that I
will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, so
that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you
again. Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that,
whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you
are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the
faith of the gospel, and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them
this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God’s
doing. For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in
Christ, but of suffering for him as well since you are having the same struggle
that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.”
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials
published March 01-02/2021
Elias Bejjani/Visit My LCCC Web site/All That you need to
know on Lebanese unfolding news and events in Arabic and English/http://eliasbejjaninews.com/
MoPH: 1,888 new Coronavirus cases, 51 deaths
Guterres Appoints David Tolbert as Registrar of the STL
French Ambassador Meets Aoun, Urges 'Quick Solutions'
Beirut Blast 'Collapsed World' of Berlin Film Fest Contenders
STL President and Vice President re-elected for a new term
Lebanon steps up efforts to clean tar contaminated beaches in southern city of
Tyre
Spanish Ambassador hands Minister of Health grant from AECID
Health Ministry grants SINOPHARM Emergency Use Authorization
Berri meets IDAL delegation, President of Lebanese Cultural University in the
World
Mustaqbal Delegation Visits Rahi in Bkirki
Abiad Cautions of Covid among Children, Adolescents
Lebanon Authorizes Use of Chinese Vaccine Sinopharm
Amal Urges New Govt., Warns of Security Deterioration
No Papers, No Jab: Lebanon's Migrants Face Barriers to COVID-19 Vaccination
2 Americans Wanted in Ghosn's Escape in Japanese Custody
Last Tango in Beirut ...Saad al-Hariri’s wager on a Sunni-Shi‘a partnership in
the next phase is no less risky than was his alliance with Michel Aoun./Michael
Young/Carnegie MEC/March 01/2021
The US and the UN Nuclear Inspectors Must Stop Appeasing Iran/Con Coughlin/Gatestone
Institute/March 01/2021
Deadly consequences of indulging Iran’s hostage diplomacy/Baria Alamuddin/Arab
News/February 28/2021
Titles For The
Latest
English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on
March 01-02/2021
Israel-US attacks against Iran in Syria pave way for
increased cooperation/Seth J. FrantzmanJerusalem Post/March 01/2021
First-ever UAE ambassador to Israel presents credentials/Jerusalem Post/March
01/2021
Israel in talks with Saudi, UAE, Bahrain for defense alliance against Iran/Lahav
Harkov/Jerusalem Post/March 01/2021
Pompeo: I know 'many' inside Saudi Arabia want normalization with
Israel/Jerusalem Post /March 01/2021
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to jail in historic ruling
Netanyahu Blames Iran for Ship Attack, Tehran Denies Charge
Myanmar's Suu Kyi Hit with Two New Criminal Charges
One Iranian-Backed Militia Member Killed, 2 Injured in Syria Strike
170 US Lawmakers Urge Biden Administration to Push Turkey on Rights
Blinken Calls on Houthis to Match Saudi, Yemen Govt Commitment to End War
Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published March 01-02/2021
Turkey’s Ziraat Bank Under Scrutiny/Aykan Erdemir and Umut
Can Fidan/FDD/March 01/2021
With Strikes in Syria, Biden Confronts Iran’s Militant Network/Ben Hubbard and
Jane Arraf/The New York Times/March 01/2021
UAE Steps Back From Wars as Biden Reasserts Mideast Role/Zainab Fattah, Lin
Noueihed, and Sylvia Westall/Bloomberg/March 01/2021
The US and the UN Nuclear Inspectors Must Stop Appeasing Iran/Con Coughlin/Gatestone
Institute/March 01/2021
Biden's Emergencies/Chris Farrell/Gatestone Institute/March 01/2021
“There Was Blood All Over”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, January
2021/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/March 01/2021
The Khashoggi Report/Mamdouh al-Muhainy/Asharq Al Awsat/March 01/2021
Beware of Sick Maps/Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/March 01/2021
Iraq PM to Asharq Al-Awsat: We Are Destined to Rid Ourselves of Foreign
Hegemony/London - Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/March 01/2021
The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials
published
March 01-02/2021
Elias Bejjani/Visit My LCCC Web site/All That you need to know on Lebanese unfolding news and events in Arabic and English/http://eliasbejjaninews.com/
MoPH: 1,888 new Coronavirus cases, 51 deaths
NNA/March 01/2021
The Ministry of Public Health announced, on Monday, the registration of 1,888
new Coronavirus infections, thus raising the cumulative number of confirmed
cases to-date to 376,921.
Also, it indicated that 51 deaths were recorded during the past 24 hours.
Guterres Appoints David Tolbert as Registrar of the STL
Naharnet/March 01/2021
The United Nations Secretary-General, Antὸnio Guterres, appointed David Tolbert
to the post of Registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), the STL said
in a statement Monday. Below is the press release sent by STL: Tolbert is a
highly accomplished international human rights lawyer and former war crimes
prosecutor with a record of leadership and innovation, as senior manager in
international organizations and NGOs. From 2010 to 2018, he served as President
of the International Center for Transitional Justice and, from 2009 to 2010, as
the STL’s Registrar. Mr Tolbert also worked at various international courts and
Tribunals, including nine years at the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Tolbert served as Acting Registrar since July 2020,
following a leave of absence for health reasons of the former Registrar, Mr
Daryl Mundis. In accordance with the STL's Statute, the Registry, under the
direction of the Registrar, is responsible for servicing the operational and
administrative requirements of the STL. The Registry provides support to the
other organs of the Tribunal to facilitate their functioning and ensure that the
Tribunal is in a position to carry out its mandate. The Registrar's
responsibilities include judicial support, such as court management, language
services and victims and witnesses, as well as administration. Mr Tolbert is
also responsible for the STL budget, fund-raising policies, outreach and public
information of the Tribunal.
French Ambassador Meets Aoun, Urges 'Quick
Solutions'
Naharnet/March 01/2021
French Ambassador to Lebanon Anne Grillo held talks Monday with President Michel
Aoun at the presidential palace. She was accompanied by the embassy’s political
advisor, Jean Heilbronnز Grillo and Aoun discussed “the current domestic
developments, Lebanese-French ties and means to develop them in all fields,” the
National News Agency said. Discussions also tackled “the governmental crisis and
France’s desire for finding quick solutions that would lead to forming a
government to would confront the difficult circumstances that the country is
going through.”
Grillo also stressed that “France will stand by Lebanon to help it overcome its
crises, especially that the Lebanese people deserve to live reassured, relieved
and in better social and economic circumstances.”
Beirut Blast 'Collapsed World' of Berlin Film Fest
Contenders
Naharnet/March 01/2021
The Berlin film festival kicked off online Monday with a premiere from a
Lebanese couple who had to overcome both Beirut's devastating port blast and the
pandemic to bring their movie to the screen. "Memory Box" by Joana Hadjithomas
and Khalil Joreige is one of 15 films vying for the Golden Bear top prize Friday
at the 71st Berlinale, the first major European cinema showcase of the year.
Like Sundance this winter, the event has gone all-virtual as the global movie
industry tries to keep new releases ticking over with entertainment-starved
audiences stuck at home and movie theatres shuttered.
"Memory Box" is the first Lebanese contender in the Berlinale competition in
four decades. It is based on the true story of the discovery more than 30 years
later of a collection of letters, notebooks and mixtapes Hadjithomas sent to a
friend in Paris as a teenager in the 1980s during Lebanon's civil war.
In the movie, the mysterious package arrives at the Montreal home of Maia, who
emigrated to Canada, and her teenage daughter Alex in the middle of a blinding
blizzard. The time capsule from her own adolescence spurs Maia to begin sharing
long-held secrets about her shattering wartime experiences.
-'Not just trauma' -
"It's sometimes our kids who make us return to something that we just don't want
to see or that we refuse to experience anymore," Hadjithomas, 51, told AFP via
Zoom from Paris, the couple's second home. "We are not sharing a common history
in Lebanon and after the war we did not reconnect as a community, so this is
partly why we try to work with art and films to question this issue."
Hadjithomas and Joreige's work has drawn international acclaim and has been
featured at Cannes, the Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou and New York's MoMA.
"Memory Box" includes flashbacks of 1980s Beirut, but the fighting largely
serves as the backdrop to a portrait of youth chasing romance and escape in one
of the Middle East's most vibrant cities. "What was important was not just to
show civil war and the trauma -- it's a generation that also wanted to live, to
love, to dream," Hadjithomas said. She and her husband were working on the film
in Beirut at the time of the explosion of hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate
fertiliser on August 4 that killed more than 200 people, injured thousands and
ravaged swathes of the capital. Their apartment, art studio and production
company are close to the port, Hajithomas said.
"So when the blast happened it destroyed the three places that were home to us
in Lebanon," she added. "I was in a cafe very close by and it was very
traumatic, so we took time to recover. But we don't want to recover this time.
We don't want to be resilient, all of us, we just want accountability."
'Hope for June'
The couple said the blast triggered wartime memories, while the Covid-19
outbreak created tough hurdles for the filming and post-production work. Joreige,
52, said there were eerie parallels between the filmmaking and the world
outside. "This film is about confinement, two women blocked because of the
storm, but you can see it today as the confinement because of the pandemic," he
said. "And then all of our world collapsed with the blast and the film was still
echoing our present." Coronavirus has robbed the couple of the chance for now to
walk the Berlinale's red carpet. Festival organisers hope to stage public
screenings and a gala awards ceremony in June if pandemic conditions permit.
"It's very difficult because we haven't even shared the film with our crew, our
team, our actors, and now the audience," Hadjithomas said.
"But we are also happy to be part of the competition with other filmmakers that
we love, that we respect. And we really hope for June! Everyone will be there
and it will be great."
STL President and Vice President re-elected for a new term
NNA/March 01/2021
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon on Monday announced the following: The Judges
of the Appeals Chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) re-elected
Judge Ivana Hrdlicková of the Czech Republic as President and Judge Ralph Riachi
of Lebanon as Vice President. Their new term of eighteen months starts running
today. The re-election of the President and the Vice-President is in accordance
with Article 8(2) of the Tribunal's Statute and Rules 31 and 33 of the Rules of
Procedure and Evidence. The President of the Tribunal has a wide range of tasks,
including oversight of the effective functioning of the Tribunal and the good
administration of justice, as well as representing the STL in relations with
States, the United Nations and other entities. In the President's absence, her
duties are fulfilled by the Vice-President. The biographies of Judge Hrdlicková
and Judge Riachi are available on the STL website.
Lebanon steps up efforts to clean tar contaminated beaches
in southern city of Tyre
NNA/March 01/2021
Over the weekend, the Union of Tyre Municipalities, the National Council for
Scientific Research (CNRS), in cooperation with volunteers, environmental and
scout associations, the Civil Defense, and UNIFIL, launched a campaign to
clean-up Tyre Coast Nature Reserve from balls of sticky gobs and blobs of tar,
which showed up last week on South Lebanon’s beaches stretching from the border
town of Naqura to the city of Tyre after washing up from an oil spill in Israel.
The heavily contaminated reserve is a Ramsar registered site that harbors many
species of plants, animals, and insects. It is also a nesting site for the
endangered Loggerhead and green sea Turtle, as well as a shelter to the Arabian
spiny mouse and many other creatures.
Head of Tyre Municipalities Union, Hassan Dabouk, sounded the alarm on the
devastating ramifications of the oil spill pollution and pointed to the grave
danger it poses on Lebanon’s largest sandy beach.
“It is a popular beach visited by thousands of people on a daily basis, and this
substance has massively contaminated its sand; consequently, a campaign has been
launched to swiftly clean-up the tarred beaches in a bid to mitigate the damage
before the start of the swimming season," explained Dbouk, who added that work
would be organized by the day to cover the entire polluted area.
Dr. Mouin Hamze, Head of the CNRS, pointed out that approximately two tons of
tar had washed ashore, 90 percent of which was buried under the sand. “This is
making the clean-up process even more difficult; yet, if these substances stay
for a longer period, they will constitute a disaster. All our dependence is on
the volunteers’ efforts to get rid of the largest amount possible of this toxic
tar,” he added.
Hamze then expected the clean-up of the reserve to last for up to two more
weeks, yet he had earlier anticipated tar to keep washing up on Lebanese shores
for up to three months.
On another note, Hamze confirmed that thus far, there was no proof that fish
wealth had been harmed in the polluted area. “There are no oil spills inside the
water, therefore, no restrictions will be placed on the movement of marine
fishing for now,” he said.
For its part, the "Lebanese Eco Movement" issued a statement urging the Lebanese
state and relevant ministries and municipalities to investigate the cause and
source of the oil spill. It demanded the issuance of “a clear report specifying
the exact spots of the pollution, its size, and the amount of damage.” It also
requested the allocation of a financial sum in support of affected areas.
Most importantly, the LEM pushed for a speedy clean-up process.
“The climatic factors, water currents, and tidal movements that have contributed
to washing up the oil spill residues to the current sites are able to spread
them further and redistribute them,” the environmental movement warned.
Youssef Jundi, Lebanon Diving Center Head, said that it was not yet known
whether the source of the pollution that had contaminated Tyre coast was from
ships or oil installations. He also warned that the oil spill pollution hadn’t
only affected Tyre Coastal Reserve as had been reported. “The contamination has
extended from Ras al-Naqoura to the beaches of al-Zahrani villages, as we have
personally surveyed,” he said.
In turn, Lebanon’s Green Party said that the tar pollution along Lebanon’s
southern coast required swift action at the national and international levels.
“This pollution has a serious and direct impact on the marine and beach life,
which calls for quick action at the national and international levels, starting
with a scientific investigation,” the Green Party said in a statement.
It called for resorting to the United Nations to implement international
agreements on the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of
the Mediterranean (Barcelona Convention). “Lebanon was one of those countries
that have signed this agreement, which regulates the integrated protection of
the environment and ecosystems.”
The party also ratcheted up the pressure for a radical solution to prevent the
recurrence of pollution along the Lebanese coast from the remnants of industrial
activities in neighboring countries.
UNIFIL spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti, said that UNIFIL had been in touch with
local authorities to see what help could be provided.
“In order to ensure immediate assistance, UNIFIL has provided equipment and
tools, together with additional PPEs, donated by UNIFIL ITALBATT. UNIFIL staff
members have also been assisting the local communities in cleaning the shores,”
Tenenti said, adding that UNIFIL troops are also cleaning the areas outside
Naqoura.
UNIFIL's Western Sector Command provided an Italian donation consisting of
supplies, equipment, and preventive tools to help clean the polluted beaches of
Tyre. The Italian CIMIC Office of Civil-Military Cooperation of the Western
Sector has provided the first part of the required materials, to be followed by
other supplies within the next few days.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s Caretaker Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, has been following
up on the matter and has officially tasked Minister of Defense, Zeina Akar,
Minister of Environment, Demianos Kattar, and the National Council for
Scientific Research, to follow up on the issue by informing UNIFIL forces to
draw up an official report in this regard and by acting accordingly to repair
the damage caused by the leakage.
Based on the PM’s decision, the UNDP Disaster Risk Management Unit (DRM) at the
Presidency of the Council of Ministers has been supporting the coordination of
the response operation with various ministries and agencies, as well as
responding to requests based on needs.
The DRM has also activated EU mechanisms of support requesting satellite maps
and images to help determine the exact scale of the oil spill's damage.
Environmental groups in the Mediterranean region have described this oil spill a
severe ecological disaster that endangers marine life and biodiversity in the
area. They’ve also anticipated the clean-up process to linger for months or even
years.
Spanish Ambassador hands Minister of Health grant from
AECID
NNA/March 01/2021
Caretaker Minister of Public Health, Hamad Hassan, on Monday welcomed Spanish
Ambassador to Lebanon, Jose Maria Ferré de la Pena, who came to hand him a grant
offered by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID)
with the aim of assisting the Lebanese Ministry of Health in its fight against
the Coronavirus pandemic and in appreciation of its efforts. The donation
consists of 50 ventilators, as well as 4 respirators, with the approximate cost
of 90,000 euros.
Health Ministry grants SINOPHARM Emergency Use
Authorization
NNA/March 01/2021
The technical scientific committee set up by Caretaker Minister of Public
Health, Dr. Hamad Hassan, approved on Monday the registration of vaccines
provided by the private sector, and consequently issued an Emergency Use
Authorization EUA for the Chinese Coronavirus vaccine SINOPHARM.
This came during a committee meeting chaired by Minister Hassan at the Ministry
of Public Health. By granting SINOPHARM emergency use authorization, it is now
available to be marketed as per applicable conditions.
Berri meets IDAL delegation, President of Lebanese Cultural
University in the World
NNA/March 01/2021
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Monday welcomed at his Ain El Tineh residence the
Board Chairman of the Investment Development Authority of Lebanon (IDAL), Dr.
Mazen Sweid, accompanied by an IDAL delegation. Discussions reportedly touched
on the Authority’s work and legislative matters related to laws that would
encourage investments in Lebanon. Speaker Berri also received the President of
the Lebanese Cultural University in the World, Abbas Fawaz, and members of the
University’s administrative body, with whom he discussed the present conditions
of the Lebanese expatriate communities.
Mustaqbal Delegation Visits Rahi in Bkirki
Agence France Presse/March 01/2021
After his calls for a UN-sponsored international conference for Lebanon,
Maronite Patriarch Beshara el-Rahi received a delegation from al-Mustaqbal
Movement in Bkirki, the National News Agency reported. The delegation was led by
MP Bahiaa Hariri, said NNA. "Delegated by Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri,
we visited His Beatitude and supported his initiatives and dauntless efforts
aimed at reaching a solution to steer the country out of the political crisis
and form the government," MP Samir Jisr told reporters following the meeting. He
added that talks also touched on the outcome of the external communications
carried out by the PM-designate. "We confirmed to His Beatitude that PM Hariri
is determined to form a mission-driven government of non-partisan competent
experts," said the lawmaker. "We also underlined that the PM-designate is
committed to the implementation of the Constitution and the Taef Agreement in
letter and spirit, especially in terms of the preservation of the rights of the
Lebanese, Christians and Muslims alike," he added. "We reiterated our support
for the Baabda Declaration, which stipulated Lebanon's neutralization from the
policy of axes and regional and international conflicts," he continued.
In response to a question about the government formation, Jisr said: "We did not
lose hope. This issue must be solved.""Mustaqbal Movement backs Rahi's calls on
neutralizing Lebanon because it refuses keeping the country a platform to launch
missiles. As for an international conference for Lebanon, we have to see if that
is possible," Mustaqbal official and ex-MP Moustafa Allouch had earlier told al-Jadeed
television. Thousands of Lebanese rallied Saturday in support of the Patriarch
following Hizbulah criticism of the Christian leader's positions.
Al-Rahi had called for a UN-sponsored "international conference" in the face of
Lebanon's economic collapse and political impasse.
Abiad Cautions of Covid among Children, Adolescents
Naharnet/March 01/2021
Director of the state-run Rafik Hariri University Hospital, Firass Abiad, warned
on Monday of the effect of Covid on children who retract the virus. “Most
children with Covid do not show symptoms, and the incidence of the infection in
the young is usually underestimated. The Ministry of Health report reveals that
in Lebanon, 7000 (age 0-9) and 26,000 (age 10-19) have tested positive. Among
them, 15 passed away and 14/15 had comorbidities,” said Abiad in a tweet. Abiad
noted that the majority of children who get infected with Covid will not have
symptoms. “There is some evidence that they may be less susceptible to the
infection. If infected, the majority will not have symptoms. Some may have mild
symptoms, but few will get very sick. That is why they are less likely to be
tested.” A new study shows that sick children with Covid can have “either a
severe respiratory infection, or a generalized inflammatory response. Both can
be fatal,” he said. Abiad emphasized that children and adolescents do transmit
the infection to others, though with adolescents it can be quite infectious. He
advised against opening schools without proper safety measures. “Schools are not
advised to open without proper safety measures put in place, including testing.
With our current Covid status, opening schools carries risks. Yet, schools play
a vital role in the psychological and social wellbeing of students, in addition
to the educational impact. The real debate is not whether schools should open,
but under what circumstances,” he concluded.
Lebanon Authorizes Use of Chinese Vaccine Sinopharm
Naharnet/March 01/2021
A scientific committee formed by caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan on
Monday granted emergency use authorization (EUA) to the Chinese anti-Covid
vaccine Sinopharm. The committee has been tasked with discussing the
registration of vaccines submitted by the private sector.
Following the EUA, private companies can now sell the vaccine in the Lebanese
market according to applicable regulations. The decision was taken in a meeting
chaired by Hassan and attended by the committee’s members -- Dr. Abdul Rahman
al-Bizri, Dr. Maroun Zoghbi, Dr. Rony al-Zaani, Dr. Thuraya Dumyati, the
representative of the Lebanese University Dr. Nazih Abu Chahine and the head of
the pharmacy dept. at the Health Ministry, Dr. Colette Reaidi. The Ministry had
granted emergency use authorization for the Russian vaccine Sputnik V on
February 5. Lebanon’s national vaccination campaign began Feb. 14 and has been
criticized as too slow and riddled by violations. The World Bank has allocated
$34 million to inoculate an initial two million of Lebanon's six million
inhabitants free of charge with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Amal Urges New Govt., Warns of Security
Deterioration
Naharnet/March 01/2021
The Amal Movement on Monday urged an end to “political overbidding and to
raising constitutional and legal disputes,” stressing that it is necessary to
speed up the formation of the new government. In a statement issued after a
meeting for its political bureau, the Movement said a new government is needed
to “address the inevitable collapse of the economic and social situations and
its impact on the stability of the security situation.”It accordingly warned
that such a collapse would not leave a chance to any party to “win a certain
share or achieve its partisan interests.”The politburo added that the most
notable sign of collapse is “the unprecedented disorder in the dollar exchange
rate against the Lebanese lira and its exceeding of all limits.”“This has led to
a hysteric hike in prices without any real supervision by the competent
ministries,” the political bureau said.
