LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
January 21/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations
My friends, be careful that none of you have a heart so evil and unbelieving that you will turn away from the living God
Hebrews 03/07-16: " So then, as the Holy Spirit says, “If you hear God's voice today, do not be stubborn, as your ancestors were when they rebelled against God, as they were that day in the desert when they put him to the test. There they put me to the test and tried me, says God, although they had seen what I did for forty years.  And so I was angry with those people and said, ‘They are always disloyal and refuse to obey my commands.’  I was angry and made a solemn promise: ‘They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest!’” My friends, be careful that none of you have a heart so evil and unbelieving that you will turn away from the living God.  Instead, in order that none of you be deceived by sin and become stubborn, you must help one another every day, as long as the word “Today” in the scripture applies to us.  For we are all partners with Christ if we hold firmly to the end the confidence we had at the beginning. This is what the scripture says: “If you hear God's voice today, do not be stubborn, as your ancestors were when they rebelled against God.” Who were the people who heard God's voice and rebelled against him? All those who were led out of Egypt by Moses.  With whom was God angry for forty years? With the people who sinned, who fell down dead in the desert.  When God made his solemn promise, “They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest”—of whom was he speaking? Of those who rebelled. We see, then, that they were not able to enter the land, because they did not believe."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on January 20-21/18
Lebanese journalist sentenced to six months in prison/Georgi Azar/Annahar/January 20/2018
Lebanese Intelligence Turned Targets’ Android Phones Into Spy Devices, Researchers Say/Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times/January 20/2018
Iran’s nuclear problem must be re-visited/Amir Taheri/Al Arabiya/January 20/18/
How the US Ended Up Enthralled by Unions/Megan McArdle/Bloomberg/January 20/18
A Coherent Arab Strategy Would Curb Iran’s Influence/Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/January 20/18
Young Afghans in Sweden/Bruce Bawer/ Gatestone Institute/January 20/2018
Spend a dollar, save a life/ABDULRAHMAN AL-RASHED/Arab News/January 20/2018
An insight into Lebanon's state-sponsored hacking/Georgi Azar and Yehia El Amine/Annahar/January 20/18

Titles For Latest LCCC Lebanese Related News published on January 20-21/18
Israel undermining UNIFIL efforts: Aoun
Aoun confers with Abou Zeid over stone quarry owners' demands
Aoun checks on military units in Tripoli: Preserving national stability is our absolute priority
Hariri, Ibrahim review security situation
Berri meets with Shoura Council members
Suspects Behind Sidon Bombing Fled Lebanon
Kataeb Chief Vows Accountability over Landfill Leachate Disaster
FOOTAGE: Storm Exacerbates Environmental Crisis at Metn Landfill
Marouni: Lebanese Must Choose Between State of Transparency or Corruption
Sayegh Says Government No Longer Trusted by International Community
Jumblatt, Zaspkin convene in Mukhtara
Bassil: Best solution for Syrian Refugees is to return home
Mashnouq during press conference: ISF preemptive security operation foiled terror attacks over recent holidays
Othman, Maruti tackle general situation
Lebanese journalist sentenced to six months in prison
Lebanese Intelligence Turned Targets’ Android Phones Into Spy Devices, Researchers Say

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 20-21/18
Syrian army, allies take Idlib air base, says Hezbollah media unit
VP Pence says US stands 'shoulder to shoulder' with Egypt
Turkey launches major new ground and air cross border operation in Syria
Vice President Pence says US stands ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Egypt
New vote on Iraq poll date ‘by Monday’ as Abadi meets Kurdistan region PM
Newly-leaked documents describe ‘Iranian state-sanctioned persecution of Baha'is’
Pence heads to the Middle East amid Israel embassy storm
Turkish ski bus accident kills 11, injures 44
US official: Turkey’s shelling of Afrin in Syria would hurt regional stability
Egypt’s Sisi announces intention to run for second term
Report: Germany Weighing New Sanctions against Iran

Latest Lebanese Related News published on January 20-21/18
Israel undermining UNIFIL efforts: Aoun
The Daily Star/January 20/18/BEIRUT: President Michel Aoun Friday told UNIFIL Commander Maj. Gen. Michael Beary that Israel's plan to build a wall along its border with Lebanon undermined efforts exerted by the peacekeeping mission and the Lebanese Army. During a meeting with Beary at Baabda Palace, Aoun said that Israel's decision to build a wall within the demarcated Blue Line "doesn't go in harmony with the efforts that [the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] is exerting in cooperation with the Lebanese Army to preserve security and stability along the southern border." A statement from the presidency noted that Aoun had informed Beary that Lebanon was demanding that attention be paid to the 13 specific points along the Blue Line that the government has reservations about. "Lebanon doesn't consider the Blue Line to be the final border – it is a temporary measure that was used following [Lebanon’s] liberation in 2000 and Israel's withdrawal," Aoun said, according to the statement. Aoun told Beary that Lebanon fully supports UNIFIL in its mission, while underscoring Lebanon's commitment to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701.Passed in 2006, Resolution 1701 ended the bloody 34-day Israel-Hezbollah war and sought to strengthen mechanisms to prevent future conflict. For his part, Beary assured Aoun that the situation in south Lebanon was stable, and praised the work that the Army has been doing. The statement added that Beary and Aoun also talked about the Rome II conference, set to be held in February, which will aim at garner support for the Lebanese security forces.

Aoun confers with Abou Zeid over stone quarry owners' demands
Sat 20 Jan 2018/NNA - President of the Republic Michel Aoun met Saturday with MP Amal Abou Zeid, accompanied by a delegation of stone quarry owners from the area of Jezzine who came to raise their demands. The President promised to give utmost attention to the delegation's demands in allowing them to carry-on with their works, urging MP Abou Zeid to pursue the matter with Interior Minister Nuhad al-Machnouk during the upcoming week. In turn, Jezzine's quarry owners vowed to take the necessary environmental measures stipulated by the Ministry of Environment, jointly cooperating with their municipality in this respect.

Aoun checks on military units in Tripoli: Preserving national stability is our absolute priority
Sat 20 Jan 2018/NNA - Army Chief, General Joseph Aoun, inspected Saturday a number of military units deployed in the city of Tripoli, stressing that the country's security and stability are well-preserved. "Protecting national security and stability is our utmost priority," Aoun said reassuringly, as he was briefed on the work of various military units stationed in the region and the tasks carried out to maintain security and stability in the city. The Army Chief called for "intensifying efforts and measures to consolidate this stability and maintain full readiness to keep-up with national deadlines, most prominent of which are the parliamentary elections scheduled for upcoming spring."

Hariri, Ibrahim review security situation
Sat 20 Jan 2018/NNA - Prime Minister Saad Hariri met Saturday evening with General Security Director General Abbas Ibrahim, who briefed him on the security conditions prevailing in the country.

Berri meets with Shoura Council members
Sat 20 Jan 2018/NNA - House Speaker Nabih Berri met Saturday with members of the State Shoura Council, headed by Henri Khoury who presented the Speaker with the Council's annual report, while talks centered on various judicial and legal issues. The Speaker later conferred with Economic Associations' Head Adnan Kassar over various economic issues of concern. A delegation from the Beirut Bar Syndicate also called on Speaker Berri this afternoon, with relevant matters of concern topping their discussion. Former Minister Faisal Karameh was also amongst Speaker Berri's interlocutors for today, with whom he reviewed the upcoming parliamentary elections' issue.

Suspects Behind Sidon Bombing Fled Lebanon
Kataeb.org/Saturday 20th January 2018/Three people have been identified as the perpetrators of the bomb blast that wounded a Hamas member in Sidon last week, LBCI channel reported on Saturday. The ISF's Information Branch reportedly identified two of the three assailants, having confirmed that all of them have fled Lebanon. The main suspect, Ahmad Baytiyeh, was in charge of the execution along with another person, while the third suspect was waiting for them in the car. The security agency raided the house of the main suspect, Ahmad Baytiyeh, in Tripoli where it found documents and evidence proving that he is a seasoned intelligence agent. Baytiyeh is believed to have fled to Netherlands, the report added, while his other two accomplices headed for Turkey. The Army Intelligence arrested several people as part of the investigation, LBCI reported.

Kataeb Chief Vows Accountability over Landfill Leachate Disaster
Kataeb.org/Saturday 20th January 2018/Kataeb leader Samy Gemayel on Saturday deplored the appalling situation which has turned sour at the Burj Hammoud landfill due to the bad weather conditions which battered Lebanon earlier this week, blaming the ruling authority for this environmental disaster. A video posted on social media showed the massive damage caused by the recent storm at the Burj Hammoud landfill where sea water percolated through the waste piled up at the Metn's dumping site. “You decided to dump garbage along the sea coast in a random way while turning a deaf ear to all the logical solutions [that were proposed to you] because all you cared about was money and personal interests, not the Lebanese people's health,” Gemayel wrote on Twitter. “Here's the result. Waste is floating on the sea… Anyway, the Lebanese will hold you accountable, you unscrupulous people!" he added.

FOOTAGE: Storm Exacerbates Environmental Crisis at Metn Landfill
Kataeb.org/Saturday 20th January 2018/A video posted on social media showed the massive damage caused by the recent storm at the Burj Hammoud landfill where sea water percolated through the waste piled up at the Metn's dumping site. By increasing the amount of leachate, water with dissolved contaminants picked up from garbage, the environmental and health crisis posed by the landfill has been tremendously exacerbated. Human Rights Watch on Friday launched a campaign to help end the waste management crisis in Lebanon by calling for an end to the dangerous practice of open burning of waste. The campaign also calls on the Parliament and the government to adopt a national waste management law and strategy that cover the entire country and comply with environmental and public health best practices and international law.

