English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For March 03/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today

We did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you. God shows no partiality
Letter to the Galatians 02/01-07: “Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain. But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. But because of false believers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you. And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) those leaders contributed nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised”..”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 02-03/2021

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/

Local Currency In Lebanon Hits Record Low as Lebanon's Crises Worsen
Lebanon’s pound hits all time low amid worst economic crisis since 1990
Roads Blocked across Lebanon in Protest at Dire Situations
Hezbollah gunmen fight off bid to arrest Rafik Hariri’s killer
Hezbollah frowns at Rai’s call for internationalisation
Presidency Says Remarks Attributed to President are ‘Unfounded’
FPM Bloc Urges Hariri to Present 'Unambiguous' Line-Up to Aoun
Israel Releases Lebanese Citizen Nabbed from Kfarshouba Area
Canadian Ambassador Visits Lebanese Army Logistic Brigade
Report: Lebanese Army Foils Planned Attacks by IS Group
Lebanon Seeks U.N. Help over Mediterranean Oil Spill Pollution
Specter of partition looms over Lebanon/Osama Al-Sharif/Arab News/March 02/2021
Why are some Lebanese protesters 'terrorists' while so many thugs walk free?/Luna Safwan/The National/March 02/2021
A single Pan-Arab market currency is essential for a prosperous future/Rami Rayess/Al Arabiya/March 02/2021
Japan to try two Americans accused of helping Nissan chief Ghosn flee
The Carlos Ghosn Saga: Key Dates
Film about Beirut blast competes in 71st Berlinale
Le rôle des chrétiens du Liban et leur place spécifique dans la région/OLJ / Par Abdel Hamid EL-AHDAB , le 02 mars 2021

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 02-03/2021

Pope plans to embark on historic visit to Iraq amid pandemic
Clergy lead a rare Christian revival in Iraqi town welcoming Pope Francis
Factbox: Iraq's Christian denominations
US Blacklists Houthi Leaders, Blames Iran for Intensifying Yemen Crisis
Doctors Without Borders Staffer Killed in North Syria Camp
Iran resistance urges tougher sanctions after exposing secret nuclear advances/Ray Hanania/Arab News/March 03/2021
Macron Calls Rouhani, Asks Iran for 'Clear Gestures'
Syrian Pound Hits Record Low against Dollar

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 02-03/2021

As the Resistance-Axis crumbles is Assad leaving the door open for peace with Israel?/Hanin Ghaddar/Al Arabiya/March 02/2021
The UN Should Protect Human Rights, Not Human Rights Abusers/Bradley Bowman and David May/Newsweek/March 02/2021
Democracies still don’t understand CCP’s political warfare: Kerry Gershaneck/Cleo Paskal/The Sunday Guardian/March 02/2021
Senators are calling for a US-Israel working group, and it could save lives/Bradley Bowman/FDD-Defence News/March 02/2021
How Russia Is Responding To Joe Biden’s Syria Airstrike/Anna Borshchevskaya//www.19fortyfive.com/March 02/2021
“There Was Blood All Over”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, January 2021/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/March 01/2021
Palestinian Terrorists to Biden: Do Not Believe the Palestinian Leadership/Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/March 02/2021
China Continues Crushing Hong Kong/Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/March 02/2021
Military Force Must Remain an Option With North Korea/John Bolton/Bloomberg//March 02/2021
Let us hope region heeds Pope Francis’ message of peace/Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/March 02/2021

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 02-03/2021

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/

Local Currency In Lebanon Hits Record Low as Lebanon's Crises Worsen
Associated Press/March 03/2021
The Lebanese pound hit a record low against the dollar on the black market on Tuesday as the country's political crisis deepens with no prospects of new Cabinet in the near future and foreign currency reserves dwindle further.
The dollar was trading at 9,975 Lebanese pounds around noon Tuesday. The previous record was registered in July, when the dollar briefly sold for 9,900 pounds on the black market. The official price remains 1,520 pounds to the dollar. Lebanon has been hammered by one crisis after another, starting with the outbreak of anti-government protests against the country's corrupt political class in October 2019. That has been compounded by the coronavirus pandemic and a massive, deadly blast in Beirut's port last August. In neighboring Syria — where the economy has been hit by the 10-year conflict, corruption and Western sanctions — the dollar also hit a record on Monday, reaching nearly 3,900 Syrian pounds. The economies of the two neighboring countries are connected and many Syrians have had their money blocked in Lebanese banks that have implemented harsh capital controls.
The massive blast at Beirut's port last August, when nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate detonated, killed 211 people and injured more than 6,000. Large parts of the Lebanese capital were badly damaged in the blast.
Prime Minister Hassan Diab's government resigned six days after the Aug. 4 blast, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. In October, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri was named to form a new Cabinet but nearly five months later, disagreements between him and President Michel Aoun on the shape of the Cabinet has stood in the way of a new government's formation. Lebanon has also been in desperate need for foreign currency but international donors have said they will only help the country financially if major reforms are implemented to fight widespread corruption, which has brought the nation to the brink of bankruptcy. The crash in the local currency will throw more people into poverty. In Lebanon, the minimum wage is 675,000 pounds, or about $67 a month. Before the protests broke out in 2019, the minimum wage was about 450$. The crisis has driven nearly half the population of the small country of 6 million into poverty. Over 1 million refugees from Syria live in Lebanon. In December, the World Bank warned that Lebanon's economy faces an "arduous and prolonged depression," with real GPD projected to plunge by nearly 20% because its politicians refuse to implement reforms that would speed up the country's recovery. In March last year, Lebanon defaulted for the first time ever on a payment on its massive debt amid ongoing popular unrest. Lebanon's debt reached $90 billion or 170% of GDP, making it one of the highest in the world.

Lebanon’s pound hits all time low amid worst economic crisis since 1990
AFP, Beirut/02 March/2021
The Lebanese pound hit an all-time low against the dollar on Tuesday amid a deepening economic crisis that has thrown more than half of the population into poverty. The Lebanese pound had been pegged to the dollar at 1,500 since 1997 but the country’s worst economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war has seen its value plummet. On Tuesday, it was trading at nearly 10,000 pounds to the dollar on the black market, money exchangers told AFP. “It’s crazy what’s happening,” one money exchanger said on condition of anonymity. Before the latest hit, the pound had briefly stabilized at 8,000-8,500 to the greenback in recent weeks. In July, it had reached 9,800 to the dollar. The dizzying depreciation came as Lebanon’s central bank started reviewing the country’s banks under international pressure for banking sector reform. Lebanese banks had been given until Sunday to increase their capital by 20 percent, among a series of demands from the central bank. On Monday, a central bank committee “agreed on a roadmap with deadlines for the Bank of Lebanon to take appropriate measures” if these requirements were not met, it said in a statement. Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newsaper said Tuesday that the currency plunge was partly the result of commercial banks sucking dollars out of the market to meet the capital demands of the central bank. The slide in the value of the pound has led to soaring food prices in a country where more than half of the population now lives below the poverty line. Lebanon has been without a fully functioning government since outgoing premier Hassan Diab resigned in the wake of a devastating explosion in Beirut port last year. The blast killed more than 200 people and piled new misery on a country already brought to its knees by the economic crisis.
The hashtags dollar and blackmarket were trending in Lebanese Twitter circles Tuesday. “The exchange rate reached 10,000 LBP and still no government,” said one Twitter user. Mahya Yahya of Carnegie’s Middle East Centre echoed the sentiment. “Meanwhile Lebanon’s Lira collapses further - political deadlock continues and no policies to stem the collapse!” she said.

Roads Blocked across Lebanon in Protest at Dire Situations
Associated Press/Agence France Presse/March 03/2021
Protesters took to the streets Tuesday across Lebanon after the Lebanese pound hit a record low against the dollar on the black market and amid severe power cuts that have plunged much of the country into darkness.

In Beirut, the protesters blocked the key Ring highway that links the capital’s west to its east. They also blocked the nearby Beshara al-Khoury road, another vital route, and the Verdun highway. The road outside the Mohammed al-Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut was also blocked later in the day with burning tires and rocks, with protesters there denouncing the dire economic situation and the Lebanese pound collapse.In the evening, protesters blocked the Saifi and Qasqas roads while the Corniche al-Mazraa road was re-blocked after it was briefly reopened.
"What is happening is unacceptable... People need to revolt," one of the protesters told a television channel in Beirut."There is no way to get back our dignity other than the street," another said.
The al-Msharrafiyeh road in Beirut's southern suburbs was also blocked.
On the capital’s southern outskirts, protesters blocked the old airport road, the Chatila-airport tunnel and the al-Assad Highway.
And on Beirut’s northern outskirts, protesters cut off the Dora-Nahr el-Mot highway with burning tires, obstacles and trash bins while the lane leading to Beirut was witnessing a severe traffic jam.
Protesters also blocked the country's main highways in Jiye, Zouk and Jal el-Dib and several roads in nearly all of the country's provinces, vowing that they will not leave until the departure of the ruling class and the improvement of the situations. Elsewhere, protesters blocked the Riyaq-Baalbek road and the Taalabaya road in the Bekaa, the Elia roundabout in Sidon and the Hasbaya-Marjeyoun road.
Earlier in the day, demonstrators had blocked two key highways in the North.
Protesters in Chtaura and Sidon meanwhile forced money exchange shops to close amid a deployment of security forces. The Lebanese pound hit a record low against the dollar on the black market on Tuesday, a sign of the country's multiple crises deepening with no prospects for a new Cabinet in the near future. The crash in the local currency has resulted in a sharp increase in prices and a lack of hard currency has also led to delays in the arrival of fuel shipments, leading to more extended power cuts around the country, in some areas reaching more than 12 hours a day.
The dollar was trading at 9,975 Lebanese pounds around noon Tuesday. The previous record was registered in July, when the dollar briefly sold for 9,900 pounds on the black market. The official price remains 1,520 pounds to the dollar. Lebanon has been hammered by one crisis after another, starting with the outbreak of anti-government protests against the country's corrupt political class in October 2019. That has been compounded by the coronavirus pandemic and a massive blast in Beirut's port last August that decimated the facility. Lebanon has also been in desperate need for foreign currency but international donors have said they will only help the country financially if major reforms are implemented to fight widespread corruption, which has brought the nation to the brink of bankruptcy.
The drop in the value of the Lebanese pound also came after an end of February deadline for the country's banks to raise their capital after they were hit hard by the crisis. Local media reports hinted that some lenders had to collect hard currency from the black market, increasing demand for the greenback over the past days ahead of the Feb. 28, deadline. "The dollar is equal to 10,000 pounds. People are hungry, prices are flying and there is no electricity," tweeted Lebanese business writer Hala Saghbini. "We want a government immediately. Enough humiliation of the people."
"They've driven us to begging; they're starving us," a protester said. "We've been sitting at home for ages, then there was the port blast, and they haven't formed a government. We've had enough of this ruling class."
The crash in the local currency will throw more people into poverty. In Lebanon, the minimum wage is 675,000 pounds, or about $67 a month. Before the protests broke out in 2019, the minimum wage was about $450 per month. The crisis has driven nearly half the population of the small country of 6 million into poverty. Over 1 million refugees from Syria live in Lebanon. In December, the World Bank warned that Lebanon's economy faces an "arduous and prolonged depression," with the gross domestic product projected to plunge by nearly 20% because its politicians refuse to implement reforms that would speed up the country's recovery. In March last year, Lebanon defaulted for the first time ever on a payment on its massive debt amid ongoing popular unrest. Lebanon's debt reached $90 billion or 170% of GDP, making it one of the highest in the world.
 

Hezbollah gunmen fight off bid to arrest Rafik Hariri’s killer
Najia Houssari/Arab News/March 03/2021
BEIRUT: Gunfire broke out in south Beirut on Tuesday night when Hezbollah fought off an apparent attempt by Lebanese security forces to arrest the man convicted of assassinating former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Information circulating on social media said officers tried to raid a house thought to be the hideout of Salim Ayyash, 57, who is wanted by the Lebanese state at the request of the International Tribunal for Lebanon. Hezbollah fighters opened fire, surrounded the security patrol, and detained its members and their vehicles. Amateur video footage on social media shows shots being fired and a Hezbollah fighter shouting: “Attack them and disarm them.”An activist close to Hezbollah told Arab News: “The security patrol wanted to arrest wanted suspects accused of a crime, it is not true that there was a clash with Hezbollah." Rafik Hariri died in a suicide bombing of his car in Beirut in February 2005. The Special Tribunal tried Ayyash in his absence, and sentenced him to life imprisonment in August 2020 for conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. Hezbollah has said it will never hand him over.
 

Hezbollah frowns at Rai’s call for internationalisation
The Arab Weekly/March 02/2021
“Hezbollah believes that internationalisation would pose an existential threat to Lebanon. What has internationalisation done in Syria, Libya and Iraq?” MP Hassan Fadlallah said.
BEIRUT – The statements of the Maronite Patriarch Mar Beshara Boutros al-Rai, made during a political and popular gathering that attracted more than 15,000 people on Saturday in Bkerke, north of Beirut, angered leaders and supporters of Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah group.
Soon after the patriarch’s speech, Hezbollah criticised Rai and his proposals, especially with regard to holding an international conference for Lebanon.
The Shia group considers that the Maronite patriarch’s call to internationalise the Lebanese crisis an attempt to undermine its influence in Lebanon, and an effort to create international pressure to push the Iran-aligned militia to abandon its weapons.
Observers say that the concerns of the pro-Iran party are justified, as the patriarchal authority has always played a key role in countering political polarisation and regional interference in Lebanon. Rai’s recent move is reminiscent of a call by Maronites in 2001 to pressure the Syrian Army to withdraw from the country. After nearly four years, the Maronites’ effort succeeded and Syria pulled its forces out of Lebanon.
In the first response by Hezbollah to Rai’s statements, a member of the Loyalty to Resistance bloc in parliament, Hassan Fadlallah said on Sunday that internationalisation poses “an existential threat to Lebanon.”
Fadlallah added, “We expected a different behaviour about what happened in Bkerke,” suggesting that “certain sides are using Bkirki as a cover to serve their own political agendas.”
“Some parties are hiding behind Bkirki,” Fadlallah said in a TV interview.
“Hezbollah believes that internationalisation would pose an existential threat to Lebanon. What has internationalisation done in Syria, Libya and Iraq?” the MP added. “Those who want to cling to the Taif Accord must not invite nations to Lebanon to resolve our crisis, although these nations do not have time for anyone at the moment,” Fadlallah went on to say, stressing that “solutions should begin inside” the country. Earlier this month, Rai had called for a UN-sponsored “international conference” in the face of Lebanon’s economic collapse and political impasse. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah slammed the proposal and similar calls from other parties, saying such moves would open the door to foreign interference or even to an “occupation.”
A Lebanese protester carries the portrait of late Maronite Patriarch Cardinal
In a speech to the crowd on Saturday, Rai repeated the call for an international conference, saying that “all we propose is to revitalise the Lebanese state, which is in disarray, broken.”Rai is an ardent supporter of Lebanon’s official policy of dissociation from regional conflicts, a position that clashes with Iran-backed Hezbollah’s involvement in the war in Syria.Those present on Saturday shouted slogans in support of the Lebanese Army and denounced Hezbollah as a “terrorist” group. Hezbollah, however, pre-empted the Bkerke rally by launching an intense media attack on the patriarch, in a move that reflected the extent of the group’s concerns over the rise of popular support for Rai’s proposals. Observers believe that Rai’s interventions will pressure Hezbollah into changing some of its positions, especially in relation to the management of the government crisis.
Rai has repeatedly urged political rivals to agree to a new government. “You came from all over Lebanon … to support two things: neutrality and an international conference for Lebanon under the auspices of the United Nations. In one word you came here to save Lebanon,” Rai said to the crowd at the church’s seat in Bkirki. “Through an international conference we want to announce the neutrality of Lebanon so that it does not return to become a victim of conflicts and wars and divisions,” he said, adding Lebanon has been suffering from a government crisis since last August, at a time when the country is witnessing an economic and financial collapse, which has exacerbated the problems of most Lebanese, forcing many of them into poverty and hunger. Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri was given the task of forming a government in October but is struggling to cobble together a cabinet to share power with all Lebanese parties, including Hezbollah. Hariri said earlier in February there was no way out of the crisis without the support of Arab countries.