No Papers, No Jab: Lebanon's Migrants Face Barriers to
COVID-19 Vaccination
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 1 March, 2021
An Ethiopian who has lived in Lebanon for more than two decades, Jamal, aged 70,
speaks Arabic with a near-native tongue. But like many migrants, he had no idea
that he was entitled to a COVID-19 vaccination under the nation's inoculation
drive, and that due to his age, he should be near the front of the queue. "If I
can get it, I definitely want it," said Jamal, who asked not to give his full
name, as he scanned an online platform for vaccine pre-registration late last
week, before sinking back into his chair in disappointment. While Lebanon's
partly World Bank-financed vaccine program is open to migrants, an ID number is
needed for registration - effectively excluding several hundred thousand
migrants like Jamal who do not have their papers in order. Two weeks into an
inoculation campaign marred by a row over queue-jumping by lawmakers, officials
and human rights groups are concerned that some 500,000 migrants in the nation
of six million people could be left out. Officials have so far secured some 6
million vaccine shots, enough for just under half the population, but outgoing
Labor Minister Lamia Yammine said cash-strapped authorities did not have enough
funds to vaccinate all of the nation's residents. "The resources of the Lebanese
state are limited even for Lebanese, so as a labor ministry we're going to try
to get (funding) from various sources," Yammine, whose ministry oversees migrant
workers, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She said employers may be asked to
pay for the inoculation of migrant employees, while the embassies of countries
with large migrant populations and international organizations could also be
asked to chip in. "We want to find a way to guarantee they all get the vaccine,
and especially the undocumented ones," Yammine said, though she acknowledged
that migrants without valid residency papers would be unable to get the jab
under current regulations.
'Deliberate mismanagement'
Undocumented migrants account for about half of Lebanon's migrant workers, many
of whom came to the country long before its 2019 economic meltdown in search of
work from countries such as Nigeria, Sudan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.
Lebanon has also committed to providing COVID-19 vaccines to about 1.2 million
Syrian and Palestinian refugees living within its borders in a process being
overseen by UN agencies. So far, only a small number of them have been
vaccinated. The vaccine roll-out has been overshadowed by favoritism towards the
well-connected, inspiring little confidence that marginalized groups will end up
getting the jab, said Farah Baba of local human rights NGO the Anti-Racism
Movement. "Given the corruption and deliberate mismanagement we saw early on in
the vaccination drive, we really doubt migrant workers are going to receive it
in an equitable or organized manner," she said.
Efforts to get migrant workers vaccinated could be further hindered by the
uneasy relationship many migrants have with authorities, who have excluded them
from labor law protections under a system rights groups have likened to
modern-day slavery. Migrants consulted by the International Labor Organization (ILO)
said they feared registering or even inquiring about the vaccine for fear of
detention or deportation, the ILO's Lebanon project coordinator Zeina Mezher
said. Language barriers and widespread vaccine hesitancy may also deter many
from being immunized, she said.
Of the two dozen migrant workers consulted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation,
only two said they intended to get the vaccine - the rest citing concerns over
possible side-effects or the involvement of authorities.
"I'm strong and young ... I don't think (the vaccine) is for me," said Filipina
shopkeeper Lala, 33, as she pointed a customer towards dried mangoes in her
cluttered store. Standing on the curb outside, Limal, a 42-year-old from Sri
Lanka, said he wanted to get the jab but was uneasy about dealing with official
institutions. "There is nothing for us. Only problems from the state."
2 Americans Wanted in Ghosn's Escape in Japanese Custody
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 1 March, 2021
An American father and son wanted by Japan for aiding former Nissan Motor Co.
Chairman Carlos Ghosn escape from the country in a box were handed over to
Japanese custody Monday, ending their months-long battle to stay in the
US.Michael Taylor and his son, Peter Taylor, failed to convince US officials and
courts to block their extradition to Japan, where they will be tried on charges
that they smuggled Ghosn out of the country in 2019 while the former auto titan
was awaiting trial on financial misconduct charges. The Massachusetts men, who
have been locked up at a suburban Boston jail since their arrest in May, were
handed over to Japanese officials early Monday, said one of their attorneys,
Paul Kelly. The Taylors' lawyers had argued the accusations don't fit under the
law Japan wants to try them under and that they would be treated unfairly in
Japan and subjected to “mental and physical torture." They have accused Japan of
pursuing the pair in an attempt to save face after the embarrassment of Ghosn’s
escape.Michael Taylor, a US Army Special Forces veteran and private security
specialist who in the past was hired by parents to rescue abducted children, has
never denied the allegations.
He gave an interview to Vanity Fair magazine for a story last year in which he
described the mission in detail. When asked why he did it, he responded with the
motto of the Special Forces: “De oppresso liber” or “to liberate the oppressed,”
the magazine reported. Michael Taylor refused to discuss the details of the case
in an interview last month with The Associated Press because of the possibility
that he will be tried in Japan. But he insisted that his son wasn’t involved and
was not even in Japan when Ghosn left. Ghosn, who became one of the auto
industry’s most powerful executives by engineering a turnaround at the Japanese
manufacturer, had been out on bail after his November 2018 arrest on charges
that he underreported his future income and committed a breach of trust by
diverting Nissan money for his personal gain. Ghosn has denied the allegations
and has said he fled to avoid “political persecution.” Prosecutors have
described it as one of the most “brazen and well-orchestrated escape acts in
recent history.” Authorities say the Taylors were paid at least $1.3 million for
their help. On the day of the escape, Michael Taylor flew into Osaka on a
chartered jet with another man, George-Antoine Zayek, carrying two large black
boxes and pretending to be musicians with audio equipment, authorities said.
Meanwhile, Ghosn, free on bail, headed to the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo and met up
with Peter Taylor, who was already in Japan, authorities say.
The elder Taylor and Zayek met up with the two others at the Grand Hyatt and
shortly after, they split up. Peter Taylor hopped on a flight to China while the
others got on a bullet train and went back to another hotel near the airport,
where Taylor and Zayek had booked a room. They all went in; only Ghosn’s
rescuers were seen walking out. Authorities say Ghosn was inside one of the big
black boxes. At the airport, the boxes passed through a security checkpoint
without being checked and were loaded onto a private jet headed for Turkey,
officials said.
The Taylors had hired lawyers connected to former President Donald Trump,
including ex-White House attorney Ty Cobb, in attempt to get Trump to block the
extradition before he left office. In his interview with the AP, Michael Taylor
implored President Joe Biden to step in and said he felt betrayed that the US
would try to turn him over to Japan after his service to the country. But the
Biden administration declined to block the extradition. Under Trump, the US
State Department agreed in October to hand the men over to Japan. But a federal
judge in Boston put their extradition on hold shortly after their lawyers filed
an emergency petition. The judge rejected their petition in January and the
Boston-based 1st Circuit Court of Appeals later denied their bid to put the
extradition on hold while they appeal that ruling. Supreme Court Justice Stephen
Breyer last month denied a bid for more time for an appeal, clearing the way for
the men to be handed over to Japan.
Last Tango in Beirut ...Saad al-Hariri’s wager on a Sunni-Shi‘a
partnership in the next phase is no less risky than was his alliance with Michel
Aoun.
Michael Young/Carnegie MEC/March 01/2021
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/96529/%d9%85%d8%a7%d9%8a%d9%83%d9%84-%d9%8a%d9%88%d9%86%d8%ba-%d8%b1%d9%82%d8%b5%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%aa%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%ba%d9%88-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%ae%d9%8a%d8%b1%d8%a9-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a8%d9%8a%d8%b1/
Saad al-Hariri’s wager on a Sunni-Shi‘a partnership in the next phase is no less
risky than was his alliance with Michel Aoun.
Last October 8, Lebanon’s leading Sunni politician Saad al-Hariri was invited by
a prominent television talk show host, Marcel Ghanem, to appear on his program.
At the time, parliamentary consultations were about to begin to determine who
would be designated to form a new government. Ghanem’s main purpose was to see
whether Hariri would be willing to replace Prime Minister Hassan Diab, whose
cabinet was governing in a caretaker capacity.
The expectation initially was that Hariri would say no, mainly because his main
regional sponsor, Saudi Arabia, did not appear to want him to cover for what
they regard as a Hezbollah-dominated order in Lebanon. However, Hariri not only
said he would agree to being named prime minister, but that as the strongest
Sunni politician in the country he was the natural candidate for the post, which
is reserved for Sunnis in the Lebanese sectarian system.
However, there was also an understated message in Hariri’s remarks that evening.
He was asked about his erstwhile political allies, the Maronite Christian
politician Samir Geagea and the Druze leader Walid Joumblatt, who had opposed
Hariri repeatedly in previous months. Hariri responded with what was a subtle
warning to Geagea and Joumblatt, who come from numerically smaller religious
communities. If he, as a Sunni, came to an agreement with the two leading Shi‘a
parties, Hezbollah and Amal, then the country’s other communal representatives
could follow if they wanted to, but he would forge ahead, regardless, if they
did not.
Not surprisingly, two days later Joumblatt, whose reactions are always a good
barometer of the trends in Lebanese politics, rallied to Hariri, whom parliament
tasked with forming a government on October 22. Joumblatt understood that Sunni-Shi‘a
concord could leave communities like the Druze and the Maronites isolated.
While the government formation process has dragged on for months, Hariri has not
reversed himself in wanting to base a new government on his partnership with the
Shi‘a parties. Indeed, when Ghanem had probed whether a government reform
program required to unlock foreign aid to Lebanon could work, Hariri had replied
that this was the main question he had for Hezbollah. In other words, he was
quite clearly appealing to the Shi‘a parties to side with him on his agenda.
Hariri’s approach rests on an ambiguity in his ties with the Saudis. While the
prime minister-designate will never break with Riyadh, nor can he afford to do
so, he has sought to widen his margin of maneuver. Doubtless he remembers his
humiliation at Saudi hands in 2017, when he was reportedly held against his will
in the kingdom. But his attitude today seems to be defined by a sense that the
relationship would benefit both sides more if he were to push the envelope, as
his father once did. Hariri also understands that if he remains out of office
for too long, his value to the Saudis will evaporate completely, which will mean
the end of his political career.
Nor have the Saudis given him any reason not to disregard their wishes, having
cut him off politically in recent years. However, they also have never openly
said that they oppose a Hariri-led government. Their ambassador’s line has been,
privately, that Hariri, if he wants to lead a cabinet, must have a program. By
telling Ghanem that his aim for a new government was implementation of the
French economic reform plan for Lebanon proposed by President Emmanuel Macron
last September, Hariri appeared to be fulfilling that condition.
Hariri also seems to enjoy significant domestic Sunni support these days,
something facilitated by his ongoing struggles with President Michel Aoun and
his son in law Gebran Bassil over the prime minister’s prerogatives in forming a
government. By insisting that the president is an equal partner with the prime
minister in this process, an interpretation many Sunnis strongly contest, Aoun
has bolstered Hariri’s standing within his community. Paradoxically, then,
Hariri is leaning on Sunni backing in order to facilitate a rapprochement with
Hezbollah and Amal, parties that most Sunnis otherwise oppose.
Beyond that, what does Hariri’s yearning for a Sunni-Shi‘a partnership mean, and
on what can it be based? A priority of the prime minister-designate is to
isolate Bassil, who as a leading Maronite politician wants so succeed Aoun as
president and who was the person most responsible for undermining Hariri’s last
government. If he can do so, Hariri feels, he would be in a good position to
help bring to office another Maronite, one with whom he has good relations, such
as Suleiman Franjieh. Franjieh, presumably, would give Hariri more latitude to
operate as he sees fit.
However, that assumption is based on two potential fallacies. The first is that
a Franjieh in office, were he to be elected, would be like Franjieh out of
office—friendly to Hariri and hostile to Bassil. Nothing guarantees that this is
true. For example, if Franjieh were to push for better Lebanese relations with
the Syrian regime, with which he has long been close, this could trap Hariri
between the president’s preference and a Sunni electorate that views Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad as the personification of evil. What would Hariri do
then?
A second fallacy may be to assume that Hariri can build a relationship with
Franjieh that is stronger than Franjieh’s ties with Hezbollah. Even if Hezbollah
seeks a better rapport with a broadly representative Sunni politician, its
instinct will often be to back a constitutionally weaker president against the
prime minister. Why? Because in Lebanon the cabinet is the executive authority,
so putting pressure on the prime minister can mean shaping the government’s
agenda.
Does this imply that Hariri should not seek to reinforce his ties with the Shi‘a
parties? No, but it would be a mistake for him to assume that such a partnership
would buy him more than some wiggling room in certain situations. Maybe that’s
enough for Hariri. That’s because another implied message in his interview with
Ghanem was that he was not so much committed, on principle, to implementing
economic reform, as intent on introducing reforms to salvage the system and the
political class’ stakes in it. That is precisely what Hezbollah wants, and is
why it so opposed the popular uprising in October 2019.
Time will tell whether Hariri’s wager can succeed, or whether it will lead him
down the same blind path it did in 2016, when he thought he could work with Aoun
and Bassil. A new failure could leave the prime minister-designate on his own,
with his credibility in tatters.
The US and the UN Nuclear Inspectors Must Stop Appeasing
Iran
Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute/March 01/2021
كون كوغلين/معهد كايستون: على الولايات المتحدة والمفتشين النوويين التابعين للأمم
المتحدة التوقف عن استرضاء إيران والتملق لها
في أحدث مثال على نهج إيران المتهور بما يتعلق بملفها النووي، هدد آية الله علي
خامنئي بزيادة تخصيب اليورانيوم إلى 60 في المائة أي أقل بقليل من عتبة 90 في
المائة المطلوبة لإنتاج مواد تستخدم في صنع الأسلحة. وفي حين ادعى المدير العام
للوكالة الدولية للطاقة الذرية أن المحادثات كانت ناجحة تجد الوكالة نفسها في موقف
العجز حيث هي لن تتمكن من التأكد مما إذا كانت إيران تعمل بنشاط لإنتاج أسلحة نووية
إلا بعد انجازها ما تريد .
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/96542/con-coughlin-gatestone-institute-the-us-and-the-un-nuclear-inspectors-must-stop-appeasing-iran-%d9%83%d9%88%d9%86-%d9%83%d9%88%d8%ba%d9%84%d9%8a%d9%86-%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%85%d8%b9%d9%87%d8%af-%d9%83/
In the latest example of Iran’s increasingly reckless approach to the nuclear
issue, the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has threatened to
increase uranium enrichment to 60 percent, just below the 90 percent threshold
required to produce weapons grade material.
Thus, while IAEA director general Rafael Grossi claimed the talks had been a
success, the IAEA now finds itself in the invidious position whereby it will not
be able to ascertain whether Iran is actively working to produce nuclear weapons
until after the event.
Even Mr Grossi has been forced to concede that, as a result of Iran’s decision
to withdraw access to inspection teams, the IAEA’s ability to monitor Iran’s
activities will be reduced by 70 percent.
In the latest blow to the IAEA’s credibility, within hours of Mr Grossi
concluding his compromise deal, Mr Khamenei exposed the futility of this
approach with his threat that Iran was prepared to increase uranium enrichment
to 60 percent, a move that would make any attempt to revive the JCPOA utterly
doomed.
As Iran continues to maintain its defiance over its controversial nuclear
programme, the failure of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the
UN-body responsible for monitoring Iran’s activities, is only lending further
encouragement to the ayatollahs to indulge in further acts of dangerous
brinkmanship. Pictured: IAEA director general Rafael Grossi at the
organization’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on November 18, 2020.
As Iran continues to maintain its defiance over its controversial nuclear
programme, the failure of the UN-body responsible for monitoring Iran’s
activities is only lending further encouragement to the ayatollahs to indulge in
further acts of dangerous brinkmanship.
In the latest example of Iran’s increasingly reckless approach to the nuclear
issue, the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has threatened to
increase uranium enrichment to 60 percent, just below the 90 percent threshold
required to produce weapons grade material.
The ayatollah’s threat, moreover, which was made on state-run television, came
just hours after Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN-sponsored body responsible for monitoring Iran’s
nuclear programme, made an emergency visit to Tehran after the regime announced
it would no longer allow IAEA inspection teams to visit key sites.
Iran has been threatening to withdraw cooperation with the IAEA after the
Iranian Majlis, or parliament, which is dominated by hardline supporters of Mr
Khamenei, voted in favour of a ban following last year’s assassination of Iran’s
leading nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Banning IAEA inspectors from visiting Iran’s nuclear facilities represents a
clear violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement
negotiated by then US President Barack Obama to curb Iran’s attempts to acquire
nuclear weapons.
Iran has never fully cooperated with the IAEA’s requests to visit key nuclear
sites, and has consistently denied inspectors access to sensitive military
installations that Western intelligence officials believe have links to Iran’s
long-standing effort to acquire a nuclear arsenal.
But implementing a complete ban on IAEA inspections threatened to completely
undermine the JCPOA at a time when the Biden administration, together with the
European signatories to the deal — Britain, France and Germany — are desperately
seeking to revive the agreement after then US President Donald Trump withdrew
from American involvement in 2018.
Mr Grossi’s visit to Tehran in February was therefore seen as a desperate bid to
find a compromise that would keep the nuclear deal alive as European and US
diplomats intensified their efforts to hold fresh talks with Tehran.
The Argentine diplomat emerged from the talks claiming to have reached a
compromise with Iran that would allow inspection teams to continue monitoring
Iran’s nuclear activities — but from a distance. Under the terms of the deal,
the IAEA would in future implement what Mr Grossi described as a black box-type
system in which data is collected, but without the IAEA being able to access it
immediately.
Thus, while Mr Grossi claimed the talks had been a success, the IAEA now finds
itself in the invidious position whereby it will not be able to ascertain
whether Iran is actively working to produce nuclear weapons until after the
event.
Even Mr Grossi has been forced to concede that, as a result of Iran’s decision
to withdraw access to inspection teams, the IAEA’s ability to monitor Iran’s
activities will be reduced by 70 percent.
Moreover, the latest report published by the IAEA on Iran’s nuclear activity,
reveals that Iran has acquired 17.6 kg of 20 percent enriched uranium, with its
overall stockpile of enriched uranium now standing at 2,967 kg, which is 14
times higher than the limit set under the terms of the JCPOA.
In addition the report noted that Iran has succeeded in installing advanced IR-6
centrifuges at its underground Fordow enrichment facility, which is also in
violation of the JCPOA.
It also says Tehran has failed to provide technically credible explanations
about traces of enriched uranium that UN inspectors found at Iran’s nuclear
storage facility at Turquzabad, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
has labelled as Iran’s “secret atomic warehouse”.
Mr Grossi’s compromise deal with Iran is typical of the appeasement policy that
the IAEA has pursued ever since the Iranian regime’s clandestine attempts to
develop nuclear weapons were first exposed in 2002. The policy of kow-towing to
Tehran, despite its blatant and persistent breaches of its international
undertakings, has been adopted by successive heads of the IAEA, dating back to
the tenure of Egyptian-born Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, on whose watch the IAEA
deliberately sought to obfuscate the true nature of Iran’s activities.
In the latest blow to the IAEA’s credibility, within hours of Mr Grossi
concluding his compromise deal, Mr Khamenei exposed the futility of this
approach with his threat that Iran was prepared to increase uranium enrichment
to 60 percent, a move that would make any attempt to revive the JCPOA utterly
doomed.
*Con Coughlin is the Telegraph’s Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a
Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 2021 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
Deadly consequences of indulging Iran’s hostage diplomacy
Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/February 28/2021
بارعة علم الدين/العواقب المميتة للانغماس في دبلوماسية الرهائن الإيرانية
ولدت جمهورية الملالي من رحم جرائم خطف الرهائن وهي مستمرة في هذا النهج الإرهابي
واللاانساني الذي تجني منه ملايين الدلارات. في هذا السياق تخطف الأجانب ومواطنيها
الحاصلين على جنسيات أخرى في حين تخطف الشعب الإيراني بأكمله وتأخذه رهينة ولبنان
هو رهينة من رهائن الملالي..وحزب الله الإداة الملالوية في لبنان يعطل تشكيل
الحكومة فيه بانتظار أن يتمكن الملالي في نجاحهم التفاوض مع إدارة بايدن.
The Islamic Republic of Iran was born out of hostage taking, and it continues to
reap billions of dollars by abducting foreign nationals and assets, while
holding entire nations to ransom.
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Lebanon is one such hostage state. Iran and Hezbollah are actively blocking any
kind of political formula for saving Lebanon from catastrophe, until the Biden
administration caves into Tehran’s nuclear demands.
The Islamic Republic of Iran was born out of hostage taking, and it continues to
reap billions of dollars by abducting foreign nationals and assets, while
holding entire nations to ransom.
Lebanon is one such hostage state. Iran and Hezbollah are actively blocking any
kind of political formula for saving Lebanon from catastrophe, until the Biden
administration caves into Tehran’s nuclear demands. Hezbollah and its allies are
deliberately obstructing Saad Hariri’s Cabinet-forming efforts with impossible
demands (“blocking thirds,” additional ministers, monopolies over specific
departments, and so on). Meanwhile the economy disintegrates, sectarian tensions
boil, and even middle-class families are on the brink of starvation.
Hezbollah also holds Lebanese citizens hostage by leaving the nation perpetually
hanging on the brink of war with Israel. While Hezbollah’s leaders hide deep
underground, or in Tehran, citizens become huma -shields, with weapons
factories, missile positions and ammunition stores placed in densely populated
regions. Almost every day I speak to Lebanese terrified that their home next to
the airport or other strategic locations will be hit when conflict erupts.
