LCCC
ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
July 15/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias
Bejjani
The Bulletin's Link on the
lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/newselias18/english.july15.18.htm
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Bible
Quotations
I will
prepare a place for you and then come back to take you to be with me
John 14/01-06: ""‘Do not let your hearts be
troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are
many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to
prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will
come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be
also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to
him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the
way?’Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me."
Titles For The Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from
miscellaneous sources published on July 14-15/18
Lebanon and ‘the reconstruction of Syria/Hazem al-Amin/Al Arabiya/July 14/18
Songs of victory by the so-called ‘Resistance’ atop Syrian corpses/Al
Arabiya/July 14/18
Massive Syrian-Hizballah Golan war preparations tie IDF down from reining in
Gaza terror/DEBKAfile/July 14/18
A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Britain: June 2018/Soeren Kern/Gatestone
Institute/July 14, 2018
Three Reasons Why Trump May End the ‘Forever War/Hal Brands/Bloomberg/July
14/18
Syria’s uprooted adapt to coexisting on the margins/AP/14 July 2018
Three long years of Iranian isolation/Camelia Entekhabifard/Arab News/July
14/18
A united NATO is in America’s interests/Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/July 14/18
EU becomes center of Iran’s terrorist operations/Hamid Bahrami/Al Arabiya/July
14/18
Religious TV channels: The Shirazi family’s path to influence/Hassan Al
Mustafa/Al Arabiya/July 14/18
Positive outcomes after exposure of violations in Iraqi elections/Adnan
Hussein/Al Arabiya/July 14/18
Titles For The
Latest LCCC Lebanese Related News published on July 14-15/18
Kuwaiti Speaker Denies Travel Ban to Lebanon
Report: High Public Debt Prevents Lebanon Economic Growth
Aoun Calls on Lebanese to Help Fight Corruption
Report: Arslan Rejects Exclusion from Cabinet
Hasbani: Presidency, Premiership Battle for Power Behind Delay in Cabinet
Formation
Yemen Rebel Chief Praises Hizbullah, Iran
Lebanon and ‘the reconstruction of Syria’
Songs of victory by the so-called ‘Resistance’ atop Syrian corpses
Massive Syrian-Hizballah Golan war preparations tie IDF down from reining in
Gaza terror
Titles For The Latest LCCC
Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on July 14-15/18
Israel Strikes Gaza, ‘Hamas’ Responds with Rocket Fire
Queen Elizabeth to Sheikh al-Azhar: The World is Counting on Religious
Leaderships
Positive Atmosphere Surrounds Hamas Talks in Cairo
Iraq: Sistani Backs Basra Protests as Abadi Calls for Calm
Tight Security ahead of Trump-Putin Meeting in Helsinki
Israeli Air Strikes Hit Gaza after Bloody Border Protests
Sharif in Custody as 132 Die in Pakistan Election Violence
The Latest LCCC Lebanese Related News published on July 14-15/18
Kuwaiti Speaker Denies
Travel Ban to Lebanon
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 14 July, 2018/Speaker of the Kuwaiti
National Assembly Marzouq Al-Ghanim said on Friday that there has never been
a travel ban for Kuwaiti citizens to Lebanon, in reply to a question on when
the warning to Gulf nationals to travel to the country would be lifted.
"There are 14 or 15 fully booked flights between Kuwait and Lebanon on a
daily basis," the Speaker said, noting that additional flights are needed to
accommodate the number of passengers. On Friday, Ghanim visited Lebanese
President Michel Aoun, who hailed the deeply rooted Lebanese-Kuwaiti
relations. “The constant interest shown by the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah
Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, in Lebanon and the Lebanese, reflects Kuwait's
keenness to support Lebanon in regional and international forums and work to
maintain its stability, security and economy," the president said. Aoun
brought to attention the stances made by the Kuwaiti Speaker during
Lebanon’s past crises, especially when he chaired the Arab Tripartite
Commission, which had been tasked by the Arab Summit to find solutions to
the situation prevailing in Lebanon at the time. On Syrian refugees and
Lebanon's position calling for their safe return to Syria, Aoun pointed out
the repeated calls to the international community to help facilitate such a
return. For his part, Ghanim underlined Kuwait's continued support for
Lebanon in various fields, stressing the "brotherly and friendly" relations
between the Kuwaiti and Lebanese peoples. The visiting official also met
Friday with Speaker Nabih Berri, and he wished Lebanon stability and peace,
hoping that the new government would be formed soon. Furthermore, Ghanim
held talks with PM-designate Saad Hariri. “I believe in the wisdom of Prime
Minister Hariri and His Highness the Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber
Al-Mubarak and their ability to find the best form of cooperation to meet
the economic challenges,” he said after the meeting.