Presidency Says Remarks Attributed to President are ‘Unfounded’
Naharnet/02 March/2021
The Presidency Press Office on Tuesday responded to a statement in a local newspaper attributed to President Michel Aoun about the current situation and the government file. The press office of Aoun described the statement as “totally and completely unfounded,” and called on media outlets to refer to the official press office of the President regarding all news related his stances. Al-Akhbar daily said on Tuesday that Aoun allegedly declared doubts to his visitors of PM-designate Saad Hariri’s intention to form a balanced government, pointing to an alliance between the latter and speaker Nabih Berri, ex-PM Walid Jumblat and others. The daily also claimed that Aoun sees the Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh as part of Hariri’s alliance, and that they aim to form a government capable of preventing a forensic audit and foiling any chance for political dialogue between the various political forces.
 

FPM Bloc Urges Hariri to Present 'Unambiguous' Line-Up to Aoun
Naharnet/02 March/2021
The Free Patriotic Movement-led Strong Lebanon bloc on Tuesday warned over the “negative repercussions” resulting from the delay in forming a new government, urging PM-designate Saad Hariri to submit an “unambiguous” cabinet line-up to President Michel Aoun. The bloc “is still awaiting the PM-designate to conduct the necessary consultations and cooperate with the president to submit a cabinet line-up that respects the norms stipulated by the National Pact and the constitution,” it said in a statement issued after its weekly e-meeting. The bloc added that such a line-up should be “unambiguous” so that an “agreement” can be reached on it “as soon as possible.”
 

Israel Releases Lebanese Citizen Nabbed from Kfarshouba Area
Naharnet/02 March/2021
The Israeli army on Tuesday released a Lebanese citizen whom it had accused Sunday of crossing into the occupied part of the Kfarshouba Hills. The 26-year-old man, who hails from the Hasbaya town of al-Hibbariyeh, was handed to the UNIFIL peacekeeping force at the Ras al-Naqoura crossing, UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said. UNIFIL later handed over the man to Lebanese authorities through the International Committee of the Red Cross. Tenenti said UNIFIL chief Maj. Gen. Stephano Del Col had been in contact with all parties so secure the man’s release, adding that the U.N. force has launched an investigation to unveil the incident’s circumstances and pinpoint the exact location from which he was abducted.
 

Canadian Ambassador Visits Lebanese Army Logistic Brigade
Naharnet/02 March/2021
The Canadian Ambassador to Lebanon, Chantal Chastenay, accompanied by a delegation visited the Lebanese Army Logistic Brigade to anticipate the support provided by Canadian authorities in favor of the army and to identify the required needs, the Army said in a statement Tuesday.
Lebanon receives military equipment from Canada, which also provided training to troops in basic winter warfare allowing them to better protect the Lebanese borders. Chastenay is also leading the coordination of Canada’s $30 million assistance to Lebanon as the country reels from the impact of a massive blast in Beirut that killed more than 170 people, injured thousands and caused widespread destruction in Beirut.

Report: Lebanese Army Foils Planned Attacks by IS Group
Naharnet/02 March/2021
The Lebanese Army, Intelligence Directorate reportedly arrested a number of jihadists of the Islamic State group who were planning to carry out suicide terror operations in Lebanon, the Saudi Asharq el-Awsat reported on Tuesday. A senior security source told the daily the militants were planning to target positions of the military and security forces. They were interrogated and admitted to have explored several military sites for that goal. The source said that out of the 18 militants detained, there were 12 Syrian nationals and 6 Lebanese, one of whom was considered the “mastermind” of the group who had been arrested previously on charges of planning to carry out terrorist operations. They were arrested in a preemptive operation executed by the army in the encampments of Syrian refugees on the outskirts of the border town of Arsal and in Mashareea al-Qaa in northeastern Lebanon. The Intelligence Directorate has reportedly reached a firm conviction that ISIS is planning to resume terrorist operations in Lebanon targeting military positions, while exploiting the presence of encampments of the displaced most notably those located on the outskirts of Arsal, according to the source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
 

Lebanon Seeks U.N. Help over Mediterranean Oil Spill Pollution
Naharnet/02 March/2021
Lebanon's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday moved to file a report with the U.N. in which it asked for technical assistance in the face of a Mediterranean oil spill that has contaminated at least half of coastline. The report, prepared by the National Council for Scientific Research at the request of caretaker PM Hassan Diab, highlights the magnitude of the damage, describes it as an environmental disaster and warns that the recovery could take several years, the National News Agency said. The report also calls on the U.N. to “determine the reasons behind this spill and identify the culprit so that Lebanon can demand compensations for the severe environmental damage it has incurred.” “This is considered an environmental disaster and (Lebanon) has no ability to address it and contain its protracted damage” on its own, the report says. MP Enaya Ezzeddine of the Development and Liberation bloc has said that the amount of tar that has polluted the sand beaches of south Lebanon in recent days has been estimated to be at around two tons. “The cleaning process will be arduous and painstaking and it requires followup and cooperation between municipalities, scout associations and local, national and international NGOs and environmental groups,” Ezzeddine added. Lebanese on Saturday raked balls of tar away from a turtle beach in the South after a massive slick washed ashore after hitting neighboring Israel.
A storm more than a week ago threw tons of the sticky, black substance onto the beaches of Israel, apparently after leaking from a ship. Within days the spill had spread to south Lebanon, where clumps of tar contaminated beaches stretching from the border town of Naqoura to the southern city of Tyre, all the way to the capital Beirut. The swathe of coastline, which includes some of the country's best preserved beaches, is a nesting site for turtles which usually appear later in the year. On Saturday morning, mask-clad volunteers and members of the civil defense sifted blobs of tar out of sand on the beach of the Tyre Coast Nature Reserve, an AFP journalist said. The protected zone covers 3.8 square kilometers of beach as well as adjacent sea waters. As well as endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles, the beach provides shelter for the Arabian spiny mouse.
Mouin Hamze, the head of the National Council for Scientific Research, has said that the pollution could continue washing up on Lebanese shores for up to three months. A survey of the area using drones is not yet complete, but he said the damage was extensive in the South while tar had even landed on the beach further north in the capital Beirut. Israeli authorities said Sunday they had cleared a Greek tanker of suspicion in relation to the oil spill that caused the massive tar pollution. Powerful winds and unusually high waves pummeled Israel's entire Mediterranean coastline on February 17, with tons of tar staining 160 kilometers of beach from its borders with the Gaza Strip to Lebanon. According to Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry, there are "dozens" of vessels under suspicion, with Israeli inspectors, aided in some cases by international bodies, already ruling out around 10 of them.
The ministry said in a Sunday statement it was monitoring, with the help of the Israeli air force, a stain in the sea some 150 kilometers offshore that could be oil.

Specter of partition looms over Lebanon
Osama Al-Sharif/Arab News/March 02/2021
Seven months after the horrific explosion that destroyed Beirut port and large parts of the Lebanese capital, little progress has been made in uncovering the facts and bringing the culprits to justice. The port explosion has become a symbol for Lebanon’s quick descent into anarchy and political and economic paralysis. The incident forced the government of Hassan Diab to resign. After weeks of disarray and following an initiative by French President Emmanuel Macron, veteran politician Saad Hariri was named as prime minister-designate with a mandate to form a Cabinet of non-partisan experts to salvage the country and invite international financial aid.
Since then, Hariri’s attempts to form such a government have been met with resistance from President Michel Aoun, whose unholy alliance with Hezbollah continues to put the interests of the pro-Iran militia ahead of those of the country. The group wants to have veto power in the Cabinet — an experiment that paralyzed previous governments and stood in the way of adopting political and economic reforms.
For decades, Hezbollah has enforced itself as a state within a state with a military arsenal that surpasses that of the national army. It has benefited from a sectarian political system that serves the narrow interests of a bickering ruling class at the expense of the Lebanese people. In the process, the country’s main ministries and institutions have been divided among various parties and groups, paving the way for mass corruption and a slow collapse of the country’s infrastructure, including its banking, municipal and health sectors.
When the Lebanese took to the streets in late 2019 to protest worsening public services, rising unemployment and a falling lira, they were met with force and their demands for an end to the political status quo went unheeded. Hezbollah, whose involvement in the Syrian civil war has dragged Lebanon into a never-ending crisis, was not in the mood to give in to pressure to open a new chapter, which would include handing over its arsenal to the regular army.
The Beirut port explosion was a major milestone in Lebanon’s turbulent history; perhaps as important as the spark that triggered the country’s bloody civil war in the 1970s. A triad of health crisis, economic collapse and political deadlock now threatens to bring the country to its knees at any moment. What is more worrying is the lack of regional and international interest in getting involved in the Lebanese quagmire. Except for France, no other party has expressed willingness to exert pressure or step in.
And when Lebanon’s influential Christian Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai warned on Saturday of a “full-fledged coup,” calling for an international conference to avert “chaos, hunger and oppression,” while repeating his earlier call for Lebanon to be “united and neutral… active, positive, sovereign, independent, free and strong,” Hezbollah responded by accusing him of trying to “internationalize” the crisis.
The basic reality is that Hezbollah holds the key to Lebanon’s stability, unity and sovereignty. But it is the party that has “internationalized” the crisis by pledging its loyalty to Iran’s supreme leader and not to the Lebanese state. It has become a proxy in Iran’s regional misadventures and a pawn in Tehran’s confrontation with the US, as well as, by extension, Israel. The group has already been responsible for dragging the country into a major war with Israel in 2006; the result being the horrific devastation of Lebanon’s infrastructure and loss of life.
As Hezbollah continues to stockpile Iranian-made missiles, Israel is preparing for a major and perhaps final confrontation with the Shiite group. It goes without saying that Lebanon will pay dearly if and when such a conflict takes place.
There are a number of possible future scenarios. One involves a breakout of civil war — a possibility that seems unlikely despite the fact that the state could collapse at any moment. Another is cornered on the assumption that Hariri will succeed in forming an independent government that will pave the way for international aid to salvage the economy and rebuild Lebanon’s institutions; but this would mean that Aoun and Hezbollah would be willing to compromise. Such a possibility would push Lebanon further toward adopting positive neutrality on a number of key issues, including the Syrian civil war and the conflict with Israel. That seems unlikely.
A triad of health crisis, economic collapse and political deadlock threatens to bring the country to its knees at any moment.
A third scenario involves the de facto partitioning of Lebanon along sectarian lines as the state institutions finally cave in. As wild and unimaginable as this scenario looks today, it could emerge as a convenient option for each party in light of the current insurmountable deadlock and as time runs out to save the 100-year-old Greater Lebanon. Hezbollah’s intransigence and its fealty to its masters in Tehran have already determined Lebanon’s fate, raising concerns that its ethnic and religious diversity — long an example of its vitality and creativity — is also the cause of its doom.
*Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman. Twitter: @plato010

Why are some Lebanese protesters 'terrorists' while so many thugs walk free?
Luna Safwan/The National/March 02/2021
Last week, 35 protesters in Lebanon were charged with terrorism offences, which carry a maximum penalty of death. As Ayman Raad, one of the attorneys defending them, pointed out, this is the first time since October, 2019 that protesters have faced terrorism charges.
The events that led here began in January in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, where demonstrations erupted against the country’s ongoing nationwide lockdown to stem the spread of Covid-19.
What began as nonviolent protests quickly turned into riots and clashes with security forces – specifically, the Lebanese army. Tripoli has seen many protests since 2019. January’s scenes also evoked memories of violence that took place there between 2013 and 2014.
The city has long been under the state’s microscope. Although it was historically a strong base of support for Lebanon’s political leadership, it is now more often portrayed as “hosting extremism”, in part it is home to a religiously conservative culture and also because many young men from the city have gone to fight in the civil war in neighbouring Syria. But it has also become a particularly impoverished city in the country’s ongoing economic crisis, leading many of its residents to disavow the political class altogether. So the army, rather than riot police, equipped with heavy weapons and armoured cars, is usually the force deployed to deal with them. Tripoli’s protests were violent, to be sure. Demonstrators used fireworks and Molotov cocktails, and attempted to break into municipal offices. Within hours, buildings were set on fire.
Terrorism, however, seems to be either a misunderstanding or, worse, a deliberate mislabelling of what happened – and one with serious consequences, given the use of the death penalty. This is especially concerning when so many other acts of terrorism have occurred in Lebanon without perpetrators ever being brought to justice. And so many other, similar protests occur without resulting in similar prosecutions. Tripoli is not unique in having citizens unhappy with the government’s policies. Violent and severe protests have taken place in many other parts of Lebanon, too, without drawing charges of terrorism. Peaceful protests have also been attacked by counter-protesters, or partisan gangs, with violence. In just one instance in 2019, Lebanese security forces failed to stop attacks on peaceful demonstrators by men armed with sticks, metal rods, and sharp objects, according to a Human Rights Watch report.
The report cites dozens of protesters “who said they witnessed or were the victims of violent attacks by counter-demonstrators”. It goes on to say that “security forces failed to intervene to protect peaceful protesters from violent attackers on at least six occasions in Beirut, Bint Jbeil, Nabatieh and Sour, and no assaulter was ever brought to court”.
In the final two months of 2019, supporters of the Iran-backed militant political party Hezbollah and its ally the Amal Movement burned tents belonging to protesters in downtown Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, after beating demonstrators who were blocking the nearby Ring Bridge. The cars of protesters, as well as those of local residents, were damaged and one was set alight. Hezbollah and Amal together wield enormous influence in Lebanon’s political system. Those who wave their flags seem to operate on the streets with impunity.
But they are not the only ones. In clear attempts to silence the broader protest movement that swept Lebanon in 2019, different groups supporting powerful politicians have attempted to burn down the Revolution Fist, a monument to popular resistance to the country’s corrupt elite, in Martyr’s Square. On two occasions they have succeeded. Although attacks on protesters were frequent throughout 2019 and 2020. But there were many even before that. One of the biggest remains the invasion of the Future Television building in Beirut in 2008. Hezbollah and Amal movement supporters surrounded the television station in Beirut’s Hamra district, preventing its employees from leaving or broadcasting for hours.
The station’s old building was burned down, meanwhile, by supporters of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, another Hezbollah ally. That incident was never classified by the state as terrorism, no charges were pressed and to this day no one has been held responsible.
It was not even the first time Future TV was attacked. In June 2003, it was struck by two 107mm rockets, which damaged equipment in the main television studio, as well as the offices of Radio Orient.
Prosecutors’ decision to single the Tripoli protest out, then, raises suspicions of judicial favouritism, leading many in Lebanon to ask: are certain groups protected and others pursued? Why Tripoli?
The reality is that Tripoli is no longer a rock-solid base for those in power. Its protesters, unlike those who have committed violence in the examples cited above, do not throw their support behind Beirut’s elites, and so they are receiving no support, or even justice, in return.
Last week’s charges reveal the judicial favouritism that operates in Lebanon today, heavily influenced by political favours, leading to a group of people who might have protested, vandalised and rioted in the hope of being heard, but not engaged in terrorism, to be labelled terrorists. Others, meanwhile, who have tried to terrorise civilians for the sake of political dominance roam the streets of Beirut today, with a clean record, and maybe even an unjustifiably clean conscience, because no prosecutor ever held them accountable, not even once.
*Luna Safwan is a Lebanese freelance journalist who works on press freedom
 