Israel uses the same murderous logic of holding Lebanese citizens hostage.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz threatened that if fighting starts “Lebanon will be
the one to pay the heaviest of prices for the weapons that have been scattered
in civilian population centers.”
By keeping Yemen, Syria and Iraq in a state of constant turmoil, these nations
are also hostages to Tehran’s foreign policy of ceaseless confrontation. Iranian
proxy missile attacks against American bases are a blunt threat that if the US
refuses to compromise, Iraq will erupt in flames. Biden’s retaliatory strikes
against militia bases in remote Syria border regions thus smartly sidestepped
Tehran’s desire to see civilians killed in the crossfire.
The ayatollahs discover over and over again that crime pays — billions of
dollars at a time. Eye-watering ransoms can be comparable to the annual sum with
which Iran subsidizes Hezbollah, estimated at $700 million. For example:
Tehran is demanding over $500 million owed by Britain from a Shah-era arms deal
in exchange for the release of British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Barack Obama in 2015 dispatched $400 million in cash to Tehran, coinciding with
the release of five US hostages.
The Islamic Republic of Iran was born out of hostage taking, and it continues to
reap billions of dollars by abducting foreign nationals and assets, while
holding entire nations to ransom.
An estimated $500 million ransom was paid for Qatari royals kidnapped by an
Iranian proxy in Iraq. Quds Force’s Qassim Soleimani was personally allocated
$50 million.
Seoul is due to release $1 billion, part of $7 billion in funds frozen by US
sanctions, as an “initial step” in releasing a South Korean oil tanker hijacked
by Iran.
The world first witnessed what sort of beast Iran is when the US Embassy in
Tehran was overrun in 1979. Fifty diplomatic staff were held hostage until the
Regan administration brokered a deal by persuading Israel to export billions of
dollars’ worth of arms to Tehran’s militantly anti-Israel ayatollahs. Throughout
the 1980s, dozens of Westerners were taken hostage by Hezbollah and exploited
for Iran’s political gain.
No other state uses hostage-taking as systematically as Iran. Innocent
individuals are detained on falsified espionage charges meriting life
imprisonment or execution. Coerced confessions are extracted by torture,
solitary confinement, or threats to family members.
Iranian-Swedish researcher Ahmadreza Djalali has been sentenced to death,
apparently in retaliation for assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists,
presumably by Israel. Arab-Iranian activist Habib Chaab was lured from his home
in Sweden to Istanbul, where he was abducted, and now faces a death sentence in
Iran. Detained academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert in 2020 was exchanged for three
Iranian terrorists jailed in Thailand for their part in a botched bombing
campaign. Iran would usually leave its own citizens to rot, but when Republican
Guard terrorists are at stake the ayatollahs are happy to negotiate.
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif freely acknowledges such “hostage diplomacy,”
saying that if Iranian prisoners are released abroad “Iran is ready to
reciprocate.”
The civilized world appears incapable of responding, other than a recent
Canadian initiative against “coercive diplomacy,” and France, Germany and
Britain summoning Iran’s ambassadors in protest. Such feeble measures only
encourage the morally bankrupt ayatollahs to demand bigger ransoms.
Biden’s national security adviser says they “have begun to communicate with the
Iranians” over US hostages, and the issue is a “significant priority.” But how
can Britain and America be negotiating on a level playing field over the nuclear
issue while Iran is holding their citizens ransom? America insists on keeping
such issues separate, but Iran views its nuclear program, hostages, Lebanon,
Iraq and Yemen as additional negotiating cards.
Most developed nations refuse to do deals with kidnappers, but when the abductor
is a state, billions of dollars are handed over — only for Iran to kidnap new
victims, and the farcical process starts over again.
When innocent mothers face psychological torture in solitary confinement, states
such as Britain and Sweden, which value their citizens, feel under immense moral
pressure to cut deals. However, these billion-dollar sums (direct ransoms or
unfrozen funds) are immediately funneled back to terrorist and paramilitary
groups with the blood of thousands of innocent people on their hands.
States that routinely employ hostage taking as a diplomatic tool should be
treated not as states, but as criminal gangs. They should be thrown out of every
international body including the UN, and not given the privilege of direct
negotiations with the US and other civilized nations until they permanently
modify their behavior.By doing deals with terrorist states we perpetuate murder
and terrorism. Hezbollah prospers and holds the Lebanese nation at gunpoint
based on the bountiful profits of Iran’s “hostage diplomacy,” along with
revenues from narcotics, weapons and people smuggling.
Such systematic criminality is fundamentally woven into the Islamic Republic’s
DNA, and until we deal with Tehran according to this premise, we only perpetuate
this cycle of new generations of innocent victims held to ransom.
*Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle
East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has
interviewed numerous heads of state.
The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published March 01-02/2021
Israel-US attacks against Iran in Syria pave way for
increased cooperation
Seth J. FrantzmanJerusalem Post/March 01/2021
Israel has carried out more than 1,500 airstrikes
against Iranian targets in Syria.
Israel and the US have targeted Iranian-backed forces in Syria over the last
several days, according to reports. The airstrikes on Sunday evening triggered
Syrian air defense, according to Iranian regime media. The strikes may have been
in response to an attack on an Israeli-owned vessel in the Gulf of Oman.
Last week, in response to an attack on US military forces in Iraq, the US also
carried out airstrikes in Syria. The US said that President Joe Biden had
ordered the strikes against Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria. The
strikes were authorized as a response to attacks against American and coalition
personnel in Iraq. “Specifically, the strikes destroyed multiple facilities
located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed military
groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada,” the US said.
“It was a deliberate and planned retaliation,” the US said in an unambiguous
message, adding that it would act to protect American personnel. The reports of
Israeli airstrikes on Sunday in Syria come in the wake of the visit by US
Central Command Air Force Commander Lt.-Gen. Gregory Guillot to Israel on
Friday. The visit underpinned “strategic cooperation with American forces,” IAF
Commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin said.
The double blow to Iran from the US and Israel is not the first time Iran has
been hit in Syria by both countries. Israel had carried out more than 1,000
airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria, according to January 2019 reports.
That number is likely closer to 1,500 airstrikes by now. The US carried out
retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed forces in Syria in December 2019
after an attack that killed a contractor at K-1 base in Iraq. In January, US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged US intelligence support for Israeli
airstrikes in Syria, according to Al-Monitor, a Washington-based news website.
Can the US force Iran out of Syria, pondered Jared Szuba in a piece at
Al-Monitor last December. “Are we ever going to get to a place where Iran does
not have forces in Syria?” Michael Mulroy, a former US deputy assistant
secretary of defense for the Middle East, asked during a think-tank event on
December 17, the report noted. “I mean, people that are smarter on this than I
have told me, no, that’s not going to happen.” “Mulroy, a veteran CIA
paramilitary officer who worked on Syria during his time at the Pentagon,
suggested that minimizing Tehran’s influence in the Levant should remain a US
goal,” Szuba wrote. “‘Maybe we should have a smarter take to it,’ he added.” It
is known that the US under the previous administration, including national
security advisor John Bolton and secretary of state Mike Pompeo, sought to
support Israel’s actions regarding Iran’s entrenchment in Syria.
Iran rapidly increased entrenchment since 2018, and Iran’s forces have suffered
accordingly. A strike in June 2018 hit a KH headquarters in Albukamal. Iraqi
media at the time, reporting statements by the pro-Iranian Hashd al-Shaabi,
blamed the US and Israel for the strikes.
IN AN interview in January, former US Syria envoy James Jeffrey showcased how
Israel and the US are working together in Syria. In Foreign Affairs, the former
American envoy on Syrian policy said: “US-supported Israeli strikes on Iranian
targets in the country further limited the [Syrian] regime’s military
options.”Jeffrey also told Szuba in an interview for Al-Monitor about the US
support for Israeli airstrikes in Syria.
“The US only began supporting that when I came on board,” he said. “I went out
there and we saw Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and others, and they
thought that they were not being supported enough by the US military, and not by
intelligence. And there was a big battle within the US government, and we won
the battle. “The argument [against supporting Israel’s campaign] was, again,
this obsession with the counterterrorism mission. People didn’t want to screw
with it, either by worrying about Turkey or diverting resources to allow the
Israelis to muck around in Syria, as maybe that will lead to some blowback to
our forces. It hasn’t.” Supporting Israel in Syria was a pillar of US policy on
Syria. The changeover in US administrations in January led to many questions
about whether the US would continue to support Israel’s freedom of action in
Syria and also whether the US would respond to Iranian attacks. Now we know that
the support appears to be continuing and that both Israel and the US are willing
to strike Iranian-backed forces or threats in Syria.
Linking Syria to Iran’s attacks elsewhere is a key aspect of the strikes over
the last several days. That means Iran may be getting a message that if it does
something in the Gulf of Oman, its militias could be targeted 2,000 kilometers
away. The US appears to have said the same thing.
The idea that the militia units in Syria are responsible for guiding policies
that target a ship in the Gulf of Oman or strike at a sensitive location in
Erbil appears overwrought. It is the linkage and messaging and context of US
support for Israeli actions in Syria that is important. David Shor, who
commentates on regional issues, noted on Twitter in a thread on the attacks:
“Time will tell before we can ascertain precisely what was attacked tonight in
Syria, and whether these targets can be differentiated at all from the hundreds
of others targeted over the years in Syria.”
That is a key point, beyond the linkage, of what the strikes have hit and
whether this matters to Iran. Airstrikes have long been part of a larger
Clausewitz-style, air-power diplomacy in the region, whereby an action in one
place results in a reaction in another.
For instance, Iran was establishing a permanent military base in Syria at Al-Kiswah,
a “Western intelligence source” told the BBC in November 2017. Al-Kiswah has
been struck several times since then, in May 2018, June 2019 and in January
2021. Airstrikes in eastern Syria on Iranian-linked targets were carried out by
Israel with intelligence provided by the US, a senior US intelligence official
said this January. There is now a long timeline from the Kiswah revelations in
November 2017, the warnings about Iranian entrenchment in 2017 and 2018, the
increasing entrenchment, the strike on the Hezbollah killer-drone team near the
Golan Heights in August 2019 and then the revelations of increased US support
for Israel’s actions in 2020, as well as US airstrikes against Iranian elements
in Syria in 2019 and now in 2021. The map of Israel-US involvement in Syria is
growing and converging on Iran’s network of bases in the region, which stretches
across its plethora of proxy forces from Iraq to Lebanon. This may pave the way
for increased US-Israel
cooperation in the region, or at least underpin a shared
strategy.
First-ever UAE ambassador to Israel presents credentials
Jerusalem Post/March 01/2021
Ashkenazi: We have a historic opportunity to
present a model of warm, comprehensive peace.
The United Arab Emirates’ first ambassador to Israel, Muhammad Mahmoud Al Khaja,
arrived in Jerusalem on Monday and presented his credentials to President Reuven
Rivlin. Rivlin told Khaja the whole nation was excited to welcome him. “We
waited patiently for relations to grow step by step, and now we are privileged
to see this wonderful day at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, the capital
of Israel,” he said. Rivlin emphasized the importance of Emiratis meeting the
people of Israel and getting to know them, and of Israelis getting to know the
people of the UAE. “There are so many things we can do together,” he said.
Rivlin invited Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan to
visit Israel. He delivered his opening remarks in Arabic and then switched to
Hebrew.
Khaja, speaking in Arabic, brought greetings from the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi
and said it was personally very moving to be in Israel and in the presence of
the president. His speech illustrated the common aspirations of the two
countries. A new day of tolerance and cooperation was dawning in the Middle
East, “today more than ever,” he said. Khaja said he was certain the Abraham
Accords between Israel and the UAE would enhance stability and security in the
region. He cited the manner in which Israel is working to overcome COVID-19,
underscoring that both Israel and the UAE are among world leaders in vaccinating
their populations. Unlike the traditional robes he wore at his swearing-in
ceremony in the UAE last month, Khaja on Monday was attired in a Western-style
business suit. Following the official statements, the president and the
ambassador sat down for a working meeting in English.
The importance that Israel attaches to its diplomatic relations with the UAE was
apparent in the way Khaja was received.
In a complete break with standard protocol, Khaja was allowed to cut the line of
ambassadors waiting to present their letters of credence to Rivlin in an
official ceremony in the main hall of the President’s Residence. Traditionally,
the president and the new ambassadors do not make statements to the press, an
honor reserved for foreign heads of state who are on official visits to Israel.
In this case, however, both Rivlin and Khaja made statements to the press. Plus,
the IDF band added to its repertoire on Monday by playing the UAE’s national
anthem as the ambassador entered the presidential compound. Earlier, Khaja met
with Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, who said it was “another historic day in
the Middle East and a great step toward strengthening peace between our
countries and nations.” “We have a historic opportunity to present a model of
warm, comprehensive peace,” he added. The exchange of embassies is “critical for
establishing bilateral relations and promoting peace,” Ashkenazi said. UAE
Ambassador to Israel Muhammad Mahmoud Al Khafa and Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi
Ashkenazi give each other the traditional coronavirus-era greeting of elbow
bumping (Foreign Ministry)UAE Ambassador to Israel Muhammad Mahmoud Al Khafa and
Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi give each other the traditional
coronavirus-era greeting of elbow bumping (Foreign Ministry) Khaja was expected
to present his credentials, visit Yad Vashem and meet with Tourism Minister Orit
Farkash-Hacohen. He may also meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this
week. The UAE ambassador will be in Israel for four days to scout a location for
the Emirati Embassy. He is expected to come to Israel full-time at the end of
the month. After meeting with Ashkenazi, Khaja held a meeting with the Emirati
Embassy’s diplomatic staff together with Foreign Ministry staff, led by
Director-General Alon Ushpiz and Deputy Director-General for the Middle East
Chaim Regev. Khaja has been tweeting in Hebrew, English and Arabic in recent
days. Following his meeting with Rivlin, he tweeted in all three languages: “I
look forward to representing my beloved country and working to strengthen
cooperation and relations between our two countries.”
Israel in talks with Saudi, UAE, Bahrain for defense alliance against Iran
Lahav Harkov/Jerusalem Post/March 01/2021
Following op-ed by Ronald Lauder in Saudi paper, PMO says its 'not confirming
report, but we are always interested in upgrading ties with our Middle East
partners.'Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have
discussed expanding cooperation in facing common enemies, an Israeli official
familiar with the matter said Monday. The matter is being “informally
discussed,” the source said, adding that the countries are US allies. All four
believe a nuclear Iran would be a major threat and have been eyeing the Biden
administration’s plan to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal with concern.
“There is much to be gained by expanding cooperation,” the source said. The
remarks came following an article by World Jewish Congress president Ron Lauder
in Arab News calling for a “NATO of the Middle East.”
Saudi Arabia does not have a free press, and Arab News, an English-language
daily newspaper published in Saudi Arabia, is owned by Prince Turki bin Salman
Al Saud, a son of King Salman and brother of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman,
and is seen as reflecting the Saudi government’s official views.
Lauder said his contacts in Arab states viewed Israel as the only reliable ally
against Iran, and vice versa. They are “contemplating, aghast, the West’s
inability to halt these belligerent, dangerous developments” of Iran resuming
uranium enrichment and limiting International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors’
access to nuclear sites, he said. “Facing the accelerating threat of a
malevolent Iran and the weakness of a coronavirus-hit world, the path toward
self-reliance seems also to be the only path forward,” Lauder wrote. “Israelis
and Arabs should seize the opportunity to work together to save the Middle East
from the looming catastrophe of extremism and nuclearization.”
Israel is in talks with the three Gulf states about a defense alliance, i24 News
reported last week. The Prime Minister’s Office said it was “not confirming the
report, but we are always interested in upgrading ties with our Middle East
partners.”
One early indicator of a possible defense alliance is that Israel did not object
to the US selling F-35 fighter jets to the UAE, after the countries normalized
ties as part of the Abraham Accords last year.
Under US law, Washington must make sure its weapons sales in the Middle East do
not threaten Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region. Following
meetings between Defense Minister Benny Gantz and his US counterpart at the
time, Jerusalem gave the green light to sell the planes to Abu Dhabi.
Israel still does not have official ties with Saudi Arabia. But it grew closer
with the three Gulf states with which it is discussing further security
cooperation in the aftermath of the 2015 deal between world powers and Iran,
which they felt does not prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon once the
agreement expires. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and MBS, as the Saudi crown
prince is known, secretly met in Neom, a planned futuristic-Saudi city on the
Red Sea, last November.
Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi spoke with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi
on Monday. “Views were exchanged on a number of issues of common interest, as
well as the importance of supporting all efforts aimed at achieving peace and
stability in the region,” Ashkenazi said. “We agreed to maintain our direct
channel of communication and to further enhance cooperation.” Israel does not
have official diplomatic relations with Oman, but Netanyahu led a delegation to
the country in 2018. Albusaidi also spoke with Palestinian Authority Foreign
Minister Riad Malki, an Omani Foreign Ministry readout said. Albusaidi confirmed
“the Omani position in support of achieving a just and comprehensive peace in
the Middle East through direct negotiations and a two-state solution with the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” the statement said.
Pompeo: I know 'many' inside Saudi Arabia want normalization with Israel
Jerusalem Post /March 01/2021
"I hope that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can find its way to join the Abraham
Accords," Pompeo continued. "I know that many inside that country want that to
take place." Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has claimed that "many"
people living in Saudi Arabia want to normalize relations with Israel.
Pompeo made the comments in a recorded message to the Combat Antisemitism
Movement (CAM), which is scheduled to present America's former top diplomat with
its first ever Global Leadership Award for his work in facilitating the Abraham
Accords on Monday. "Predicting the future has proven a struggle for me," Pompeo
said, according to AFP. Pompeo added that he believes "many more" countries will
seek out normalization with Israel in the future. "I hope that the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia can find its way to join the Abraham Accords," Pompeo continued. "I
know that many inside that country want that to take place."There has been wide
speculation and expectations among some of Israel’s highest echelons that there
will be normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia within the near future.
There has also been speculation that Saudi Arabia has been pressuring countries
to recognize Israel in unison with Washington, before doing so themselves. In
November, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman (MBS) and Pompeo in Neom, Saudi Arabia, according to Israeli sources.
The meeting took place in Neom, a new city in northern Saudi Arabia on the Red
Sea meant to show off the kingdom’s technological advancement. The Israeli and
Saudi sides discussed Iran and normalization, The Wall Street Journal reported,
citing a senior Saudi adviser. The trip coincided within a week before the
assassination of one of Iran's top nuclear scientists Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who
was gunned down in a car near Tehran in what appeared to be a professional hit.
Pictures from the scene showed two vehicles, one damaged in an explosion and
another riddled with bullets. Fakhrizadeh was a senior Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corps (IRGC) officer and headed Iran’s nuclear weapons project.
Before leaving office, Donald Trump mentioned the possibility that Saudi Arabia
would join the Abraham Accords Israel signed with other Gulf states, but reports
came out immediately afterward of a generational divide, with the 84-year-old
king remaining loyal to the traditional Saudi position – that peace with a
Palestinian state must come before normalization with Israel – while the
35-year-old crown prince reportedly supported establishing ties with the Jewish
state. Pompeo has encouraged Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to follow the
United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in establishing diplomatic relations with
Israel. Thus far, Saudi Arabia has only allowed Israel to fly over its airspace.
"When leaders in the Arab world saw that the United States was prepared to do
this, to push back against Iran, to push back against the IRGC (Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps) leadership in the person of Qasem Soleimani, they
knew they had a friend," Pompeo said in his address to CAM. "They knew that they
could proceed down a path that their people wanted and work against
anti-Semitism and build out a set of accords with the State of Israel.”
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told Reuters in November that
normalization with Israel would only come after “a permanent and comprehensive
peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis including the
establishment of a Palestinian state on 1967 borders.”
The minister said his country has “supported normalization with Israel for a
long time,” pointing out that they authored the Saudi Peace Initiative that
would have the Arab world establish ties with Israel in exchange for their
vision of a two-state solution.
Lahav Harkov and Reuters contributed to this report.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to jail
in historic ruling
CNN/March 01/2021
A French court on Monday sentenced former President Nicolas Sarkozy to three
years in prison for corruption and influence peddling, but suspended two years
of the sentence.
President from 2007 to 2012, he was found guilty of trying to illegally obtain
information from a senior magistrate in 2014 about an ongoing investigation into
his campaign finances. The judge said Sarkozy did not need to serve time in
jail. He could serve the sentence by wearing an electronic bracelet at home. The
66-year-old is the first president to have been sentenced to jail in France's
modern history.
Netanyahu Blames Iran for Ship Attack, Tehran Denies Charge
Agence France Presse/March 01/2021
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accused Iran of a recent attack on
an Israeli-owned ship, noting his country was regularly "striking" its arch-foe
in comments that followed an overnight raid on Syria. Iran has denied any role
in the explosion last Thursday that hit the MV Helios Ray in the Gulf of Oman,
leaving two holes in its side but causing no casualties. The latest escalation
between the sides came as the international community has been trying to salvage
the troubled 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. "It is indeed an Iranian act, that's
clear," Netanyahu told public broadcaster Kan. "As for a reaction -- you know my
policy," he continued. "Iran is Israel's greatest enemy, I'm determined to block
it, we're striking at it throughout the region."Iranian foreign ministry
spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh responded swiftly to dismiss Netanyahu's claims.
"We strongly deny this accusation," Khatibzadeh told reporters, adding that "the
source of this accusation itself shows how invalid (the claim) is."