Marouni: Lebanese Must Choose Between State of Transparency or Corruption
Kataeb.org/Saturday 20th January 2018/Kataeb MP Elie Marouni Saturday warned that the growing differences between certain political forces are raising doubts about the fate of parliamentary elections, saying that some parties are seeking to postpone the polls as they know that the new electoral law will not grant them significant gains. “The Kataeb party bets on the Lebanese and their awareness, especially that the authority hasn’t achieved anything at all,” Marouni said in an interview on Voice of Lebanon radio station. Marouni stressed that the Kataeb party has become stronger when it got isolated, saying that we're living in an era when nothing can be hidden. "The Lebanese people must choose between the project that aims at building a transparent and fair state, and the project of selling the nation and spreading corruption."

Sayegh Says Government No Longer Trusted by International Community
Kataeb.org/Saturday 20th January 2018/Kataeb's second Deputy-President Salim Sayegh on Friday said that there is no valid reason to postpone the parliamentary polls, stressing that the upcoming electoral battle implies a political, moral and national significance.“In case the polls were postponed, this would prove that democracy in Lebanon has been turned into a masked dictatorship,” Sayegh said in an interview on LBCI. Sayegh warned that Hezbollah's control over the Parliament would deal a harsh blow to the country’s balance, adding that this will lead to a constant strife.
"People should know that in case Hezbollah wins the majority of seats in the Parliament, the State will become controlled by one party and, therefore, the international sanctions imposed on it will also affect the State as a whole." Sayegh asked whether the Future Movement and the Lebanese Forces party are still committed to and convinced of the values on which the Cedars Revolution was launched, adding that he can't accept for a moment that LF chief Samir Geagea doesn't see things the same way as the Kataeb party. Asked about ties with the Lebanese Forces party, Sayegh pointed out that contacts are now ongoing after the period of standoff that recently disrupted the relation between the two parties, saying that these talks should go on whether there will be an electoral agreement or not. "We are opposing a certain approach and we cannot ally with any faction that is aligned with the ruling authority," he said. “We have entered into a confrontation against a certain mentality and an approach that we will continue to fight,” he stated. Sayegh called on political forces to garner electoral support based on clear projects, not on sectarian incitement, noting that the new voting system allows new forces to emerge. Sayegh mocked the "creative diplomacy" that is being currently practiced, saying that performance of the foreign minister has created problems instead of solving them. “Lebanon has to be the link between regional axes, rather than being part of an alliance against the other," he said. The Kataeb official voiced concern over the repercussions that the ruling authority's policy will afflict on Lebanon, adding that the upcoming international conferences will unlikely yield any financial support given that the Lebanese government is no longer trusted.

Jumblatt, Zaspkin convene in Mukhtara
Sat 20 Jan 2018/NNA - Democratic Gathering Head, MP Walid Jumblatt, met Saturday at his Mukhtara Palace with Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zaspkin, with talks touching on latest developments on both the local and international scenes. Discussions continued over a luncheon held by Jumblatt in honor of the Russian diplomat, in presence of Jumblatt's family members.

Bassil: Best solution for Syrian Refugees is to return home
Sat 20 Jan 2018/NNA - Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Minister Gibran Bassil deemed Saturday that the only solution to end the displaced Syrians' situation is to return to their homeland. "There is one sole solution which is the return of displaced Syrians to their land because Lebanon is no longer able to deal with this crisis," Bassil said during the seventh annual conference by the Free Patriotic Movement's Research and Studies Center. Bassil urged the Lebanese government to work all together for the return of the Syrian refugees to their country, not only because of the economic deterioration in Lebanon but also for security and social reasons. In this context, Bassil revealed that a municipalities' conference will be held on May 4 to discuss the experiences of some municipalities that have succeeded in controlling displacement within their municipal borders, while helping townsmen preserve their jobs and maintain security and social order in their towns and villages. Bassil concluded by noting that Lebanon, despite all the difficulties it has witnessed, has never sent displaced or refugees to other countries but rather shared with the world its intellectual and scientific talents.

Mashnouq during press conference: ISF preemptive security operation foiled terror attacks over recent holidays
Fri 19 Jan 2018/NNA - Interior and Municipalities Minister Nouhad Mashnouq on Friday revealed an exceptional preemptive security operation carried out by the Internal Security Forces (ISF) Information Branch which led to foiling supposed terrorist attacks over the recent holidays in Lebanon. Minister Mashnouq's disclosure came during a press conference at the ISF Command headquarters, where he unveiled that an ISF unit had arrested one of the terrorist Daesh Organization's commanders, known as Abu Jaafar al-Iraqi, in Beirut last June. Mashnouq said that the ISF used the apprehended Daesh Commander to find out about the details of any possible terror attack during the recent holidays and thus to foil such dreadful plans. The ISF extraordinary preemptive operation was carried out under the rubric "Safe Lebanon" Operation. Mashnouq said that the message behind the revelation of the operation was to affirm that Lebanon is a safe country, and to reassure the Lebanese and Arabs that Lebanon enjoys an effective and high security capability. "The security situation in Lebanon is cohesive," Mashnouq stated. Mashnouq visited ISF Information Branch at the Command's headquarters, where he congratulated Branch officers on their extraordinary efforts undertaken within the framework of the highly important security operation. The Minister lauded their high professionalism and competence in this regard.

Othman, Maruti tackle general situation
Fri 19 Jan 2018/NNA - Internal Security Forces chief Imad Othman on Friday received at his Barracks office Italian Ambassador to Lebanon, Massimo Maruti, on a visit aimed at bolstering means of cooperation and coordination.
Talks between the pair reportedly touched on the general security situation in the country.

Lebanese journalist sentenced to six months in prison
Georgi Azar/Annahar/January 20/2018
BEIRUT: A military court verdict sentencing Lebanese journalist Hanin Ghaddar to six months in prison has sparked an outcry on social media, with supporters expressing their outrage at this decision. Following a trial in absentia which found Ghadir guilty on charges of “defamation against the Lebanese Army,” supporters of Ghaddar, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, took to Twitter to blast the verdict. “Lebanese decline in freedom of expression continues,” said fellow Lebanese journalist Joyce Karam, while her Washington Institute colleague Robert Satloff denounced “this outrageous verdict and what passes for justice in Lebanon." Ghaddar, who was previously the managing editor of NOW News in Beirut, has been embroiled in controversy since her 2014 criticism of Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria. During a 2014 panel discussion put together by the Washington Institute titled ‘Syria and Its Repercussions’, Ghaddar made comments suggesting that the Lebanese Army distinguishes between "Sunni and Shia Terror," and tolerates Hezbollah, triggering an outcry from certain Lebanese publications.
Ghaddar was portrayed by Al-Akhbar newspaper as a supporter of Israel, giving the impression that the journalist was on the same panel as Israeli politician Ehud Barak, who was merely one of the many speakers invited to attend the annual conference. Ghaddar participated in the same conference but did not speak on the same panel.
Al-Akhbar alleged that Ghaddar strayed from discussing Syria, instead focusing on Iran’s plan for “regional dominance”, Hezbollah's role in the region, and the party’s role in Syria stirring the Shiite-Sunni conflict. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar also followed suit, accusing Ghaddar of speaking alongside Barak, in violation of Lebanese law, and attacking “the resistance” and Lebanese Army. In the wake of these media attacks, Ghaddar released a statement on her website rebutting the campaign against her, arguing that her appearance was not in violation of Lebanese laws. “My patriotism is not defined according to the political allegiance of the aforementioned media outlets, which need to have their patriotism tested due to the threats and accusation of treason in some of their writings against me and other colleagues,” she said.