Report: High Public Debt Prevents Lebanon Economic
Growth
Naharnet/July 14/18/An economic and financial reference
called on Lebanon’s government to take into consideration the recent
statement issued by the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), urging Lebanese officials to recognize the threats endangering the
country as the result of its “slow” economic growth, al-Joumhouria daily
reported on Saturday. The IMF statement has stressed that Lebanon needs
immediate financial control to improve its capacity to serve the high public
debt, which was over 150 percent of GDP at the end of 2017. “This requires
Lebanon to take necessary and immediate action to put an end to this
decline,” the reference told the daily. In light of that “decline, we can
not talk about any economic growth,” said the economic reference who spoke
on condition of anonymity. The IMF pointed out in its June report that
“traditional drivers of growth in Lebanon are subdued with real estate and
construction weak and a strong rebound is unlikely soon.” “It is unlikely
that any recovery will be near without necessary urgent initiatives,” added
the source.
Aoun Calls on Lebanese to Help Fight Corruption
Naharnet/July 14/18/President Michel Aoun on Saturday has called on the
Lebanese people to cooperate with the State in its fight against corruption.
“The Lebanese are invited to help the country in combating corruption
because there is no possibility of achieving reform in a society whose
people do not cooperate with its state in the face against corruption,” the
Presidency said on Twitter.
Report: Arslan Rejects Exclusion from Cabinet
Lebanese Democratic Party leader MP Talal Arslan reportedly rejected his
exclusion from the new government, to be lined up by the premier, with
sources saying that PSP leader Walid Jumblat’s “monopolization of the Druze
community’s representation is dangerous,” al-Joumhouria daily reported on
Saturday. According to information obtained by the daily, Arslan has
“categorically rejected” his elimination, and insists on being “personally
represented.”“Based on the results of the parliamentary elections at the
Druze arena, it is normal for Arslan to be represented. Jumblat’s attempt to
monopolize the Druze representation is dangerous. It would leave negative
and dangerous results,” party sources told the daily. Jumblat insists to
allocate the whole three Druze Cabinet seats to his Progressive Socialist
Party. Arslan, of the Strong Lebanon bloc and Jumblat’s rival Druze figure,
also wants a share. The sources said that “Jumblat rejects the real
partnership in the Druze community, in order to maintain his hegemony on the
mountain and its political decision.”The so-called Druze obstacle is one of
the problems delaying the Cabinet formation. Differences between the
Lebanese Forces and Free Patriotic Movement over portfolios one one hand,
and the representation of Sunni opposition figures have also hampered the
lineup.
Hasbani: Presidency, Premiership Battle for Power
Behind Delay in Cabinet Formation
Naharnet/July 14/18/Caretaker Deputy Prime Minister, Public Health Minister
Ghassan Hasbani considered the obstacles delaying the formation of the new
Cabinet denote a "battle of powers" between the Presidency and Premiership,
the National News Agency reported on Saturday. “Although the government
formation is an internal matter, but it is affected to a certain extend by
foreign developments. The key obstacle in the formation is the conflict over
powers between the presidency and premiership. The battle is not over the
allocation of portfolios to a particular party,” added Hasbani. Hasbani
stressed on the essential role of the Prime Minister-designate in this
respect. He said the problem today is that a certain political party wants
to have a big share in the Cabinet “which undermines the essence and
prerogatives of the cabinet formation.”“The decision now is in the hands of
the PM-designate," Saad Hariri, Hasbani went on. “He is dealing with the
various parties in an equal manner to reach a homogeneous government that
enjoys a genuine partnership, and one that can restore stability to Lebanon
and neutralize regional conflicts."