Syria strikes
Netanyahu's remarks came hours after Syrian air defences intercepted what they
said were Israeli missiles over Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the strike hit the area of Sayyida
Zeinab south of Damascus, where Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Lebanese
Hezbollah forces are reported to be present. There was no immediate report of
casualties. The Israeli army refused to confirm its involvement in the attack.
It was not clear what caused the blast on the Helios Ray, a vehicle carrier
travelling from the Saudi port of Dammam to Singapore, which punctured the
boat's hull but did not cause any casualties among the crew or damage to the
engine. Israel has long accused Iran of trying to acquire nuclear weapons, a
charge always denied by Tehran. Following the election of US President Joe
Biden, Washington, the European parties to the deal -- France, Germany and
Britain -- and Tehran have been trying to salvage the troubled 2015 nuclear
accord, which granted Iran international sanctions relief in return for
restrictions on its nuclear programme. The accord has been nearing collapse
since former president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018 and reimposed
crippling sanctions as part of a "maximum pressure" campaign against Tehran.
On Sunday, Iran dismissed a European offer for an informal meeting involving the
US. In his remarks on Monday, Netanyahu reiterated the Israeli line that it was
his country's top priority that "Iran won't have nuclear weapons, with or
without an agreement". "That's what I also told my friend President Biden," the
Israeli leader added. Critics have questioned if Netanyahu, who supported
Trump's move to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, would be able to
coordinate the Israeli position on the volatile issue with Biden. Biden entered
office declaring that he wants to return to the deal in some form, calling
Trump's policy on Iran a failure.
Myanmar's Suu Kyi Hit with Two New Criminal Charges
Agence France Presse/March 01/2021
Ousted Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi was hit with two new criminal
charges when she appeared in court via video link on Monday, a month after a
military coup triggered relentless and massive protests. Suu Kyi has not been
seen since being detained on February 1, and her appearance came as
demonstrators took to the streets again across the country in defiance of an
escalation of deadly force from the junta. At least 18 people died on Sunday as
troops and police fired live bullets at demonstrators in cities across Myanmar,
according to the United Nations, which cited its own credible information. Suu
Kyi, 75, was already facing obscure criminal charges for possessing unlicensed
walkie-talkies, as well as violating coronavirus restrictions by staging a
campaign event during last year's election. She is now also accused of a
violation of communications laws as well as intent to incite public unrest, her
lawyer Khin Maung Zaw said. "We can not say for sure how many more cases Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi will face in this period," he told reporters in Naypyidaw.
"Anything can happen in this country at this time."Myanmar's ousted president
Win Myint is also facing the same intent to incite public unrest charge in
addition to coronavirus restriction breaches. Suu Kyi has reportedly been kept
under house arrest in Naypyidaw, an isolated city that the military built during
a previous dictatorship. The military has justified its takeover, ending a
decade-long democratic experiment, by making unfounded allegations of widespread
fraud in last November's national elections. Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy won the election in a landslide. The generals have hit Suu Kyi with
two charges the international community widely regards as frivolous -- relating
to importing walkie talkies and staging a campaign rally during the pandemic.
Monday's court proceedings were preliminary matters in the case, including with
Khin Maung Zaw seeking to formally represent her.
Uprising-
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to streets regularly over the past
month to oppose the coup. While the military has steadily increased the type of
force used to try to contain the uprising, beginning with tear gas and water
cannons, this weekend's violence saw the biggest escalation. One person was shot
while crouching behind rubbish bins and other makeshift shields, and had to be
dragged away by others, with the incident filmed by media. AFP independently
confirmed 10 deaths in Sunday's violence, although there were fears the toll
could be much higher. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a
reliable monitoring group, estimated that about 30 people had been killed by
security forces since the coup on February 1. On Monday, protests erupted again
in multiple cities across the country, with demonstrators in Yangon using bamboo
poles, sofas and tree branches to erect barricades across streets. In one clash
broadcast live on Facebook and verified by AFP, unarmed protesters fled after a
volley of shots were fired. It was not immediately clear if the security forces
had fired live rounds or rubber bullets. Hundreds of people were also arrested
over the weekend with many in Yangon taken to Insein Prison, where Myanmar's
leading democracy campaigners have served long jail terms under previous
dictatorships. More than 1,100 people have been arrested, charged, or sentenced
since the coup, according to The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
One reporter was also shot with rubber bullets on the weekend while covering a
protest in the central city of Pyay, their employer said. Several journalists
documenting Saturday's assaults by security forces were detained, including an
Associated Press photographer in Yangon. "We strongly condemn the escalating
violence against protests in Myanmar and call on the military to immediately
halt the use of force against peaceful protesters," Ravina Shamdasani,
spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, said. The United States has been one
of the most outspoken critics of the junta, and Secretary of State Antony
Blinken also reacted with horror after Sunday's violence. "We condemn the
Burmese security forces' abhorrent violence against the people of Burma & will
continue to promote accountability for those responsible," Blinken tweeted,
using the country's old name.
One Iranian-Backed Militia Member Killed, 2 Injured in
Syria Strike
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 1 March, 2021
A US strike in Syria last week killed one Iranian backed militia member and
injured two others, the Pentagon said on Monday. "We'll continue to assess, as
you know we do, and if that changes we'll certainly let you know," Pentagon
spokesman John Kirby told reporters. Washington and Tehran are seeking maximum
leverage in attempts to save Iran’s nuclear deal reached with world powers in
2015 but abandoned in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump, after which regional
tensions soared and fears of full-scale conflict grew. The air strikes, early on
Friday local time, targeted militia sites on the Syrian side of the Iraqi-Syrian
frontier, where groups backed by Iran control an important crossing for weapons,
personnel and goods. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the air strikes in
Syria were meant to send the message that President Joe Biden will act to
protect Americans. Future US actions in the region will be deliberative and will
aim to deescalate tensions in Syria, Psaki said.
170 US Lawmakers Urge Biden Administration to Push Turkey
on Rights
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 1 March, 2021
One hundred seventy members of the US House of Representatives signed a
bipartisan letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging President Joe
Biden’s administration to address “troubling” human rights issues as it
formulates policy for dealings with Turkey. The letter, dated Feb. 26 and made
public on Monday, notes that NATO ally Turkey has long been an important US
partner but says the administration of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
strained the relationship. “Strategic issues have rightfully received
significant attention in our bilateral relationship, but the gross violation of
human rights and democratic backsliding taking place in Turkey are also of
significant concern,” said the letter, whose signers included Representatives
Greg Meeks, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and
Mike McCaul, the panel’s ranking Republican member. Erdogan said on Feb. 20 that
the common interests of Turkey and the United States outweigh their differences
and Turkey wants improved cooperation with Washington. But relations have frayed
over a host of issues, including Turkey’s purchase of a Russian missile defense
system and US support for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria.
Washington has also expressed repeated concern over rights and freedoms. The
lawmakers’ letter said Erdogan and his party have weakened Turkey’s judiciary,
installed political allies in key military and intelligence positions, and
wrongfully imprisoned political opponents, journalists and members of minority
groups.
Blinken Calls on Houthis to Match Saudi, Yemen Govt
Commitment to End War
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 1 March, 2021
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that Saudi Arabia and the
government of Yemen are “committed and eager” to find a way to end the war in
Yemen and called on the Iran-backed Houthi militias to do the same.
Speaking after a visit to the region by his Yemen envoy Tim Lenderking, Blinken
told a UN humanitarian aid pledging conference: “He reports that the Saudis and
the Republic of Yemen government are committed and eager to find a solution to
the conflict.” “We call on the Houthis to match this commitment. A necessary
first step is to stop their offensive against Marib.”
The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from
miscellaneous sources published March 01-02/2021
Turkey’s Ziraat Bank Under Scrutiny
Aykan Erdemir and Umut Can Fidan/FDD/March 01/2021
Irregularities Point to Erdoğan’s Manipulation of Financial System to
Consolidate Power
Executive Summary
Concerns continue to mount about the integrity of the Turkish financial system.
News reports surfaced in January alleging that one of Turkey’s largest financial
institutions was involved in questionable offshore deals, conflicts of interest,
and irregular transactions with the country’s wealth fund. Turkey’s largest
lender, Ziraat Bank, and largest mobile phone operator, Turkcell, are at the
center of the scandal. Multiple news outlets report that Ziraat extended a $1.6
billion nonperforming loan to an offshore company, likely under the direction of
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish strongman appears to have
used public funds, courts, and questionable financial transactions to further
consolidate economic and political power. The Turkish president already has an
established record of targeting businesses and media outlets once owned by
secular figures and political rivals. U.S. regulators and prosecutors should
continue to address concerns regarding illicit finance in the Turkish banking
system.
Introduction
Turkey’s state-owned Ziraat Bank, the country’s largest lender by total assets,
came under public scrutiny in January for a $1.6 billion nonperforming loan it
had extended in 2014 to an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
Although Ziraat has since issued a press statement claiming to have settled the
loan as of October 2020, Turkey’s opposition parties and independent media
outlets continue to highlight multiple irregularities in one of the biggest
loans in Turkish banking history.1 Since the initial exposé by a Turkish daily
on January 4, the Ziraat Bank scandal has widened: Through a chain of
questionable deals involving multiple conflicts of interest, the country’s
sovereign wealth fund, headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, used Ziraat
Bank, which the fund fully owns, to disappear a nonperforming loan issued to an
offshore entity to purchase control of Turkey’s largest mobile phone operator,
Turkcell.2
Turkcell has the potential to be a strategic asset for Erdoğan at home and
abroad. The company already underwrites several pro-Erdoğan institutions in
Turkey and the United States. The Turkish president could further attempt to use
the telecommunications company to facilitate his control over information as a
tool to suppress domestic dissent. There are concerns that this might already be
happening. This past January, Erdoğan raised privacy concerns about Facebook’s
WhatsApp messaging service to urge Turkish users to switch to Turkcell’s
messaging app, BiP, which can access more personal information than the other
most popular messaging apps used in Turkey, according to a Turkish watchdog.3
The scandal involving Ziraat Bank, Turkey’s wealth fund, and Turkcell is the
latest example of how Erdoğan seeks to wield public funds, courts, and irregular
financial transactions to consolidate economic and political power. The Turkish
strongman already has a troubling track record of taking control of businesses
and media outlets once owned by secular figures and political rivals.
Turkish Papers Expose Ziraat Bank Scandal
The Turkish daily Sözcü dropped a bombshell on January 4. The paper reported
that 2019 audits by the Turkish Court of Accounts revealed that the country’s
two biggest public lenders, Ziraat Bank and Halkbank, provided large
conglomerates with significant loans that have since become nonperforming.4
These loans were controversial because the primary mandate of state-owned Ziraat
Bank is to extend credit to farmers, while the primary mandate of Halkbank is to
extend credit to small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Three days later, another Turkish daily, BirGün, disclosed that one of the
nonperforming loans was for $1.6 billion, with a 10-year maturity and a
three-year grace period.5 Ziraat Bank offered the loan in 2014 to an unnamed
company in tax haven BVI.6 The size of the loan, the audit noted, comprised a
quarter of the total value of all the loans on the bank’s watch list. Over the
last six years, BirGün reported, the offshore company repaid only $17.5 million.
On the same day as the BirGün exposé, Faik Öztrak, a lawmaker and deputy
chairperson from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), held a press
conference criticizing the Turkish government for extending Ziraat Bank loans to
firms based in tax havens instead of providing them to farmers in need.7 In an
attempt to defend its actions, Ziraat Bank issued a statement on January 8
stating it extended the 2014 loan to a BVI-based subsidiary of Çukurova Holding,
a Turkish conglomerate, to help the company maintain its shares in Turkey’s
largest mobile phone operator, Turkcell. However, Ziraat Bank did not name
Çukurova Holding’s offshore subsidiary.8
The next day, Sözcü reported that the $1.6 billion loan went to Turkcell itself.
This was incorrect. The loan went to a Turkcell shareholder.9 On January 11,
amid growing public censure, Turkcell released an official disclosure through
the Public Disclosure Platform of Turkey’s Central Securities Depository,
denying the receipt of the Ziraat Bank loan.10 As a publicly traded company
listed on both Borsa Istanbul and the New York Stock Exchange since 2000,
Turkcell is subject to strict reporting and disclosure requirements.
Meanwhile, Deniz Yavuzyılmaz, another CHP lawmaker, highlighted another
irregularity with the loan: multiple conflicts of interest.11 The
government-owned Turkey Wealth Fund (TWF), which fully owns Ziraat Bank and is
Turkcell’s largest shareholder, with 26.2 percent of its shares, used the Ziraat
loan to gain control of Turkcell’s board through Çukurova Holding.12 Hüseyin
Aydın, the Ziraat Bank CEO who approved the 2014 loan, sits on the boards of not
only Turkcell but also TWF.13 Gerçek Gündem, a Turkish news portal, explained
that these findings reveal “the lender and the borrower are in the same
institution.”14
Ziraat and Illicit Finance
The concern surrounding Ziraat Bank’s massive offshore loan stems in part from
the past misconduct of Turkey’s state-owned banks. Since 2013, various
sanctions-busting, money laundering, and terrorism-finance allegations have
surfaced against the banks.15 These allegations include October 2019 charges
against Turkey’s Halkbank in a Manhattan federal court for “the bank’s
participation in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on
Iran.”16 Policy experts have described the bank’s actions as the biggest
sanctions-evasion scheme in recent history.17
There have also been numerous exposés of the Turkish ruling elite’s problematic
offshore deals. In November 2017, CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu exposed a $15
million transfer by Erdoğan, his family members, and his allies to an account on
the Isle of Man,18 one of the tax havens implicated in the 2017 Paradise Papers
scandal.19 The papers consisted of 13.4 million leaked files that the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its 95 media partners
examined to expose financial crimes by political and economic elites across the
globe.
The Black Sea, a Romania-based investigative reporting outlet, confirmed that
the Erdoğan family owned three offshore companies, including a Maltese company
that facilitated a 2008 deal that enabled Erdoğan to acquire a $25 million oil
tanker from Azeri-Turkish billionaire Mübariz Mansimov. Mansimov has been in a
Turkish prison since March 2020, charged with ties to a religious network Ankara
blames for a 2016 failed coup attempt.20
Likewise, The Black Sea reported that Erdoğan’s close associate former Prime
Minister Binali Yıldırım and Yıldırım’s family members owned $140 million in
foreign assets in Malta and the Netherlands, among other jurisdictions.21 Before
becoming minister of treasury and finance, Berat Albayrak, Erdoğan’s son-in-law,
also helped establish offshore companies to help his then-employer, an Erdoğan
business ally, evade taxes.22
Erdoğan’s Bid to Control Çukurova Holding’s Assets
The chain of events that led to Ziraat Bank’s $1.6 billion loan to Çukurova
Holding’s BVI-based subsidiary in 2014 offers a telling account of how Erdoğan’s
Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) consolidated economic and
political power in Turkey by gradually taking over the country’s secular
businesses, media outlets, and state institutions.
Çukurova Holding is a Turkish conglomerate with subsidiaries in industrial,
construction, and information and communication technologies as well as media,
transportation, trade, energy, and financial services.23 In 2011, Forbes Turkey
listed Çukurova Holding’s chairman, Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, a pro-secular and
liberal figure, as Turkey’s richest man, with a net worth of $4 billion.24
That year, however, The Wall Street Journal reported that Karamehmet was
“fighting to survive” as he struggled with the financial and legal fallout from
Turkey’s 2001 banking crisis as well as with the AKP’s growing pressure on
pro-secular media bosses.25 Karamehmet was not only battling “Swedish and
Russian shareholders to keep his stake in Turkcell,” but also fighting “a nearly
12-year prison sentence for fraud” and the government’s freezing of “$1 billion
of [Çukurova Holding’s] assets as collateral for alleged unpaid taxes.” In 2015,
Forbes reported his net worth had declined to $1.15 billion, and dropped him
from its billionaires list the following year.26
Karamehmet’s troubles over Turkcell shares, his most valuable assets, date to a
2005 deal with Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman. That year, Fridman’s
Moscow-based Alfa Group provided cash-strapped Çukurova Holding with a $3.3
billion financing package through BVI-based Cukurova Finance. $1.6 billion of it
came in the form of six-year bonds convertible into 13.8 percent of Turkcell’s
shares. Turkey’s state minister celebrated the deal as Russia’s “biggest foreign
direct investment.”27
According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings from June 2005,
Çukurova Holding and Cukurova Finance, together with Fridman’s BVI-based Alfa
Telecom Turkey Limited, made “an indirect investment in Turkcell via their
respective holdings in Cukurova Telecom Holdings Limited,” another BVI-based
company controlled by Karamehmet and Fridman.28 This investment made Alfa
Telecom Turkey Limited the indirect owner of 13.2 percent of Turkcell. Alfa
Telecom Turkey Limited owned 49 percent of Cukurova Telecom, which in turn owned
52.9 percent of Turkcell Holding, the owner of 51 percent of Turkcell’s shares.
When Karamehmet later defaulted on his debt to Fridman, years of legal battles
ensued, leading to a January 2013 UK Privy Council ruling in favor of Çukurova
Holding and Cukurova Finance. This afforded Karamehmet the opportunity to
reclaim a 13.8 percent stake in and control over Turkcell, but only if he could
repay $1.6 billion to Fridman’s Alfa Group by July 30, 2014.29
Two weeks before the deadline, Turkey’s Treasury and the Banking Regulation and
Supervision Agency blocked a funding deal offered by an Istanbul-based
private-equity firm owned by Yıldız Holding, one of the world’s largest food
manufacturers. The firm was chaired by Murat Ülker, who had taken over
Karamehmet and was Turkey’s richest man, with a $3.7 billion net worth.30 The
funding deal offered by Ülker’s Yıldız Holding would have enabled Karamehmet to
maintain a majority stake in Turkcell and mitigate concerns about allowing a
Russian company to acquire a majority stake in Turkey’s largest mobile operator.
Furthermore, since the Ülker family is one of Turkey’s leading conservative
Muslim families, with a history of doing business with Erdoğan before his rise
to power, this solution should have been politically suitable.31 The Ülker
family also enjoyed credibility within AKP circles for being targeted by
secularists in the Turkish military following the “post-modern coup” of 1997,
through which the Turkish military forced the country’s first Islamist prime
minister, Necmettin Erbakan, to resign after only one year.32
By 2014, however, Ülker was no longer favored by Erdogan. As a London-based
financier told Al-Monitor in 2016, Ülker was “not viewed as being sufficiently
subservient to Erdoğan” at a time when the Turkish president was “creating his
own oligarchs.”33 The cracks in the Ülker-Erdoğan relationship that complicated
Yıldız Holding’s Turkcell deal with Çukurova Holding became public in November
2016, when Yıldız Holding became a target of Turkish government probes into the
country’s July 2016 abortive coup d’état.34 In 2020, the Turkish president even
shuttered a university established by a foundation that Murat Ülker co-founded
in 1986.35
With only five days remaining before the July 30, 2014, payment deadline, and
facing the prospect of Fridman’s imminent control over Turkcell, Ziraat Bank
stepped in. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that the public
lender’s $1.6 billion loan marked “a significant increase in the Turkish
government’s involvement in the strategically important telecom industry.”36
Thus, Erdoğan blocked a private financing deal and tapped into $1.6 billion in
public funds via Ziraat Bank as a long-term strategy to control Turkcell.
In fact, Ziraat Bank’s bailout came four months after Turkey’s Capital Markets
Board appointed three “independent” board members to Turkcell: two former AKP
ministers and the chairman of the board of trustees of an Istanbul university
with close ties to Erdoğan.37 CHP lawmaker Deniz Yavuzyılmaz charged that
Cukurova Finance was able to receive the Ziraat Bank loan only after Erdoğan
allies joined Turkcell’s board.38
Erdoğan’s bailout of Cukurova Finance through Ziraat Bank appears to be part of
a strategy not only to control Turkcell, but also to transfer other businesses
from the pro-secular tycoon Karamehmet to Erdoğan’s sphere of influence. In May
2013, Turkey’s Saving Deposit Insurance Fund seized Çukurova Holding’s media
assets and its motor company BMC.39 In November 2013, Erdoğan ally Ethem Sancak
acquired 11 Çukurova media assets, including newspapers, a broadcaster, and a
satellite TV provider.40 Under Sancak’s management, these outlets voiced
consistent support for the AKP. Sancak has also expressed devotion to Erdoğan,
saying, “As I got to know Erdogan, I realized that such a kind of divine love
between two men is possible.”41
In May 2014, 18 days before Ziraat Bank’s loan to Cukurova Finance, Sancak
received the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund’s approval for his purchase of BMC,
which since then has become an important pillar of Erdoğan’s economic and
military partnership with Qatar, a key ideological ally.42 Erdoğan appears to
have relieved Çukurova of all its strategic assets before targeting the most
valuable asset, Turkcell, via a last-minute Ziraat Bank bailout.
Ziraat Bank’s U.S. Troubles
Ziraat Bank has become a key instrument not only of Erdoğan’s power
consolidation at home, but also of his international ambitions. However,
pushback from the U.S. Treasury Department and U.S. regulators and courts has
forced Erdoğan to curb Ziraat Bank’s footprint abroad. He currently uses the
lender predominantly to serve his domestic agenda.