A single Pan-Arab market currency is essential for a prosperous future
Rami Rayess/Al Arabiya/March 02/2021
The countries of MENA need to collaborate to launch a single currency like the Euro. Allowing the region to exploit resources, coordinate policies, and accelerate economic growth, it will cut political tension and conflict. If the governments of the region fail to do this, as has been the case for decades, there will always be war. Relying on international support will remain a policy of dependency, and Arabs will never compete with other parts of the world. With all the resources available to achieve that goal, a political decision to move forward is an indispensable step to allow progress to take place. Yes, it was on several occasions attempted to set up a single currency. No, it has never managed to. Established in 1978, The Arab Monetary Fund had the purpose to develop a unified currency: the Arab Dinar. An agreeable political decision from all the stakeholders proved impossible, with Western currencies (especially the US Dollar) dominating international trade transactions, one reason for its failure. In 2012, the Arab League Council discussed the Union of Arab Exporters launching a unified currency, but no concrete development happened. It disappeared in the Shamal of time.
Speculation about the inability of Arab states to foster economic relations, and follow a path similar to that of the European Union continues to haunt the region. The Arab League and the European Coal and Steel Community were launched at similar times. The former in 1945, and the latter in 1951.
While Europe has established a currency, opened borders with free movement of people, goods and trade, Arabia can only dream of achieving something similar. Whether or not Arabs will ever succeed in opening a new page of vast economic collaboration has become even more skeptical with the regional shuffling of cards after the Abraham Accords.
The European model, despite Britain’s withdrawal, remains an example to look up to. Most importantly, political differences were set to one side. Each country maintains its own independent foreign and domestic policies, and reaches common ground as issues arise. Arab economic integration has fallen short of expectations. True, there are structural chasms between Arab economies, with some more advanced than others. Yet, the same scenario was overcome in Europe. There are existing protocols that can allow a gradual integration, despite structural discrepancies between Arab countries.
The first road map should include launching the necessary political and economic initiatives, followed by installing the necessary institutional mechanisms to meet the goals, and expect gradual results. Addressing variances in the heterogeneous Arab economies would be a top priority too.
Arab economies can complement each another. Labor mobility, for example, would allow Egyptians freely move to Saudi Arabia to fill gaps in sectors and industries, or Jordanians to add to the knowledge economy in Kuwait.
Any attempts to cooperate always flop.
The first Arab Economic Summit convened in Kuwait in 2009. It was followed by three other summits in Sharm el Sheikh in 2011, Riyadh in 2013 and Beirut in 2016. The last was a total failure with a boycott of Arab leaders. The importance of organizing summits, and ones that can limit discussions to economic issues, is important, but these four achieved little, if anything. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), is the exception, with all other attempts reaching deadlock and fading away.
As Arabs have been politically divided they have also failed to contemplate the gains achievable from cooperation. The Maghreb countries, for example, turn to the EU for economic cooperation due to geographical proximity. Some Arab countries prefer to turn to the US, the EU and China rather than their neighboring ailing Arab economies. This is not to undermine the enormous support that the GCC has provided to nations, such as Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen. Liberalizing interregional Arab trade and services seems a necessary but insufficient condition to foster economic cooperation and integration. At least this was the path of success for the European Union.
Openness cannot be restricted to the removal of trade barriers and reviewing custom regulations. There should instead be an open policy for exchange of services. Communications, information technologies, transport and financial services are but a few to mention. Intra-Arab cooperation in these sectors are lagging behind. An absence of conviction by Arab decision-makers implies there isn't any form of integration likely. Integration is capable of accomplishing direct benefits to member states by boosting foreign direct investment in evolving economies, while generating badly needed employment opportunities. If geographical proximity, common language and culture is not conducive to start economic integration, what is?

Japan to try two Americans accused of helping Nissan chief Ghosn flee
The Associated Press, Tokyo/02 March/2021
Two Americans suspected of helping former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn skip bail and escape to Lebanon in December 2019 have been extradited to Japan. Michael Taylor and his son Peter had been held in a suburban Boston jail since May. They were handed over to Japanese custody on Monday and arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday. Ghosn, who led Nissan Motor Co. for more than two decades, was arrested in 2018, and charged with under-reporting his future compensation and breach of trust in diverting Nissan money for personal gain. He says he is innocent. What are the father and son accused of doing? Michael Taylor, with the help of another man, George-Antoine Zayek, hid Ghosn in a large black box supposedly containing audio equipment, according to the authorities. The box passed through airport security in Osaka, central Japan, and was loaded onto a private jet that flew Ghosn to Turkey. Peter Taylor is accused of meeting with Ghosn and helping his father carry out the escape. Authorities say the Taylors were paid at least $1.3 million. Where will they be taken and what happens there? The Taylors, like other suspects, can be held up to 23 days without any formal charges at the Tokyo Detention Center on the outskirts of the capital and questioned for hours almost daily by prosecutors, without a lawyer present. Their lawyer can visit and they can receive snacks and books. The detention can be extended with “rearrests,” if more charges are tagged on. Ghosn spent more than 100 days at the center before gaining his release on bail. The solitary cells are simple, with Japanese-style futon mattresses. The center, which is different from prisons for people who have been convicted, also has an exercise area and clinic.

Is this the routine treatment of suspects in Japan?
The Japanese treatment of suspects has been widely criticized as “hostage justice,” designed to coerce suspects to confess and often resulting in false confessions. The Taylors’ lawyers in the US say they worry they may be treated unfairly in Japan and subjected to “mental and physical torture.”
They also argue that jumping bail is not a crime under Japanese law. That is technically accurate, but most people who escape are easily caught in Japan. Japanese prosecutors say they have enough evidence to convict the Taylors. What can be expected if they go on trial? Even after formal charges are filed, closed-door pre-trial sessions by the prosecutors and defendants before a judge generally go on for months. The media have no access to such sessions. Jury trials exist in Japan, but only for murders and other heinous crimes. A panel of three judges will hear the Taylors’ case in a trial that could last months or even years. English translation will be provided during the trial. Media coverage is allowed, but no filming or recording. If convicted, the Taylors face up to three years in prison and a fine of up to 300,000 yen ($2,900). They could get a suspended sentence and not serve time. In principle, just as in the US, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But 99 percent of criminal trials end in convictions. Where is Carlos Ghosn and can he be tried? Japan has put Ghosn on Interpol’s wanted list, but Lebanon has no extradition treaty with Japan. Extradition from the US isn’t common, so the extradition of the Taylors for an alleged nonviolent crime reflects the determination of Japanese prosecutors to pursue the case against Ghosn. Ghosn is almost certain to be extradited if he sets foot in the US Former Nissan senior executive Greg Kelly is on trial in Tokyo on charges he helped under-report Ghosn’s compensation. Kelly, an American, says he is innocent.

The Carlos Ghosn Saga: Key Dates
Agence France Presse/02 March/2021
The rollercoaster saga of former Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn has made international headlines, from his shock 2018 detention in Japan to his audacious escape the following year.
As two men accused of helping Ghosn flee are extradited to Japan, here are the key dates in a case that continues to grip the business world:
- November 2018: arrests, firings -
Ghosn is arrested along with his aide Greg Kelly after they arrive separately on private planes in Tokyo on November 19.
They are accused of financial misconduct for an alleged scheme to under-report the salary of Ghosn, then Nissan chief and head of an alliance grouping Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors.
The pair deny wrongdoing. Ghosn is swiftly removed from his role at all three firms.
- December 2018: new allegations -
Japanese prosecutors charge Ghosn and Kelly on December 10 with under-reporting his salary between 2010 and 2015.
They are immediately rearrested on allegations of further under-reporting between 2015 and 2018.
On December 21, Ghosn is arrested on fresh allegations that he transferred losses from personal financial investments to Nissan. His detention is extended.
- March 2019: Ghosn bail approved -
Ghosn attends his first court hearing in January, insisting the accusations against him are "meritless and unsubstantiated".
His first bail request is denied, and on January 11 two new charges of financial misconduct are filed against him.
The disgraced executive tells AFP from prison that his detention would "not be normal in any other democracy."
On March 5, the court approves Ghosn's third request for bail, set at one billion yen ($9 million, eight million euros).
- April 2019: Rearrest, bailed again -
Ghosn is rearrested in a dawn raid of his Tokyo apartment in early April, and on April 22 authorities hit him with a further charge of aggravated breach of trust -- alleging he siphoned off money for personal ends from cash transferred from Nissan to a dealership in Oman.
On April 25, the court grants Ghosn a second bail of $4.5 million. He is banned from leaving Japan and requires court permission to see his wife.
- September 2019: U.S. charges -
On September 9, Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa resigns amid allegations that he also padded his salary, adding 47 million yen by altering the terms of a bonus. He denies wrongdoing but apologizes.
Ghosn and Nissan are accused by U.S. securities regulators of hiding more than $140 million in his expected retirement income from investors.
Ghosn is fined $1 million, and Nissan says it will pay $15 million.
- December 2019: Ghosn jumps bail -
Just before New Year's Eve, Ghosn gives authorities in Japan the slip, hiding in an instrument case to flee on a private plane.
He eventually lands in Lebanon, which does not have an extradition treaty with Japan.
A week later Ghosn gives a press conference claiming Nissan colluded with prosecutors to have him arrested because he wanted to deepen the Japanese firm's alliance with Renault. He says he fled because he did not believe he would get a fair trial.
- May 2020: Accomplices arrested -
Two men accused of helping Ghosn flee Japan, former U.S. special forces member Michael Taylor and his son Peter, are arrested in the United States.
Japan seeks to extradite them, and in September a U.S. judge rules extradition proceedings can move forward.
- September 2020: Kelly trial -
The trial against Kelly begins in Tokyo on a single charge of under-reporting Ghosn's compensation. He denies wrongdoing and pleads not guilty. Nissan, on trial as a firm on the same charge, pleads guilty.
Ex-Nissan whistleblower Hari Nada testifies in Kelly's trial in January, followed by Saikawa in February.
- March 2021: Taylors extradited -
Michael and Peter Taylor lose their battle against extradition and are handed over to Japanese prosecutors.
The pair, who allegedly smuggled Ghosn out of the country in an audio-equipment case in December 2019, land at Narita airport outside Tokyo on March 2.

Film about Beirut blast competes in 71st Berlinale
The Arab Weekly/March 02/2021
“Memory Box” by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige is one of 15 films vying for the Golden Bear top prize.
BERLIN - 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.
– Flashbacks –
“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.”

Le rôle des chrétiens du Liban et leur place spécifique dans la région
OLJ / Par Abdel Hamid EL-AHDAB , le 02 mars 2021
J’écris tout en m’inquiétant pour le sort et le rôle des chrétiens au Liban et je dis, en totale allégeance au Liban, que le danger auquel sont exposés les chrétiens s’étend à tout le Liban. Sans les chrétiens et leur coexistence avec les musulmans, le Liban n’aurait pas existé et son existence n’aurait pas de sens. Les chrétiens du Liban ne sont pas les chrétiens de l’Orient et ne sont pas liés aux chrétiens de l’Iraq dont un million et quart ont émigré depuis l’émergence de Daech. De même, ils ne sont ni les chrétiens du Soudan ni ceux de la Syrie.
Les chrétiens du Liban sont les gardiens du cèdre du fait de leur coexistence avec les musulmans. Ils sont son socle et sa raison d’être, historiquement et géographiquement parlant. Si le Liban comprenait uniquement des musulmans, son existence n’aurait pas de sens et sa carte aurait été totalement différente. Quand je dis chrétiens, je parle aussi de leur culture, de leur mode de vie et de leurs relations intellectuelles, tout en notant que leur culture diffère de celle des coptes d’Égypte, des chrétiens d’Iraq et des chrétiens du Soudan, etc.
Les chrétiens du Liban sont à la base du lien tissé avec les musulmans du Liban, comme l’a clairement expliqué Fouad Siniora. Ce lien ou cette coexistence réussissait bien sous le règne de Fouad Chéhab, ainsi qu’avec Béchara el-Khoury et Raymond Eddé. Quant à Bachir Gemayel, il a joué un certain rôle en essayant de normaliser les relations avec Israël. Aujourd’hui, il ne reste que quatre États arabes toujours hostiles à Israël, alors que tous les autres ont totalement normalisé leurs relations avec lui.
Le secret du succès de Fouad Chéhab, Béchara el-Khoury, Raymond Eddé et Bachir Gemayel, c’est qu’ils se sont respectés eux-mêmes face à la propagation de l’islam. Cheikh Béchara el-Khoury avait participé à la fondation de la Ligue des États arabes et avait rassuré les Arabes en leur soulignant, quand ils ont voulu adopter la règle du vote, que nous sommes une minorité et qu’avec l’adoption de la règle du vote à la majorité, notre identité et notre rôle seraient perdus. Ainsi, les pays arabes, l’Égypte et l’Arabie saoudite en tête, ont réagi favorablement à cette opinion et ont fini par adopter la règle du vote à l’unanimité pour la prise des décisions.
Quand Fouad Chéhab rencontra Gamal Abdel Nasser, la légende de son temps, il insista, en ce temps d’unité, pour que la réunion se tienne dans une tente à la frontière libano-syrienne ; la moitié de la tente était placée en territoire libanais et l’autre moitié sur le territoire de la République arabe unie (au moment de l’union de la Syrie avec l’Égypte) ! Fouad Chéhab respecta l’arabisme de Abdel Nasser dans sa politique étrangère et, de son côté, Abdel Nasser respecta le « libanisme » de Fouad Chéhab au niveau de la politique intérieure. Les militants de l’arabisme critiquèrent l’arabisme chéhabiste qui fut imparfait en raison de la prédominance du « libanisme ». Comme le disait Mounah el-Solh à l’époque : « Le chéhabisme avait choisi la politique consistant à adopter peu d’arabisme pour échapper à un arabisme quasi total. »
Fouad Chéhab s’est respecté et a été énormément respecté par Abdel Nasser.
Le Liban a traversé une période de paix et de sécurité car il a réussi à suivre une politique adoptant un arabisme particulier à lui ainsi qu’un « libanisme » total !
Un arabisme libanais fondé sur la liberté
Le Liban est un pays arabe, mais son arabisme est un arabisme libanais fondé sur la liberté et la démocratie. De ce fait, il diffère de l’arabisme du Baas, celui des prisons et des assassinats en Syrie et des charniers en Irak. Il n’est pas l’arabisme des commissions comme au Soudan et n’est pas un arabisme religieux comme dans le Golfe et en Algérie ! L’arabisme du Liban est fondé sur une structure diversifiée, civile et civilisée, et surtout sur la liberté. C’est un arabisme qui aurait pu trouver une solution à la cause palestinienne si toutes les armées arabes, réellement « toutes » les armées arabes, n’avaient pas pris le pouvoir pour libérer la Palestine après 1948, alors qu’elles ne savaient ni gouverner ni se battre. La Palestine est toujours dans la même situation d’antan alors que les trois quarts des États arabes ont normalisé leurs relations avec Israël !
L’arabisme du Liban n’est pas l’arabisme baasiste de Mounah el-Solh qui accusa le chéhabisme de choisir la politique visant à « adopter peu d’arabisme pour échapper à un arabisme quasi total ». L’arabisme du Liban est avant tout la liberté qui constitue son noyau et il est possible uniquement par le biais de la neutralité du Liban.
L’année 1967 fut celle de la chute de Abdel Nasser qui est décédé en 1970 !
Le christianisme libanais arabe avait un rôle à jouer avec Raymond Eddé, mais celui-ci, ennemi juré du chéhabisme, ne fut pas élu président après Fouad Chéhab. Il reste qu’il avoua, trois jours avant son décès, que Chéhab a bâti un État et une nation et qu’il avait eu tort dans sa guerre contre le chéhabisme. En fait, Raymond Eddé était un patriote et un défenseur de la liberté, laquelle n’était pas garantie sous le chéhabisme. Au lieu de Raymond Eddé, ce fut l’accord du Caire après le chéhabisme et comme conséquence le mini-État palestinien. Raymond Eddé s’est opposé à l’accord du Caire et même Abdel Nasser a trouvé étrange la ratification dudit accord par le Liban, alors qu’il connaissait la situation et la composition du Liban.
Les deux héros de la résistance chrétienne
Raymond Eddé n’a jamais rendu visite à Abdel Nasser et continua à s’opposer à l’accord du Caire et son mini-État palestinien qui voulait libérer la Palestine à partir de Jounieh et Ouyoune el-Simane. De même, les chrétiens s’étaient opposés à l’accord du Caire car il avait détruit la cause palestinienne et causé la guerre civile au Liban. Alors que Raymond Eddé s’opposait à l’État palestinien à partir de l’étranger, Bachir Gemayel s’y opposait au Liban même. La guerre civile a réussi à faire sortir les organisations palestiniennes par la porte, mais les services secrets « alaouites » sont entrés par la fenêtre pour gouverner le Liban sous des noms chrétiens tels qu’Émile Lahoud et Élias Hraoui !
Les deux héros de la résistance chrétienne face aux services secrets alaouites furent alors Raymond Eddé et Bachir Gemayel, et ce jusqu’à l’assassinat de Bachir !
Depuis ce temps, Bachir est assassiné chaque jour… Quant à Raymond Eddé, le héros de la résistance libanaise, il n’avait jamais cessé d’intervenir auprès des instances internationales et ce jusqu’à son décès.
Une opportunité historique est ensuite apparue à la faveur de l’émergence d’un islam politique sunnite au Liban dont le slogan est « Le Liban d’abord et avant tout ». Mais avec l’apparition de l’islam politique sunnite, l’histoire a encore une fois joué contre le Liban. Après le retrait des services secrets alaouites, la communauté chiite occupa les premiers rangs en raison d’une alliance avec l’Iran et d’un accord chiito-chrétien (remplaçant l’accord du Caire) conclu à Mar Mikhaël, d’où le nom d’« accord de Mar Mikhaël ».
La communauté sunnite demeura sans leader après l’assassinat de Rafic Hariri, le décès de Saëb Salam et l’assassinat de Rachid Karamé. Le leadership chrétien s’affaiblit de plus en plus et finit par se joindre au leadership chiite religieux lié à l’Iran qui, lui, devenait plus dominant. Ainsi, le rôle des chrétiens, qui avait des caractéristiques arabes et occidentales ainsi qu’un équilibre culturel arabo-occidental faisant du Liban le pays de la liberté et de la culture mixte, s’est affaibli.
L’histoire ne pardonne pas
La culture des chrétiens n’a jamais été iranienne et même les Ottomans n’ont pas pu la « turquiser ». En fait, cette culture inspira la pensée nationaliste arabe non religieuse. Les musulmans ont beaucoup bénéficié de la culture des chrétiens et ces derniers ont inoculé leur culture occidentale à la pensée arabe.
Le leadership chrétien ne cessa de s’affaiblir et le rôle chrétien ne cessa d’être en contradiction avec son histoire et sa nature à tel point que la politique libanaise et le leadership chrétien sont devenus iraniens. Les chrétiens ont perdu leur rôle historique en concluant l’accord de Mar Mikhaël, devenant ainsi les protecteurs de la politique iranienne et même refusant l’initiative française.
Le leadership chrétien est aouniste sur le plan de la forme mais en fait, c’est Gebran Bassil qui est le vrai leader. On ne répétera pas les slogans lancés par les manifestants dès le début de la révolution du 17 octobre.
Le leadership chrétien n’a rien à voir ni avec Fouad Chéhab, ni avec Raymond Eddé, ni avec Bachir Gemayel.
Le leadership aouniste, que les chrétiens ont élu en lui assurant plus de vingt députés au Parlement, est en contradiction avec le leadership chrétien qui a marqué l’histoire ! Les chrétiens aujourd’hui ont agi contre leur histoire, contre leur culture et contre leur rôle historique. Pour qu’il récupère sa position en tant que premier leadership libanais, le leadership chrétien a besoin de personnalités comme Fouad Chéhab, Raymond Eddé et Bachir Gemayel.
Gebran Bassil joue aujourd’hui le rôle que jouait Milošević dans les guerres des Balkans, au sujet desquelles Samir Atallah a écrit un article intitulé « Ça ne vaut pas la peine », comparant les faits aux Balkans avec ce qui se passait et ce qui se passe toujours au Liban. Citant Fouad Chéhab, il dit : « Au début des années 70, j’ai voyagé à Belgrade où notre feu ambassadeur cheikh Mounir Takieddine, immergé dans la vie politique dans ce pays, avait écrit un ouvrage portant sur la vie de Tito. » Et d’ajouter : « Un jour, j’ai demandé à cheikh Mounir s’il craignait le retour de la balkanisation. Et de répondre qu’après Tito, tout est possible et chez nous (c’est à dire au Liban), tout est possible aussi après Fouad Chéhab. »
L’histoire ne pardonne pas. Faisons un saut dans le passé : la famille hachémite en Irak était populaire et était le leader historiquement et religieusement. Originaire de la région du Hijaz, elle se préparait pour régner sur toute la région arabe, en commençant par la Syrie, la Jordanie et l’Irak. Mais le 14 juillet 1958, le palais royal al-Rihab est pris d’assaut. La famille hachémite fut ainsi massacrée des mains des soldats et officiers car elle était allée contre l’histoire, et ce lorsque l’Émir Abdel Illah et Nouri el-Saïd ont serré la main de l’homme d’État britannique Eden alors que Le Caire était bombardée par les Anglais et que la population égyptienne été exterminée ! L’histoire ne les a jamais pardonnés.
L’histoire a condamné la famille hachémite à l’extermination quand elle perdit son rôle et alla contre l’histoire. Hélas ! Nouri el-Saïd n’a pas compris l’histoire.
Gebran Bassil, qui joue aujourd’hui le rôle de Milošević aux Balkans après Tito et le rôle de Nouri el-Saïd à Bagdad, insiste pour éloigner les chrétiens de leur histoire sous prétexte de la restauration de l’autorité et du pouvoir des chrétiens.
Mais l’histoire ne pardonne pas…
La révolution n’est pas orpheline ;
les trafiquants de drogue, ceux qui se livrent au blanchiment d’argent et qui vivent sur le compte de la tutelle du juriste islamique iranien (wilayat el-faqih), de qui ils reçoivent de l’argent et des armes, réduisent le Liban en esclavage pour le compte de l’Iran.
La révolution a un héros : c’est le patriarche des chrétiens, le patriarche Béchara Raï, dont la voix retentit partout au monde quand il parle.
Le patriarche est Saad Zagloul, Abdel Kader al-Jazaëri et Richelieu : il est le héros de la révolution et le héros des chrétiens. Par son audace et son héroïsme, il œuvre à remédier à l’impasse politique actuelle. Nous soutenons tous le patriarche maronite Raï et nous sommes tous avec la neutralité du Liban.
Abdel Hamid el-Ahdab
Avocat
Les textes publiés dans le cadre de la rubrique « courrier » n’engagent que leurs auteurs et ne reflètent pas nécessairement le point de vue de L’Orient-Le Jour. Merci de limiter vos textes à un millier de mots ou environ 6 000 caractères, espace compris.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 02-03/2021