Lebanese Intelligence Turned Targets’ Android Phones Into Spy Devices, Researchers Say
Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times/Jan. 18, 2018
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/technology/lebanese-intelligence-spy-android-phones.html?referer=
Lebanon’s internal intelligence agency appears to have been caught spying on thousands of people — including journalists and military personnel — in more than 20 countries, according to researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Lookout, a mobile security company.
The spy operation, revealed on Thursday, is among dozens around the world uncovered by human rights groups and technical organizations in recent years as governments and intelligence agencies have started relying more on mobile and desktop spyware than on traditional forms of cloak-and-dagger espionage.
The researchers found what they said was evidence that Lebanon’s intelligence agency — called General Directorate of General Security, or GDGS — spied on their targets’ Android mobile devices and desktop computers using various methods for more than six years. Their primary attack method, researchers said, was through a series of decoy Android apps designed to look like widely used private, secure messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal.
Once downloaded, the apps allowed spies to steal nearly everything off their victims’ phones, including text messages with one-time passcodes for accessing email and other services, as well as contact lists, call logs, browsing history, audio recordings and photos. The apps also let the spies take photos using the phone’s front or back camera, and turned the device into a silent microphone to capture audio. The apps were not designed to target Apple iPhone users.
“One of the main takeaways from this investigation is that actors, like Dark Caracal, are shifting away from a pure desktop capability for espionage to now relying heavily on mobile tools to gather their intelligence,” said Michael Flossman, a security analyst at Lookout, referring to the name that he and other researchers coined for the Lebanese spies they said were most likely responsible for the espionage.
GDGS is Lebanon’s main internal intelligence agency, and its director, Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, a career army general, has a rising profile and a broadening portfolio. The agency oversees residency permits for foreigners, from diplomats and tens of thousands of Southeast Asian domestic workers to more than a million Syrian refugees. The agency’s expertise and clout has traditionally been seen as stemming from its human intelligence, not from high-tech espionage techniques.
Speaking ahead of the report’s publication, General Ibrahim told Reuters: “General Security does not have these type of capabilities. We wish we had these capabilities.” GDGS did not return a call for comment on Thursday.
Researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Lookout began collaborating to uncover what they believed was a likely nation state spy campaign in 2016. That year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a report documenting a spy campaign against journalists and activists who had been critical of the authorities in Kazakhstan. The campaign included technology used to spy on Android users. Lookout, which focuses on mobile device security, offered to help.
Together, researchers tracked the spying to command and control servers operated by the attackers. The researchers looked at who had registered the servers and when, as well as the dates of some of the stolen content. They deduced that the campaign had been going on for as long as six years.
The attackers were targeting journalists and activists, as well as government officials, military personnel, financial institutions, defense contractors and others in 21 countries. Those countries included the United States, China, Germany, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and inside Lebanon.
The researchers traced the attacks to a building in Beirut that houses Lebanon’s GDGS, using Wi-Fi networks and so-called internet protocol addresses assigned to attackers’ machines. While researchers said they could not be sure whether the attacks were the work of the GDGS or rogue employees, many of the attacks appeared tied to an email address — op13@mail.com — that had been linked to various online personas, including “Nancy Razzouk” and “Rami Jabbour.” All of the physical addresses listed with registrations made by that email account were clustered around the GDGS building in Beirut, according to the user’s wireless activity.
As part of their work, researchers found evidence that Lebanese spies were directing victims to install the spy apps through WhatsApp messages that began innocuously with a “How are you?” Those then linked to the spy apps with additional messages like “You can download from here to communicate further.”
In other cases, the spies found their targets on Facebook, inviting them to Facebook groups, where they posted links to their decoy apps, which they often referred to by names like “WhatsApp plus.” The spies also directed victims to fake login sites for social media services like Twitter and Facebook to steal their credentials, hijack their accounts and push out trick messages to more people.
Researchers also found evidence that Lebanese officials had previously used FinFisher, a product manufactured by the British company Gamma International, which sells surveillance tools that let customers turn computers and phones into listening devices to monitor a target’s messages, calls and whereabouts. Increasingly, researchers discovered that the spies had built their own custom mobile spy tools that were less sophisticated than FinFisher but as effective in getting the intelligence they were after.
Martin J. Muench, the managing director of Gamma International, has told The New York Times that his company only sells surveillance tools to governments for criminal and terrorism investigations. The Times has covered several instances in which Mr. Muench’s tools have popped up on devices used by journalists and activists. Gamma Group did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Researchers also uncovered evidence that Lebanese officials deployed several variants of malware to victims’ desktop machines; the malware was designed to work across several operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Apple’s Mac and Linux. That malware could steal screenshots of victims’ computer screens, use the victim’s webcam to spy on their physical whereabouts, record sound, grab photos and any Skype activity, file listings and files, and even iPhone backups.
In the hours after researchers published their report on Thursday, the servers conducting the spying went dark.
*Anne Barnard contributed reporting.
*Follow Nicole Perlroth on Twitter: @nicoleperlroth

An insight into Lebanon's state-sponsored hacking
Georgi Azar and Yehia El Amine/Annahar/January 20/2018
BEIRUT: If Edward Snowden taught the world anything, it’s that governments now have the ability to pry into the personal and political affairs of their own citizens at relative ease, and Lebanon is no exception.
In the wake of the bombshell revelations illustrating the country’s state-sponsored spying activities – directed at its own people – Lebanon has now been thrust at the forefront of this discussion, joining a long list of nations that partake in such pervasive behavior.
The crux of the report, compiled by cybersecurity firm Lookout Inc. and digital rights NGO the Electronic Frontier Foundation, suggests that Lebanon’s government is, at the very least, complicit in this blatant cyber espionage campaign; undertaken by a group of operatives under the banner of Dark Caracal.
Following Annahar’s thorough analysis of the report, below are the key findings and results that show the severity of the breach and what it encompasses.
ORIGIN OF THE ATTACKS AND ITS PERPETRATORS
According to the report, Dark Caracal operators were stationed inside the government-owned General Directorate of General Security (GDGS) building after researchers from Lookout and EFF acquired information from test Android devices on which the hackers trialed their attacks, before using a WiFi geo-tracking service to pinpoint their exact location.
The IP addresses on the attackers’ servers originated from the state-owned telecom operator Ogero, with two of these addresses located just south of the bulky GDGS building which is possibly a switching or central hub for the telecom company.
The GDGS building is home to one of the country’s intelligence agencies and is situated at the intersection of Beirut’s Pierre Gemayel and Damascus Streets in Beirut.
Lookout and EFF’s researchers traced the first attacks to January 2012, when Dark Caracal initiated an early mobile surveillance campaign, with the investigation running until January 2018 after the spying campaign was exposed.
Researchers discovered four different aliases associated with Dark Caracal, along with two domains, and two phone numbers, with the email address op13@gmail.com at the center of it all.
Further analysis of the data generated revealed ‘Nancy Razzouk’, ‘Hassan Ward’, ‘Hadi Mazeh’, and ‘Rami Jabbour’ as the chosen aliases by the associated personas, with the contact details for ‘Nancy’ matching the public listing for a Beirut-based individual by that name.
PLATFORMS BREACHED AND METHODS
According to the report by Lookout Inc. and EFF, Dark Caracal was able to cast its net wide by gaining deep insight into each of the victim’s lives. It acquired these insights through a series of multi-platform surveillance campaigns that kicked off with desktop attacks, while later pivoting to mobile devices.
“During our research, we found almost 90 indicators of compromise used in the breaching campaigns being, 11 Android Malware IOCs, 26 desktop malware IOCs, 60 domains, IP Addresses and WHOIS information,” the report said.
The platforms used for likely security breaches are WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Primo, Threema, Orbot TOR Proxy, Psiphon, Plus Messenger, and Signal.
Dark Caracal relied primarily on social engineering via posts on Facebook groups and WhatsApp messages to compromise target systems, devices, and accounts. At a high-level, the attackers designed three different kinds of phishing messages, the goal of which is to eventually drive victims to a watering hole controlled by Dark Caracal.
The group’s infrastructure hosted phishing sites, which look like login portals for well-known services, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. The investigation found links to these pages in numerous Facebook groups that included “Nanys” in their titles.
A phishing scam is the attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details, often for malicious reasons, by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
While a watering hole is a security exploit in which the attacker seeks to compromise a specific group of end users by infecting websites that members of the group are known to visit. The goal is to infect a targeted user's computer and gain access to the network at the target's place of employment.
“The Android malware family mainly trojanizes messaging and security applications and, once it compromises a device, it is capable of collecting a range of sensitive user information,” the report explained.
Dark Caracal distributed trojanized Android applications with its custom-developed mobile surveillanceware through its watering hole, secureandroid[.]info. Many of these downloads included fake messaging and privacy-oriented apps.
Dark Caracal used phishing messages through popular applications, such as WhatsApp, in order to direct people to the watering hole.
Phishing links posted in Dark Caracal linked Facebook groups include politically themed news stories, links to fake versions of popular services, such as Gmail, and links to trojanized versions of WhatsApp.
Four Facebook profiles similar in theme “liked” the phishing groups. Dark Caracal likely used these fake profiles to initiate communication with victims and build a rapport before directing them either to content on the “Nanys” Facebook groups or to the secureandroid[.]info domain directly.
TYPE OF STOLEN DATA
According to the report, the type of exfiltrated data includes SMS messages, call records, contacts, images, account information, bookmarks and browsing history, installed applications, audio recordings, WiFi details, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Skype databases, legal and corporate documentation, and finally, file and directory listings.
Exfiltrated data can be divided into the following categories of information:
- SMS messages: Messages included personal texts, two-factor authentication and one-time password pins, receipts and airline reservations, and company communications.
- Contact Lists: This data included numbers, names, addresses, bank passcodes, PIN numbers, how many times each contact was dialed, and the last time the contact was called.
- Call logs: This data included a full record of incoming, outgoing, and missed calls along with the date and duration of the conversation.
- Installed Applications: This data included app names and version numbers.
- Bookmarks and Browsing History: This data included bookmarks and browsing history from web pages. This data was seen in only one Android campaign called oldb, but it clearly identified victims that were active in political discourse.
- Connected Wi-Fi Details: This data included observed Wi-Fi access point names, BSSIDs, and signal point strength.
- Authentication Accounts: This data included the login credentials and which applications are using it.
- File and Directory Listings: This data included a list of personal files, downloaded files, and temporary files, including those used by other applications.
- Audio Recordings and Audio Messages: This data included audio recordings of conversations, some of which identified individuals by name.
- Photos: This data included all personal and downloaded photographs, including profile pictures.
- Skype Logs Databases: The data included the entire Skype AppData folder for certain victims, including messaging databases.
“It is common to see smartphone photos backed up to this location, which most often contains personal photographs of family and friends taken by the individual being targeted,” The report added.
The investigation found the largest collection of data from a single command and control server that operated under the domain adobeair[.]net.
Over a short period of observation, devices from at least six distinct Android campaigns communicated with this domain resulting in 48GB of information being exfiltrated from compromised devices.
Windows campaigns contributed a further 33GB of stolen data.
The remainder of the data contained desktop malware samples, spreadsheet reports on victims, and other files.
TARGETS AND THEIR DEMOGRAPHICS
Dark Caracal targeted a broad range of victims spanning members of the military, government officials, medical practitioners, education professionals and academics, civilians from numerous fields, financial institutions, manufacturing companies, and defense contractors.
“We have identified hundreds of gigabytes of data exfiltrated from thousands of victims, spanning 21+ countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” the report highlighted.
Victims were found to speak a variety of languages and were also from a wide range of countries. “We discovered messages and photos in Arabic, English, Hindi, Turkish, Thai, Portuguese, and Spanish in the examined data,” the report said.
The countries are the following:
HOW DARK CARACAL WAS EXPOSED
Even the most primitive hacking tools and methods can be effective when those targeted lack the required aptitude to protect themselves, leading to a substantial data breach without the need for a sophisticated spying apparatus.
Yet, this lack of elevated prowess on behalf of Dark Caracal as well led to their eventual downfall, after the hackers carelessly left behind hundreds of gigabytes of intercepted and stolen data on the open internet.
“It’s almost like thieves robbed the bank and forgot to lock the door where they stashed the money,” Mike Murray, Lookout’s head of intelligence, told the Associated Press.
This is only the second instance when such carelessness was on display, with the only other example of such ineptitude emanating from Kazakhstan in 2016, when Lookout similarly uncovered a series of attacks targeting journalists and political activists critical of that authoritarian government, along with their family members, lawyers, and associates.
Ironically, that particular data haul led researchers at Lookout to Dark Caracal after researchers linked elements from the Kazakh breach to Lebanon by stumbling across an open server riddled with images, photos, private conversations, text messages and much more.
BLATANT BREACH OF PRIVACY RIGHTS
It’s always hard to give the government the benefit of the doubt in regards to domestic surveillance, yet skepticism mounts further when looking at Lebanon’s law pertaining to wire-tapping, the collection of data, and illegally obtaining sensitive information.
This indiscriminate spying on citizens’ communications on behalf of the GDGS is in violation of Lebanese law, according to a lawyer who spoke to Annahar on condition of anonymity.
The warrantless spying on individuals convicted of no crime, for no probable cause, is in direct contravention of the core protections guaranteed by law #140, ratified on October 27, 1999, the lawyer said.
Article 1 of law #140 clearly prohibits the collection of information or monitoring of communication of any kind, unless in specific cases.
With the government expected to hedge itself on the basis of keeping the country safe, article #9 of the same law stipulates that authorities wishing to surveil any form of communications must obtain the approval of the Defense Minister, Interior Minister, as well as the Prime Minister; credibly showing that the surveillance is related to terrorist activities, protecting national security, or fighting organized crime.
The request must also specify the means of communication authorities wish to intercept, the information being sought, as well as the duration of the operation which cannot exceed a two-month period unless extended in accordance with applicable law.
Another article of the law stipulates that Lebanon’s security agencies must go through the proper legal channels to obtain a warrant in order to surveil a citizen, by providing a judge with necessary evidence accompanying their case.
Abuses of powers, the overstepping of authority, and the circumventing of legal guidelines is punishable by up to three years in prison, accompanied by a fine of up to LBP100 million.

Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 20-21/18
Syrian army, allies take Idlib air base, says Hezbollah media unit
Reuters, Beirut/January 20/18/The Syrian army and allied forces captured Abu al-Duhur airport in Idlib province from insurgents on Saturday, a Hezbollah military media unit said. They had pushed into the military air base hours earlier, pressing their offensive in Syria’s largest rebel stronghold, said the media unit run by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which fights along the Damascus government.
  
VP Pence says US stands 'shoulder to shoulder' with Egypt
AP /January 20/2018
Pence in Egypt for talks on security, counterterrorism
Pence visit showcases dilemma facing Egypt, Jordan leaders
CAIRO: Vice President Mike Pence and Egyptian leader Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi pledged a united front against terrorism in the Mideast as Pence, the highest-level American official to visit the US ally in nearly a decade, began a trip through the region after leaving behind a government shutdown in Washington.
Pence and El-Sissi held 2½ hours of talks at the presidential palace in Cairo, with acknowledgements of friendship and partnership between the two countries. Through a translator, Pence listened intently as el-Sissi cited the need to address "urgent issues," including "ways to eliminate this disease and cancer that has terrified the whole world."Pence pointed to President Donald Trump's efforts to forge stronger ties with el-Sissi in his first year in office, "after a time when our countries seemed to be drifting apart."Pence said "we stand shoulder to shoulder with you and Egypt in fighting against terrorism," and that "our hearts grieve" for the loss of life in recent terrorist attacks against Egyptians. The vice president noted the deadly attack against Christians in late December, when a militant opened fire outside a suburban Cairo church, killing at least nine people. He also pointed to the killing of 311 worshippers inside a mosque in northern Sinai last November.
"We resolve to continue to stand with Egypt in the battle against terrorism," Pence said. Pence arrived in Cairo hours after the US Congress and Trump failed to reach agreement on a plan to avert a partial federal closure. Pence went ahead with his four-day trip to the Middle East, citing national security and diplomatic reasons. Pence's meetings with El-Sissi delved into security cooperation, economic ties and efforts to fight Daesh. His visit to the region came more than a month after Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a step that's enraged Palestinians. El-Sissi identified "the peace issue" as one of the most important issues in their discussions, but the two leaders did not elaborate. When Pence's motorcade arrived at the palace, journalists traveling with the vice president were initially barred from exiting their bus. After they were brought into the palace, media were not allowed into a photo session with the two leaders. Negotiations between US and Egyptian officials followed, and members of the media were eventually were brought into the meeting and heard the leaders deliver short statements.
Pence and El-Sissi did not respond to questions at the end.
Pence planned to travel to Jordan later Saturday and then to Israel on Sunday. He was not expected to meet with Palestinians officials. El-Sissi has built a strategic alliance with Trump and urged the American president to become more involved in the fight against Islamic militancy in the Middle East. Trump has praised el-Sissi for the April release of Egyptian-American charity worker Aya Hijazi, who had been detained for nearly three years. But Trump's designation of Jerusalem as Israel's capital poses a dilemma for Egypt, which receives extensive military and economic aid from Washington but does not want to appear dismissive of Palestinian concerns. White House officials said before the Cairo meeting they expected the decision on the Israeli capital and Trump's plans to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to come up. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has condemned Trump over the Jerusalem announcement and warned that the US can no longer play any role in future peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. El-Sissi has tried to reassure Abbas of his continued efforts to secure an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.
The Egyptian leader, who led the 2013 military overthrow of an Islamist president, has announced plans to run in the March election. El-Sissi is heavily favored to win a second four-year term after leading a heavy crackdown on dissent, jailing thousands of opponents, including many of those behind the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. White House aides said Pence was expected to raise with el-Sissi the importance of human rights, political freedoms and freedom of expression. Pence had initially planned to visit the region in December, shortly after Trump's announcement, but the trip was postponed in the aftermath of Abbas' refusal to meet the vice president in Bethlehem. The spiritual leaders of Egypt's Muslims and Orthodox Christians also canceled their meetings with Pence.

Turkey launches major new ground and air cross border operation in Syria
AFP, The Associated Press, Reuters, Ankara, Istanbul, Moscow/January 20/18/The Turkish army on Saturday confirmed it had started a major new ground and air cross border operation against the People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia in Syria, which Turkey deems to be a terror organization.
Dubbing the new campaign operation ‘Olive Branch’, the Turkish army said it had begun at 1400 GMT and was aimed against the YPG and also ISIS militants. The army also said the operation would be carried out “with respect for Syria's territorial integrity” and stemmed from Turkey’s rights under international law. In latest reports, Turkey’s state-run news agency said Turkish jets have attacked a military airport in northwest Syria that is under the control of a Syrian Kurdish military group. Anadolu Agency said the jets struck Mannagh air base. Separately, the agency quoted Turkey’s military officials as saying warplanes had so far struck 108 out of a total of 113 Syrian Kurdish militia targets in the Afrin region. Turkey said it was informing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime of its new offensive against Syrian Kurdish militia regarded as a terror group by Ankara, in a rare official contact with Damascus. “We informed all parties on what we are doing. We are even informing the Syrian regime in writing,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the 24 TV broadcaster. “Even though we don’t have relations with the regime, we are taking our steps in compliance with the international law.”Turkey has been one of the leading foes of Assad’s regime since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.
Russia voices concern
Meanwhile, Russia voiced concern and urged restraint over a new Turkish operation to oust Kurdish militia from a northern Syrian enclave in Syria. “Moscow is concerned at this news. We call on the opposing parties to show restraint,” the foreign ministry said in a statement after the launch of an operation which has also drawn US warnings. Russia's Defense Ministry said it was pulling back troops that had been deployed near the Syrian city of Afrin after bombing strikes by Turkish warplanes. In a statement reported on Russian news agencies, the ministry said Saturday that “to prevent possible provocations, to exclude the threat to life and health of Russian servicemen, the operational group of the Center for Reconciliation of warring parties and military police in the Afrin area is relocated to the Tell-Adjar area.”Tell-Adjar is within a so-called “de-escalation zone” established in September. There were no immediate reports of how many Russian servicemen were affected by the move.
Yildirim confirms aerial offensive
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Turkish jets had begun an aerial offensive against the Syrian Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin in northwestern Syria. “As of this moment our brave Armed Forces have started the aerial offensive to eliminate the PYD and PKK and Daesh elements in Afrin,” said Yildirim at a speech in the city of Bilecik, referring to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party respectively, and using an Arabic acronym for the ISIS group. Turkey’s state-run news agency, meanwhile, said that a group of Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces crossed into the area on Saturday as part of an offensive to oust a militia group Turkey considers to be terrorists. Associated Press journalists at the Turkish border saw at least five jets heading toward Afrin. They also witnessed a convoy of buses, believed to be carrying Syrian opposition fighters, traveling along the border across from Afrin. The convoy included trucks mounted with machine guns. Rojhat Roj, a spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish militia group, confirmed that a Turkish plane was striking Afrin city. A Syrian Kurdish YPG spokesman in Afrin said people were wounded in Turkish air strikes on Afrin, even though it was unclear how many. Turkish warplanes were striking Afrin city and several villages around it, he said. The warplanes struck residential parts of Afrin, forcing people to hole up in their homes and in shelters, a senior Kurdish official there said. Hevi Mustafa, a top member of the civilian administration that governs Afrin, said several wounded people had arrived in the hospitals. Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in a statement said that Turkish authorities have started “an aggressive war against our people in Afrin, targeting civilian districts with air strikes.” YPG said “we have no choice but to resist” after the Turkish attacks. “Wwe will defeat this aggression like we have defeated other assaults against our cities.”
Erdogan speech
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had earlier said on Saturday that Ankara had “de-facto” already launched an operation on the ground to oust Kurdish militia from the Syrian town of Afrin. “The Afrin operation has de-facto been started on the ground,” Erdogan said in a televised speech in the city of Kutahya, without specifying further. “This will be followed by Manbij,” he added, referring to another Kurdish-controlled Syrian town to the east. Speaking to the members of his ruling AK Party in the western province of Kutahya, Erdogan did not specify if that meant Turkish troops had crossed the border. Earlier, the Turkish army said it launched new strikes on Saturday against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia in northern Syria. The army said it shelled Kurdish positions in Afrin on Friday and Saturday, hitting shelters and hideouts used by militants from three groups. The army said it hit in “legitimate self defense” camps and refuges used by the YPG in response to fire coming from the Afrin region. The army said it hit in "legitimate self defense" camps and refuges used by the YPG in response to fire coming from the Afrin region controlled by the militia group, which Turkey deems to be a terror organization.