In September 2014, the U.S. Federal Reserve launched a probe into Ziraat Bank’s
New York branch on the heels of an earlier agreement under which the Federal
Reserve required an audit of certain dollar clearing transactions Ziraat Bank
processed in 2012 – at the height of Iran’s violations of U.S. sanctions.43
In 2017, Ziraat Bank became one of the two Turkish public lenders implicated by
Reza Zarrab, the Turkey-based ringleader of a massive Iranian sanctions-evasion
scheme who later turned state’s witness as part of a federal case brought
against Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the deputy CEO of Halkbank. Atilla was sentenced to
32 months in prison for “conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran.”44
Zarrab testified in November 2017 that Turkey’s then-economy minister told him
that Ziraat Bank was one of the Turkish banks Erdoğan authorized to move funds
for Iran.45 Ziraat denied this.46 Less than two weeks after Zarrab’s testimony,
Ziraat shuttered its New York branch, which had been active since 1983.47
Ziraat again came to the attention of U.S. regulators in 2019. It was the key
financial institution Erdoğan deployed to assist Venezuelan strongman Nicolás
Maduro.48 Bloomberg fingered Ziraat as the institution Venezuela’s central bank
used “to pay contractors, move money and import products in Turkish liras.”49 In
July 2019, weeks after the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a Turkey-based
company involved in a corruption and money laundering network directed by Maduro,
Ziraat stopped working with Venezuela’s central bank, fearing U.S. sanctions.50
Ziraat Bank and Turkey’s Sovereign Wealth Fund
The Turkcell saga has also exposed important connections between Ziraat Bank and
TWF, Turkey’s sovereign wealth fund, which since its inception in August 2016
has been a source of controversy for providing Erdoğan with a “parallel budget”
exempt from the oversight of Turkey’s parliament and Court of Accounts.51
On June 28, 2020, TWF disclosed its agreement to acquire 26.2 percent of
Turkcell shares by entering into a series of agreements with four firms:
Sweden’s former phone monopoly-turned-multinational telecommunications firm,
Telia Company; Fridman’s LetterOne, which owns Alfa Telecom Turkey Limited;
Karamehmet’s Çukurova Holding; and Ziraat Bank.52 Exhausted by what Bloomberg
called a “15-year-old feud for control” over Turkcell that resulted in “spats
over board representation, dividends, and other issues,” Telia Company sold its
24 percent indirect share in Turkcell for $530 million.53
This dollar figure represented a 54 percent discount compared to Turkcell’s
market value and amounted to a $322 million loss for Telia.54 TWF, which fully
owns Ziraat Bank, assumed Cukurova Finance’s $1.6 billion debt to the bank and
received Karamehmet’s shares.55 This deal also increased the share of Fridman’s
LetterOne in Turkcell from 13.2 percent to 24.8 percent.
As Al-Monitor’s Mustafa Sönmez noted, despite selling some shares to LetterOne,
TWF needed to pay “$1.6 billion to Ziraat Bank and $530 million to Telia,” a sum
that would have forced the fund to issue debt securities, since that amount was
not available in its coffers.56 Five months later, what Sönmez refers to as
“Turkey’s ‘wealthless’ wealth fund” sold 10 percent of the Borsa Istanbul stock
exchange to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund for $200 million, in another opaque
deal criticized by the CHP.57
TWF’s CEO, meanwhile, bragged that the Turkish sovereign wealth fund had bought
10 percent of Borsa Istanbul “for a much lower amount” in December 2019 from the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).58 EBRD exited Borsa
Istanbul hastily after Ankara appointed Atilla, Halkbank’s former deputy CEO, as
head of the stock exchange. Atilla had been convicted in U.S. court for his role
in the aforementioned multibillion-dollar scheme to evade Iran sanctions.59
When TWF relieved Ziraat of its nonperforming $1.6 billion loan, it also
injected $3 billion into Turkey’s three public lenders, including Ziraat Bank.60
Since TWF is cash-strapped, it disclosed plans to “issue debt securities” in May
2020 for state-owned banks to “purchase at market price.”61 It appears Ziraat
Bank’s purchase of TWF’s debt securities, which in turn funded a capital
injection in Ziraat Bank, also helped TWF relieve Ziraat Bank of its $1.6
billion nonperforming loan. Moreover, Hüseyin Aydın, Ziraat Bank’s CEO, sits on
the boards of TWF and Turkcell – all three parties involved in this troubling
chain of financial transactions.
What might appear controversial from a governance perspective represents the
triumph of Erdoğan’s effort to solidify his control over the country’s leading
telecommunications company. The reshuffle allowed Erdoğan to appoint five out of
Turkcell’s nine board members.62 It is ironic that a saga that started in 2014
ostensibly to prevent Russian control of Turkcell ended up increasing Russian
billionaire Fridman’s stake while also giving Erdoğan full rein over the
company.
As a postscript, market-savvy Fridman, less than a month after an October 2020
overhaul of Turkcell’s ownership structure, exploited a short-lived lira rally
to sell 5 percent of Turkcell shares for about $205 million, getting a much
better return on his investment than Sweden’s Telia.63 Fridman’s remaining 19.8
percent stake is subject to a 12-month lock-up.64
Lingering Questions
Although Erdoğan’s bid for control over Turkcell appears complete, Turkey’s
opposition continues to probe the irregularities in this complex chain of
transactions. On January 14, CHP Deputy Chairman Faik Öztrak filed questions
with Turkey’s minister of treasury and finance, challenging the terms of the
deal presented in Ziraat Bank’s press release.65 One of Öztrak’s inquiries is
about the value of Cukurova Finance’s 13.8 percent stake used to cover its
nonperforming loan to Ziraat Bank. As Öztrak points out, if Telia’s 24 percent
stake in Turkcell was worth $530 million in June 2020, then how can Cukurova
Finance’s 13.8 percent stake settle the BVI-based company’s $1.6 billion debt to
Ziraat Bank?
Meanwhile, Turkish journalists continue to question why Turkcell shares that TWF
took over from Telia and Cukurova Finance ended up with a new subsidiary of TWF
instead of with the sovereign wealth fund itself.66 That subsidiary, TVF Bilgi
Teknolojileri İletişim Hizmetleri Yatırım Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi (TVF
BTIH), is an Istanbul-based joint stock company established on June 5, 2020,
with registered capital of only 5 million Turkish liras ($740,000). According to
Turkcell’s disclosures to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on June
17, 2020, and to the Public Disclosure Platform of Turkey’s Central Securities
Depository on September 11, 2020, a company with less than $1 million of
registered capital now controls Turkcell, which has a market capitalization of
$4.8 billion.67
Turkcell claims the new structure, which created a new class of privileged
shares that comprise 15 percent of the company’s total shares and are owned
entirely by TWF through TVF BTIH, hence granting TWF the power to elect five out
of nine members of Turkcell’s board, will improve governance and protect
minority shareholders.68 This assertion is highly questionable. The
irregularities resulting from the various dealings among TWF, Ziraat Bank, and
Turkcell leave much room to improve corporate governance and protect
shareholders.
In the short run, Turkcell’s minority shareholders might actually find the
stability provided by Erdoğan’s influence preferable to board infighting that
had pushed investors away. Given Erdoğan’s track record, however, the current
arrangement may prove risky in the long run, not only for the company but also
for its shareholders. TWF, Ziraat Bank, and Turkcell are likely to be embroiled
in the Turkish president’s bid to consolidate political and economic power
through these entities and others.
U.S. regulators and prosecutors should continue to scrutinize Turkish entities
Erdoğan uses to pursue his domestic and global agenda and the potential illicit
transactions carried out through them. Resisting the Turkish president’s
attempts to scuttle the ongoing federal case against Halkbank on charges of
evading Iran sanctions would be a good start.69
With Strikes in Syria, Biden Confronts Iran’s Militant
Network
Ben Hubbard and Jane Arraf/The New York Times/March 01/2021
Using a carefully calibrated approach, the president hopes to restrain Iran’s
regional militia allies without undercutting efforts to reach a new nuclear
deal.
With Strikes in Syria, Biden Confronts Iran’s Militant Network
Using a carefully calibrated approach, the president hopes to restrain Iran’s
regional militia allies without undercutting efforts to reach a new nuclear
deal.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Since President Biden entered the White House, Iranian-backed
militants across the Middle East have struck an airport in Saudi Arabia with an
exploding drone, and are accused of assassinating a critic in Lebanon and of
targeting American military personnel at an airport in northern Iraq, killing a
Filipino contractor and wounding six others.
On Thursday, the world got its first glimpse of how Mr. Biden is likely to
approach one of the greatest security concerns of American partners in the
region: the network of militias that are backed by Iran and committed to
subverting the interests of the United States and its allies.
United States officials said that overnight airstrikes ordered by Mr. Biden hit
a collection of buildings on the Syrian side of a border crossing with Iraq on
Thursday and targeted members of the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and an
affiliated group.
A Kataib Hezbollah official said that one of his group’s fighters had been
killed in the airstrikes. A statement by the group later described the dead
fighter as a member of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, a collection of
paramilitaries that includes Kataib Hezbollah and is officially part of Iraqi
government security forces.
But Iranian state television and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a
conflict monitor based in Britain, reported that 17 fighters had been killed in
the airstrikes, which occurred near Abu Kamal, Syria, just across the border
from Iraq.
While the exact death toll remained unclear, Mr. Biden appears to have
calibrated the strikes, hoping they would cause enough damage to show that the
United States would not allow rocket attacks like that on the Erbil airport in
northern Iraq on Feb. 15, but not so much as to risk setting off a wider
conflagration.
“He is kind of putting his first red line,” said Maha Yahya, the director of the
Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
She said the strikes signaled to Iran that his eagerness to return to a nuclear
agreement would not lead Mr. Biden to ignore other regional activities by Iran
and its allies, and particularly attacks on American troops.
“It is sending a message: The bottom line is that we won’t tolerate this and
will use military force when we feel you’ve crossed the line,” Ms. Yahya said.
Militiamen fled from six of the seven buildings hit in the strikes after
spotting what they believed to be an American surveillance aircraft, according
to the Sabareen news channel on Telegram, which is used by Iran-backed groups.
In a sign of heightened tensions between the Iraqi government and Iran-backed
groups that are also part of Iraq’s security forces, Sabareen said the U.S.
strikes had been aided by an Iraqi intelligence official posing as a shepherd.
Iraq’s interior and defense ministries issued statements denying they had
provided intelligence for the attack.
In an interview with a local television network on Thursday, Iraq’s foreign
minister, Fuad Hussein, said those calling themselves “the resistance” and
launching rocket attacks in Iraq were no more than terrorists.
“We see these attacks as attacks on the Iraqi government,” Mr. Hussein said in a
recent interview with The New York Times, referring to attacks on the U.S.
Embassy and other American targets. Mr. Hussein is one of several Iraqi
officials who have traveled to Iran in recent months to try to persuade it to
use its influence to rein in militia forces.
“I and others went to Tehran and had a frank and open discussion with the
Iranians,” he said. “For a period of time, it stopped these attacks.”
“At the end, the field of conflict is in Iraq,” Mr. Hussein said.
Senior Iraqi officials have said they expect a more nuanced policy by the Biden
administration toward Iraq. Mr. Hussein said Baghdad had no expectations that
the administration would make Iraq a foreign policy priority, but said relations
would be helped by the long experience of both Mr. Biden and key administration
officials with Iraq and Iraqi politicians.
Kataib Hezbollah says it maintains a presence at the border crossing to prevent
the infiltration of Islamic State fighters into Iraq. It called the U.S. strikes
on the border a crime aided and abetted by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates and said it reserved the right to respond. It also repeated calls for
the Iraqi government to expel U.S. forces.
Kataib Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the attacks on Erbil airport this
month that killed the military contractor and an Iraqi civilian.
The Iraqi government has struggled to rein in Iran-backed militias that have
grown in influence since mobilizing to fight the Islamic State when it took over
large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The group lost its last piece of
territory two years ago, and many of the Iran-backed paramilitary groups have
been absorbed into Iraq’s official security forces.
Iraq has warned that conflict between the United States and Iran playing out on
its soil threatens to destabilize the country.
Attacks on American interests in Iraq by suspected Iran-backed militias
intensified after the United States killed an Iranian general, Qassim Suleimani,
and a senior Iraqi security official, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, in a drone strike
in Baghdad in 2020.
“In the last year, Iraq has become a playground and battleground for this type
of activity driven by the U.S.-Iran escalation,” said Renad Mansour, the Iraq
Initiative director at Chatham House, a London-based policy group. “These groups
began to spring up after the killing.”
“There’s one clear message from all of them: that avenging the deaths isn’t
over,” he said. “For them, time isn’t an issue.”
Mr. Mansour, who tracks armed groups in Iraq, said the newer groups appeared to
be made up of fighters armed with weapons connected to the larger Iran-linked
paramilitaries.
Some of the Iran-backed paramilitary groups are on the Iraqi government’s
payroll as part of the Iraqi security forces but are only nominally under the
control of the government.
The tit-for-tat attacks come as the Biden administration begins the daunting
task of trying to restore the nuclear agreement with Iran that former President
Donald J. Trump withdrew the United States from in 2018. Looming behind the
question of the parameters of a new deal is the issue of Iran’s destabilizing
activities across the Middle East, which are particularly concerning to American
allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Iran has spent decades building a network of partnerships with militia groups
across the region that has allowed it to project power far outside its area of
influence. These groups include the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah
in Lebanon, a number of groups in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
All of these groups have received at least some financing, support and weaponry
from Iran over the years, and all share its ideology of “resistance,” or the
struggle against Israel and United States interests in the region.
The groups have developed numerous, often low-cost ways of creating headaches
for America and its allies. Hezbollah has grown into Lebanon’s most powerful
military and political force, with an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets
pointed at Israel and seasoned fighters who helped turn the tide in Syria’s
civil war in favor of President Bashar al-Assad.
This month, the group’s foes in Lebanon accused the group of assassinating
Lokman Slim, a publisher, filmmaker and vocal critic of the group who had close
ties with Western officials. Hezbollah officials denied any connection to Mr.
Slim’s killing.
Days after Mr. Slim’s death, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom an Arab coalition
led by Saudi Arabia has been bombing since 2015, targeted an airport in the
Saudi city of Abha with an explosive-laden drone, damaging a civilian airliner.
The Erbil rocket attack was claimed by a previously unknown armed group calling
itself the Guardians of the Blood. United States officials said it appeared to
be affiliated with one or more of Iraq’s better-known militias, and Thursday’s
strikes in Syria targeted facilities belonging to them.
*Ben Hubbard reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Jane Arraf from Amman, Jordan.
Falih Hassan contributed reporting from Baghdad.
UAE Steps Back From Wars as Biden Reasserts Mideast Role
Zainab Fattah, Lin Noueihed, and Sylvia Westall/Bloomberg/March
01/2021
Gulf nation reduces role in Yemen, Libya to focus on economy
Muscular foreign policy since Arab Spring exposed UAE to risks
The United Arab Emirates is scaling back its role in foreign conflicts,
accelerating a shift from policies it pursued after the 2011 Arab Spring, with
the new administration in the U.S. a key factor.
The oil-rich nation has significantly reduced arms and logistical support for
Libya’s eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar, said five people
familiar with the matter, as a UN-led process to unify the North African country
gathers momentum. It’s also dismantling parts of its military base in Eritrea’s
port of Assab, vacating troops and hardware used to support the Saudi-led
coalition’s war in Yemen, according to two of the people, who spoke on condition
of anonymity.
The UAE did not respond to a request for comment but has previously denied
supplying arms to Haftar. It welcomed in January the Security Council’s call for
foreign forces to withdraw from Libya and declared support for a new leadership
elected in February.
The move comes as President Joe Biden’s arrival in the White House prompts a
recalibration among Gulf allies. They had enjoyed particularly close ties with
Donald Trump and welcomed his decision to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal with
Iran. Biden’s already sought to re-engage the Islamic Republic and reboot
coordination with NATO and Europe. He’s also signaled he’ll be less tolerant of
U.S. allies engaging in conflicts that undermine Washington’s objectives.
Biden’s Untapped Options to Pressure Saudi Arabia Over Khashoggi
The UAE’s moves accelerate a roll-back of its military footprint that began
under Trump, when tensions in the Gulf repeatedly threatened to tip into
conflict with implications for global oil supplies and UAE business hub Dubai.
Covid-19 and low oil prices further exposed the fragility of the small OPEC
member state that punches above its weight internationally. The International
Monetary Fund said in October it expects the UAE economy to grow by 1.3% this
year after a 6.6% contraction in 2020.
Risk Assessment
When popular uprisings swept the region in 2011, the UAE sought to neutralize
the influence of political Islam and its enthusiasts in Ankara, Doha and Tehran.
It sees such movements as destabilizing and a threat to dynastic rule.
While it’s not seen abandoning such strategic goals, diplomats and analysts say
Abu Dhabi has been refocusing its methods. It’s leaning more toward politics,
working through local proxies, and avoiding the negative attention risked by
direct and costly intervention.
“There is a new administration in the U.S. and the Emiratis need to get the
optics right,” said Tarek Megerisi, policy fellow at the European Council on
Foreign Relations, adding that even with a scaling back of flights to eastern
Libya, some appear to have continued in recent months, indicating a continuing
relationship there.
“They need to be careful with their image, especially in a year when they’re
looking to join the UN’s Security Council,” Megerisi said, referring to Abu
Dhabi’s candidacy to secure an elected, non-permanent seat for the 2022-2023
term.
The shift coincides with a change of personnel. Anwar Gargash, the minister of
state for foreign affairs who became the most visible spokesperson for UAE
interventions, stepped down to take on a diplomatic advisory role. The UAE
promoted Khalifa Shaheen al-Marar to minister of state. He has served as
ambassador to Turkey, Iran and Syria, indicating a possible shift toward mending
ties with rivals.
“The risk calculation has changed for the UAE,” said David Roberts, an associate
professor at King’s College London. “There will be more potential for blow back
from this administration on several files, whether in regards to Yemen or
sanctions-busting in Libya. This is really the de-risking of the more risky
aspects of UAE foreign policy.”
Gulf Reaches Out to Erdogan in Wary Move to Ease Tensions
The most obvious shift has come in Yemen, where the UAE joined a Saudi-led
campaign to oust Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from the capital Sanaa. Six years
on, the war’s failed to achieve those aims while contributing to the world’s
worst humanitarian disaster, prompting Biden to demand an end to fighting while
putting weapons sales to the UAE and Saudi Arabia on hold.
The UAE began withdrawing from Yemen in late 2019 but maintained support for
southern separatist fighters. It’s now scaling back in the Horn of Africa, where
it had spent the past few years building a military and diplomatic presence --
even helping to broker a peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea -- as part of
its broader competition for influence.
The involvement has come at a cost. The New York Times reported in February a
foiled attack on the UAE embassy in Ethiopia was orchestrated by an Iranian
sleeper cell seeking targets in response to the U.S. assassination of a
high-profile spymaster last year.
“The UAE’s regional assertiveness along with Saudi has been a major failure,”
said David Wearing at Royal Holloway, University of London. “Wiser heads in the
UAE would accept that they don’t have the capacity for this and, therefore,
Biden might be pushing an open door.”
Libya Pivot
In Libya, where a confidential United Nations report found in May the UAE had
been operating a covert air bridge to supply Haftar with weapons in
contravention of UN arms embargo, the pivot is more recent.
The UAE is now completely out of Libya militarily, said two people with
knowledge of the matter. The UAE had expressed frustration with Haftar after
Turkish intervention last year helped to end his offensive to overthrow the
internationally-recognized government in Tripoli.
Haftar’s Bid to Take Tripoli Ends as Last Bastion in West Falls
A third person with knowledge of the matter said UAE flights to eastern Libya
had fallen significantly though that might be because they’d already deployed
enough equipment for any future battle. Two others said it had reduced its
military footprint, though all said there was no evidence it’s severed contact
with Haftar or Sudanese and other mercenaries involved in the fight.
Mercenaries deployed by the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group to support Haftar remain
in Libya. Meanwhile, the Al-Watiya airbase southwest of Tripoli, seized from
Haftar by Turkish-backed government forces last year, has been expanded, its
runway extended to allow for larger aircraft and the potential use of advanced
fighter jets, one of the people said.
Though that would largely preclude further air strikes by Haftar on western
Libya, Turkey may have little appetite to take the fight to his eastern
stronghold, resulting in the current stalemate.
The UAE’s regional rethink doesn’t amount, however, to an automatic win for
Turkey, which is recalibrating its own approach, switching to diplomacy with
Europe in the dispute over Cyprus and gas exploration in the eastern
Mediterranean.
“All sides seem to be getting tired of these forever wars,” said Mohamed Anis
Salem, former ambassador and UN official, now with the Egyptian Council for
Foreign Affairs. “They’re realizing that they’re better off reorienting those
expensive and politically-fraught strategies.”
— With assistance by Selcan Hacaoglu, and John Follain
(Adds analyst comment from eighth paragraph)
The US and the UN Nuclear Inspectors Must Stop Appeasing
Iran
Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute/March 01/2021
In the latest example of Iran's increasingly reckless approach to the nuclear
issue, the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has threatened to
increase uranium enrichment to 60 percent, just below the 90 percent threshold
required to produce weapons grade material.
Thus, while IAEA director general Rafael Grossi claimed the talks had been a
success, the IAEA now finds itself in the invidious position whereby it will not
be able to ascertain whether Iran is actively working to produce nuclear weapons
until after the event.
Even Mr Grossi has been forced to concede that, as a result of Iran's decision
to withdraw access to inspection teams, the IAEA's ability to monitor Iran's
activities will be reduced by 70 percent.
In the latest blow to the IAEA's credibility, within hours of Mr Grossi
concluding his compromise deal, Mr Khamenei exposed the futility of this
approach with his threat that Iran was prepared to increase uranium enrichment
to 60 percent, a move that would make any attempt to revive the JCPOA utterly
doomed.
As Iran continues to maintain its defiance over its controversial nuclear
programme, the failure of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the
UN-body responsible for monitoring Iran's activities, is only lending further
encouragement to the ayatollahs to indulge in further acts of dangerous
brinkmanship. Pictured: IAEA director general Rafael Grossi at the
organization's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on November 18, 2020.