Pope plans to embark on historic visit to Iraq amid pandemic
The Arab Weekly/March 02/2021
The March 5-8 trip will be Francis’s first outside Italy since November 2019, when he visited Thailand and Japan. Four trips planned for 2020 were cancelled because of COVID-19.
VATICAN CITY--Rockets have hit Iraqi cities and COVID-19 has flared, yet, barring last-minute changes, Pope Francis will embark on a whirlwind four-day trip starting on Friday to show solidarity with the country’s devastated Christian community.
Keen to get on the road again after the pandemic put paid to several planned trips, he convinced some perplexed Vatican aides that it is worth the risk and that, in any case, his mind was made up, three Vatican sources said.
“He is itching to get back out on the road after such a long period,” said one Vatican official. “Despite some misgivings, the general mood in here is that all systems are go.” The March 5-8 trip will be Francis’s first outside Italy since November 2019, when he visited Thailand and Japan. Four trips planned for 2020 were cancelled because of COVID-19.
“He really feels that need to reach out to people on their home ground,” said the official, a Vatican prelate who is familiar with Iraq and who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Vatican officials and local Church leaders say they are satisfied that Iraqi forces will be able to provide adequate security for the pope and his entourage. “The pope knows where he is going. He is deliberately coming to an area marked by war and violence to bring a message of peace,” Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil told reporters on a recent conference call.
“The authorities are taking the pope’s security very seriously, with 10,000 security personnel deployed for the purpose,” he said.
First visit by a pope
Conflict in Iraq, birthplace of the Prophet Abraham – who is revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews – made a trip by Francis’s predecessors elusive. But while wars have ended, violence continues. A twin suicide attack in Baghdad killed at least 32 people in January. The pope condemned the bombings. Last Monday, rockets hit Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, which hosts government buildings and foreign embassies. There were no casualties.
Another shadow hanging over the trip is the coronavirus pandemic, which, along with security measures, will drastically limit the number of people who will see the pope in person.
Officials banned most travel within provinces after more than 4,000 new cases were detected on Thursday, for a total of more than 600,000 cases so far. Francis, 84, has said it is important to make the trip even if most Iraqi Christians will see him only on television. “They will see the pope is there in their country,” he told Catholic News Service last month, adding: “I am the pastor of people who are suffering.”
Several Vatican and Iraqi Church officials say they are doing everything possible to ensure that papal appearances do not turn out to be super-spreader events. The pope and his entourage, including the accompanying press corps, have been vaccinated. But most people who will attend papal events have not. A first batch of 50,000 doses is due to arrive in Iraq from China on Monday.
Strict measures
Two gatherings at churches in Baghdad will be limited to about 100 people each, with social distancing and masks required. Up to 10,000 people will have numbered seats for a papal Mass in a stadium in Erbil that has a capacity of 30,000, and contact tracing will be possible if there is an outbreak, Warda said. Vatican and Iraqi planners of the trip got a sobering reminder of the spread of coronavirus in Iraq on Saturday when Archbishop Mitja Leskovar, the Vatican’s ambassador there, said he had tested positive and had gone into self-isolation. Leskovar has been the key planner of the trip and he had been due to be at the pope’s side throughout the visit.
“This is not going to influence the pope’s programme, which is going on as planned,” Leskovar said. For security reasons and so as not to draw crowds, the pope will use a closed car and not a popemobile on the streets, a Vatican source said.
Busy programme
Among the most extraordinary moments of the trip will be his one-on-one meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highly reclusive cleric, who is a top religious authority for many of the world’s Shia Muslims.
The 84-year-old pontiff, who will be on his first foreign trip since the start of the pandemic, plans to voice solidarity with the country’s Christian community — one of the world’s oldest — and the rest of Iraq’s 40 million people during the packed three-day visit. Amid war and persecution, the Christian community in Iraq has fallen from 1.5 million in 2003 to just 400,000 today.
From central Baghdad to the Shia shrine city of Najaf, welcome banners featuring the pope’s image and Arabic title “Baba al-Vatican” already dot the streets. From Ur, the birthplace of the Prophet Abraham in the southern desert, to ravaged Christian towns in the north, roads are being paved and churches rehabilitated in remote areas that have never seen such a high-profile visitor. “The pope’s message is that the Church stands beside those who suffer,” said Najeeb Michaeel, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of the northern city of Mosul. “He will have powerful words for Iraq, where crimes against humanity have been committed.” World’s oldest Christian community
Iraq’s Christian community is one of the oldest and most diverse in the world, with Chaldeans and other Catholics making up around half, along with Armenian Orthodox, Protestants and others.
By 2003, when the US-led invasion toppled then-president Saddam Hussein, Christians made up around 6% of Iraq’s 25 million people.
But even as sectarian violence pushed members of the minority to flee, the national population surged, further diluting Christians to just one percent, according to William Warda, co-founder of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organisation. Most were concentrated in the northern province of Nineveh, where many still speak a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ.
In 2014, jihadists from ISIS seized control of Nineveh, rampaging through Christian towns and telling residents: convert or die.
At the time, Pope Francis endorsed military action against ISIS and considered visiting northern Iraq in solidarity with Christians there.
That trip never materialised, but Francis has kept a close eye on Iraq, condemning the killing of unarmed protesters during mass anti-government rallies from 2019.
– A long time coming –
Pope John Paul II had planned to visit Iraq in 2000 but Saddam Hussein abruptly cancelled the trip. His successor Benedict XVI never made moves towards Baghdad. Soon after Francis was elected pope in 2013, he was urged to visit Iraq by Father Louis Sako — later appointed as Cardinal and the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church and now a key organiser of the visit. In 2019, Iraqi President Barham Salih extended an official invitation, hoping to help Iraq “heal” after years of violence.
But as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged Italy, the pope cancelled all foreign trips from June 2020.
Pope Francis is an outspoken proponent of interfaith efforts and has visited several Muslim-majority countries including Bangladesh, Turkey, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.
In Abu Dhabi in 2019, he met Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the imam of the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, a key authority for Sunni Muslims. They signed a document encouraging Christian-Muslim dialogue.
Francis hopes this week’s trip could open a similar door to Shia Muslims, who number roughly 200 million worldwide but are the majority in Iraq. As part of that effort, he will meet the top cleric for many Shias, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, at his humble home in Najaf.
Sako said in January the pope hoped Sistani would endorse the same “Abu Dhabi” treatise, but clerical sources in Najaf have denied this.
Still, the encounter will be a key moment in an emblematic trip. “It’s a historic visit — we’re talking about the head of a religious sect that is followed by 20 percent of the world’s population,” Najaf governor Luay al-Yasserit said. “His visit means a lot. His visit to His Holiness, the top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, will have a huge impact.”
 

Clergy lead a rare Christian revival in Iraqi town welcoming Pope Francis
Reuters/02 March/2021:
As ISIS terrorist group’s fighters advanced across northern Iraq in 2014, Mazen Shemes’ nine-year-old son was killed by a mortar. The family had to bury him quickly before fleeing the same night, along with thousands of other Christian families. Five years later the 47-year-old farmer returned to the town of Qaraqosh, part of a wave of people who, supported by church leaders, re-populated its empty streets and rebuilt homes left in ruins by extremist militants and the fighting that ousted them. “This is our land. We can’t just abandon it and leave,” said Shemes, standing in his garden where young trees are growing.
About half of the Christian enclave of Qaraqosh has come back since ISIS was defeated in 2017, a rare sign of hope for a community devastated by Iraq’s descent into extremist violence after the US invasion in 2003.
Iraq’s Christian population of 1.5 million some 20 years ago stands at 300,000, and many of those want to leave because they see few prospects in a war-torn country where Shia militias and sleeper militant cells still pose a threat. Pope Francis will visit the town’s restored Grand Immaculate Church - Iraq’s largest - on Sunday as part of a four-day tour of the country designed to boost morale and highlight the difficulties some Christian communities face.
For the Catholic clergy who led the reconstruction work and helped families return to the town near Mosul – ISIS group’s de-facto capital - his trip is a source of huge pride.
“We try to do as much as we can,” said Father Ammar Yako, a local Syriac Catholic priest who has been supervising the renovation of the Grand Immaculate Church in Qaraqosh since 2019. “But then, God remains the one who decides what will happen to us.”
Rebuild, revive
Among the first to return to the town, the main center of Hamdaniya district, after liberation from ISIS were the clergy. Embedded with security forces just after they retook Qaraqosh, Father Ammar recalled his shock at seeing the destruction. “Over 2,000 houses were burned,” he said. Others were torn apart by airstrikes against the militants. There was no water or electricity.
The imposing Grand Immaculate Church had been desecrated by the militants and ravaged by fire. But Father Ammar was thankful that it was, at least, still standing. “I started thinking that maybe we would be able to rebuild it.”
Local church leaders from different denominations devised a plan to encourage families to come back to the town of 50,000 people, raising funds mainly from foreign Christian non-governmental organizations.
“We decided to start by rebuilding houses so that people would come home,” said Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Yohanna Petros Mouche, adding that churches would come next. Father Georges Jahola was put in charge.
With a team of around 20, Father Georges started to map the city, assess the damage and allocate funds to support families who began to trickle back. Over half the damaged homes have been restored.
But reconstruction funds have dried up, preventing Father Georges from completing the work. Some 2,000 houses in the town remain empty, and church leaders are opposed to the idea of allowing Iraqis from other areas to move in. “If we lose our land, we lose our identity,” Father Georges explained, poring over a map showing the Christian enclave of Qaraqosh surrounded by land allocated to other religious groups that locals feel could endanger their town’s identity. Father Ammar hopes worshippers will soon be able to pray again regularly in the Grand Immaculate Church, a grey and yellow stone building with a distinct red roof that stands out among the surrounding houses. Volunteers were recently cleaning and decorating the building ahead of the pope’s visit. Traces of burning inside the church were left untouched, a reminder of the fragility of the Christian community in Iraq.