Yemen Rebel Chief Praises Hizbullah, Iran
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/July 14/18/Yemen's rebel chief
on Friday praised Iran and its ally Hizbullah, singling out the Lebanese
group's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah for his "solidarity."But Abdulmalik
al-Huthi, whose fighters are battling Yemen's Saudi-backed government, again
denied accusations of receiving smuggled weapons from Iran. In a speech
broadcast on the rebels' Al Masirah TV, Huthi praised "the glory and dignity
of Iran" and thanked Nasrallah for "solidarity with the people of Yemen from
his position of greatness."While Iran acknowledges support for the Huthis'
cause, it denies arming the rebels. Saudi Arabia has also accused Hizbullah
of sending its fighters into Yemen. The party has denied the accusations.
"The U.S., Saudi Arabia and the UAE know that talk of rockets entering Yemen
from Iran through the Hodeida port are completely false," Huthi said via
video link from an undisclosed location. Yemen's government, backed by the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and their regional allies, is battling
the Huthis for control of the impoverished country. The conflict is now
centered on the Red Sea city of Hodeida, home to the country's most valuable
port and controlled by the Huthis. The United Nations, which recognizes the
government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, is pushing for a truce
between rival parties to avoid further civilian suffering in a country
teetering on the brink of famine. Huthi, who does not appear in
public, said he had agreed to grant the U.N. "supporting logistical and
technical role" in Hodeida, accusing the Saudi-led coalition of rejecting
the offer.
Lebanon and ‘the
reconstruction of Syria’
حازم الأمين: لبنان وإعادة إعمار «سورية الأسد»
Hazem al-Amin/Al Arabiya/July 14/18
There is flagrant Lebanese insolence in terms of relations with Syria and
Syrians. There is this sentiment that reaches the extent of suffocation by
the large number of Syrian refugees while at the same time, there is a
growing desire for “reconstructing Syria” as it offers great investment
opportunities. There are calls to dump Syrian refugees beyond borders and at
the same time there are demands to establish a “free trade zone” at the
borders to help Lebanese businessmen who aspire to go to Damascus for
negotiating “reconstruction” contracts.
Self-serving businessmen
In fact, those calling for dumping refugees beyond the border are the same
ones who aspire to invest in “Assad’s Syria.” The emerging segments of the
“businessmen”’ of the corrupt Lebanese system who have taken parts of
Lebanese shores, destroyed heritage buildings in Beirut and established
companies that benefit from close relations with officials are the same ones
who aspire to have a share in the “reconstruction of Syria.” In fact, they
are also the ones who own or fund the racist media discourse against the
refugees.
Many Lebanese banks have started looking for “Syrian partners” to carry out
activities for funding “the reconstruction of Syria” projects. Heads of
construction companies, hotels and even schools have started visiting
Damascus. “Reconstructing Syria would bring Lebanese business out of
recession.” This statement is repeated by almost every businessman we meet
in Beirut! Those who know who are the “the businessmen of the powerful
republic” would no doubt remember their moral contradiction represented in
the investment ambitions and their racism against Syrian people as reflected
via their demands to dump the refugees beyond borders.
Lebanese businessmen seeking share in the “reconstruction of Syria” are the
ones funding racist discourse in media against Syrian refugees.
It might be unrealistic and illogical to ask the Lebanese to be consistent
when talking about Syria and Syrians but flagrantly adopting this
contradictory discourse is also provocative. Today, everyone is focused on
the “reconstruction of Syria.” Lebanese expats are no longer a source of
revenue for the economy and tourism, since Hezbollah has taken control of
the country, and the economy and tourism’s source of income is now limited
to the Lebanese inside the country. Meanwhile, most oil and gas field
projects have been deferred.
Crony capitalism
Thus “reconstructing Syria” is the only option left for businesses, but it
too comes with conditions such as having ties with authorities both in
Lebanon and Syria, along with what lies in between relations among “trading
families” like Makhlouf, Bassil, Gomaa and Arab and what links these
families in terms of familial ties. These relations always end up with being
linked to the head of power in both countries.