As Iran continues to maintain its defiance over its controversial nuclear
programme, the failure of the UN-body responsible for monitoring Iran's
activities is only lending further encouragement to the ayatollahs to indulge in
further acts of dangerous brinkmanship.
In the latest example of Iran's increasingly reckless approach to the nuclear
issue, the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has threatened to
increase uranium enrichment to 60 percent, just below the 90 percent threshold
required to produce weapons grade material.
The ayatollah's threat, moreover, which was made on state-run television, came
just hours after Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN-sponsored body responsible for monitoring Iran's
nuclear programme, made an emergency visit to Tehran after the regime announced
it would no longer allow IAEA inspection teams to visit key sites.
Iran has been threatening to withdraw cooperation with the IAEA after the
Iranian Majlis, or parliament, which is dominated by hardline supporters of Mr
Khamenei, voted in favour of a ban following last year's assassination of Iran's
leading nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Banning IAEA inspectors from visiting Iran's nuclear facilities represents a
clear violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement
negotiated by then US President Barack Obama to curb Iran's attempts to acquire
nuclear weapons.
Iran has never fully cooperated with the IAEA's requests to visit key nuclear
sites, and has consistently denied inspectors access to sensitive military
installations that Western intelligence officials believe have links to Iran's
long-standing effort to acquire a nuclear arsenal.
But implementing a complete ban on IAEA inspections threatened to completely
undermine the JCPOA at a time when the Biden administration, together with the
European signatories to the deal -- Britain, France and Germany -- are
desperately seeking to revive the agreement after then US President Donald Trump
withdrew from American involvement in 2018.
Mr Grossi's visit to Tehran in February was therefore seen as a desperate bid to
find a compromise that would keep the nuclear deal alive as European and US
diplomats intensified their efforts to hold fresh talks with Tehran.
The Argentine diplomat emerged from the talks claiming to have reached a
compromise with Iran that would allow inspection teams to continue monitoring
Iran's nuclear activities -- but from a distance. Under the terms of the deal,
the IAEA would in future implement what Mr Grossi described as a black box-type
system in which data is collected, but without the IAEA being able to access it
immediately.
Thus, while Mr Grossi claimed the talks had been a success, the IAEA now finds
itself in the invidious position whereby it will not be able to ascertain
whether Iran is actively working to produce nuclear weapons until after the
event.
Even Mr Grossi has been forced to concede that, as a result of Iran's decision
to withdraw access to inspection teams, the IAEA's ability to monitor Iran's
activities will be reduced by 70 percent.
Moreover, the latest report published by the IAEA on Iran's nuclear activity,
reveals that Iran has acquired 17.6 kg of 20 percent enriched uranium, with its
overall stockpile of enriched uranium now standing at 2,967 kg, which is 14
times higher than the limit set under the terms of the JCPOA.
In addition the report noted that Iran has succeeded in installing advanced IR-6
centrifuges at its underground Fordow enrichment facility, which is also in
violation of the JCPOA.
It also says Tehran has failed to provide technically credible explanations
about traces of enriched uranium that UN inspectors found at Iran's nuclear
storage facility at Turquzabad, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
has labelled as Iran's "secret atomic warehouse".
Mr Grossi's compromise deal with Iran is typical of the appeasement policy that
the IAEA has pursued ever since the Iranian regime's clandestine attempts to
develop nuclear weapons were first exposed in 2002. The policy of kow-towing to
Tehran, despite its blatant and persistent breaches of its international
undertakings, has been adopted by successive heads of the IAEA, dating back to
the tenure of Egyptian-born Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, on whose watch the IAEA
deliberately sought to obfuscate the true nature of Iran's activities.
In the latest blow to the IAEA's credibility, within hours of Mr Grossi
concluding his compromise deal, Mr Khamenei exposed the futility of this
approach with his threat that Iran was prepared to increase uranium enrichment
to 60 percent, a move that would make any attempt to revive the JCPOA utterly
doomed.
*Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a
Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 2021 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
Biden's Emergencies
Chris Farrell/Gatestone Institute/March 01/2021
Often, the emergency is declared as a means of blocking targeted persons and
governments from moving money, contraband, and property.
Most Americans probably have no idea that the United States is in the midst of
ongoing "national emergencies" over matters in Nicaragua, Burundi, or the
Central African Republic -- but we are...
We are increasingly being subject to rule-by-decree.... President Biden just
declared that the decades-long crisis on the Mexican border is not a problem. No
debate, no vote, no ratification -- just the stroke of a pen. Who objected? Any
protests or marches? If organizations were to protest or march, would they be
called "white supremacists" or "insurrectionists?"
Remember: with Mexico, everything -- cartels, "coyotes," smugglers, drugs,
traffickers, sexual violence -- is A-OK. Mexico = good. Libya = bad.
If you are against a Biden policy, does that mean you are against the
government? Does that make you suspect in some way?
Some "emergency" decrees dropped down the Memory Hole; others manufactured,
seemingly, from thin air.
President Joe Biden has reversed and cancelled the national emergency declared
by President Donald Trump concerning the border security, humanitarian and
COVID-19 crisis at the southern border of the United States. Pictured: The US
Border Station at Brownsville, Texas, on the border with Mexico, on February 24,
2021. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
President Joe Biden has reversed and cancelled the national emergency declared
by President Donald Trump concerning the border security, humanitarian and
COVID-19 crisis at the southern border of the United States. Nothing to see
here. Move along.
In fact, on his very first day in office, Biden terminated that emergency, which
he said had been a mistake from the get-go. Ironically, Biden has re-opened the
exact same Texas facility the Trump administration used in order to detain the
overflow of illegal aliens at the border. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
has criticized Biden the same way she criticized Trump. At least she is
consistent. Perhaps you remember the claims of children in cages and drinking
from toilets? That must have all been a terrible misunderstanding.
Biden wrote in his February 10 Presidential Communication:
"I have determined that the declaration of a national emergency at our southern
border was unwarranted. I have also announced that it shall be the policy of my
Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a
border wall, and that I am directing a careful review of all resources
appropriated or redirected to that end."
Now that Biden has things all straightened out along the Mexican border, you
will clearly understand the grave national threat to our existence as a republic
posed by Burma. Burma?
Yes, Burma. Biden declared a new national emergency based on the February 1
military coup in Burma. The situation in that country poses an "unusual and
extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United
States," according to Biden.
Having tackled Burma, Biden was keen to renew the 2011 declaration of national
emergency concerning Libya. "We need to protect against the diversion of assets
or other abuse by persons hindering Libyan national reconciliation," he wrote on
February 11. Remember: with Mexico, everything -- cartels, "coyotes," smugglers,
drugs, traffickers, sexual violence -- is A-OK. Mexico = good. Libya = bad.
None of this "national emergency" stuff is new, of course. In fact, there are 38
"national emergencies" currently in effect, according to a recently updated
report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) on all of our assorted
emergencies.
The CRS report is worth reading to understand the history, law and practice of
precisely what a "national emergency" means. They describe the president's
powers, Congressional oversight and the law governing what can and cannot be
done. Often, the emergency is declared as a means of blocking targeted persons
and governments from moving money, contraband, and/or property.
Most Americans probably have no idea that the United States is in the midst of
ongoing "national emergencies" over matters in Nicaragua, Burundi, or the
Central African Republic -- but we are.
We are increasingly being subject to rule-by-decree. The Biden administration
has issued 41 Executive Orders. That is more than any other president -- ever.
Then there are the "emergencies" we have discussed above. Some are obscure and
arcane. Others are profound and result in huge shifts in national policy that
bear heavily on our security, economy and -- especially -- public health.
However, the health issue on the border is largely ignored by the mainstream
news media and the social media giants manipulating the public's news feed.
Rule-by-decree is not a matter of policy "tweaks" or administrative rule
changes. Biden just declared that the decades-long crisis on the Mexican border
is not a problem. No debate, no vote, no ratification -- just the stroke of a
pen. Who objected? Any protests or marches? If organizations were to protest or
march, would they be called "white supremacists" or "insurrectionists?"
If you are against a Biden policy, does that mean you are against the
government? Does that make you suspect in some way? How many Americans are
worried about that?
A new administration and a record number of new executive orders. Some
"emergency" decrees dropped down the Memory Hole, others manufactured,
seemingly, from thin air. All of these developments require our close
consideration and careful tracking.
*Chris Farrell is a former counterintelligence case officer. For the past 20
years, he has served as the Director of Investigations & Research for Judicial
Watch. The views expressed are the author's alone, and not necessarily those of
Judicial Watch.
© 2021 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
“There Was Blood All Over”: Muslim Persecution of
Christians, January 2021
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/March 01/2021
The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout
the month of January, 2021:
Attacks on Apostates and Evangelists
Uganda: A Muslim man beat his 13-week-pregnant wife, causing her to miscarriage,
after he learned that she had converted to Christianity. On Jan. 13, Mansitula
Buliro, the 45-year-old woman in question and mother of seven, was preparing for
Muslim evening prayers with her husband when she began to have Christian
visions. On the following day she secretly visited a Christian neighbor, prayed
with her, and put her faith in Christ. Right before she left, a Muslim man
knocked on the Christian neighbor’s door and said, “Mansitula, I thought you
were a Muslim—how come I heard prayers mentioning the name of Issa [Jesus]?”
Then, when Mansitula returned home her husband informed her that he had been
told that she had become Christian. “I kept quiet,” Mansitula later explained in
an interview:
My husband started slapping and kicking me indiscriminately. I then fell down.
He went inside the house and came back with a knife and started cutting my
mouth, saying, ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar [jihadist slogan “Allah
is greater”], I am punishing you to not speak about Yeshua [Jesus] in my house.
This is a Muslim home.’
Her screaming caused her two youngest children (six and eight) also to start
screaming, prompting neighbors to rush and stop the attack. “There was blood all
over from my mouth,” Mansitula said. “My in-laws arrived, and in their presence
my husband pronounced divorce: ‘Today you are no longer my wife. I have divorced
you. Leave my house, or I will kill you.’” A neighbor took her by motorcycle to
a nearby hospital. “I was examined, and they found that my fetus had been
affected, and after four days I had a miscarriage…. It is now very difficult to
reunite with my family. I am now Christian, and I have decided for Issa’s
cause.”
Separately, on Dec. 27, around 7 pm, eight Muslims ambushed and beat Pastor
Moses Nabwana and his wife, a mother of eight, as they were walking home from a
church function: “They began by beating my husband, hitting him with sticks and
blunt objects on the head, the back, his belly and chest,” Naura, his wife,
said. “I made a loud alarm, and one of the attackers hit me with blows and a
stick that affected my chest, back and broke my hand.” Christian neighbors
rushed to their cries, prompting the assailants to flee. Due to the severe
injuries they sustained, the wife was hospitalized for five days and her
husband, Pastor Moses, was hospitalized for several more days. The assault came
after area Muslims learned that an imam had converted to Christianity and joined
their church; mosque leaders incited the attack. On that same night, “area
Muslims demolished the roof, windows, doors and other parts of the[ir] church
building that has a capacity for 500 people, leaving a heap of broken debris…
Chairs, benches, musical instruments, amplifiers and other items were
destroyed.”
Then, around 4:30 am on Sunday, Jan. 24, while the pastor was still recovering
at the hospital, three Muslims broke into their home, again beating his wife,
Naura—who was still recovering from her first beating—as well as two of their
eight children. “I heard loud noises and plates being broken,” Naura recalled.
“The children and I woke up. The attackers had broken the door and entered in.
One started strangling me, while another threw one of my daughters outside
through the window and broke the skin on her leg.” The Muslims fled before
inflicting more damage once they learned that her brother-in-law and his family
were rushing over: “The assailants left behind a Somali sword,” she said, “which
I think they possibly had planned to use to rape and then kill me.” Naura’s 10
year-old daughter suffered a deep cut on her knee, and her 12-year-old daughter
suffered an eye injury. Atop all the injuries she suffered from her first
beating, Naura’s neck was injured: “I am still in great pain, and the doctor has
recommended that my uterus, which is seriously damaged, needs to be removed,”
she said. “This will need a big amount of money.” According to a church leader
who visited Naura and her family in their thatched-roof dwelling the day after
the attack, “She is still in pain and needs basic assistance in the absence of
the husband, the bread-winner.”
Iran: On Jan. 18, the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” arrested Fatemeh
(Mary) Mohammadi, a 22-year-old convert to Christianity and human rights
activist, on the accusation that “her trousers were too tight, her headscarf was
not correctly adjusted, and [that] she should not be wearing an unbuttoned
coat.” This is the third time officials arrest Mary. She did six months of
prison time, after her first arrest, for being a member of a house church—which
the regime recently labeled as “enemy groups” belonging to a “Zionist” cult; she
also spent a brief time in jail after participating in a peaceful protest in
April 2020. Officials have also pressured her employer, whom she always had a
good relationship with, to prevent her from returning to work as a gymnastics
instructor; and she was kicked out of her university on the eve of her exams.
Reflecting on her travails, Mary wrote that:
Everything is affected… Your work, income, social status, identity, mental
health, satisfaction with yourself, your life, your place in society, your
independence…. And as a woman it’s even harder to remain patient and endure, in
a society so opposed to women and femininity, though crying out for them both.
Attacks on Christian ‘Blasphemers’ in Pakistan
Pakistan: On Jan. 28, hospital employees slapped and beat a Christian nurse who
had worked there for nine years, after a Muslim nurse told them that she had
said “only Jesus is the true Savior and that Muhammad has no relevance.” A
hospital member recorded and loaded a video of the attack on Tabeeta Nazir Gill,
a 42-year-old Catholic gospel singer. It shows the woman surrounded by a throng
of angry Muslims who slap her and demand she “confess your crime in writing.” “I
swear to God I haven’t said anything against the prophet [Muhammad],” the
Christian woman insists in the video. “They are trying to trap me in a fake
charge.” “Fortunately, someone called the police, and they promptly arrived on
the scene and saved her life,” Pastor Eric Sahotra later explained. After
questioning the accused, police concluded, based also on the testimony of other
co-workers, that “A Muslim colleague made the false accusation due to a personal
grudge,” continued the pastor:
Other hospital employees were misled into believing the allegation, so they also
attacked Tabeeta…. News of the incident spread quickly through the social media,
raising fears of mob violence outside the hospital and other areas.
A Muslim mob later descended on and besieged the police station; this prompted
police to register a First Information Report against Gill under Section 295-C
of Pakistan’s blasphemy statues—which calls for the maximum death penalty for
anyone who verbally insults Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. Last reported, the
woman’s two young children were “in a state of shock since the time they saw the
graphic video of their mother’s beating,” said the pastor. No legal action was
taken against the Muslim nurse who fabricated the blasphemy accusation to
instigate her coreligionists. The report adds that,
In Pakistan, false accusations of blasphemy are common and often motivated by
personal vendettas or religious hatred. Accusations are highly inflammatory and
have the potential to spark mob lynchings, vigilante murders and mass protests.
Many of those accused of blasphemy never reach the courtroom; violence has
killed 62 accused people since 1990, with few prosecutions.
Separately, hundreds of Muslims descended on the village of a 25-year-old
Christian man, and threatened to behead him and torch his and adjoining homes,
soon after it became known that he had shared a Facebook post critical of
Muhammad. According to the Jan. 5 report, on first learning that Muslims were
angry, Raja Warris apologized, pointing out that he had only shared the post
“for academic understanding between Christians and Muslims and did not mean to
offend any Muslims.” The matter seemed to be closed after that; but then, and in
the words of Rev. Ayub Gujjar, vice moderator of the Raiwind Diocese of the
Church of Pakistan,
[W]e were informed by our congregation members in Charar that a huge mob had
gathered in the locality on the call of a cleric affiliated with the extremist
religio-political outfit, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan [TLP], and were demanding
the beheading of the catechist. Fearing violence, hundreds of Christian
residents fled their homes while around 400 anti-riot policemen were deployed in
the area to thwart violence.
Rev. Gujjar and other Christian leaders rushed to the police station, which was
quickly surrounded by Muslims who “chanted slogans against Christians,”
prompting police to insist that Warris be handed over. Police then registered a
First Information Report under Section 295-A and Section 298-A of Pakistan’s
blasphemy laws, which call for up to 10 years imprisonment for blasphemers, and
then showed it to the mob leaders, at which point they called off the siege and
dispersed. Discussing this incident, Bishop of Raiwind Diocese Azad Marshall
said that “Warris is an educated youth who loves to serve God.” Even so,
Christians especially need to be more careful in sharing content, because any
faith-based post could be used to instigate violence against the community… We
need to understand that Islamic religious sentiments run high in our country,
therefore it’s important to carefully analyze the content before posting it
online.
Slaughter of Christians
Pakistan: The bloated bodies of two Christian sisters, who had long rebuffed the
advances of their Muslim employers, were found in a sewer in January 2021.
Earlier, on November 26, the sisters, Sajida (28) and Abida (26), who were both
married and had children, were reported as missing. The two Muslim men for whom
they worked had regularly pressured them to convert to Islam and marry them.
Even though the young women “made it clear that they were Christian and married,
the men threatened them and kept harassing the sisters.” Forty days after they
were reported missing, on January 4, 2021, their decomposed bodies were
discovered. Their Muslim supervisors, during their interrogation, “confessed
that they had abducted the sisters,” said Sadija’s husband; “and after keeping
them hostage for a few days for satisfying their lust, had slit their throats
and thrown their bodies into the drain.” The widower described the families’
ordeal:
When police informed us that they had identified the two bodies as those of our
loved ones, it seemed that our entire world had come crumbling down…. I still
cannot fathom the site [sic] of seeing my wife’s decomposed body.
Discussing this case, Nasir Saeed, Director of the Centre for Legal Aid
Assistance and Settlement in the UK, said,
The killing of Abida and Sajida in such a merciless way is not an isolated case,
but the killing, rape and forced conversion of Christian girls have become an
everyday matter and the government has denied this and therefore is doing
nothing to stop the ongoing persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, such cases
happen very often in the country, and nobody pays any attention – even the
national media – as Christians are considered inferior and their lives
worthless.
Nigeria: On Jan. 16, Muslim Fulani herdsmen opened fire on and killed Dr. Amos
Arijesuyo, pastor of Christ Apostolic Church and a highly respected professor at
the Federal University of Technology. “The university condemns in the strongest
terms this senseless attack that has led to the untimely death of an erudite
university administrator and counselor par excellence,” the university said in a
statement. “Dr. Arijesuyo’s death is a big loss to FUTA, the academic community
in Nigeria and beyond. It is a death that should not have happened in the first
place…. Our prayers and thoughts are with the wife, children and family members
of our departed colleague at this difficult period of unquantifiable grief.”
In the two weeks before this murder, Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 26 more
people and wounded three in Christian majority regions. A separate report
appearing in mid-January revealed that “More Christians are murdered for their
faith in Nigeria than in any other country.”
Finally, in a speech released in January, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the
Islamic terror group Boko Haram, made clear that, despite Western claims that
his organization is motivated by secular interests, religion colors everything.
According to the Jan. 28 report, Shekau called on the new Chief of Defense
Staff, Lt. General Lucky Irabor, a Christian, to “repent and convert to Islam.”
He also told the new Chief of Army staff, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, that,
by going against Boko Haram, his behavior is “un-Islamic” and “he is no longer
regarded as a Muslim.”
Attacks on Churches
Sweden: Twice over the course of four days, an 800-year-old church in Stockholm
was firebombed. First, on Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021, several Molotov cocktails were
hurled at the twelfth century Spånga church, which is located in a Muslim
majority area. According to the church’s pastor, “the alarm was triggered when a
window was smashed and flammable liquid thrown at the front gate and one of the
windows. However, the fire was quickly put out by the police, who used a powder
extinguisher.” The same church had been fire-bombed just four days earlier, on
Jan. 20, 2021: two explosives were hurled at and smashed through the church
windows, and another was lobbed at the church gate. Moreover, according to one
report,
Spånga parish has been subjected to attacks on several previous occasions. In
December 2018, an explosive device was detonated in the same parish. No one was
convicted for the blast.
Hailing from the 12th century, the Spånga Church is one of the oldest in the
Swedish capital. It is located on the outskirts of Tensta and is flanked by
Rinkeby, both notorious for their heavy presence of immigrants (about 90 percent
of the population)… Both areas are dominated by immigrants from Muslim countries
and are formally classified as “particularly vulnerable” (which many consider to
be a palatable euphemism for a “no-go zone”) due to failed integration and major
problems including unemployment, rampant crime and Islamic extremism.
Attacks against churches have become a familiar sight in Sweden. Last year
alone, a number of churches, mostly those in troubled suburban [i.e., heavily
Muslim migrant] areas, were subjected to various types of attacks and vandalism,
including those in Gottsunda, Uppsala and Rosengård, Malmö.
USA: Arsonists torched an Armenian church in San Francisco in a spike of
anti-Armenian hate crimes believed to have been inspired by Armenia’s recent
clash with its Muslim neighbors, Azerbaijan and its Turkish supporter. According
to the Jan. 6 report,
In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, there have been four hate crimes committed
against the Armenian community over the last six months including a local
Armenian School being vandalized with hateful and racist graffiti, which was
followed by an arson attack on St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church. There are
about 2,500 Armenian-Americans living in the San Francisco Bay Area, so these
crimes per capita is a very high number given how small the community is. For a
region of the country that prides itself on its progressivism, diversity and
acceptance of all cultures, these latest attacks should be a warning sign that
hate and violence can rear their ugly heads irrespective of where you may live….