Vice President Pence says US stands ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Egypt
The Associated Press/January 20/18/Vice President Mike Pence and Egyptian leader Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi pledged a united front against terrorism in the Mideast as Pence, the highest-level American official to visit the US ally in nearly a decade, began a trip through the region after leaving behind a government shutdown in Washington. Pence and el-Sissi held two-and-a-half hours of talks at the presidential palace in Cairo, with acknowledgements of friendship and partnership between the two countries. Through a translator, Pence listened intently as el-Sisi cited the need to address “urgent issues,” including “ways to eliminate this disease and cancer that has terrified the whole world.”Pence pointed to President Donald Trump’s efforts to forge stronger ties with el-Sisi in his first year in office, “after a time when our countries seemed to be drifting apart.” Pence said “we stand shoulder to shoulder with you and Egypt in fighting against terrorism,” and that “our hearts grieve” for the loss of life in recent terrorist attacks against Egyptians. The vice president noted the deadly attack against Christians in late December, when a militant opened fire outside a suburban Cairo church, killing at least nine people. He also pointed to the killing of 311 worshippers inside a mosque in northern Sinai last November.“We resolve to continue to stand with Egypt in the battle against terrorism,” Pence said.
Four-day Middle East trip
Pence arrived in Cairo hours after the US Congress and Trump failed to reach agreement on a plan to avert a partial federal closure. Pence went ahead with his four-day trip to the Middle East, citing national security and diplomatic reasons. Pence’s meetings with el-Sisi delved into security cooperation, economic ties and efforts to fight the Islamic State group. His visit to the region came more than a month after Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a step that’s enraged Palestinians. El-Sisi identified “the peace issue” as one of the most important issues in their discussions, but the two leaders did not elaborate. When Pence’s motorcade arrived at the palace, journalists traveling with the vice president were initially barred from exiting their bus. After they were brought into the palace, media were not allowed into a photo session with the two leaders. Negotiations between US and Egyptian officials followed, and members of the media were eventually were brought into the meeting and heard the leaders deliver short statements. Pence and el-Sisi did not respond to questions at the end.
Jordan trip
Pence planned to travel to Jordan later Saturday and then to Israel on Sunday. He was not expected to meet with Palestinians officials.El-Sisi has built a strategic alliance with Trump and urged the American president to become more involved in the fight against militancy in the Middle East. Trump has praised el-Sisi for the April release of Egyptian-American charity worker Aya Hijazi, who had been detained for nearly three years. But Trump’s designation of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital poses a dilemma for Egypt, which receives extensive military and economic aid from Washington but does not want to appear dismissive of Palestinian concerns.White House officials said before the Cairo meeting they expected the decision on the Israeli capital and Trump’s plans to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to come up. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has condemned Trump over the Jerusalem announcement and warned that the US can no longer play any role in future peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. El-Sisi has tried to reassure Abbas of his continued efforts to secure an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. Pence had initially planned to visit the region in December, shortly after Trump’s announcement, but the trip was postponed in the aftermath of Abbas’ refusal to meet the vice president in Bethlehem.

New vote on Iraq poll date ‘by Monday’ as Abadi meets Kurdistan region PM
Reuters, Baghdad/January 20/18/ Iraq's parliament failed on Saturday to approve May 12 as the election date, as suggested by the government, as Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers demanded a delay to allow hundreds of thousands of war-displaced people to return home. Shi'ite politicians, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, insist on holding the election as planned on May 12, saying a delay would be against the constitution. Speaking after Saturday's session in Baghdad, Parliamentary Speaker Salim al-Jabouri, a Sunni, expressed hope that parliament would be able to vote on an election date by Monday, state TV reported. Abadi is seeking re-election, building on a surge in his popularity among Iraq's majority Shi'ite Arab community after leading the three-year fight against Islamic State militants, supported by a U.S.-led coalition. "Postponing the elections would set a dangerous precedent, undermining the constitution and damaging Iraq’s long-term democratic development," the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said in a statement on Thursday. Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi met on Saturday in Baghdad with the semi-autonomous. Kurdistan region's Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, a Kurdish official said.
It is the first meeting between Abadi and a top leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) since conflict broke out between Baghdad and the region's authorities over a Kurdish independence referendum held in northern Iraq on Sept. 25. Washington had shown understanding for Abadi's move in October to dislodge Kurdish fighters from the oil rich northern region of Kirkuk, even though the Kurds are traditional allies of the United States. Tens of thousands of Kurds were displaced as a result of the takeover of the ethnically mixed areas of Kirkuk and its surroundings by Iraqi forces supported by Iranian-backed paramilitary groups. The United Nations estimates the total number of people who remain displaced in Iraq at 2.6 million, mostly Sunni Arabs from areas previously controlled by Islamic State. The role of prime minister is reserved for the Shi'ite Arabs under a power-sharing system set up after the 2003 U.S-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab. The largely ceremonial office of president is reserved for a Kurdish member of parliament, while the speaker of parliament is drawn from among Sunni Arab MPs.

Newly-leaked documents describe ‘Iranian state-sanctioned persecution of Baha'is’
Al Arabiya English/January 20/18/Newly-released documentary evidence detailing “years of relentless oppression” suffered by the Baha’i community in Iran has been published by the Washington-based Baha’i International Community (BIC) this week. A BIC website published thousands of official documents, reports, testimonials, and audio-visual material chronicling the “continuous, pervasive, state-sponsored persecution against the Baha’is of Iran, demonstrating the falsity of claims made by Iranian authorities that Baha’is are not discriminated against,” according to a statement by the group. The archives include cases of imprisonment and execution, acts of violence, kidnapping, the burning and destruction of homes, confiscation of properties, and the spreading of hateful propaganda through the state media. “The compelling accounts and documents on the website provide proof of the decades of systematic implementation of policies designed to suffocate an entire community,” said Diane Ala’i, Representative of the Baha’i International Community. Most documents in the archives are related to the years following the Islamic revolution in 1979, during which the Baha’is became subject to a new wave of intense persecution. Over 200 Baha’is were executed or disappeared without a trace, the statement read. “Baha’is continue to be denied access to university education, excluded from employment in the public sector as well as numerous professions in the private sector, and denied benefits in the pension system. They are unjustly arrested, imprisoned, and sentenced to years in prison after trials lacking due process of law,” it added.The Baha’i faith is a small monotheistic religion which began in Iran in the 1800s and whose followers face regular persecution.

Pence heads to the Middle East amid Israel embassy storm
AFP Saturday/January 20/18/US Vice President Mike Pence set off for the Middle East on Friday for a trip overshadowed by controversy over plans to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Pence had been due to travel in December last year, but Arab anger over President Donald Trump's decision to declare Jerusalem Israel's capital saw many planned meetings cancelled. The deadly protests that erupted at the time have subsided, but Pence may still face a cold welcome in some capitals and concern over the fate of the UN aid agency for Palestinians (UNRWA). Washington has delayed a $65 million funding package for the cash-strapped body, putting at risk operations to feed, teach and heal thousands of Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian leadership, already stunned and furious over the Jerusalem decision, has denounced the US administration and had already refused to meet Pence during his planned December trip. But Pence's press secretary, Alyssa Farah, said the vice president would still meet the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Israel on the high-stakes four-day tour. Pence will arrive in Cairo on Saturday for a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, heading the following day to Amman for a one-on-one with King Abdullah II. Both these leaders, whose countries have peace deals and diplomatic ties with Israel, would be key players if US mediators ever manage to get a revived Israeli-Palestinian peace process off the ground, as Trump wants. They are also key intelligence-sharing and security partners in America's various covert and overt battles against Islamist extremism in the region and Egypt is a major recipient of aid to help it buy advanced US military hardware. On Monday, he will begin a two-day visit to Israel, where he will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin and deliver a speech to the Knesset. He can expect a warm welcome from local politicians after Trump's decision on Jerusalem, which Israelis and Palestinians alike interpreted as Washington taking Israel's side in the dispute over the city.

Turkish ski bus accident kills 11, injures 44
The Associated Press, Ankara, Turkey/January 20/18/ Turkish officials say a bus carrying mostly people going on a ski trip has crashed into trees on the side of a road, killing 11 passengers and injuring 44 others. Governor Ozdemir Cakacak of Eskisehir province said the bus was travelling from the Turkish capital of Ankara to the western city of Bursa when it crashed on a road in his region early on Saturday. The cause of the crash, which occurred on the first day of a school holiday, was under investigation. The state-run Anadolu Agency quoted the bus driver as telling police that he veered toward the side of the road to avoid what he thought was a stray dog in the road.