Authority in our countries is based on corruption. Wars end in corruption
and elections are just one more thing that reflects the appetite of the
corrupt. Settlements are made out of greed as they want a share in the
spoils of war. The obnoxious racism which has for long emerged from
nationalistic and criminal tendencies is accompanied with a corrupt and
elusive mood in our case. Deals follow the crime, and in many cases, deals
are what trigger the crime.
We practice racism against refugees and make deals to trade with their
rights. We steal the donations sent to them and want to send them back to
the war in their country. Then we go to their country even before them to
establish a free market zone on the borders. We await their arrival to
“reconstruct their country” in the same way we have reconstructed ours.
We are waiting for them with the same aspiration we had while waiting “the
return of the displaced” to our country! Do you remember “the return of the
displaced” to Lebanon? Do you remember Wadi al-Zahab (Valley of Gold)? The
corrupt returns of this latter project were the basis of a capital on which
the revenues gained by those in power accumulated for three decades.
The same people are going to “reconstruct” Syria. New Syrian intelligence
officers will be waiting for them there since most of the old team of
officers who sponsored the “reconstruction of Lebanon” has been eliminated.
Songs of victory by the so-called ‘Resistance’ atop
Syrian corpses
علي الأمين: "الممانعة" وأناشيد الانتصار فوق جماجم السوريين
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/65933/%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%B9%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A3%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B4%D9%8A%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%AA%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%B1/
Ali Al-Amin/Al Arabiya/July 14/18
The most important victory claimed by the “Axis of Resistance” in Syria is
keeping President Bashar al-Assad as head of the regime as well as the
victory against what they call “terrorism,” in reference to those who
rebelled against the Assad regime and those who defected from the army. This
is in addition to groups that the United Nations classifies as terrorist
organizations.
In the coming days we will come to know how the real terrorist entities came
into being and grew, and how, at the lowest level, they served as a flexible
tool for the Assad regime and its allies to serve their agenda and demands,
especially in becoming a convenient excuse for eliminating the entire Syrian
opposition in many areas under its control.
No matter how much violence these terrorist organizations perpetrated, they
cannot eclipse the horrors and terror of the Syrian regime and cannot offset
the number of the civilians killed and displaced by the regime.
Victory here means the survival of Assad and his regime, with the power of
Russian interference against the Syrian people from Aleppo to Damascus
suburbs and along other Syrian territories. The proponents of the Resistance
applauded the endurance of the Assad regime and its continuous killings.
They proudly called Russian President Vladimir Putin “Abu Ali Putin,”
overlooking the deep agreements between Russia and Israel.
They did even not view Israeli air raids on some Iranian sites or sites of
militias affiliated with Iran as a Russian collusion with Israel. They were
not provoked by the Israeli-Russian understandings regarding the
organization of the Russian and Israeli air traffic in the Syrian airspace.
Instead, the Resistance carries on with its cheap tune of taking the road
from Aleppo, Homs, Darya, Palmyra and other cities and towns of Syria to
Jerusalem.
Genocide against one’s population
This so-called victory means that Assad will continue being the head of the
regime. Cities were ruined by the Resistance’s weapons, barrels and
missiles, whether those launched by the Russian pilots, or those that were
said to be destined for Jerusalem. This “Resistance,” however, has exposed
its bloody and fatal reality to the Syrians. This Iranian generosity is only
reserved for the Syrians as Iran’s rockets did not fall on any Israeli
settlement and Israeli blood did not even flow in Iranian hymns.
The only victory achieved by the ‘Resistance’ axis is keeping Assad in power
This so-called victory is the victory of a model that mastered the use of
barrel bombs like none before it and that used chemical weapons. If it had a
nuclear weapon, it wouldn’t have hesitated to use it against its people and
not against Israel. This model is so well known that it has set an example
to the capability of a ruling regime to delve into killing, torturing and
suppressing prisoners to the extent that when the latter are released, they
suffer from mental, psychological and physical problems.