Factbox: Iraq's Christian denominations
Reuters/March 02/2021
Pope Francis visits Iraq on a historic four-day trip beginning March 5. He will preach inter-faith coexistence and try to boost Christians who over centuries of conflict have fled Iraq and the wider Middle East in droves. Iraq is overwhelmingly Muslim but hosts several ancient Christian communities, who now number an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people from the 1.5 million who lived in the country before the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. There are 14 officially recognised Christian sects in Iraq. Most live in Baghdad, the northern Nineveh Plains province and Iraq's self-run Kurdistan region.
These are the most prominent Christian denominations in Iraq:
CHALDEANS
Chaldeans are the most numerous of Iraq's Christians, up to 80% of the group. The Chaldean Church is Eastern Rite affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church but allowed to keep its traditions and rituals.
It was founded in Mesopotamia, what is now modern-day Iraq, in the first century AD.
The church is based in Baghdad and headed by Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako. Most Chaldeans live in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon. They speak a version of Aramaic, a Semitic language spoken at the time of Jesus. There are 110 Chaldean churches across Iraq.
SYRIACS
Syriacs make up about 10% of Iraqi Christians. They include Catholics, which are the majority, and Orthodox. The northern towns of Qaraqosh, Bashiqa and Bartella house the biggest Syriac community in the country.
The main Syriac Catholic church is based in Lebanon while the Orthodox church is based in Syria. There are 82 Syriac churches in Iraq, both Catholic and Orthodox.
ASSYRIANS
Assyrians including Assyrian Catholics make up around 5% of Christians in Iraq. Most are originally from Iran and Turkey. Many of them fled to Iraq following the massacres by the Ottoman army during World War One.
Assyrians refer to the killing of their people in 1915 as a genocide, which took place around the same time as the massacre of Armenians. There are 21 Assyrian churches in Iraq, 17 of them in Baghdad.
ARMENIANS
About 3% Assof Iraqi Christians are Armenian. After the Armenian genocide in 1915-1923 by the Ottoman Empire, many of them fled to Iraq. They speak Armenian. There are 19 Armenian churches in Iraq, both Orthodox and Catholic.
ARABS, SMALLER GROUPS
Arab Christians make up about 2% of the Iraqi Christian population.
There are also three Greek Orthodox and four Coptic Orthodox churches in Baghdad and 57 Roman Catholic churches across the country, as well as a small number of Protestants.
Sources: Iraqi Christian Foundation/ Freedom of belief for minorities in Iraq, a book published by Saad Salloum, an academic specialised in Iraq minorities and founder of Institute for the Study of Religious Diversity/2019 U.S. State Department Report on Iraq religious freedoms.

US Blacklists Houthi Leaders, Blames Iran for Intensifying Yemen Crisis
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 2 March, 2021
The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on two military leaders of the Iran-backed Houthis militias in Yemen, accusing them of procuring weapons from Iran and organizing attacks, in the Biden administration’s first punitive action against them. The sanctions contrast with the State Department’s decision last month to revoke terrorist designations on the militias imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration on its last full day in office, over concern that they would exacerbate Yemen’s humanitarian crisis. But President Joe Biden’s administration has signaled limits to US tolerance of the Houthis, warning that Washington will keep up pressure on their leadership. “The United States remains committed to promoting accountability of Houthi leadership for their actions, which have contributed to the extraordinary suffering of the Yemeni people,” Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control Andrea Gacki said in a Treasury Department statement. Tuesday’s move blacklisted Mansur Al-Sa’adi, the Houthi naval forces chief of staff, and Ahmad ‘Ali Ahsan al-Hamzi, the commander of Houthi-aligned Yemeni air force and air defense forces. The Treasury accused the two leaders of orchestrating attacks by the Houthis that affected the Yemeni people, neighboring countries and commercial vessels in international waters, in actions done to “advance the Iranian regime’s destabilizing agenda.”

“The United States condemns the destruction of civilian sites by the Houthi militants designated today. These individuals command forces that are worsening the humanitarian crisis in Yemen,” Gacki said. The war has sent the impoverished country spiraling into what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The Treasury said Iran has intensified the conflict by providing direct financial and material assistance to the Houthis, including small arms, missiles, explosives and unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, that have been used against the legitimate Yemeni government. The Treasury said Al-Sa’adi has received extensive training in Iran and helped smuggle weapons into Yemen, while al-Hamzi has acquired Iranian-made weapons for use in the war, including in drone strikes. Tuesday’s sanctions - imposed under an executive order that aims to freeze the assets of people threatening the peace, security or stability of Yemen - blocks any property those blacklisted may have under US jurisdiction and generally bars Americans from dealing with them.

Doctors Without Borders Staffer Killed in North Syria Camp
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 2 March, 2021
The international aid organization Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday a staff member was killed and three were injured in separate incidents last month in a camp for displaced people in northeast Syria. The al-Hol camp houses families of members of the ISIS group and has witnessed a sharp increase in crime in recent weeks. In a statement, Doctors Without Borders said it is extremely concerned about the lack of security facing camp residents, two-thirds of whom are children. The group added that it was “shocked and saddened” after a staff member was killed and three injured in incidents on Feb. 24 and Feb. 27.
“Our colleague was off-duty with their family when they were killed” on Feb. 27, said Will Turner, the group's emergency manager for Syria. “People are being killed with a brutal frequency, often in the tents where they live.”Turner said the agency was still trying to understand the circumstances of the killing and did not provide details. He said on Feb. 24 the child of a staff member died and three staff members were injured in a fire at a wedding in the camp. The fire spread to adjoining tents after a child accidentally knocked over a diesel heater. At least seven people were killed in the blaze, including the 4-year-old daughter of a staff member. Al-Hol houses the wives, widows, children and other family members of ISIS militants. More than 80% of its 62,000 residents are women and children. The majority are Iraqis and Syrians, but it includes some 10,000 people from 57 other countries. They are housed in a highly secured separate area known as the Annex. Many of them remain die-hard ISIS supporters.

Iran resistance urges tougher sanctions after exposing secret nuclear advances
Ray Hanania/Arab News/March 03/2021
“Today’s revelation shows that deception, denial, and duplicity are part of the regime’s DNA.” CHIACGO: Leaders of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) called on the international community at a press conference on Tuesday to re-enforce sanctions on Iran and not surrender to “Tehran’s blackmailing and posturing.”NCRI officials revealed new information on how Iran’s Mullahs are carefully building a nuclear weapon while seeking to remove sanctions on its programs. The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released on Feb. 23 shows anthropogenic uranium particles at two sites in Iran. The Iranian regime had blocked access to these sites to IAEA inspectors for months. “Today’s revelation shows that deception, denial, and duplicity are part of the regime’s DNA. Neither Europe nor the US should give into Tehran’s blackmail and posturing,” Ali Safavi of the NCRI told the Arab News following the press conference. “They should hold it to account for the systematic and flagrant breaches of its own commitments, even under the fatally flawed Iran nuclear deal. Sanctions should not be lifted unless and until the regime comes clean on its nuclear deceptions and stops its malign actions in the Middle East and its oppression of the Iranian people.”
Joining the NCRI at the press conference were US envoy and former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph and Struan Stevenson, former senior member of the European Parliament from Scotland. “The discovery of uranium particles at two suspect sites demonstrate very clearly that the regime continues and has continued to violate the agreement,” Joseph said, emphasizing that the Iranian regime cannot be trusted. “The regime openly violates the limits of the Iran deal today to coerce the US administration back into the agreement. The lesson here is not to be blackmailed by the regime because if you allow yourselves to be blackmailed you will only have more blackmail in the future, and another fatally flawed agreement.” Joseph said that rejoining the deal will not achieve the goal of President Joe Biden’s administration to lay the groundwork for a broader and more comprehensive agreement with Iran.
Stevenson criticized the EU’s failure to address the problems and urged Biden to halt efforts to renegotiate with Iran. “Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, hasn’t uttered a single word of criticism about an Iranian diplomat who was jailed last month for trying to kill hundreds of people in Europe with a bomb,” Stevenson said. “I sincerely hope that the Biden administration will not follow Borrell’s example of bare-faced appeasement. To do so would, it would be a humiliating defeat to America and a propaganda coup for the theoretical regime. The US, the EU, and the UN must hold the Iranian regime to account for its acts of aggression. Any concessions to the theocratic dictatorship will be seen as an act of weakness by the West.” The NCRI has been monitoring Iran’s secret nuclear arms development program and said new information released Tuesday was provided by the sources from the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran inside the country. The information includes details on the role and function of the site in Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, the experts involved at the time, and their current activities. The regime has not yet answered the IAEA’s questions regarding the possible presence of nuclear material at these locations, NCRI officials said. In his introductory statement to the IAEA Board of Governors yesterday, IAEA Director Rafael Grossi expressed the agency's deep concerns on finding nuclear material in undeclared locations in Iran.
“The fact is that the mullahs’ regime is seeking to acquire a nuclear weapon as a strategic means to guarantee its survival, and for this reason it has never abandoned its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. This pursuit has continued unabated for the past three decades,” Safavi said.
One site, located north of Abadeh city in the Fars province, was built by companies controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the mid-1990s under the supervision of the then-minister of defense. The site is part of a project managed by the main entity in charge of research and development of nuclear weapons, the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, known by its Persian acronym SPND. This site was constructed for a project dubbed Marivan for the use of one of the SPND’s subdivisions, called the Center for Research and Expansion of Technologies on Explosions and Impact.
The center is engaged in the research and construction of nuclear high-explosive detonators. Saeed Borji, one of the regime’s top explosives and high-impact specialists who for years worked directly under the supervision of Brig. Gen. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the key figure in Tehran’s nuclear weapons project, has been involved in the Marivan project. Borji is currently in another role along with some of the most senior experts. It is alleged that he is still conducting research for the nuclear weapons program’s explosives and impact fields using a cover.
 

Macron Calls Rouhani, Asks Iran for 'Clear Gestures'
Agence France Presse/March 02/2021
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday asked Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for "clear gestures" and an immediate return to the terms of a landmark nuclear deal with Western powers in a telephone call.
Macron's office said the French leader also asked Rouhani to fully cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, on inspections and expressed his "deepest concern" over Iranian violations of the accord. The 2015 deal -- called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- has been hanging by a thread since former U.S. president Donald Trump withdrew Washington from it and reimposed punishing sanctions on Iran in 2018.

Syrian Pound Hits Record Low against Dollar
Agence France Presse/March 02/2021
Syria's pound hit a new low against the dollar on the black market Tuesday, a foreign exchange website and currency traders said, in the latest blow to the war-battered economy. The exchange rate reached 4,000 Syrian pounds to the U.S. dollar for the first time since the start of the conflict a decade ago, traders told AFP by phone. "There's a huge scarcity of dollars on the market," one trader said. Syria's economy has been battered by 10 years of war, and is reeling from the knock-on effects of a financial crisis in neighboring Lebanon that has stemmed the flow of dollars into government-held areas.
The website showed the dollar was selling for 4,000 Syrian pounds in Damascus, while it hovered around 3,900 in other parts of the country. Lebanon's pound too reached an all-time low on the black market Tuesday, trading at almost 10,000 to the dollar. Syria's official exchange rate has stood at around 1,250 pounds to the greenback since June -- compared to 47 pounds to the dollar before the war. The new unofficial rate means the currency is now worth almost 99 percent less on the black market than the official rate before the war. The United Nations says 60 percent of the population now struggles to find enough food each day, with food prices 33 times higher than before the conflict. The Damascus government has blamed the economic crisis on Western sanctions and the crisis in Lebanon. Analyst Zaki Mehchy said the Lebanese economic crisis was "one of the main reasons" for the recent change to the Syrian unofficial exchange rate. "What's happening in Lebanon is affecting the Syrian pound because Lebanon is one of the main channels for the Syrian government to the external market," he said. Another factor was likely the introduction of a new 5,000 Syrian pound banknote, which went into circulation without being covered by hard currency or an increase in economic activity, the senior consulting fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank said. Syria's war has killed more than 387,000 people, ravaged key infrastructure and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the repression on anti-government protests.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 02-03/2021

As the Resistance-Axis crumbles is Assad leaving the door open for peace with Israel?
Hanin Ghaddar/Al Arabiya/March 02/2021
Last week, Israel agreed to finance a supply of Russian-made COVID-19 vaccine to Damascus, to secure the release of one of their citizens being held in Syria. According to media reports, Russia was paid $1.2 million, who then mediated the deal to send Sputnik V vaccines to the Assad regime. The Israeli national could have been released easily in a prisoner exchange. It begs the question: Why didn’t they do this instead? Israel has been bombing Iranian military bases successfully, and it could target the Syrian regime, a strategy it hasn’t followed. Could Israel realize there might be an opportunity, and a relatively cheap and riskless one, to send Assad vaccines? In the volatile history between the two countries, if Assad is serious about starting to collaborate with his traditional enemies it could become a watershed moment. The question remains: Maybe he needs to be put to the test, and will the vaccine shipment do this?
What does Assad want, but what does he need?
Before the Israeli civilian-vaccine deal was made, media reports suggested secret meetings between Israeli and Syrian officials had happened in Cyprus, and in Russian military bases in Syria. All were organized and mediated by Russia, the reports claimed. Russia had three goals in mind: to sell its vaccine; strengthen the power base in Syria by allowing the regime to maintain a level of popular support with a vaccine rollout, and to secure a connection between Israel and Syria, with eventual peace an option. Iran will continue to oppose any peace prospects in Syria, but Putin might disagree: An inflated Iranian presence in Syria will eat away at Russia’s foothold in the region, its power, and will hamper international diplomacy efforts that he is championing – or at least pretending to. As for Assad, this is not the first time he has shown an interest to build peace with Israel. He needs Iran’s help, and he understands that he would have been ousted a long time ago without it, along with Russian military support.
The price of Iran making key decisions in Syria has become too high, with his support base unhappy. As the Syrian economy crumbles, in parallel with neighboring Lebanon, the discontent is expected to increase. Assad needs a way out, but he cannot confront the Iranians. Despite his condemnation of Israeli bombings of Iranian bases in Syria, privately Assad may view favorable relations with Israel appealing. Israel is trying to block Iran’s presence and power in Syria, and has been successful. Assad is vulnerable without Iran’s protection. Would an Israeli-Russian coalition offer the same support, allowing him to retain power? Assad knows that he can’t maintain any public support if the economy is collapsing, and as COVID-19 cases climb it’s clear he needs serious financial and medical health support. Neither Russia nor Iran can provide this. Israel – on the other hand – can assist. By paying for the vaccines (which Putin refused to provide for free), perhaps Israel will offer financial aid.
Time to give Assad an ultimatum
The vaccine deal has secured Assad around 150,000 doses, according to Israeli media. This might help him tighten the small circle around him, and protect the regime from imminent collapse. Assad has kept the door open to welcome the Israelis for a very long time, but has so far halted any real progress. He has been successful in giving the impression that he is interested in peace, but hasn’t made practical steps in this direction. Accepting to meet with Israelis, and talking about peace is one thing, but getting results is something completely different. It is time for Israel to tackle his approach, and find out if he will defy Iran’s decisions for Syria. Assad should not be allowed back to the Arab League, for example without concrete steps for peace. Iran knows this and is in denial. Their rhetoric about defending Syria, and the idea of the country being part of the resistance axis will collapse if admitting that Assad is talking to the Israelis. In a way, Iran hasn’t got to a point of feeling the threat because the Assad regime hasn’t made any clear moves of peace with Israel. The fissure in the resistance axis is now apparent, and will eventually crack. Nothing breaks alliances and shatters rhetoric more than financial difficulties. When the countries that Iran controls – from Yemen to Lebanon, through to Syria – are crumbling under economic crises, the resistance narrative will eventually become meaningless. This is the perfect moment to put Assad to the test. If he cannot make concrete, and practical steps toward fulfilling his peace promises, his regime will collapse. Israel should not protect Assad any longer if their meetings, talks, and deals, are only benefiting him and his Russian allies, and indirectly Iran. If he fails the test, he should be treated as part of the resistance axis, and treated accordingly.
 