US official: Turkey’s shelling of Afrin in Syria would hurt regional stability
Reuters Saturday/January 20/18/Turkish artillery fired into Syria’s Afrin region on Friday in what Ankara said was the start of a military campaign against the Kurdish-controlled area. The cross-border bombardment took place after days of threats from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to crush the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in Afrin in response to growing Kurdish strength across a wide stretch of north Syria. Direct military action against territory held by Kurdish militia would open a new front in Syria’s civil war and would see Ankara confronting Kurds allied to the United States at a time when Turkey’s relations with Washington are reaching breaking point.“The operation has actually de facto started with cross-border shelling,” Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli said, adding that no troops had crossed into Afrin. A US State Department official said such moves would undermine regional stability and would not help protect Turkey’s border security. “We do not believe that a military operation serves the cause of regional stability, Syrian stability or indeed Turkish concerns about the security of their border,” the official told reporters, stressing he had limited information about Turkey’s reported military moves. “The kind of threats or activities which these initial reports may be referring to, we don’t think advance any of these issues. They are destabilizing.” The United States has instead called on Turkey to focus on the fight against ISIS militants and not take military action in Afrin. Reuters TV filmed Turkish artillery at the border village of Sugedigi firing on Friday morning into Afrin region, and the YPG militia said Turkish forces fired 70 shells at Kurdish villages between midnight and Friday morning. Shelling continued in the late afternoon, said Rojhat Roj, a YPG spokesman in Afrin. Roj said it was the heaviest Turkish bombardment since Ankara stepped up threats to take military action against the Kurdish region. “YPG is ready to confront Turkish troops and FSA terrorists. If they dare to attack, we are ready to bury them one by one in Afrin,” a YPG statement said. Separately, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying that media reports on Russian military units withdrawing from the Afrin region had been denied, though he did specify who had denied them. Turkey had sent its military chief to Moscow on Thursday to seek approval for an air campaign in Afrin, although Damascus warned it could shoot down any Turkish planes in its skies.
‘No other way’
Canikli said Ankara was determined to destroy the Kurdish group. “All terror networks and elements in northern Syria will be eliminated. There is no other way,” he said. “The operation in central Afrin may last a long time, but the terrorist organization will swiftly come undone there.” Although Canikli said no Turkish troops have gone into Afrin, Turkish newspapers said 20 buses carrying Free Syrian Army fighters crossed on Friday from Turkey into a Turkish-controlled part of northern Syria, on Afrin’s eastern flank. They said the FSA militants would deploy near the town of Azaz, where Kurdish shelling overnight struck a psychiatric hospital. The Turkish armed forces said several civilians wounded in the attack were taken to Turkey for treatment, and Turkish television footage showed rubble and damaged walls. Turkey has been angered by US military support for the Kurdish YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces which spearheaded the fight against ISIS in Syria, and by an announcement that the United States would stay in Syria to train about 30,000 personnel in the swathe of eastern Syria under SDF control. Turkey says the YPG is a terrorist group and a branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party which has waged an insurgency in southeast Turkey for decades, and Canikli criticized Washington for its continued emphasis on countering ISIS. “The threat of ISIS has been removed in both Syria and Iraq. With this reality out in the open, a ‘focus on ISIS’s statement is truly a meaningless remark,” he said.

Egypt’s Sisi announces intention to run for second term
Staff writer, Al Arabiya //January 20/18/Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced on Friday his intention to run for a second term in office in a March election. "I announce to you in the honesty and transparency which we are used to... my candidacy for the post of president of the republic," Sisi said at a conference in Cairo, broadcast live on state television. Sisi is widely expected to win in the first round, which is to be held March 26-28. Campaigning begins on February 24 and will last until March 23. Candidates must register between Jan. 20 and 29.

Report: Germany Weighing New Sanctions against Iran
Asharq Al-Awsat/Asharq Al Awsat/January 20/18/In an attempt to dissuade US President Donald Trump from terminating the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Germany is seeking to impose new sanctions against Tehran, reported the Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday.
Germany also wants to punish Iran for its missile program and its meddling in conflicts in other Middle East countries, such as the war in Yemen and Syria, the report said. Berlin is currently lobbying among European allies to reach an agreement on new sanctions, it added. The report cited diplomats in Brussels as saying that Germany was pushing for new sanctions together with Britain and France to show the United States that European allies were taking Trump's criticism against Iran seriously. A German foreign ministry spokeswoman and another government spokesman both declined to comment on the report.
Trump recently set an ultimatum to fix "disastrous flaws" in the deal curbing Tehran's nuclear program. The agreement was reached between Tehran and world powers in 2015. Trump has said he would waive nuclear sanctions on Iran for the last time to give the United States and European allies a final chance to amend the pact. Washington also imposed sanctions on the head of Iran's judiciary and others. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif has said the deal was not renegotiable, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday it cannot survive if Washington pulls out of it.

Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on January 20-21/18
Iran’s nuclear problem must be re-visited
Amir Taheri/Al Arabiya/January 20/18/
The decision by US President Donald Trump to prolong the lifting of some sanctions against Iran for a further 120 days has reopened the four-year old “what to do about Iran” debate.
While some have condemned Trump for renewing sanctions relief for the mullahs, others have castigated him for his call to re-negotiate the “nuclear deal” connoted by his predecessor Barack Obama.
Conducting the “what to do about Iran” debate in a calm and constructive way isn’t easy for two reasons.
The first is that the Iran issue has become linked with the United States and, worse still, more recently with Trump.
As we all know whatever issue involving the US, even remotely, is instantly upgraded for better or for worse.
No one cared when a million people were massacred in Rwanda or that an entire community is driven out of Burma through ethnic cleansing.
The US wasn’t and isn’t involved.
The European Union foreign policy point-woman Federica Mogherini travels all the way to Rangoon not to plead on behalf of the Rohingya but to criticize the US for “threatening the nuclear deal with Iran.” The Vatican calls for “respect for the nuclear deal” but takes care not to mention the word Rohingya.
See what the US does, and say the opposite
In almost every country there is an active anti-American constituency that judges every event with reference to its relation to the United States.
For that constituency the trick is to see what the US does and say the opposite.
For example, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party, was briefly contemplating a mild gesture of sympathy towards the young and poor Iranians who were challenging the mullahs’ regime in Tehran a week or so ago. In the end, however, Corbyn refused to criticize the mullahs because the US had expressed sympathy for the protesters.
As soon as the Iran issue is raised it is transformed into a club with which to beat the “Great Satan” or, in Corbyn’s lexicon, “imperialist bully”.
The second reason why the Iran debate is so fraught is that it has become linked to the bitter partisan divide in US politics.
For one side of the divide, the “Iran deal” must be buried solely because it was Obama’s baby. To the other side, the “deal” must be untouched as if it were sacred writ simply because Trump has promised to jettison it.
So, let us see if we can reflect on the “nuke deal” issue” with a minimum of clinical coldness.
To begin with let us do a bit of America-bashing and Trump-trampling to reassure the anti-American and anti-Trump constituencies.
Here it goes: America is the “earth-devouring Imperialist monster” that wants to swallow such nations as North Korea, Cuba and, of course, Iran under the Khomeinists.
Next, Donald Trump is an ignoramus predator challenging such choir boys as the Castro clan in Havana, the Kim tribe in Pyongyang, and the “Supreme Guide” clique in Tehran.
Having hopefully satisfied anti-Americans and Trump-haters, let us see what is going on with the “deal”.
To start with the “deal” isn’t legally binding because it was negotiated by the P5+1, an informal group with no legal existence, no mission statement and answerable to no one. They produced a press release, titled “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA) in 176 pages, in three different versions, which was neither signed by anyone nor approved by any legislative authority in any of the countries concerned.
In that press release Iran promised to do a number of things to make sure its nuclear project would not have a military dimension.
Iran has fulfilled some of those promises but quietly ignored others.
The result is that Iran’s nuclear program continues to have a potential military dimension. Iran continues to enrich and stockpile uranium that, because it is of a lower grade of just over 5 per cent, is useless for medical and industrial purposes. It is also unfit as fuel because Iran doesn’t have nuclear power stations. (Its one such station gets its fuel from Russia which built the plant.
The Iranian enriched uranium is of a different code from the fuel the Russian-built station needs).
The second reason is that Iran is developing two generations of medium and long-range missiles that, because they are fitted with small warheads, can only make military sense if they carry nuclear payloads.
The danger of Iran developing a nuclear arsenal remains. (That, of course, is Iran’s right if it so wishes. But the JCPOA assumes that Iran doesn’t want to become a nuclear power).
In exchange the P5+1, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, were supposed to do a number of things to ease sanctions imposed on Iran because of its violation of The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). They, too, have fulfilled part of those promises but not enough to make a significant difference as far as Iran is concerned.
Just as Iran cheated on JCPOA, the 5+1 cheated On Iran.
No sanction has been cancelled and Iran is allowed to spend only a fraction of its own frozen money with the permission of the P5+1. Because of the snap-back mechanism under which even temporarily lifted sanctions are instantly re-imposed, few people would want to invest in Iran.
The issue is not whether” the deal” is good or bad. It is that the Obama fudge hasn’t worked and is unlikely to work.
No point in turning the knife in the wound: The “deal” is bad for Iran, bad for the P5+1 and bad for the world.
The Iran nuclear problem needs to be addressed in an honest, serious, and generous, manner that would meet the legitimate demands of all sides.
That means it needs to be re-negotiated on a broader canvas. And this is what Trump, “the hateful-figure who attacks the mainstream media and uses foul language”, is proposing.
Even professional Trump-haters would find it hard to dismiss his suggestion that the “deal” is flawed and needs to be revisited.
But they must first learn to temper their hate.