The vandals at the Armenian School in San Francisco spray-painted the colors of
the Azerbaijan flag and used threatening language in Azerbaijani. In many ways,
these latest hate crimes, coupled with the resurgence of hostilities in the
South Caucasus, are a continuation of the Armenian Genocide that is now finding
its way to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is often said that those who fail to
learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We are clearly seeing these
prophetic words come to life for Armenians in the San Francisco Bay Area who
have fought for decades for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. As victims of
oppression, Armenians see these latest attacks as an extension of Turkey and
Azerbaijan’s denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and a threat to their very
existence.
Philippines: An Islamic group consisting primarily of teenage Muslims opened
fire on a church. According to the Jan. 8 report,
the Islamic State-linked Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters [BIFF], a terrorist
group based in the southern Philippines, attacked a parish church after
conducting a raid on the town’s military and police outposts. After a 15-minute
firefight, both the church building and a statue of the patron saint bore bullet
holes. Police and military authorities said the BIFF had also plotted to set
ablaze Sta. Teresita parish church and the church-run Notre Dame of Dulawan high
school in the area. However, their attempt to burn the two church facilities was
foiled by policemen and soldiers.
BIFF is an Islamic separatist organization operating in the Philippines; it
swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014. Right before the church attack,
dozens of gunmen from the Islamic group attacked the local police station and
burned a police vehicle parked outside. The police attack came after two men
connected with the group were arrested and is seen as a reprisal attack against
police. Muslim terrorism has been on the rise in the Philippines, the population
of which is 86% Christian. According to the report,
In August [2020], pro-ISIS terrorists blew themselves up in attacks that killed
at least 15 people … and injured 80 others in the city of Jolo … in the far
south of the country, whose population is majority Roman Catholic.
In 2019, terrorists set off two explosive devices at the Our Lady of Mount
Carmel Cathedral, also known as the Jolo Cathedral, in the Mindanao region. The
attack resulted in approximately 100 injuries and about 20 dead.
In August 2019, pastor Ernesto Javier Estrella of the United Church of Christ in
Antipas, Cotabato Province, was shot and killed on the Island of Mindanao.
In June 2018, Catholic priest Richmond Nilo was gunned down in a chapel in
Zaragoza town in Nueva Ecija province, at the altar where he was preparing to
celebrate mass.
General Hostility for Christians and Christianity
Pakistan: On Jan. 5, a Muslim man severely beat his Christian employee because
he had taken leave to attend a Christmas Day prayer service. Even though Ansar
Masih had compensated for the missed day of work by working on the following
Sunday, his manager was abusive. “When I argued with him, he called four other
staffers to teach me a lesson for going to church and arguing with him,” Masih
later explained. “They abused Christians for their religious practices and said
derogatory words when they came to know that I was busy praying at the church.”
The Christian man sustained several injuries during the assault and was taken to
a local hospital. According to the report, as often happens in such cases,
Police officials and the men that assaulted Masih are now putting pressure on
his family to settle the matter out of court. Masih has submitted an application
to police regarding the incident, but not action has been taken by officers
against Masih’s assailants.
Austria: According to a Jan. 5 report, approximately 40 Muslim migrants rioted
and burned down a Christmas tree in Favoriten. On coming to extinguish the large
tree, the fire brigade heard one of the migrants yelling: “A Christmas tree has
no place in a Muslim district,” even as the raging mob pelted the emergency
service officials with projectiles to screams of “Allahu Akbar.”
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again and Sword and Scimitar, is a
Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the
David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle
East Forum.
About this Series
The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic.
Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate
some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported
each month. It serves two purposes:
1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not
chronic, persecution of Christians.
2) To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and
interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.
Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a
specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols;
apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish
with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced
conversions to Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute
expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like
cowed dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and
murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.
Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and
locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear
that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic
Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.
The Khashoggi Report
Mamdouh al-Muhainy/Asharq Al Awsat/March 01/2021
Zero facts and one hundred percent analysis, as one Western commentator put it.
This is how one could describe the CIA report on Khashoggi’s murder, which
contained a blend of analysis and projections that are not based on clear facts.
The report cannot stand in the face of a real test, and it would be difficult,
even for those who celebrated it, to claim that the report provides concrete
proof. It is composed of mere journalistic assessments that had been kept secret
for a long time.
All of this leads us to a logical conclusion; the leaks and secret information
passed on to the press about the Khashoggi assassination over the past three
years had been based on speculation. From here, we can understand how the issue
was politicized on a wide scale to achieve partisan and ideological objectives.
The Khashoggi case is not the only one about which inaccurate information has
been leaked. Let us recall, for example, the case of the Trump administration’s
ties to Russian agents, in which newspapers hostile to the former US president
published information leaked from US intelligence agencies about clandestine
collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Former CIA
Director John Brennan openly accused Trump of treason and being a foreign agent.
The rest of the story is well known; an extensive investigation was conducted by
Special Investigator Robert Mueller, it cost nearly $50 million, many
individuals were investigated, and the probe ultimately found Trump innocent of
all the accusations that had been made by intelligence services for purely
political reasons.
Before Jared Kushner had even taken office, information about him was revealed
to be false and mere baseless speculation leaked by intelligence services. It
was claimed that he had established secret channels of communication with the
Russians to exchange information during the transition period. The whole story
was speculative, and it had been conjured up to achieve political ends by using
intelligence services as a tool. Intelligence agencies have not only been
utilized to undermine foreign powers but sometimes even against the man living
in the White House himself.
That is why such analysis and speculation have aroused criticism from US
presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike. President Richard Nixon dubbed
these analysts a group of clowns, and President Lyndon Johnson repeatedly asked
what those analysts had been doing in the CIA building.
Moreover, let us recall that President Truman, during whose term the US
intelligence agency was established, subsequently criticized it in a famous 1963
article for The Washington Post. He wrote about critical missteps that he
thought should be rectified, the most prominent of which is the exploitation of
the intelligence agency to compel presidents to make unwise decisions. He
believed that the CIA had turned into something different and that it should go
back to being an objective and quiet intelligence institution that does not
serve any agendas. He also suggested that the president receive unadulterated
information directly, without this information being passed on to other
government institutions that could alter it.
That is, he wanted to isolate this agency from political and partisan agendas so
that they do not submit to pressure or become driven by personal aspirations and
biases that make it easy to cater the information to the desired narrative. We
clearly see how this can happen in the Khashoggi report, which resembles a
politicized rehashing of well-known leaks that had been published by propaganda
outlets and dailies like the Turkish Yenisafak newspaper. It is for this reason
that observers criticize this institution which, in contrast to other
established institutions, has become a center for inaccurate leaks and a place
for ideologues to spread their message. It thereby becomes easy prey, even for
foreign intelligence services that know what they want and provide it with the
information that they want published and that ultimately serves their interests.
This story has a history; it is nothing new, and the Khashoggi report is just
one example. The three pages contain a series of estimations that wreak of
internal partisan politics. With that, the report did not achieve the aims of
those who want to ruin the historic relationship between Riyadh and Washington,
a relationship that has been, for the past eight decades, the key driving force
shaping the regional system as we know it today (if it didn’t exist… we would be
living in a very different world). This was demonstrated by both the US
officials’ statements about the supreme interests that bring the US and Saudi
Arabia together and the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement repudiating
the report and emphasizing the solid and long-standing relationship between the
two countries.
Beware of Sick Maps
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/March 01/2021
The story of sick maps becomes painful when they choose to wait for a doctor
from overseas and for treatment from distant laboratories. The patient’s desire
to recover is fundamental to any treatment. Experience shows that states do not
fall from the outside unless the inside is fragile and sick. The manifestation
of a unifying national will is essential in this context. Perhaps, for this
reason, any foreign tutorship is keen to break up the citizens’ unity and create
confrontation lines between them. This is how old tensions are awakened, merged
with new fears, to tear people apart and divide them on opposite barricades.
In our stricken region, we saw stark experiences and unexpected shocks. We saw
the Iraqi army penetrate the Iranian borders during the era of Saddam Hussein.
Then we saw Baghdad unable to form a government unless it obtained Tehran’s
blessing. We witnessed Syria tightening its grip on Lebanon, moving strings and
puppets, then we saw Lebanese militias crossing the borders to defend the Syrian
regime. We looked at maps losing their immunity in front of the winds of
disintegration or terror. We saw countries losing their stability and hiding in
panic under a strong influence that haunted their voice and will.
There is much talk about an expected solution, not from Iraq, but from an
American-Iranian deal. Most of the time, things are more complicated than many
people think. For decades, Iran has exerted enormous efforts and launched
various attacks to cut off the US thread that it believed was maintaining the
stability and continuity of a number of countries in the region. In the past few
years, the US administration launched a sanctions war to cut the Iranian thread
that circumvented decision-making in several countries and transformed them into
sick maps.
The Biden administration’s journey with the dire Middle East is still in its
early beginnings. It is very important for the US administration to be able to
read what has changed and what has been revealed, and not be merely an echo of
old ideas capable not of treating sick maps, but rather producing more of them.
Stability has well-known pillars in the Middle East, and the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia is at the forefront of these foundations.
The Biden administration should reflect on the size of the change that Saudi
Arabia has witnessed. This evolution has led to drying out the sources of
extremism and opening the doors of hope for young generations that extremist
ideology was previously trying to lure into terrorism. Relying on reports and
assessments lacking evidence to make judgments or spread a climate of distrust
with the allies will certainly negatively affect the stability of the region and
the ability of the current administration to play a constructive role in it.
Sick Syria is not useful to anyone. Neither to its citizens nor to its
neighbors. Neither to the region nor to the world. It certainly does not help
putting this thorny part of the world we call the Middle East on the path to
stability and prosperity. By sick Syria, I mean the country which is still
dripping in blood as a result of the fierce wars that took place on its lands. I
mean the country whose millions of people live in camps near their borders and
do not dare or are not allowed to return. The country, whose official
institutions do not control all of its territories, which today are scattered
under many flags. The country, whose allies and enemies take part in making its
decisions. In the past, Syria has been known for having a strong decision-making
ability. It was not just an allegation, for Hafez al-Assad allowed neither
Washington nor Moscow to dictate policies to him. Bashar al-Assad continued on
this path before Syria’s role receded due to its withdrawal from Lebanon and the
start of the cracking of its institutions with the outbreak of its “spring”,
with all its justifications, circumstances, and horrors.
Sick Syria is not useful to anyone. It is certainly not beneficial to Lebanon,
which is tied to its neighbor by veins that are impossible to cut. These
arteries are definitely different from the illegal smuggling crossings that the
“strong era” failed to control, making the latter the weakest of the tenures
that Lebanon has ever seen. The truth is that sick Syria, which is unable to
regain its stability and restore its people, is a permanent project to
destabilize the Lebanese arena and add fuel to the fire.
One does not need to be reminded of the geographical and historical links
between Syria and Iraq which were evoked during the spread of the “ISIS state”
over large parts of the territories of the two countries. If ailing Syria
carries within it the danger of the birth of terrorism on its land or its
infiltration into it, then it also carries the risk of being the scene of
grinding battles or the outbreak of a war that transcends its borders.
The reality is that an Israeli war is being waged against Iranian targets in
Syria, and Tehran has so far chosen not to respond in a way that could lead to a
broad confrontation that Russia would not allow, even if the latter did not
oppose Israeli local strikes against “Iranian positioning”.
Sick Iraq does neither serve its people nor the stability of the region, which
is seeing increasing disintegration, poverty, and despair. What we have been
witnessing for long is strange and is almost turning into accepted norms.
Turkish warplanes launch raids on Kurdish targets inside Iraq, while the Turkish
army establishes permanent bases inside Iraqi territory. On the other hand, Iran
is tightening its grip on the Baghdad administration, or through factions that
operate under direct orders from Tehran.
There is no exaggeration in the matter. Whoever follows the events realizes that
Iraq is currently fighting a cruel battle to build its institutions and regain
its sovereign decision in defense of its stability and interests. Baghdad’s
current situation with Tehran reminds of Beirut’s past relation with Damascus… A
relation that was based on artificial and exaggerated slogans, superiority, and
terrorization.
The same can be said about Lebanon. A sick Lebanon does neither serve its people
nor its neighbors. The same applies to Yemen.
The most dangerous thing that can happen is for past experiences to be repeated…
That the fate of states be decided in the absence of their representatives, who
are more aware of the aspirations and true interests of their peoples. It would
be extremely dangerous to give capitals in the Middle East the right to manage
other countries, whatever the excuses. The tendency of peoples and groups to
resist a trend of this kind will lead to the birth of forms of resistance,
violence, despair, extremism, and terrorism. Succumbing to emerging powers and
altering historical balances is awfully perilous.
The Biden administration should make a careful reading of the region and the
pillars of stability and moderation there. Any sane observer has the right to
say: “Beware of sick maps.” Wrong treatment worsens the infection.
Iraq PM to Asharq Al-Awsat: We Are Destined to Rid
Ourselves of Foreign Hegemony
London - Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/March 01/2021
Kadhimi condemns rocket attacks, underlines close cooperation with Saudi Arabia
Baghdad is preparing to welcome on Friday Pope Francis I, who will be embarking
on a historic visit that underlines “coexistence and tolerance” and highlights
Iraq’s efforts to restore the authority of its state institutions and its role
in the region and world. Iraq is bracing for a number of developments, starting
with how the relations between Iran and the new American administration will
unfold. Many believe that the “heated” state of affairs in Iraq can be blamed on
the strained relations between Washington and Tehran. How these ties develop or
deteriorate will naturally have an impact on the upcoming early elections in
Iraq that will reflect the influence enjoyed by parties, factions and the state
alike.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi sat down for an interview with Asharq
Al-Awsat to address these issues and more. The interview was supposed to be held
in Baghdad, but the coronavirus pandemic forced it to be held virtually:
You are preparing for Pope Francis’ first ever visit. How do you view it?
The visit for us and all of our people, without exception, reflects the pope’s
understanding and support for the approach of tolerance and national partnership
among all Iraqis, regardless of their religious and sectarian affiliations. The
visit is a gesture by the pope aimed at highlighting Iraq’s standing, which has
been consolidated throughout history as a cradle of civilizations, human
heritage, monotheistic religions, cultures and discoveries.
The pope is expected to meet with top Shiite authority Ali al-Sistani. Is this a
message that underlines coexistence? Will a certain document be released to
underscore this?
One aspect of the visit as a whole is aimed at stressing coexistence between
Christians and Muslims, and religions and sects, in spite of the unfortunate
developments that had impacted everyone. The visit aims to highlight the
positives. An official source from Sistani’s office had previously said that the
pope will not sign any document during his meeting with the high authority.
Will the visit pose a security challenge given ISIS attacks and the practices of
armed groups? Do all major political blocs welcome the visit?
The government is not facing any fundamental challenges on the security level.
The government and security agencies have taken the necessary measures that
should secure the Pontiff’s movement and safety. Moreover, he will be protected
by the Iraqis wherever he is because the people of Iraq highly appreciate his
humanitarian positions. The preparations to welcome him reflect the high
standing and regard in which everyone perceives the pope.
You were credited with helping Iraq avoid an Iranian-American military
confrontation during Trump’s tenure. Can you reveal some details?
I did nothing more in this regard than what my duty in protecting Iraq and the
Iraqis demand. We have repeatedly firmly stressed our rejection of turning our
country into an arena for a proxy war or for Iraq to be used as a platform to
launch attacks. This is a constant policy that we have sought to consolidate and
we have worked on applying it on the ground.
At the same time, we have invested our positive and balanced ties with all sides
towards easing tensions and escalation in the region. The fate of Iraq lies in
the hands of the Iraqis alone. There is a regional and international
understanding of Iraq’s role and standing and its people’s desire that no one
meddle in their country’s internal affairs. We have told everyone: We are not an
open arena. A strong and united Iraq will act as a positive factor in cementing
security, peace and cooperation in the region and world.
I would like to add that the attempt to weaken Iraq or take it out of
international and regional equations has had dire consequences on all sides.
Even though the world viewed ISIS as a dangerous international threat, the
Iraqis on the ground confronted and defeated it through the help of their
neighbors and friends.
Our intelligence agencies and security forces all came together recently,
uncovering ISIS’ movements, cells, leaderships and hideouts, which they
surrounded and defeated. This confirms that the stability of Iraq is necessary
for the region and world. This is something we seek to underscore and
consolidate.
Do you believe the rocket attacks against the the Green Zone and American bases
are part of the vengeance for the killing of [Iranian Quds Force commander]
Qassem Soleimani or part of pressure on Washington to lift sanctions against
Iran and resume negotiations?
From our end and based on our mutual interests, we believe that the best way to
restore normal relations in the region lies in diplomatic consultations and
negotiations that can reach balanced solutions that meet everyone’s demands.
Those resorting to threats and the use of force will eventually find themselves
on the losing end, sooner or later. Such an approach does not benefit anyone,
rather it goes against the interests of the peoples of the region and only fuels
instability and tensions.
Our security agencies are monitoring outlawed groups that are trying to
reshuffle cards through their rocket attacks. Suspects have been detained and
they will appear before the judiciary. Our one and only choice is the Iraqi
state and respect for its laws, agreements and decisions. Decisions of war and
peace are taken by the state alone, not individuals or groups. Any violation of
the state will be confronted by the rule of law and the judiciary.
Some sides believe that they can usurp the state’s voice and decision-making
power. Those sides are nothing more than outlawed criminals. We will pursue them
and uncover their malign goals. In fact, some of those bullying the state, its
system, laws and sovereignty now believe their illusions, which were shaped
during past circumstances. These circumstances have now changed. We will not
allow violations to be committed at the expense of the Iraqi people. Our
people’s aspirations dictate our actions and choices. Any other option that
contradicts the will of the people will be defeated.
The use of Iraqi territories to deliver political messages is only permissible
when they are sent through diplomatic channels and political methods. We are
doing this out of the sense of responsibility towards our people and based on
our drive to cement calm in the region. We will not allow rocket or terrorist
messages. No country has the right to deliver messages to others at the expense
of the security and stability of our people. The Iraqi government, people and
political forces reject any meddling in their internal affairs.
Where are the relations between Baghdad and Washington headed? Is Iran insisting
on the United States’ complete military withdrawal from Iraq? Will NATO replace
American forces? Is the American military necessary for you in confronting a
possible resurgence of ISIS?
Our ties with Washington are bound by agreements that have been ratified by the
legislative authority. These agreements underscore our commitment to our
national sovereignty and interests. The presence of American and international
coalition forces does not go beyond these agreements. We have reiterated this
whenever Iraqi-American ties are discussed.
Iraq needed international help in the war against ISIS. This pushed us to launch
the strategic dialogue with the US in order to set the arrangements for the
post-war phase. The arrangements are mainly tied to training, logistic support
and joint efforts to combat ISIS and terrorism.
Iraq and its government alone decide the fate of foreign forces deployed in
their country, regardless of their identity. This decision, which is ultimately
about national sovereignty, is not connected to other goals.
How do you assess the improvement in relations with Saudi Arabia on various
levels? Will you visit Riyadh soon?
We are keen on establishing the best relations with Arab countries, our
neighbors and the world. With Saudi Arabia, we are bound with ties of
fraternity, joint history, culture and constant interests. We are satisfied with
the development of relations between our countries and the growing tangible
business cooperation. Visits are constantly being made by officials from both
countries. I also held a successful virtual meeting with my brother Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman as part of the Iraqi-Saudi coordination council. We are in
constant contact and nothing but the coronavirus pandemic is impeding mutual
visits.
Some sides have spoken of the possible formation of an axis that includes Iraq,
Egypt and Jordan. Is this currently on the table? Is this the new “Mashreq”
(Orient) that you spoke about?
We are not inclined to join axes or groupings that imply alignment or isolation.
We only seek agreements that help promote joint efforts that benefit the
interests of our people and countries. It may be beneficial to lay the
foundation for model relations with an Arab or regional country without it
having to devolve into a negative grouping. We are bolstering our ties with
Egypt and Jordan based on this approach.
The concept of the new Mashreq is based on prioritizing the common interests of
regional countries and dispelling doubts and illusions. Our region boasts all
the factors that allow not only the establishment of joint security, but a
system of deep cooperation that would allow us all to translate our human,
cultural and natural potential into a productive global cooperation system. This
would replace the cycle of crises and conflicts. The cooperation can start by
building on common factors and modernizing our way of thinking. Terrorism is the
region’s main enemy. Doubts, lack of communication and the neglect of common
factors are part of the problems of our region that need to be addressed.
Turning to the future requires the use of the tools of the future, not the past.
In spite all of its crises, the region is ready to make this choice.
Do you think that the goal to restore the authority of the state is moving
forward despite the assassination of activists, rocket attacks and spread of
illegal arms? Do you expect actual results from the early elections?
From the moment this government came to power, it acknowledged that Iraq is
suffering from the severe tensions between the state - with all of its elements,
values, laws, defenders and supporters - and the forces of the “non-state” -
with all of their hurdles and deliberate attempts to marginalize and undermine
the state or weaken its ability to protect the people and achieve stability and
security.
It is no secret that since the ouster of the authoritarian Saddam Hussein
regime, Iraq has endured difficult and complicated circumstances. It was not
prepared to meet the aspirations of our people that were calling for completing
the process of rebuilding the state and its institutions. Takfiri terrorism,
remnants of the Baath regime, the unfortunate sectarian conflict, security
chaos, corruption, reluctance to introduce reform and positive change and
achieve national unity all prevented the rebuilding of a national state system
along constitutional lines.
It is also obvious that some of these factors are still present and still
obstructing state work. Financial and administrative corruption are other
factors at play. The project to restore state authority primarily requires
continued political efforts that connect with all economic, social and military
elements. It also needs to establish an environment of social reconciliation and
a political desire that can restore the state for all Iraqis. Here, we must
stress that the project of building a state is an accumulative process that does
not come to a halt over a minor detail.