The UN Should Protect Human Rights, Not Human Rights Abusers
Bradley Bowman and David May/Newsweek/March 02/2021
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Wednesday that the United States will seek membership at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in January 2022 as part of the Biden administration’s commitment to “putting human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy.”
To be sure, the United States is at its best when it strives to model human rights at home and stand up for those principles abroad. And when Washington leads and assembles like-minded countries to advance international human rights together, we are more likely to succeed.
Accordingly, it would seem to be an easy decision for the United States to join the UNHRC. But that is not necessarily the case. To understand why, it is worth considering what the UNHRC has become.
The UNHRC certainly includes countries and individuals of good faith who are dedicated, sincere advocates for human rights. Unfortunately, they have allowed it to be increasingly coopted by countries that do not share a genuine commitment to human rights.
To escape unwanted attention or consequences for their illicit activities, criminal syndicates may attempt to control the local police department. That is not unlike what happens today at the UNHRC. The world’s worst human rights abusers, such as China, have sought membership on the UNHRC to shield and enable their own egregious human rights abuses, seeking to shift attention elsewhere.
Take a moment to let that sink in. China has detained upwards of a million Uighur Muslims in what Blinken himself has described as a “genocide.” China has violently suppressed pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and continues to occupy Tibet. Yet China sits on the United Nations Human Rights Council.
If the Biden administration is successful in gaining membership at the UNHRC in 2022, China is not the only authoritarian human rights abuser the U.S. delegation will find around the UNHRC table.
Russia will be there, too. Yes, that Russia. The one that has cracked down on freedom of expression while poisoning and imprisoning opposition leader Alexei Navalny for having the temerity to stand up to Vladimir Putin‘s corruption and authoritarianism.
And Beijing and Moscow are not the only systematic abusers of human rights who have discovered the value of UNHRC membership.
Freedom House conducts an annual report assessing political rights and civil liberties in countries around the world. Nearly 60 percent of the UNHRC’s current members are ranked by Freedom House as “not free” or “partly free.” Admittedly, Cuba and Venezuela—both members of UNHRC—don’t help the average.
If we are being honest, despite some notable exceptions, the UNHRC has started to resemble a human rights abuser convention—making the denizens of the Star Wars cantina look like Cub Scouts by comparison.
Countries such as China, Russia and Cuba join to divert attention elsewhere and ensure their own human rights violations are ignored. They do so by creating false moral equivalencies and targeting countries with far superior records on human rights.
Israel has been a primary victim of this strategy.
The UNHRC has passed roughly an equal number of resolutions condemning Israel as the rest of the world combined. The council’s standing agenda item to scrutinize the country’s human rights record—a special attention paid only to Israel—contributes to this imbalance. The UNHRC also sustains a special rapporteur whose mandate calls to investigate only Israel.
So where does that leave us? Great-power competition is happening everywhere—including at the UNHRC. If the United States vacates that field of competition, its authoritarian adversaries will fill the vacuum, call the shots and create an international order more hostile to human rights and American interests.
At the same time, we don’t want to provide resources and credibility to an organization that authoritarian regimes use to shield their worst human rights abuses and cynically divert attention to others.
That is the dilemma America confronts at the UNHRC.
The Biden administration hopes that American involvement at the UNHRC can help steer the corrupted body in the right direction. Yet the collapse of the UNHRC’s predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights, should serve as a cautionary tale. The United Nations replaced the former human rights body, which was dominated by human rights abusers and demonstrated an obsession for excoriating Israel.
Does that sound familiar?
As our colleague Richard Goldberg notes, U.S. membership from 2009 until 2018 did not help address these fundamental UNHRC maladies.
Regardless, with the best of intentions, the Biden administration seems determined to rejoin the UNHRC. Since membership is a means to an end, not an end in itself, what should be the metrics of success by which we can judge the Biden administration’s efforts?
What about working to establish minimum common-sense standards for who can be a member of the UNHRC? The mere suggestion will surely elicit reflexive eye rolls among many UN watchers.
But is it really such a horrible idea to suggest that countries engaged in grave and ongoing crimes against humanity (such as the Chinese Communist Party’s atrocities in Xinjiang) should not sit on the UNHRC? Is there nothing that a country could do that would warrant barring or evicting it from the UNHRC?
If countries can engage in the worst human rights abuses imaginable and still achieve or retain membership, it says much about the state of the UNHRC—and any hope for real reform.
Here’s another metric that could be used to measure any Biden administration effort to reengage at the UNHRC: Can the U.S. delegation convince the UNHRC to treat Israel more equitably?
Perhaps some of the time previously spent on Israel could be used to help the Uighurs detained in concentration camps in Xinjiang. European allies willing to put principle before profit might want to partner with the U.S. delegation on this effort. And perhaps Muslim-majority countries might want to team up to help fellow Muslims confronting atrocities that our grandchildren will read about decades from now.
Americans rightly want to honor our principles, advance human rights and not vacate key fields of competition with China. But we also don’t want to inadvertently aid and abet an enterprise that often undermines the goals it was established to advance.
In his announcement, Blinken touted the administration’s commitment “to a world in which human rights are protected, their defenders are celebrated and those who commit human rights abuses are held accountable.” The problem is that the international organization charged with leading that effort frequently does exactly the opposite.
*Bradley Bowman is senior director for the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where David May is a research analyst. Follow them on Twitter @Brad_L_Bowman and @DavidSamuelMay. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Democracies still don’t understand CCP’s political warfare: Kerry Gershaneck
Cleo Paskal/The Sunday Guardian/March 02/2021
‘Both India and the US have pro-China factions, for reasons ranging from simple greed to leftist, pro-totalitarian ideology. Consequently, it has been difficult to develop a national consensus to fight Beijing’s malign influence. But this lack of will and ability to confront it almost guarantees ultimate victory for the PRC.’
China is using political warfare (PW) to try to weaken India, the United States, and any others the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to dominate. Understanding how to identify, combat and push back on the PW front is essential, especially for democracies where our open communications systems are our strength and—in the context of a malign actor like the CCP—our weakness.
One of the world experts in PW is Prof Kerry K. Gershaneck. Prof Gershaneck was a Visiting Scholar (Taiwan Fellow) at the National Chengchi University in Taipei over the past three years. He was also the Distinguished Visiting Professor at Thailand’s Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy and the Royal Thai Naval Academy for six years. He is a former US Marine officer, and has extensive national-level strategic communications and counterintelligence experience over the course of more than 30 years.
We interviewed him about some of the findings in his recently published book Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to “Win without Fighting”, as well as recent events in India and the US.
Q: All countries wage political warfare to some extent, to include India and the US. Why write a book on China’s political warfare?
A: The nature of the regime matters greatly, as does the extent of the threat it poses. China is an expansionist, hyper-nationalistic, militarily powerful, brutally repressive, fascist, and totalitarian state. It is essential to understand each word in that indisputable description. The CCP poses an existential threat to the freedom and democracy that India and the US represent. Failure to understand the nature of the CCP regime undermines our countries’ ability to fully understand the danger the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) PW poses and to build our capacity to combat it.
I wrote the book because many American elected officials and others in key policy, national security, and education positions simply do not understand the nature of the PRC threat. They do not understand—or simply refuse to recognize—that the PRC is at war with us. During the Cold War, the US used to be pretty good at fighting totalitarian political warfare, which is a key reason the Free World won that prolonged Cold War with the USSR. It’s worth noting that the non-aligned nations won as well when the USSR collapsed.
But we abandoned those skills in the early 1990s, when we naively assumed the collapse of the Soviet Union meant we had won and that there would never be a threat again from a totalitarian communist regime. The communist Soviet regime had collapsed but not the CCP. The CCP studied the Soviet Union’s collapse closely and learned lessons regarding how to keep its totalitarian system alive. And it vastly improved its political warfare capabilities to ensure that it could overcome the democracies’ efforts to reform the PRC to help it to become like them.
Q: You mention in your book that the PRC is “at war” with the rest of the world. When did this war start, and why has it taken so long for governments to realize they are under attack?
A: Chinese communists have used political warfare to influence, co-opt, and subvert their enemies for almost 100 years. Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists called for revolutionary wars to (in his words) “liberate the peoples of the world” well before the founding of the PRC. The CCP used political warfare to defeat the Nationalist Chinese forces on mainland China in 1949, and to successfully repress the peoples of countries like Tibet and Xinjiang that it conquered immediately thereafter. The PRC now wages political warfare daily against its own population as well as against countries such as India to support its global expansionist, totalitarian ambitions.
Officials in democracies such as India and the US have been too easily deceived about PRC’s political warfare for several key reasons. When the Soviet Union collapsed around 1990, many in our countries naively believed there would be no more expansionist, totalitarian threats. They were wrong, of course. Chinese communists still quietly harbored plans for regional (and ultimately global) hegemony. As PRC rulers proclaimed China’s “peaceful rise”, they built massive economic and military strength and engaged in global political warfare operations to subvert the democracies.
Meanwhile, the US and other democracies dismantled their Cold War political warfare capabilities and foolishly assumed the PRC would join the community of nations as a “responsible stakeholder”. Even though India has fought a major war with China and has had to contend with China’s routine military incursions and attacks, as a nation it has not developed a full awareness of the CCP’s political warfare against it, nor systematically studied it and countered it.
The democracies’ blindness to PRC political warfare severely undermines the ability to conceptualize the threat. However, now many countries are waking up to the threat, but some leaders do not have the strength and will to implement appropriate countermeasures. For example, both India and the US have pro-China factions, for reasons ranging from simple greed to leftist, pro-totalitarian ideology. Consequently, it has been difficult to develop a national consensus to fight Beijing’s malign influence. But this lack of will and ability to confront it almost guarantees ultimate victory for the PRC.
Q: How does the PRC wage political war around the world? Do tactics vary from country to country, region to region?
A: From the CCP perspective, PW is total war—it is unrestricted warfare using every means just short of large-scale military combat. The PRC’s form of political warfare is generally standard worldwide: it uses the same playbook to achieve its political, economic, and military objectives globally without having to fight conventional wars. Tailored strategies and tactics, however, are adapted for each region and country.
It’s important to understand that PRC’s PW—this unrestricted warfare—is designed to get others to do what the CCP wants them to do. The PRC says unrestricted warfare means “the battlefield is everywhere” and there are no boundaries between “war and non-war, and between military and non-military affairs”. In essence, the PRC says that everything, legal or illegal, is permissible in order to achieve its ends. Specific examples the PRC gives of how to conduct its unrestricted warfare include biological and chemical warfare and terrorism, means particularly pertinent to note and consider in the Covid-19 era.
The list of weapons the PRC employs is long. It includes propaganda, psychological warfare, media warfare, disinformation, corruption, economic and sexual enticement, and coercion. It also includes active measures such as hybrid warfare, proxy armies, assassination, kidnapping, and brutal physical attacks. The PRC’s PW doctrine also includes concepts such as lawfare (using international and national laws, bodies and courts to shape decision making in the CCP’s favor), cyberattacks, terrorism, espionage, bribery, censorship, deception, subversion, blackmail, enforced disappearances (kidnapping, abduction), attacks by criminal gangs, and hybrid warfare.
A noteworthy recent addition to this list of PW weapons is social media warfare. The PRC uses social media to amplify its psychological warfare, intimidation, coercion, and propaganda. With social media, the CCP floods societies with propaganda and disinformation to weaken people’s faith in democracy and create political instability. In pursuit of social media dominance, the PRC has established a PLA cyber force of perhaps 300,000 soldiers as well as a netizen “50 Cent Army” of perhaps 2 million individuals who are paid a nominal fee to make comments on social media sites supporting CCP propaganda and coercion. In conjunction with the PLA Strategic Support Force, many of these so-called “netizens” use social media to intimidate and coerce multinational corporations, celebrities, foreign governments and organizations, and critics of PRC genocide and expansionism.
This is all part of the CCP’s totalitarian thought control. The CCP employs thought control tactics internally to control its 1.3 billion subjects, such as the CCP’s internal censorship of western search applications and the use of social networks to savagely repress dissent and non-CCP approved thought.
These tactics are now routinely employed abroad. For example, university professors in India and the US routinely self-censor when it comes to the PRC, for a number of reasons. Some are ideological: they simply support the PRC’s totalitarian model. Others fear any criticism will damage their prospects for obtaining visas to the PRC or invitations to high-status conferences. Yes, this constitutes both intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice, but it is a fact of life in both India and the US.
Q: What is the PRC’s ultimate goal in waging political war? What are some of its intermediate objectives?
A: In general, the PRC’s rulers wage political warfare for three key reasons: (1) to achieve regional and global hegemony; (2) to maintain absolute control over China’s subjects internally; and (3) to co-opt or coerce other nations into becoming vassal or tributary states and to destroy states perceived as adversaries.
Based on the CCP’s Sino-fascist interpretation of an invented history, the CCP seeks to elevate China above all other nations. That is, the CCP wants to restore the myth of “One China” and its supposed former imperial grandeur as the Middle Kingdom. To use CCP terminology, the PRC wants to be the all-powerful hegemon. Accordingly, it wages political warfare to ensure the CCP’s total control over China’s population and resources, as well as those of foreign nations that the Chinese historically called barbarian states both nearby and throughout the world.
Q: What is your view of the new Biden administration? Will Joe Biden work to rein in the PRC’s aggression, or will he facilitate it?
A: The Biden-Harris administration will have to prove itself trustworthy—through strong actions and not simply empty rhetoric—to India and other democracies worldwide. Frankly, we will need to watch both the actions and words of the Biden-Harris administration over a period of time to assess if it has both the resolve and skills to confront the PRC. There was simply too much accommodation—appeasement, actually—of the CCP during the Obama-Biden administration to instill complete confidence in the new administration. Many of Biden’s current key appointees served during that time and failed to effectively identify and confront the existential threat the PRC poses. But they are older now and, one hopes, wiser.
The Biden administration also has the great advantage of being able to build on the steps the Trump administration took to confront the PRC. As one example, ideally Biden will work to expand the Quad concept, rather than simply dismiss as a Trump-era initiative. The new administration also needs to continue with the excellent work the Trump administration began regarding exposing and confronting PRC PW in the US and globally.
Conversely, to help ensure the Biden-Harris administration has the requisite resolve and skill, it is vital that India’s leaders continuously remind the US government of the threat that the PRC poses, and provide ways to work together to confront this existential threat. India must help lead!
Q: How can states like India fight back against the political warfare the PRC is waging? How can India help rally countries together and cooperate to fight back?
A: India should help lead the Indo-Pacific region in countering the PRC’s totalitarian expansionism, along with the US, Japan, and Australia and other willing partners such as Taiwan. It is in India’s clear self-interest to do so, and it has the intellectual, technological, economic, diplomatic, and military capacity to lead.
Specifically, India should work with the US to build a “Free World United Front” of like-minded nations to deter, counter, and defeat PRC political warfare. India could also work with other countries under assault to assess their own vulnerabilities, capabilities, and strategies in the face of Beijing’s political warfare campaigns against them, and to develop national strategies to counter the attack. The democracies should work together to routinely investigate, disrupt, prosecute, and expose covert and overt PRC political warfare operations.
India must also lead in encouraging academic study that focuses on combating PRC political warfare. It must support research into this existential challenge and how to contain, deter, and/or defeat it, and provide funding to students and recognition of their contributions in the fight.
Related to this crucial education effort, India’s think tanks and academic institutions could develop curriculum specifically focused on PRC political warfare, for both government and private sector leaders. The focus of these courses will be on building internal defenses within the most highly valued PRC target audiences: elected officials, senior policymakers, thought leaders, national security managers, and other information gatekeepers. Similar governmental, institutional, and public education programs were employed successfully during the Cold War, with threat briefs and public discussion a routine part of each.
To this end, India could display regional leadership by establishing an Asian Political Warfare Center of Excellence (APWCE) similar to the Finland-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. Its mission would be similar to the Finland COE: “To develop a common understanding of PRC political warfare threats and promote the development of a comprehensive, whole-of-government response at national levels in countering PRC and other political warfare threats”. The APWCE will provide the intellectual foundation and education needed to develop and synchronize India’s counter-political warfare and offensive political warfare capabilities to effectively combat China’s malign influence, and it will assist the countries in the Indo-Pacific Region and even globally as well.
To download a free copy of Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to “Win without Fighting” by Kerry K. Gershaneck https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/Political%20Warfare_web.pdf
*Cleo Paskal is a non-resident senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow her on Twitter @CleoPaskal. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Senators are calling for a US-Israel working group, and it could save lives
Bradley Bowman/FDD-Defence News/March 02/2021
Eyeing the growing military technology challenge from great power competitors, four members of the Senate Armed Services Committee sent a letter Feb. 24 to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, urging him to stand up a U.S.-Israel Operations-Technology Working Group, or OTWG. The working group authorized in the annual defense bill is necessary to ensure U.S. troops have the most advanced capabilities and can outmatch any potential adversary.
The good news is that Austin appears to recognize the problem with business as usual. During his Senate confirmation process, he expressed a belief that the Pentagon needs to be “more agile and more responsive” in fielding cutting-edge technology to deployed forces.
He is not alone in that belief. In the letter, Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Jacky Rosen D-Nev., and Mike Rounds R-S.D., noted that the “speed and severity of the technology competition with China and Russia requires the department to do better when it comes to getting necessary capabilities to our troops quickly.” The senators believe doing so will require the United States to “cooperate more systematically and effectively with tech-savvy democratic allies.”
While that improved cooperation can and should include a number of America’s allies, the senators said an OTWG with Israel offers some unique advantages. “Israel punches well above its weight in many of the technologies vital to U.S. military modernization efforts,” the senators wrote. “Moreover, Jerusalem consistently demonstrates an agility in fielding vital military capabilities that can benefit our warfighters.”
Consider that the Pentagon did not acquire until 2019 active protection systems for U.S. tanks that had been operational in Israel since 2011. Consequently, U.S. soldiers operated for years around the world lacking the cutting-edge protection Washington could have provided against missiles and rockets. That put U.S. soldiers in unnecessary risk.
Rather than belatedly trying to address such capability gaps, the U.S. and Israel should work together more systematically up front to prevent the gaps from emerging in the first place.
Other potential candidates for such research and development cooperation include, for example, artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous vehicles and cybersecurity technology.
Accordingly, the senators urged Austin to use his authority under Section 1299M of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to “stand up the U.S.-Israel Operations-Technology Working Group without delay.”
That section of the law not only authorizes Austin to create the working group but also elucidates Congress’ expectations. As the senators noted, Section 1299M makes clear that Congress wants the Pentagon to systematically evaluate and share “options to develop and acquire intelligence-informed military requirements that directly support warfighting capabilities of both the Department of Defense and the Ministry of Defense of Israel.” The OTWG could then establish “plans to research, develop, procure, and field weapon systems and military capabilities as quickly and economically as possible to meet common capability requirements.”
While some might be inclined to defend the status quo as sufficient, Austin seems to intuitively understand the urgent need to do better.
“I believe the department faces a significant challenge in accelerating our adoption of new technology in ensuring that new capabilities make their way quickly from the lab into the hands of warfighters,” Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee in advance of his Jan. 19 hearing.
To drive the point home during the hearing, Austin emphasized the need to “get the capability down to the people who need it, the people who are going to use it, as quickly as possible.”
Those “people” are America’s war fighters, and the success of such efforts will determine whether they can deter and defeat authoritarian aggressors in the years to come.
In a report to Congress last year, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command assessed that the military balance of power with China continues to become “more unfavorable.” The command warned that the United States is accumulating “additional risk that may embolden our adversaries to attempt to unilaterally change the status quo before the U.S. could muster an effective response.”
While there are a number of reasons for this eroding security situation in the Indo-Pacific region, the failure to field advanced, new capabilities to American troops in an expeditious manner is one of them.
Reversing these troubling trends in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere will require the Pentagon to, as the senators noted, “no longer conduct business as usual when it comes to defense science and technology (S&T), as well as research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) efforts.”
That is exactly what the OTWG is designed to help do.
In the effort to stand up the working group and ensure America’s troops have the capabilities they urgently require, the bipartisan group of senators invited Austin in their letter to “please consider us as partners.”
The senators won’t have to wait long to see if Austin is ready to team up with them: The OTWG section in the defense bill requires him to submit a report to Congress by March 15 detailing the Pentagon’s actions related to military technology cooperation with Israel.
If that report does not include a clear decision to use the congressional authorization to stand up the OTWG, the senators will likely conclude that more directive legislation may be required.
*Bradley Bowman is the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Bradley on Twitter @Brad_L_Bowman. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