How the US Ended Up Enthralled by Unions
Megan McArdle/Bloomberg/January 20/18
Take a look at the cost schedule for American government services, and you are likely to walk away boggled. Who are all these people working for the government? Why are they getting paid so much? And why does it seem to take so many of them to get anything done?
Look, for example, at the recent construction of the Second Avenue subway line in New York City, recently highlighted by the New York Times as “the most expensive mile of subway track on earth.” The employees singled out in that article do not work for the city, but they might as well; it is a collection of consultants, contractors and union laborers who work largely on government infrastructure projects.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that my father used to be the head of the trade association for the contractors who do this sort of work in New York City; my views were formed by this perspective. The current head of that association is interviewed in the Times article.
I have a slightly different perspective on why everything costs so much, which is that in New York, there is a collision of all the things that conspire to drive up costs. Other places may have eminent domain trouble, or politically influential labor unions, or somewhat challenging geography, or laws that let community groups delay work, or multiple layers of government and government review that pile up costs, or high costs of living that drive wages through the roof, or dysfunctional government bidding processes. … New York has all of these things in something close to their terminal form. It’s actually sort of a miracle that anything ever gets built there, or that it costs less than “all the money in the world, plus 50 cents.”
But as the Times notes, both the cost of labor and the amount of labor that’s used contribute a great deal to those bloated bottom lines. Why does Paris, with its feisty unions, manage to use fewer workers than New York City, and get jobs done for a fraction of the cost?
Because New York unions are politically connected, and for various reasons, the American government is particularly vulnerable to capture by these sorts of interests, especially as regional partisanship hardens. New York City is a one-party town in a very blue state; while New Yorkers may occasionally vote for a Republican mayor or a Republican governor, the down-ticket offices are filled in the Democratic primary. Those politicians have no interest in angering a large segment of their base that has a lot of cash for campaign contributions, and is well organized to turn out and influence elections. And the finance industry throws off such a vast river of cash that they can get away with bloated construction budgets. So no one has any incentive to crack down on wages or featherbedding.
There's a classic explanation of why collective bargaining is good: because employers have disproportionate economic power, and will therefore conspire to treat their workers unfairly. Collective bargaining levels the playing field, in theory. It organizes workers into a sort of corporation of their own, giving them enough countervailing power to get a fair deal from employers.
There are lots of ways to critique this model, but let’s leave that for another column. Instead let’s address a different question: What happens to that model when you transfer it to government operations?
It’s obvious where some problems might arise. For one thing, in the private sector, there is an effective limit to the value that unions can claim; they cannot demand deals that will raise the price of the goods they make or the services they provide so high that the market balks and the firm goes bankrupt. (Okay, well, they can demand those deals. Maybe they can even get those deals. But the deals will be short-lived and have little impact on anyone except the sadly unemployed workers and managers.)
But in the public sector, the employer is a monopolist on the services it provides. Faced with labor demands, the government may simply choose to raise prices (that is, taxes). This monopoly is not limitless; a town with a wild tax burden may soon lose its residents. And even if people don’t move, the city payroll will be disciplined by local incomes. The government cannot tax what the residents don’t have. Nonetheless, it’s easy to see how collective bargaining could drive the price of government services to far above the level a competitive market would set -- benefiting the workers but impoverishing the taxpayers, or alternately, making sure that those taxpayers get fewer, much more expensive government services.
There’s another aspect, especially in America: Those who work for the government can manipulate the political system. Now, they’re apt to try to do this whether or not they have collective bargaining: Government employees are an important constituency that politicians must consider even when they don’t belong to a union. But the union makes their lobbying more effective, because it organizes and disciplines those workers into an effective interest group, and because union dues finance more and more effective attempts to influence the political process.
So what we should expect to see in areas where government workers are unionized is that government services are either more costly, or lower quality, or both. Why lower quality? First, because if workers are paid more, government can afford fewer employees and fewer hours. Second, because while most of the debate in this country is over the effect of unions on wages, in fact, wages are only part of what unions agitate for. Unions, for example, like to make it very difficult to fire their workers, because job security is very valuable to workers, so they will push for rules and processes that protect even unproductive, incompetent or difficult workers.

A Coherent Arab Strategy Would Curb Iran’s Influence
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/January 20/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/61939
If the year 2017 started with relations between Iran and Arab countries in stormy mode, it ended with even darker clouds on the horizons. The background to this deteriorating relationship is an old mutual suspicion generated in 1979 when the mullahs seized power in Tehran. Since then the mullahs have claimed that Arab nations, regardless of their political divisions, are united in a desire to overthrow the Khomeinist regime in Tehran. They point to the 8-year war triggered in 1980 by the then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with the stated aim of regime change in Tehran. The fact that with the exception of Syria under Hafez al-Assad, all Arab governments and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) sided with Iraq, is often cited as “proof” of Arab hostility towards the new Iranian regime.
For their part, Arab states claim that deteriorating relations was caused by the Khomeinist regime’s behavior especially its publicly stated determination to “export” its ideology to all Muslims countries. As early as 1979, the new rulers of Tehran set up a special bureau in the Foreign Ministry “export revolution”, an aim stated in the Islamic Republic’s Constitution. They also created the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with the mission to crush the opponents of the regime at home and spread the Khomeinist ideology abroad, especially in the Middle East. Since 1980, the Islamic Republic has severed diplomatic ties with eight Arab states at different times and for different reasons. It has also been found guilty of promoting terrorist attacks in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. It has created militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen with the aim of using them as states within the state devoted to furthering Tehran’s objectives.
Tehran has also tried to exploit division which has always been a feature of inter-Arab relations. Oman and Qatar have been targeted for “Finlandization”, meaning the rejection of policies that might incur displeasure in Tehran. Kuwait has been wooed in the same direction with the claim that Iraq still harbors irredentist ambitions against it which only Iran is able to counter. Where those options are not available, Tehran has chosen other methods. In Iraq it has created paramilitary groups and poured vast sums buying loyalty from some Shi’ite political groups. In Syria, Iran had invested blood and treasure in keeping Bashar al-Assad in power and is now demanding that he legalize the Iranian-backed militias, including Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries, for permanent presence there. In Yemen, without Tehran’s backing, the Houthi faction might not have been able to maintain its hold on Sana’a and chunks of the coast on the Red Sea. In Lebanon, Tehran’s control exercised through “Hezbollah” and elements within other sects appears solid for the time being.
Over the years both sides (Iran and Arabs) have provided enough evidence to bestow some credibility on their respective claims. The end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 and Khomeini’s death the following year helped reduce tension with Arabs. Nevertheless, it soon became clear that there could be no lasting improvement in relations between the Islamic Republic in Tehran and the Arab nations. The reason is that the Khomeinist regime regards itself as the sole legitimate Islamic government in the world and is thus fundamentally different from all states in its region. In such a situation, either Iran must make the rest of the Middle East like itself or should itself become like the rest of the Middle East.
Every region in the world consists of states that regardless of variations in ideology, history and structure, together form a coherent patchwork. The presence of a state that upsets that coherence is an inevitable source of tension and instability. For example, you cannot have a state in the middle of Europe that rejects the legitimacy of all its neighbors and tries to overthrow their governments through propaganda, violence and even terrorism. A state that doesn’t fit into its regional patchwork is a kind of black sheep, often regarded as both a curiosity and a threat. A recent example is that of Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic. It didn’t fit the emerging patchwork in the Balkans, forcing the European powers, backed by the United States, to adopt a policy of regime change towards it. Other earlier examples closer to our region were the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein and the Taliban government in Afghanistan led by Mullah Muhammad Omar.
To be sure, war isn’t the only means of dealing with the ill-omened black sheep.
Regimes that do not fit could be overthrown with military coups as was the case in Chile under Salvatore Allende. Another method is change within the black sheep regime with one faction in the ruling elite getting rid of the troublesome elements and bringing the black sheep back in the flock. One example was Sudan which jettisoned the radical faction led by Hassan al-Turabi and adopted a profile acceptable to its region and the larger international atmosphere.
A mixture of tough economic and diplomatic sanctions combined with measures known as proximity pressure could also do the trick as recently seen in Zimbabwe. Yet another method provides a mixture of “popular uprising” and economic and diplomatic bribery to entice the black sheep to change as happened in Myanmar. Thus, without regime change in Iran, or regime change in all other Middle Eastern countries, from Turkey to Morocco and passing by Israel and Egypt, in favor of Iran, chances of genuine friendly relations between the Islamic Republic and its near and far neighbors appear slim. However, the only alternative to genuine friendship isn’t conflict or war.
One option is to give the Khomeinist regime a taste of its own medicine. This could be done by enabling the regime’s most violent opponents while fomenting instability across the country. It seems that the Trump administration in Washington is actively studying that option among several others. Another option is for the region could decide to “wait-out” the Khomeinist regime until it implodes under its inner contradictions, something that happened to the Soviet Union. Some analysts like the former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lamont, an active lobbyist for Tehran, believe that the ”waiting-out” approach could be combined with measures to draw the Khomeinist regime into international economic and trade networks. A related view, espoused by some analysts in Washington, is to forge links with the Iranian military which, like their counterparts everywhere, would like access to the latest weaponry and may be prepared to jettison ideology in exchange for inclusion in the international system.
Tehran has enjoyed two big advantages.
The first is that Arabs have not managed to work out a common strategy towards it, each trying to open a separate account with the Islamic Republic. The second advantage is that Tehran has successfully “managed” both the European Union and, until the end of the Obama presidency, even the United States. Obama truly went out of his way to help strengthen the Khomeinist regime. As for the European Union, it seems that its foreign policy spokesperson Federica Mogherini spends more time promoting Iran’s interests than looking after the interests of the union. Last month, during a visit to Myanmar, the Italian politician spent more time talking about the nuclear deal with Iran than seeking solace for the Rohingya Muslims.
Currently, Tehran’s chances of scoring further points against its neighbors appear slim. And, yet, it is unlikely that the mullahs will abandon their ambitions anytime soon. Lacking a coherent strategy, chances of the Arabs curbing Iran’s aggressive drive is equally slim. Neither side is in a position to seek a change in the status quo through heightened conflict, perhaps even including military action, or to start working for a new modus vivendi based on compromises through political and diplomatic channels. In other words, it is a stalemate, at least for the immediate future.