Early elections are a popular demand that has been expressed clearly by all
members of society and has been backed by the top Shiite authority and all
political forces – whether out of their own conviction or just to humor the
people. Transparent and fair elections are at the heart of our duty in this
government. Holding them will help rebuild the trust that has unfortunately
grown between the people and state institutions.
The Iraqi government appears caught in a tight spot between Tehran, Washington,
the Iranian supreme leader and Sistani. Can Iraq become a normal independent
state away from foreign hegemony?
Iraq is destined to become an independent state away from foreign hegemony and
the fate of peoples has always been the rejection of foreign dictates. We cannot
say that Iraq today is living under international or foreign hegemony. Rather,
political circumstances and grave errors that have been committed against the
people for decades have helped transform the country into an open ground for
ambitions and adventures and excessive extremist violence. The state today is
trying to regain its balance and seeking success by imposing this balance
against opponents. It is seeking to consolidate positive relations with
neighbors and the international community and the spirit of dialogue and
national responsibility, which are key to reclaiming the state and rejecting its
transformation once again into an open arena for others.
Are the armed factions preventing serious efforts to capture those behind the
assassination of activists and thwarting efforts to combat major corrupt
figures?
We have made strides in cracking down on and arresting those behind the
assassinations. We have also recently captured one of the largest death squads
in Basra. Dozens of suspects and fugitives have been arrested for their
involvement in assassinations. As we have previously said, the state chooses the
right time to wage its battle - which has not stopped - against the
assassination, kidnapping, extortion and drug gangs.
We started the battle against corruption with boldness despite the objections
and threats that we received. We formed a committee to combat corruption and
succeeded in uncovering several acts of fraud. Verdicts and sentences have been
issued against corrupt figures who were previously thought to be untouchable.
Our way of achieving the government agenda relies on constitutional mechanisms
and the law, away from the politicization of the fight against corruption,
criminal gangs and illegal weapons. An unbiased reading of the government’s
achievements in a short period of time will clearly demonstrate what has been
achieved away from the media spotlight or political debates.
Are you seeking a second term as prime minister? Why haven’t you stepped down as
head of intelligence? Have the agencies discovered attempts against your life?
I was chosen to lead Iraq through a very specific transitional phase. I hope
that I would succeed in this national mission during this critical time. I will
in no way allow the results of the elections to impact this mission. My position
allows me to oversee the armed forces. This does not contradict with my
continued responsibility towards an important apparatus in its security
agencies. What I am concerned about is motivating our agencies to be constantly
vigilant in uncovering terrorist cells and forces that want to target the
security of Iraq and its people.
Today, I am focused on leading the country towards safety and preventing it from
sliding towards a dangerous position that would impact the security, unity and
future of our people. My duty before our people and history is focused on
protecting the state - today and in the future - against attempts to again put
it at risk.
Do you think ties between Baghdad and Erbil are as they should be?
If you want me to compare between the current state of relations and our common
aspirations for the ties to develop into national partnership based on the
constitution and meeting the demands of our people in Kurdistan, then the answer
would be no. The ongoing dialogue between Kurdish Region delegations and the
federal government aims to achieve the partnership that we aspire for with our
brothers in Kurdistan. We want to achieve the goals of the Kurds as we do the
goals of Iraqis throughout the country. The government has helped eliminate
differences with the Kurdistan Region. Everything ultimately hinges on what the
parliament decides on the budget and other issues.
We believe that meeting commitments in line with the constitution and resolving
any dispute with Kurdistan is a primary factor in the recovery of political
life, consolidating stability and defeating terrorism and all other forces that
want to harm Iraq.
How do you assess the situation in Syria and its impact on Iraq’s stability?
Anything that harms Syria and its people will harm us and the interests of our
people. We believe that whatever happens in Syria will impact its surroundings,
especially Iraq, whether we like it or not. ISIS still has footholds along our
border with Syria. This poses a danger to both our countries and people. This is
the primary concern in our bilateral relations.
How do you describe current relations between Baghdad and Beirut?
Our relations with our brothers in Lebanon are good and promising. We are in
communication with and sympathize with them in all the efforts they are taking
to ease their crisis. We are ready to extend a brotherly helping hand as much as
our circumstances allow us.
How much are you concerned with the ongoing Turkish operations inside Iraqi
territories?
We are concerned with anything that harms our sovereignty and interests. The
positive bonds we enjoy with our Turkish neighbor help ease our concerns. The
recent statements by the Turkish president that he wanted to dispel our concern
over our relations are reassuring.
“There Was Blood All Over”: Muslim Persecution of
Christians, January 2021/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/March 01/2021
ريموند إبراهيم/كايتستون: جدول بلتعديات وكل انواع الإضطهاد التي تعرض لها
المسيحيون على أيد مسلمين خلال شهر شباط لعام 2021
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/96569/raymond-ibrahim-gatestone-institute-there-was-blood-all-over-muslim-persecution-of-christians-january-2021-%d8%b1%d9%8a%d9%85%d9%88%d8%af-%d8%a5%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%87%d9%8a%d9%85/
The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout
the month of January, 2021
Attacks on Apostates and Evangelists
Uganda: A Muslim man beat his 13-week-pregnant wife, causing her to miscarriage,
after he learned that she had converted to Christianity. On Jan. 13, Mansitula
Buliro, the 45-year-old woman in question and mother of seven, was preparing for
Muslim evening prayers with her husband when she began to have Christian
visions. On the following day she secretly visited a Christian neighbor, prayed
with her, and put her faith in Christ. Right before she left, a Muslim man
knocked on the Christian neighbor’s door and said, “Mansitula, I thought you
were a Muslim—how come I heard prayers mentioning the name of Issa [Jesus]?”
Then, when Mansitula returned home her husband informed her that he had been
told that she had become Christian. “I kept quiet,” Mansitula later explained in
an interview:
My husband started slapping and kicking me indiscriminately. I then fell down.
He went inside the house and came back with a knife and started cutting my
mouth, saying, ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar [jihadist slogan “Allah
is greater”], I am punishing you to not speak about Yeshua [Jesus] in my house.
This is a Muslim home.’
Her screaming caused her two youngest children (six and eight) also to start
screaming, prompting neighbors to rush and stop the attack. “There was blood all
over from my mouth,” Mansitula said. “My in-laws arrived, and in their presence
my husband pronounced divorce: ‘Today you are no longer my wife. I have divorced
you. Leave my house, or I will kill you.’” A neighbor took her by motorcycle to
a nearby hospital. “I was examined, and they found that my fetus had been
affected, and after four days I had a miscarriage…. It is now very difficult to
reunite with my family. I am now Christian, and I have decided for Issa’s
cause.”
Separately, on Dec. 27, around 7 pm, eight Muslims ambushed and beat Pastor
Moses Nabwana and his wife, a mother of eight, as they were walking home from a
church function: “They began by beating my husband, hitting him with sticks and
blunt objects on the head, the back, his belly and chest,” Naura, his wife,
said. “I made a loud alarm, and one of the attackers hit me with blows and a
stick that affected my chest, back and broke my hand.” Christian neighbors
rushed to their cries, prompting the assailants to flee. Due to the severe
injuries they sustained, the wife was hospitalized for five days and her
husband, Pastor Moses, was hospitalized for several more days. The assault came
after area Muslims learned that an imam had converted to Christianity and joined
their church; mosque leaders incited the attack. On that same night, “area
Muslims demolished the roof, windows, doors and other parts of the[ir] church
building that has a capacity for 500 people, leaving a heap of broken debris…
Chairs, benches, musical instruments, amplifiers and other items were
destroyed.”
Then, around 4:30 am on Sunday, Jan. 24, while the pastor was still recovering
at the hospital, three Muslims broke into their home, again beating his wife,
Naura—who was still recovering from her first beating—as well as two of their
eight children. “I heard loud noises and plates being broken,” Naura recalled.
“The children and I woke up. The attackers had broken the door and entered in.
One started strangling me, while another threw one of my daughters outside
through the window and broke the skin on her leg.” The Muslims fled before
inflicting more damage once they learned that her brother-in-law and his family
were rushing over: “The assailants left behind a Somali sword,” she said, “which
I think they possibly had planned to use to rape and then kill me.” Naura’s 10
year-old daughter suffered a deep cut on her knee, and her 12-year-old daughter
suffered an eye injury. Atop all the injuries she suffered from her first
beating, Naura’s neck was injured: “I am still in great pain, and the doctor has
recommended that my uterus, which is seriously damaged, needs to be removed,”
she said. “This will need a big amount of money.” According to a church leader
who visited Naura and her family in their thatched-roof dwelling the day after
the attack, “She is still in pain and needs basic assistance in the absence of
the husband, the bread-winner.”
Iran: On Jan. 18, the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” arrested Fatemeh
(Mary) Mohammadi, a 22-year-old convert to Christianity and human rights
activist, on the accusation that “her trousers were too tight, her headscarf was
not correctly adjusted, and [that] she should not be wearing an unbuttoned
coat.” This is the third time officials arrest Mary. She did six months of
prison time, after her first arrest, for being a member of a house church—which
the regime recently labeled as “enemy groups” belonging to a “Zionist” cult; she
also spent a brief time in jail after participating in a peaceful protest in
April 2020. Officials have also pressured her employer, whom she always had a
good relationship with, to prevent her from returning to work as a gymnastics
instructor; and she was kicked out of her university on the eve of her exams.
Reflecting on her travails, Mary wrote that:
Everything is affected… Your work, income, social status, identity, mental
health, satisfaction with yourself, your life, your place in society, your
independence…. And as a woman it’s even harder to remain patient and endure, in
a society so opposed to women and femininity, though crying out for them both.
Attacks on Christian ‘Blasphemers’ in Pakistan
Pakistan: On Jan. 28, hospital employees slapped and beat a Christian nurse who
had worked there for nine years, after a Muslim nurse told them that she had
said “only Jesus is the true Savior and that Muhammad has no relevance.” A
hospital member recorded and loaded a video of the attack on Tabeeta Nazir Gill,
a 42-year-old Catholic gospel singer. It shows the woman surrounded by a throng
of angry Muslims who slap her and demand she “confess your crime in writing.” “I
swear to God I haven’t said anything against the prophet [Muhammad],” the
Christian woman insists in the video. “They are trying to trap me in a fake
charge.” “Fortunately, someone called the police, and they promptly arrived on
the scene and saved her life,” Pastor Eric Sahotra later explained. After
questioning the accused, police concluded, based also on the testimony of other
co-workers, that “A Muslim colleague made the false accusation due to a personal
grudge,” continued the pastor:
Other hospital employees were misled into believing the allegation, so they also
attacked Tabeeta…. News of the incident spread quickly through the social media,
raising fears of mob violence outside the hospital and other areas.
A Muslim mob later descended on and besieged the police station; this prompted
police to register a First Information Report against Gill under Section 295-C
of Pakistan’s blasphemy statues—which calls for the maximum death penalty for
anyone who verbally insults Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. Last reported, the
woman’s two young children were “in a state of shock since the time they saw the
graphic video of their mother’s beating,” said the pastor. No legal action was
taken against the Muslim nurse who fabricated the blasphemy accusation to
instigate her coreligionists. The report adds that,
In Pakistan, false accusations of blasphemy are common and often motivated by
personal vendettas or religious hatred. Accusations are highly inflammatory and
have the potential to spark mob lynchings, vigilante murders and mass protests.
Many of those accused of blasphemy never reach the courtroom; violence has
killed 62 accused people since 1990, with few prosecutions.
Separately, hundreds of Muslims descended on the village of a 25-year-old
Christian man, and threatened to behead him and torch his and adjoining homes,
soon after it became known that he had shared a Facebook post critical of
Muhammad. According to the Jan. 5 report, on first learning that Muslims were
angry, Raja Warris apologized, pointing out that he had only shared the post
“for academic understanding between Christians and Muslims and did not mean to
offend any Muslims.” The matter seemed to be closed after that; but then, and in
the words of Rev. Ayub Gujjar, vice moderator of the Raiwind Diocese of the
Church of Pakistan,
[W]e were informed by our congregation members in Charar that a huge mob had
gathered in the locality on the call of a cleric affiliated with the extremist
religio-political outfit, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan [TLP], and were demanding
the beheading of the catechist. Fearing violence, hundreds of Christian
residents fled their homes while around 400 anti-riot policemen were deployed in
the area to thwart violence.
Rev. Gujjar and other Christian leaders rushed to the police station, which was
quickly surrounded by Muslims who “chanted slogans against Christians,”
prompting police to insist that Warris be handed over. Police then registered a
First Information Report under Section 295-A and Section 298-A of Pakistan’s
blasphemy laws, which call for up to 10 years imprisonment for blasphemers, and
then showed it to the mob leaders, at which point they called off the siege and
dispersed. Discussing this incident, Bishop of Raiwind Diocese Azad Marshall
said that “Warris is an educated youth who loves to serve God.” Even so,
Christians especially need to be more careful in sharing content, because any
faith-based post could be used to instigate violence against the community… We
need to understand that Islamic religious sentiments run high in our country,
therefore it’s important to carefully analyze the content before posting it
online.
Slaughter of Christians
Pakistan: The bloated bodies of two Christian sisters, who had long rebuffed the
advances of their Muslim employers, were found in a sewer in January 2021.
Earlier, on November 26, the sisters, Sajida (28) and Abida (26), who were both
married and had children, were reported as missing. The two Muslim men for whom
they worked had regularly pressured them to convert to Islam and marry them.
Even though the young women “made it clear that they were Christian and married,
the men threatened them and kept harassing the sisters.” Forty days after they
were reported missing, on January 4, 2021, their decomposed bodies were
discovered. Their Muslim supervisors, during their interrogation, “confessed
that they had abducted the sisters,” said Sadija’s husband; “and after keeping
them hostage for a few days for satisfying their lust, had slit their throats
and thrown their bodies into the drain.” The widower described the families’
ordeal:
When police informed us that they had identified the two bodies as those of our
loved ones, it seemed that our entire world had come crumbling down…. I still
cannot fathom the site [sic] of seeing my wife’s decomposed body.
Discussing this case, Nasir Saeed, Director of the Centre for Legal Aid
Assistance and Settlement in the UK, said,
The killing of Abida and Sajida in such a merciless way is not an isolated case,
but the killing, rape and forced conversion of Christian girls have become an
everyday matter and the government has denied this and therefore is doing
nothing to stop the ongoing persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, such cases
happen very often in the country, and nobody pays any attention – even the
national media – as Christians are considered inferior and their lives
worthless.
Nigeria: On Jan. 16, Muslim Fulani herdsmen opened fire on and killed Dr. Amos
Arijesuyo, pastor of Christ Apostolic Church and a highly respected professor at
the Federal University of Technology. “The university condemns in the strongest
terms this senseless attack that has led to the untimely death of an erudite
university administrator and counselor par excellence,” the university said in a
statement. “Dr. Arijesuyo’s death is a big loss to FUTA, the academic community
in Nigeria and beyond. It is a death that should not have happened in the first
place…. Our prayers and thoughts are with the wife, children and family members
of our departed colleague at this difficult period of unquantifiable grief.”
In the two weeks before this murder, Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 26 more
people and wounded three in Christian majority regions. A separate report
appearing in mid-January revealed that “More Christians are murdered for their
faith in Nigeria than in any other country.”
Finally, in a speech released in January, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the
Islamic terror group Boko Haram, made clear that, despite Western claims that
his organization is motivated by secular interests, religion colors everything.
According to the Jan. 28 report, Shekau called on the new Chief of Defense
Staff, Lt. General Lucky Irabor, a Christian, to “repent and convert to Islam.”
He also told the new Chief of Army staff, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, that,
by going against Boko Haram, his behavior is “un-Islamic” and “he is no longer
regarded as a Muslim.”
Attacks on Churches
Sweden: Twice over the course of four days, an 800-year-old church in Stockholm
was firebombed. First, on Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021, several Molotov cocktails were
hurled at the twelfth century Spånga church, which is located in a Muslim
majority area. According to the church’s pastor, “the alarm was triggered when a
window was smashed and flammable liquid thrown at the front gate and one of the
windows. However, the fire was quickly put out by the police, who used a powder
extinguisher.” The same church had been fire-bombed just four days earlier, on
Jan. 20, 2021: two explosives were hurled at and smashed through the church
windows, and another was lobbed at the church gate. Moreover, according to one
report,
Spånga parish has been subjected to attacks on several previous occasions. In
December 2018, an explosive device was detonated in the same parish. No one was
convicted for the blast.
Hailing from the 12th century, the Spånga Church is one of the oldest in the
Swedish capital. It is located on the outskirts of Tensta and is flanked by
Rinkeby, both notorious for their heavy presence of immigrants (about 90 percent
of the population)… Both areas are dominated by immigrants from Muslim countries
and are formally classified as “particularly vulnerable” (which many consider to
be a palatable euphemism for a “no-go zone”) due to failed integration and major
problems including unemployment, rampant crime and Islamic extremism.
Attacks against churches have become a familiar sight in Sweden. Last year
alone, a number of churches, mostly those in troubled suburban [i.e., heavily
Muslim migrant] areas, were subjected to various types of attacks and vandalism,
including those in Gottsunda, Uppsala and Rosengård, Malmö.
USA: Arsonists torched an Armenian church in San Francisco in a spike of
anti-Armenian hate crimes believed to have been inspired by Armenia’s recent
clash with its Muslim neighbors, Azerbaijan and its Turkish supporter. According
to the Jan. 6 report,
In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, there have been four hate crimes committed
against the Armenian community over the last six months including a local
Armenian School being vandalized with hateful and racist graffiti, which was
followed by an arson attack on St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church. There are
about 2,500 Armenian-Americans living in the San Francisco Bay Area, so these
crimes per capita is a very high number given how small the community is. For a
region of the country that prides itself on its progressivism, diversity and
acceptance of all cultures, these latest attacks should be a warning sign that
hate and violence can rear their ugly heads irrespective of where you may live….
The vandals at the Armenian School in San Francisco spray-painted the colors of
the Azerbaijan flag and used threatening language in Azerbaijani. In many ways,
these latest hate crimes, coupled with the resurgence of hostilities in the
South Caucasus, are a continuation of the Armenian Genocide that is now finding
its way to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is often said that those who fail to
learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We are clearly seeing these
prophetic words come to life for Armenians in the San Francisco Bay Area who
have fought for decades for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. As victims of
oppression, Armenians see these latest attacks as an extension of Turkey and
Azerbaijan’s denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and a threat to their very
existence.
Philippines: An Islamic group consisting primarily of teenage Muslims opened
fire on a church. According to the Jan. 8 report,
the Islamic State-linked Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters [BIFF], a terrorist
group based in the southern Philippines, attacked a parish church after
conducting a raid on the town’s military and police outposts. After a 15-minute
firefight, both the church building and a statue of the patron saint bore bullet
holes. Police and military authorities said the BIFF had also plotted to set
ablaze Sta. Teresita parish church and the church-run Notre Dame of Dulawan high
school in the area. However, their attempt to burn the two church facilities was
foiled by policemen and soldiers.
BIFF is an Islamic separatist organization operating in the Philippines; it
swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014. Right before the church attack,
dozens of gunmen from the Islamic group attacked the local police station and
burned a police vehicle parked outside. The police attack came after two men
connected with the group were arrested and is seen as a reprisal attack against
police. Muslim terrorism has been on the rise in the Philippines, the population
of which is 86% Christian. According to the report,
In August [2020], pro-ISIS terrorists blew themselves up in attacks that killed
at least 15 people … and injured 80 others in the city of Jolo … in the far
south of the country, whose population is majority Roman Catholic.
In 2019, terrorists set off two explosive devices at the Our Lady of Mount
Carmel Cathedral, also known as the Jolo Cathedral, in the Mindanao region. The
attack resulted in approximately 100 injuries and about 20 dead.
In August 2019, pastor Ernesto Javier Estrella of the United Church of Christ in
Antipas, Cotabato Province, was shot and killed on the Island of Mindanao.
In June 2018, Catholic priest Richmond Nilo was gunned down in a chapel in
Zaragoza town in Nueva Ecija province, at the altar where he was preparing to
celebrate mass.
General Hostility for Christians and Christianity
Pakistan: On Jan. 5, a Muslim man severely beat his Christian employee because
he had taken leave to attend a Christmas Day prayer service. Even though Ansar
Masih had compensated for the missed day of work by working on the following
Sunday, his manager was abusive. “When I argued with him, he called four other
staffers to teach me a lesson for going to church and arguing with him,” Masih
later explained. “They abused Christians for their religious practices and said
derogatory words when they came to know that I was busy praying at the church.”
The Christian man sustained several injuries during the assault and was taken to
a local hospital. According to the report, as often happens in such cases,
Police officials and the men that assaulted Masih are now putting pressure on
his family to settle the matter out of court. Masih has submitted an application
to police regarding the incident, but not action has been taken by officers
against Masih’s assailants.
Austria: According to a Jan. 5 report, approximately 40 Muslim migrants rioted
and burned down a Christmas tree in Favoriten. On coming to extinguish the large
tree, the fire brigade heard one of the migrants yelling: “A Christmas tree has
no place in a Muslim district,” even as the raging mob pelted the emergency
service officials with projectiles to screams of “Allahu Akbar.”
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again and Sword and Scimitar, is a
Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the
David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle
East Forum.
About this Series
The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic.
Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate
some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported
each month. It serves two purposes:
1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not
chronic, persecution of Christians.
2) To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and
interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.
Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a
specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols;
apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish
with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced
conversions to Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute
expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like
cowed dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and
murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.
Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and
locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear
that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic
Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.