How Russia Is Responding To Joe Biden’s Syria Airstrike
Anna Borshchevskaya//www.19fortyfive.com/March 02/2021
By any objective measure, strikes against secondary facilities in retaliation for targeting key state assets show restraint. Such were President Joe Biden’s February 25 airstrikes in eastern Syria against facilities of Iran-backed Shia militias, ordered after earlier rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias against the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and American troops stationed at Erbil airport. But now Russian officials predictably rush to express outrage at perceived American aggression and unilateralism.
Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova expressed condemnation adding, “we reaffirm our rejection of any attempts to turn the Syrian territory into an arena for settling geopolitical scores.” Member of the upper-house Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee Senator Sergei Tsekov blasted the strikes as “extremely outrageous.”
Timing became another point of contention. Russian President Vladamir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov claimed the Kremlin was unaware whether the U.S. gave advance warning to Russia, while foreign affairs minister Sergei Lavrov said the U.S. gave several minutes warning. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said at a press briefing the U.S. used the proper de-confliction channel as Lavrov himself confirmed and, “we did what we believe were the proper amount of notification.” Given that the U.S. and Russia back opposing forces in Syria and that Moscow has provided extensive support to Shia militias, fought alongside them, and condemned previous retaliatory American strikes against them, to say nothing of Moscow’s deep partnership with Tehran, the Biden team could have had a legitimate concern about Moscow tipping someone off about the coming strikes.
Russian officials also slammed the strike as escalatory. First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs Vladimir Dzhabarov claimed, “[T]hese are not terrorists, they are militias, and there is no reason for bombing here. One gets the impression that the US is not interested in fighting terrorists in Syria, but in inciting conflict so that it smolders there continuously.” His comment highlights Moscow’s traditional double-standard—giving Shia, but not Sunni terrorism a free pass.
Lastly, Russian officials worry about the Iran deal. Head of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs Konstantin Kosachev suggested that the strikes will undermine the renewed diplomatic efforts on the Iran deal between Washington and Tehran and condemned what he perceived as another expression of American unilateralism and disregard for international law. Head of the State Duma (parliamentary) Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutskiy said, “The attack was carried out without any trial or investigation…all this can lead to an escalation in the region.”
All these condemnations of course are a little rich coming from the Kremlin that used Syria precisely as a geopolitical arena to settle scores with the U.S. and exercised little proportionality, humanitarian law be damned. But perhaps for all the things Russian officials said, what they did not say is more intriguing. Russian officials did not slam Biden for failing to seek advice from the current Iraqi government led by two leaders—president Barham Salih and Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who American officials widely believe are genuinely adamant to preserve Iraqi sovereignty and described the earlier Shia militia attack on Erbil as an act of terror. If Moscow was serious about fighting terrorism, supporting sovereignty, and promoting genuine multilateralism it would have wanted more consultations with the Iraqi government on this issue. Instead, Moscow now worries that the Iran deal negotiations are undermined.
Moscow’s responses only confirm what while the Biden team appears rightly concerned about Russia in Europe, it should not count on the Kremlin to play a helpful role in renewed diplomatic efforts on the Iranian nuclear program. Rather than piecemeal responses, be it cyberattacks or poisoning of critics, the U.S. should focus on building a unified strategy towards Russia.
*Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy focusing on Russia’s policy towards the Middle East, and author of the upcoming book, Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence

“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.

Palestinian Terrorists to Biden: Do Not Believe the Palestinian Leadership
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/March 02/2021
Who exactly is the Palestinian Authority leadership lying to and why?
Hamas issued a statement on February 25 in which it denied that the group had changed its attitude toward Israel. "Our political and national positions are well known and clear," Hamas said. "They are expressed in our official documents and publications. We remain committed to the resistance until the liberation [of all of Palestine]."
Hamas "will pursue its resistance program until the liberation of the Palestinian land, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea." — Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas leader, alalamtv.net, February 20, 2021.
The Palestinian terror groups certainly deserve credit for being upfront about their true, lethal intentions toward Israel. Unlike the PA leadership, these terror organizations speak in a single and straightforward voice. Their message in Arabic and English is clear: we will spill as much Jewish blood as it takes to rid "Palestine" of the Jews.
Abbas is seeking to fool the Biden administration into believing that he has managed to persuade the terror groups to transform themselves into peace-seeking organizations. Abbas is utterly desperate for US funding. He is lying through his teeth to get the Biden administration to resume pumping cash into his regime -- which is bankrupt in every possible sense of the word.
It now remains to be seen whether the Biden administration will allow itself to be hoodwinked by the PA's master magician.
The Palestinian Authority claims that Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups have renounced terrorism and accepted Israel's right to exist. Hamas and the Palestinian factions, however, say this is not true and that they remain committed to "all forms of resistance" against Israel, including an "armed struggle." Pictured: Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority (PA) claims that Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups have renounced terrorism and accepted Israel's right to exist.
Hamas and the Palestinian factions, however, say this is not true and that they remain committed to "all forms of resistance" against Israel, including an "armed struggle." They are also stressing that they have not recognized Israel's right to exist and are determined to pursue the fight "until the liberation of all of Palestine," from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Hamas and its allies, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), are actually saying that the PA leadership is lying when it says that the terror groups have changed their attitude toward Israel. This raises the question: Who exactly is the PA leadership lying to and why? The answer: The PA is lying to the international community, specifically US President Joe Biden's administration.
According to the Palestinian news website Amad, the PA's Hussein al-Sheikh, head of the Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs and member of the ruling Fatah faction headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, recently sent a letter to the Biden administration concerning the purported changes in the policies of the Palestinian terror groups.
In the letter, al-Sheikh said that all Palestinian "political" factions, including Hamas, agreed to lay down their arms and accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Al-Sheikh wrote that the alleged agreement was reached during a meeting of leaders of several Palestinian factions in September 2020. "The following consensus were reached by all political factions," he said.
"Commitment to international law standards, commitment to a Palestinian state based on the borders of 1967, commitment to the PLO as the political umbrella and the legitimate sole representative of the Palestinian people, commitment to the principle of peaceful transfer of power through elections, and commitment to popular resistance (peaceful) [against Israel]."
The two important "commitments" mentioned in the letter are those referring to a Palestinian state "based on the 1967 borders" and a "peaceful resistance" against Israel. The first implies that the Palestinian terror groups, which do not recognize Israel's right to exist, are ready to accept a Palestinian state only in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Moreover, it implies that the terror groups are no longer seeking the "liberation of all of Palestine" and replacing Israel with an Islamist state.
The second "commitment" implies that Hamas, PIJ and the remaining terror groups now favor a "peaceful" resistance against Israel instead of various forms of terrorism, including rockets, stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks. Yet statements made by leaders of the Palestinian terror groups in the past few days clearly contradict the contents of the letter sent by the PA leadership to the Biden administration.
The leaders of the terror groups are sending the following message to the Biden administration and the rest of the world: Do not believe the PA leadership. We have not changed our policies toward Israel.
Hamas issued a statement on February 25 in which it denied that the group had changed its attitude toward Israel. "Our political and national positions are well known and clear," Hamas said. "They are expressed in our official documents and publications. We remain committed to the resistance until the liberation [of all of Palestine]."
The most significant document Hamas is talking about is its 1988 charter, which states: "The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf (Trust) upon all Muslim generations till the day of resurrection. It is not right to give it up or any part of it. There is no solution to the Palestinian problem expect by jihad (holy war). In the struggle against the Jewish occupation of Palestine, the banner of jihad must be raised."
Addressing a Zoom conference called, "United Against Normalization" [with Israel], Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said on February 20 that his group remains committed to a "comprehensive resistance" against Israel. Hamas, he added, "Will pursue its resistance program until the liberation of the Palestinian land, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea."
Fathi Hammad, a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, was quoted on February 25 as saying that his group remains committed to an armed resistance against Israel. "All forms of resistance are legitimate, including the popular and armed ones," Hammad said. "Palestine is Muslim-owned land, and no one is entitled to give up one inch of it."
Responding to the PA letter to the Biden administration, the Marxist-Leninist PFLP terror group denied that it had changed its policy toward Israel:
"The popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine affirms that it remains committed to the right of the Palestinian people to all their land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river. No one has the right to speak on behalf of all the [Palestinian] national groups in way that may be understood that we have given up any part of the land of historical Palestine."
The Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad also denied that it has changed its position toward Israel. PIJ Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhalah announced that his group would never recognize Israel or the Oslo Accords, signed between the PLO and Israel in 1993 and 1995. He too emphasized the need to continue waging terror attacks and jihad against Israel.
The Palestinian terror groups certainly deserve credit for being upfront about their true, lethal intentions toward Israel. Unlike the PA leadership, these terror organizations speak in a single and straightforward voice. Their message in Arabic and English is clear: we will spill as much Jewish blood as it takes to rid "Palestine" of the Jews.
The Palestinian Authority leadership's letter to the Biden administration is yet another attempt by Abbas and his senior officials to dupe the Americans and the rest of the world into believing that the Palestinian terror groups are no longer seeking the annihilation of Israel.
It is a sick joke to say that Hamas and PIJ endorse a "peaceful" resistance when the two groups scream day and night that they remain committed to the armed struggle and terrorism.
Abbas is seeking to fool the Biden administration into believing that he has managed to persuade the terror groups to transform themselves into peace-seeking organizations. Abbas is utterly desperate for US funding. He is lying through his teeth to get the Biden administration to resume pumping cash into his regime -- which is bankrupt in every possible sense of the word. It now remains to be seen whether the Biden administration will allow itself to be hoodwinked by the PA's master magician.
*Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.
© 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.