Young Afghans in Sweden
Bruce Bawer/ Gatestone Institute/January 20/2018
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11768/sweden-afghans-immigration
The Young in Sweden website describes the group's members by first begging for pity -- explaining how tough it is to be a refugee and how desperately these young people long to make a lasting home in Sweden and contribute to the country's future. It portrays them, in the American parlance, as "Dreamers."
But in a way familiar to observers of the Islamic incursion into the West, the plea for sympathy abruptly gives way to something more aggressive. The group issues a series of what it explicitly calls "demands."
It was reported that Muhammed Hussaini, an Afghan refugee who had participated in protests by Young in Sweden, had last August tried to murder a Stockholm policeman at one such event.
There exists an organization Sweden that goes by the name "Young in Sweden" ("Ung i Sverige"), which Radio Sweden has described as "one of the most notable protest movements in the country right now." It is not just any group of young people -- its members are from Afghanistan. According to its website, they fled "violence and persecution" in their homeland, only to find that they were "not welcome after all" in Sweden.
The Young in Sweden website describes the group's members by first begging for pity -- explaining how tough it is to be a refugee and how desperately these young people long to make a lasting home in Sweden and contribute to the country's future. It portrays them, in the American parlance, as "Dreamers."
But in a way familiar to observers of the Islamic incursion into the West, the plea for sympathy abruptly gives way to something more aggressive. The group issues a series of what it explicitly calls "demands." First, it demands that Sweden stop returning to Afghanistan those Afghans whose asylum requests have been rejected. Second, it demands a meeting with Mikael Ribbenvik, Secretary General of the Swedish Migration Agency. Third, it demands that politicians pass laws granting amnesty and residence permits to Afghan refugee claimants.
Pictured: The offices of the Swedish Migration Agency in Solna, Sweden. (Image source: I99pema/Wikimedia Commons)
To be sure, Young in Sweden does not just make demands. It holds illegal public protests, which have been marked by acts of vandalism and violence. It also arranges language courses. Swedish language courses for Afghans? No -- courses in Persian and Dari for native Swedes. The group's Facebook page describes these courses as an "integration project," explaining that as Afghans become part of Swedish society, Swedes need to "take responsibility to be a part of that society as well." Which is to say that if native-born Swedes wish to be full members of the new Swedish society, they must learn Persian and Dari.
The head of Young in Sweden is a young woman named Fatima Khawari, who lives with her mother and siblings in a block of government-owned flats that was built for retirees. In other words, they are yet another family of immigrants who have been given precedence in housing waiting-lists over Swedish pensioners. Khawari, born in Afghanistan and raised in Iran, was granted permanent Swedish residency at the Swedish Embassy in Tehran in December 2014, because her brother was already living in Sweden. Her family followed afterwards via what in the U.S. is quite properly called "chain migration".
There's one curious detail, though, in Khawari's personal history. Under Swedish law, only individuals under 18 years of age can be accorded residency on the grounds that they have siblings in Sweden. Khawari says that she was born in January 2000, which would have made her fourteen in December 2014. But many Swedes have observed that she seems considerably older. Was Khawari, in fact, over the legal age limit when she moved to Sweden? Journalist Egor Putilov came up with a brilliant way to find out: knowing that both Afghanistan and Iran use the Persian calendar, he asked her, during an interview last October, to state the year of her birth according to that calendar. She could not. "How can you forget your birthday?" he asked. "I can forget what I want!" she replied.
In October, at a demonstration against the return of rejected Afghan refugee-claimants to Afghanistan, a Swedish man dared to ask Khawari why she and her fellow refugees wanted to stay in Sweden instead of returning to their own country and helping to build it up. "I do not want to," Khawari replied with a laugh. When the man responded that she did not belong in Sweden while he did, Khawari retorted: "You belong nowhere." She added that while he was the face of hatred, she was the face of love, and had every bit as much right to be in Sweden as he did.
Unsurprisingly, the left-wing Swedish establishment has embraced Young in Sweden and Khawari. In October, the Left Party and its youth wing, the Young Left, awarded Young in Sweden their Anita D'Orazio Prize, which includes a cash sum of 10,000 kronor (approximately USD $1,500). On January 15, Khawari herself won the Martin Luther King Award from the Swedish Christian Council, an umbrella group that includes virtually all of the Christian denominations and Christian organizations in Sweden, including the Church of Sweden, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, Catholic Pentecostalists, the Christian Peace Movement, and the Swedish Christian Council. Khawari accepted the prize, which includes 25,000 kronor (USD $3,100) in cash, at a ceremony held in a Stockholm church.
Only a few days before the latter prize was presented, it was reported that Muhammed Hussaini, an Afghan refugee who had participated in protests by Young in Sweden and who, last August, had tried to murder a Stockholm policeman at one such event, was an acquaintance of Khawari, and that she had, in fact, arranged for his legal representation. Asked about this ticklish detail, Karin Viborn, head of the Swedish Christian Council, described the murder attempt as an "accident." Viborn also defended Young in Sweden's illegal public protests as acts of civil disobedience ("if you're changing the world, you sometimes have to break rules"), and dismissed concerns that members of Young in Sweden had committed crimes and acts of violence that a Christian group should perhaps not be rewarding.
As for the Left Party's prize to Young in Sweden, Tomas Brandberg of the Samtiden website speculated in October that Young in Sweden, far from being, as it professes to be, a grassroots movement run by Afghan youth, is in fact a covert project of the Left Party. He noted that the group's website is professionally produced and contains references to issues about which one would not expect recent arrivals from Afghanistan to know or care.
Every young Afghan refugee costs Sweden's taxpayers a million kroner (USD $125,000) a year. When Putilov asked Khawari how she felt about all that money being diverted from healthcare and other services, causing people to die of cancer because of ever-lengthening waiting times for life-saving surgery, she cut off the interview, saying she had no further time to answer questions.
One last fact about Khawari: she has said that her goal is to become Prime Minister of Sweden. Given the way in which the leftist establishment has embraced her, it hardly seems a pipe dream.
*Bruce Bawer is the author of the new novel The Alhambra (Swamp Fox Editions). His book While Europe Slept (2006) was a New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.
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Spend a dollar, save a life
ABDULRAHMAN AL-RASHED/Arab News/January 20/2018
Twelve Syrian refugees whose bodies were found near the Lebanese border, their lives claimed by the freezing cold, are only a few among hundreds who die without anyone knowing about them.
Murderers of the Syrian people include the weather, hunger, homelessness, and looting, as well as the Russians, Iranians, Assad’s forces, Daesh, and Jabhat Al-Nusra. Those who have not had their houses demolished around them, did not suffocate, and were not killed deliberately in the war may die in camps or on their escape routes out of the country.
That we are unable to stand up to the forces of evil killing the Syrian people every day does not mean we should not rescue refugees, which is at the heart of our responsibility to them. It is our duty to help millions of Syrians who are suffering tragic conditions in camps and shelters, especially in this harsh weather. Thousands of refugees are enduring mud, rain, and snow in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and inside Syria itself.
It was not enough for terrorist groups to hijack the Syrian revolution, but they also abused charitable activities and exploited charity groups, forcing many institutions to discontinue their charity work, adding to the refugees’ suffering.
Our societies are fond of charity work and helping those in need, and it is necessary to revive this spirit of volunteering through charities governed by transparency and accountability so as to let everyone know where their money is going and how it was spent.
During the civil war in Syria, preceded by the wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and others, charity work became an object of suspicion for international security services, especially when there was terrorist infiltration and the involvement of suspicious organizations.
The tragic and avoidable deaths of Syrian refugees remind us of our common humanity, and our obligations to those who are suffering.
Many charities were forced to discontinue their work because of harassment, and governments have restricted many fundraising activities so that no one abuses them. Unfortunately, this has negatively affected the helpless refugees. All they can do now is wait for aid provided by international organizations, which are overwhelmed by the large numbers of refugees and the sheer scale of the crisis zones.
Delivering food, clothing, tents and medical aid to refugee centers is a difficult task. This aid is coveted by governments. Some of the region’s governments — or individuals in these governments — exploit aids and the refugees’ needs. This has caused international organizations to suffer the abuse of some powerful people in the governments of host or transit countries.
It is sad to witness how some of the region’s states are justifying their idleness by blaming one another in order to avoid the responsibility of helping afflicted people.
Not only is volunteering and donating part of our values and morals, but they are also part of the network of social and humanitarian solidarity that protects the region’s countries from the worst that could happen in the future. Wars and tragedies are a constant threat to the whole region, so reviving these good practices is a guarantee for everyone, including those who are enjoying prosperity today.
The people of Syria, Yemen and other countries plagued by wars suffer harsh conditions every day, and their lives depend on what international and regional organizations and philanthropists give them. Everyone who works in the charity sector deserves our appreciation for their continuous support and help for refugees. Most of them are volunteers who come from around the world and may not have anything in common with those to whom they provide aid, except humanity.
It pains us to hear of those who die of starvation or cold, and we feel as if we contributed to their tragedies because we could have helped them. We are not helpless, and a dollar is enough to help a refugee survive for a day.
Collective action, volunteering and charitable activities are a sign of civilization and development. When we succeed in relief and humanitarian work, we can be confident that our nation is progressing and is on the right path.
• Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran columnist. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya news channel, and former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat.
Twitter: @aalrashed