China Continues Crushing Hong Kong
Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/March 02/2021
The national security law not only carries sentences of up to life in prison, it also gives China jurisdiction to prosecute in mainland China violations of the law that took place in Hong Kong. It is now doing just that with 12 Hong Kong activists who attempted to flee to Taiwan by boat in August and were arrested at sea, ostensibly for crossing the border illegally. Extraordinarily, the national security law also applies to alleged violations committed by anyone, anywhere in the world.
In November, China's National People's Congress Standing Committee passed legislation allowing Hong Kong's government to oust elected politicians deemed insufficiently patriotic.... Preparing to participate in an election is now an act of subversion in Hong Kong.
Censorship is already widespread. The crackdown is evidently meant to spread even more fear to dissuade any protests and encourage self-censorship. In July... books by pro-democracy figures were removed from public libraries in Hong Kong for "review"....
Plans are underway to make buyers of prepaid SIM cards provide their real name and proof of identity, with false information punishable by 10 to 14 years in prison. It will give the police authority to demand personal data from service providers with or without a court warrant. It will make it impossible for activists to plan any anti-government activity without becoming known to the authorities.
The UK has said it will accept up to five million Hongkongers. Soon, however, even the ability to flee the country may become circumscribed. A new government proposal aims to give "apparently unfettered power" to Hong Kong immigration authorities to stop people, whether Hong Kong residents or not, from leaving the city....
The CCP is determined to crush Hong Kong and so far, it has been able to do so at practically no cost to China internationally.
Since China adopted its National Security Law in June 2020, Hong Kong's government and China have sought to extinguish all opposition to Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party, and to eradicate Hong Kong's core values. Pictured: Detained pro-democracy activists are brought onto a prison transport on March 2, 2021 in Hong Kong. Since China adopted its National Security Law in June 2020, Hong Kong's government, under Chief Executive Carrie Lam, and China have sought to extinguish all opposition to Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and to eradicate Hong Kong's core values. These include free speech, a free market economy, freedom of assembly and freedom of religious belief, all guaranteed in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, a UN-registered treaty. China publicly voiced its contempt for that treaty in 2017, when it said that it was a mere "historical document" without any significance.
Beijing has described its national security law, which contains four categories of offenses -- secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and collusion with a foreign country or external elements to endanger national security -- as a "sword" deterring people who endanger national security and a "guardian" protecting Hong Kong residents.
The national security law not only carries sentences of up to life in prison, it also gives China jurisdiction to prosecute in mainland China violations of the law that took place in Hong Kong. It is now doing just that with 12 Hong Kong activists who attempted to flee to Taiwan by boat in August and were arrested at sea, ostensibly for crossing the border illegally. Extraordinarily, the national security law also applies to alleged violations committed by anyone, anywhere in the world.
The new law is affecting all aspects of Hong Kong society. Hongkongers must now be "patriotic" to China and loyal to the Communist Party. As befits a true police state looking to exert maximum control of its citizens, Hong Kong has also established a hotline for people to report breaches of the national security law. Within hours, the hotline reportedly received thousands of calls. According to Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch: "By encouraging people to report on their friends and neighbours, the Chinese government is replicating in Hong Kong one of its most successful tools for social control: an informant culture...
"This is one of many chilling recent developments in Hong Kong, where the authorities are pulling out new tools to punish and tame the city's pro-democracy movement." In November, China's National People's Congress Standing Committee passed legislation allowing Hong Kong's government to oust elected politicians deemed insufficiently patriotic. In the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, there are no pro-democracy legislators left. The last ones quit in protest in November in solidarity with the ousted lawmakers. Not content with that, on January 6, authorities arrested 53 former pro-democracy politicians and activists. They were arrested for violating the national security law by holding an unofficial primary in July 2020 to select candidates for the legislative election that was supposed to have taken place in September 2020, but which the government postponed. "The operation today targets the active elements who are suspected to be involved in the crime of overthrowing or interfering seriously to destroy the Hong Kong government's legal execution of duties," Hong Kong Secretary for Security John Lee announced. Preparing to participate in an election is now an act of subversion in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong district councilors -- representatives of the 18 districts of the city -- will also soon be obligated to take an oath of allegiance under Article 6 of the national security law. The 479 District Council seats are currently predominantly occupied by the pro-democracy camp. "To ensure the steady and lasting implementation of 'one country, two systems,' Hong Kong must always be governed by patriots," Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a recent video conference with Chief Executive Carrie Lam. "This is the fundamental principle that bears on China's sovereignty, security and development interests, as well as Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability." Lam reportedly said that Hong Kong officials "would continue to discharge their duty to safeguard national security without fear."
Beijing does not stop at lawmakers or district councilors. Hong Kong must be reshaped in the image of mainland China, ensuring future allegiance to the agendas of the CCP, which is why children as young as six must now learn about the national security law as part of the school curriculum, according to new guidelines issued by the government of Hong Kong on February 4. The guidelines state: "Schools will then be able to enhance students' awareness of national security according to their cognitive abilities so that students will grow into good nationals who have a sense of national identity, respect the rule of law and abide by the law... "The fundamentals of national security education are to develop in students a sense of belonging towards the country, an affection for the nation, a sense of national identity, as well as an awareness of and a sense of responsibility to safeguard national security...."
According to the Guardian: "The government warned teachers there was 'no room for debate or compromise' when it came to national security, and that they should 'cultivate students' sense of responsibility to safeguard' it."
Teachers and principals are also required to remove library books that are considered a breach of the national security law.
The new guidelines are accompanied by an animated video for children, which stresses that the national security law is "for our well-being" and that Hong Kong is "an inalienable part of our homeland".
On February 22, Beijing's top representative to Hong Kong, the head of Beijing's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Xia Baolong, announced that Hong Kong must undergo fundamental reform to ensure that only patriots will hold key positions in all three branches of government -- the executive, legislature and judiciary -- as well as statutory bodies. "Key posts under every circumstances must not be taken up by anyone 'who goes against China and disrupts Hong Kong,'" Xia said. "Those who stand in opposition to patriots are destroyers of the 'one country, two systems' principle and they should not be allowed to take a share of the Hong Kong special administrative region's political power. Not now, not ever."
Hong Kong is now a "city of fear". Censorship is already widespread, and the crackdown is evidently meant to spread even more fear to dissuade any protests and encourage self-censorship. In July, immediately after the national security law had been passed, books by pro-democracy figures were removed from public libraries in Hong Kong for "review" to see if they violated the new law. "Hong Kong still looks so prosperous and glamorous but deep down it's rotting," said Claudia Mo, one of the pro-democracy lawmakers, who was arrested in the latest crackdown on January 6.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam has announced even more initiatives designed to curb opposition. One of those initiatives will be a law designed to curb free speech even further by tackling dissemination of "fake news" and "hate speech". Furthermore, plans are underway to make buyers of prepaid SIM cards provide their real name and proof of identity, with false information punishable by 10 to 14 years in prison. It will give the police authority to demand personal data from service providers with or without a court warrant. It will make it impossible for activists to plan any anti-government activity without becoming known to the authorities.
Thousands of Hongkongers have already left the city, including pro-democracy activists. Additionally, in the coming two years more than 600,000 Hong Kong residents could be moving just to the UK. "Ninety-six per cent consider Hong Kong no longer a safe and free home that they are used to living in, after the passing of the national security law," a survey, conducted by the organization "HongKongers in Britain" found. The UK has said it will accept up to five million Hongkongers.
Soon, however, even the ability to flee the country may become circumscribed. A new government proposal aims to give "apparently unfettered power" to Hong Kong immigration authorities to stop people, whether Hong Kong residents or not, from leaving the city, raising criticism from the Hong Kong Bar Association (HKBA), which wrote in a submission to the Legislative Council: "It is particularly troubling that the grounds on which such an intrusive power may be exercised are not stated in the proposed legislation, and no explanation for why such a power is necessary, or even how it is intended to be used, is set out."If a new power to prevent Hong Kong residents and others from leaving the region is to be conferred ... It should be for the courts, not the director, to decide when it is necessary and proportionate to impose a travel ban."
The CCP is determined to crush Hong Kong and so far, it has been able to do so at practically no cost to China internationally. Apart from the US, most countries have offered little more than words. On December 30, the EU signed the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with China. In doing so, irrespective of China's crushing of Hong Kong and countless other violations of international law and human rights abuses, the EU decided to ignore the values it was founded on, among them respect for human rights and the rule of law, values which it regularly claims actively to promote. The European Parliament adopted a resolution on January 21, calling on the EU to sanction individuals in Hong Kong and China, including Carrie Lam, over the crackdown in Hong Kong. Until now the EU, however, has declined to sanction officials involved in the crackdown on Hong Kong, despite passing a new Magnitsky-style global human rights regime in December, which would enable it to do so. On February 22, EU foreign ministers discussed the possibility of further action against Chinese authorities, including restrictions on extradition to China, but no decision was reached at the time of this writing.
Only the US has imposed sanctions on officials responsible for the crackdowns. It is important that these sanctions not be lifted.
*Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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Military Force Must Remain an Option With North Korea
John Bolton/Bloomberg//March 02/2021
President Joe Biden last week made his most extensive foreign-policy remarks since taking office, speaking virtually to a G-7 meeting and the annual Munich Security Conference. Despite its worldwide proliferation threat, North Korea’s nuclear program went unmentioned, continuing its near invisibility under the new administration.One reason for Biden’s reticence might be the pressure from the international left and others to reject three decades of bipartisan US policy ostensibly aiming to denuclearize North Korea. While diplomatic tactics, focus and priority varied considerably under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, they all stressed that Pyongyang’s quest for deliverable nuclear weapons was unacceptable.
Unfortunately, they all produced the same result, namely the North’s continued progress toward an arsenal. During these long decades, we repeatedly heard that using force to keep the world’s most dangerous weapons away from the world’s most dangerous regimes was premature, provocative and unnecessary.
Now, some critics assert that because Pyongyang has essentially developed deliverable nukes, we should abandon denuclearization as unrealistic and unfeasible. The US and its allies must instead accept a nuclear North Korea, working to contain its menace, as they say (in a facile analogy) the West did to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Force must now be entirely off the table. Parallel recommendations have been made about Iran’s nuclear efforts.
Not surprisingly, many now rejecting denuclearization earlier believed the rogue regimes were either not pursuing nuclear weapons, or (contradictorily) were doing so only defensively. They strenuously opposed military action, or policies of reunification (Korea) or regime change (Iran), at least not without far more extensive negotiations to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully — a la the Obama administration’s North Korea policy of “strategic patience.”
Somehow, using force moved seamlessly from being “too much” to being “too late” without anyone noticing. Skeptics may ask whether this choir of the high-minded wasn’t being disingenuous all along: They never really believed diplomacy aimed at denuclearization would work, and they simply did not worry that rogue states with weapons of mass destruction were all that dangerous. How many of them are now on Biden’s national security team?
The contrast between continuing to strive for denuclearization versus swallowing failure as a fait accompli could not be starker. Japan, South Korea and many others simply cannot accept a nuclear North, with potentially far-reaching implications for their relations with the US. Every aspiring nuclear-weapons state or terrorist group watching North Korea could reasonably conclude that the US and its allies lack the fortitude, concentration, attention span and perseverance to stop them from acquiring nuclear capabilities. And anyone understanding the fearful effects of the coronavirus pandemic can also only conclude that seeking the “poor man’s nuclear weapon” — biological and chemical capabilities — cannot be lightly dismissed either.
Biden would make a potentially fatal mistake if he surrenders the goal of denuclearization. Of course, even if he continues espousing a non-nuclear North Korea rhetorically, that would hardly guarantee he knows how to bring it about, any more than his four immediate predecessors did. Weak arms control and nonproliferation diplomacy is a specialty of Democratic presidencies, and there is every reason to fear Biden will follow suit.
Trump’s performance artistry with Pyongyang also weighs heavily on the Biden administration. Three failed photo-opportunity summits, a US president who fell in love with the latest iteration of the Kim family dictatorship, and four years of continued North Korean progress toward deliverable nuclear weapons are enough to create migraines for those who must now pick up the pieces.
Nonetheless, from all the available evidence, North Korea is weaker today than perhaps ever before in its history. For its own opaque reasons, Pyongyang decided to impose even-greater detachment from the rest of the world during the Covid-19 pandemic, almost certainly reducing its already rickety economy to desperate levels. This is hardly the time to relieve the pressure of economic sanctions and international isolation. This is the time to demand concessions from Pyongyang, not reward its obdurate behavior.
Moreover, Biden’s biggest challenge, developing a strategy to contest China’s desire for Asian and ultimately global hegemony, should put North Korea at its center. For too many years, US diplomats argued that China is a constructive actor in trying to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue. This has long since been made demonstrably false.
China has always been Pyongyang’s enabler, politically, economically and scientifically. President Xi Jinping could end the North’s nuclear aspirations in a stroke if he chose, and Washington must stress this reality at every opportunity. This will be the real test of Biden’s North Korea policy.
 

Let us hope region heeds Pope Francis’ message of peace
Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/March 02/2021
God knows, Iraq could do with some good news. Coronavirus disease infection rates are running at more than 4,000 a day. Protesters are being killed and wounded again in Nasiriyah and elsewhere in the south. The government has pledged to bring to justice previous assassins of activists: They remain at large. The Biden administration has just launched airstrikes against Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada positions on the Syrian border: They and other Shiite militias continue to attack and threaten US targets (and not just US, as Irbil airport was rocketed recently) with impunity and, like a bunch of cheap Mafiosi, oppress and kill the very Iraqis they claim to protect. Turkey feels free to bully the Kurds (what’s new?). Meanwhile, Iran does what it usually does — undermines other states, enriches uranium, openly attacks vessels in international waters, and arrogantly tells the Iraqi government how to manage its own affairs.I am convinced that most Iraqis want to live in peace with their neighbors in a country they call their own. They are proud of the extraordinary communal, confessional, social and ethnic mosaic which that great Iraqi scholar, the late Ali Al-Wardi, saw as Iraq’s most distinctive characteristic.
So the forthcoming visit by Pope Francis — the first by any pontiff — will be a ray of light, if it goes ahead (which I fervently pray it does). It will certainly give hope and comfort to Iraqi Christians, but also perhaps to millions more of all faiths across the region. It will tell them they are not forgotten. Above all, after so much suffering, the visit will bring a message of peace and reconciliation. I wish I were still there to see it: As a Catholic myself, I see it as a blessing for the future, but also a call to memory.
On a melancholy November day 11 years ago, I stood with head bowed in the Syriac Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad as a packed congregation mourned those — fellow worshippers, priests, police and bystanders — murdered in cold blood by Daesh at Sunday Mass on Oct. 31, 2010. The total number of dead was perhaps 60, with another 80 or so wounded, many seriously. Seven coffins represented them all. Among the congregation were two or three other ambassadors and — notably and bravely — Sayyid Ammar Al-Hakim, then the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, one of the two major established Shiite political movements in the country, and the bearer of a proud and resonant name. All around the church, there was a heavy security presence: Snipers on roofs, armored vehicles blocking streets, police and loitering mukhabarat. I thought of Christ’s warning to Simon Peter: “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.” It is not an injunction the Christian churches or Christian leaders have always observed: It is difficult to turn the other cheek and the deadly sin of pride is seductive. But it lies at the heart of the Christian gospel.
Christianity was born in the Middle East and for centuries remained the most widely practiced religion, even after political power had slipped away. In 1918, Christians still made up about a quarter of the region’s population. Now they are down to about a 20th. The Ottomans, in their confident heyday, were generally tolerant but would still hang a patriarch or two when they thought the Greeks were causing trouble. During their long 19th-century decline, with pressure from Russia increasing and the subject populations of the Balkans restive, they became more militantly repressive. The targeted killing of Ottoman Christians did not start in 1915. As the distinguished Turkish historian Taner Akcam has extensively documented, its roots go much deeper. Mount Lebanon saw an early civil war in 1860, with mainly Druze forces carrying out pogroms of Christians. The Bulgarian massacres of 1876 became a cause celebre in Europe. The visit will certainly give hope and comfort to Iraqi Christians, but also perhaps to millions more of all faiths.
Other communities have also suffered, of course. The Yazidis, Shabak, Druze, Alawites, Amazigh, Tuareg and others have suffered in often horrifying ways. In 1918, the Jewish community of Baghdad made up perhaps 40 percent of the total population. There were significant populations of Jews, Parsees and Armenians in Basra. Cairo, Alexandria, Mosul and Aleppo were four of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world. Sadly, no longer.
But Jews have a state now. The Shiites have thrived even under the brutal authoritarianism of the Khomeinist regime in Iran and are now a privileged class in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Christians have not been so fortunate. In Egypt, where Copts still make up perhaps a tenth of the total population, there has long been a steady trickle of emigration, but it became a flood when the Muslim Brotherhood took power in 2012. When the Brotherhood was overthrown, its supporters attacked Christian targets in revenge: Christians, having no tribal networks of support, are defenseless. In the Palestinian territories, where Christ once walked, Christians previously represented perhaps a third of the total population. They are now less than a 20th. The same is true of Iraq, the land of the patriarchs. It is a sad and troubling history.
And this matters in complex ways. The late Yasser Arafat used to say to me that the continued presence of Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land was of fundamental importance to him. They were the leaven — “khamira” — in Palestinian society. Without them, it risked becoming flat, monocultural and extreme. You could apply the same principle to the minority communities of Iraq. It is wonderful that Muslims in Mosul are keen to encourage — and the UAE to fund — the rebuilding not just of their mosques but also the churches that Daesh destroyed, while Assyrians are returning to the Nineveh plains and Yazidis are slowly coming back to Sinjar. But it was Kurdish irregulars who harassed the wretched Armenians on their trail of tears in 1915. It was Bakr Sidqi who carried out the first massacre of Assyrians in modern Iraq in 1933. Shabak neighbors sought to take their land when Daesh appeared. And Shiite militias are now settling their own supporters where Yazidi and Christian villages once stood. Many Iraqi Christians — like the Copts — have emigrated in despair. There is a long way to go.
The very name Francis, assumed by the pope upon his election, brings to mind the simplicity of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was allowed to preach before the Ayyubid Sultan Al-Kamil, the nephew of the great Salahuddin, and to return unharmed to his coreligionists during the bloody Fifth Crusade 800 years ago. A similar willingness to reach out across confessional and sectarian boundaries is characteristic of this pope. And it is needed now more than ever in a world where often violent identity politics risk destroying a sense of our common humanity.
Pope Francis will visit not just Baghdad but also Najaf, where he will call on Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani (in itself a message to us all), Irbil, Mosul and Qaraqosh. He will meet the president, prime minister and other senior officials working for Iraq’s future. He will see the appalling destruction wreaked by Daesh and hear the witness of those whom it persecuted. He will celebrate Mass for the Catholic faithful. He will see Nasiriyah, the city of Abraham, for himself — and hold an interreligious meeting at the plain of Ur. Not everybody will welcome his visit. He will need to guard against those who wish to instrumentalize his presence for their own purposes. He will need to bear witness to the suffering of all communities in Iraq and the wider region. He will need to be frank with Iraqi politicians about the need for justice. He will, of course, be a diplomat and a statesman in a way that St. Francis wasn’t. But his message will be similar: We are human beings, children of God, and we need to know and love each other better. I hope that message is heard not just in Baghdad but across the world.
• Sir John Jenkins is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. Until December 2017, he was Corresponding Director (Middle East) at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), based in Manama, Bahrain, and was a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He was the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia until January 2015.