The victor is the Resistance as represented by the term “Syria of Assad,” –
a slogan that has stuck its fangs deep into the conscience of Syrians for
decades and which still tears up their soul non-stop. This model is what won
as the “Resistance” parties boast and say. The values and morals of the
Resistance in governing people won. The Assad model, which has sent every
strategic message of friendship to Israel, has won. Naturally, the latter is
only interested in its strategic interests as its interests in Syria are
only related to its security.
The party that can easily kill hundreds of thousands of its people has no
problem in giving Israel whatever it wants as long as it can finish
tightening its grip on the Syrian people. The proponents of the so-called
“Road to Jerusalem,” which was used as a pretext for committing the most
horrifying crimes, are bowing their heads against the interest of the enemy
and selling off half of the Syrian people in exchange for the survival of
Assad, participating in the displacement of millions, always under the
slogan of the “road of Jerusalem.”
Hideous deals with Israel
The Resistance has finally achieved what it wanted with Assad staying in
power. In fact, this is the most important victory achieved by the “Axis of
Resistance.” Assad has stayed and the road to Jerusalem was closed. The road
towards either Jerusalem or Golan is closed because of reforms in the
pillars of the Syrian throne. The weapons of so-called Resistance will cut
the hands of whoever reaches out for the Golan.
The Resistance that shed Syrian blood won’t dare today, even in the media,
to confront the Israeli measures related to its security conditions through
tens of kilometers of its northern border. Furthermore, there is an implicit
coordination at least through Russia and other countries to give guarantees
that the interests of Israel will not be harmed. The Resistance missiles are
still pointed at Syrian cities and against the opponents of Assad, whether
they are civilians or military. As for the Israelis, they are just a
pretense used to complete a mission that won’t affect or harm them.
The Resistance model has won. Its morals and tyrannical example has won. Its
missiles against those demanding freedom and dignified life and its
destructive project have emerged victorious.
As for Palestine and the yarns of liberating it and emancipating Jerusalem
from occupation, it is a story believed only by few. But today, after what
has been done by the Resistance against the Syrians, I am certain that the
best gift received by Israel is the Syrian ‘Nakba,’ which trumps the
Palestinian ‘Nakba’ to the point that many Syrians wish that their regime
and its prisons where they suffered death and misery were like Israeli
occupation of Palestine and like Israeli prisons where the Palestinian
revolutionaries were held. Assad’s gift to Benjamin Netanyahu is not only
the Golan Heights, but the model of Resistance with its Assad and Soleimani
identities.
Massive Syrian-Hizballah
Golan war preparations tie IDF down from reining in Gaza terror
موقع دبكي الإسرائيلي: الإستعدادات الحربية الكبيرة لحزب الله وسوريا استعداداً
للحرب في الجولان لجمت رد إسرائيل على العمليات الإرهابية في غزة
DEBKAfile/July 14/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/66040/debkafile-massive-syrian-hizballah-golan-war-preparations-tie-idf-down-from-reining-in-gaza-terror-%d9%85%d9%88%d9%82%d8%b9-%d8%af%d8%a8%d9%83%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a5%d8%b3%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%a6%d9%8a/
“The countdown has started for the battle
of Quneitra,” Syrian and Iranian propaganda machines trumpeted on Friday,
July 13.
Since Thursday, DEBKAfile reports, troops have been pouring out of Daraa
towards the Quneitra region opposite Israel’s Golan border. They consist of
the Syrian army and National Defense Forces (NDF) which are composed of
Hizballah and Iraqi and Afghan Shiite militias commanded by Revolutionary
Guards officers.
On Friday, Syrian air defense units in Quneitra and Damascus were placed on
war alert against potential Israeli aerial bombardment. Friday night, Hamas
shot 31 rockets into Israel amid two Israeli Air Force strikes in Gaza
Another straw in the winds of war came on Friday from Ali Akbar Velayati,
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s adviser on external affairs.
After meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, he said: “We will
immediately leave if the Iraqi and Syrian governments want it, not because
of Israel’s and American pressure.” Tehran has therefore welded together its
Syrian and Iraqi policies and made them interdependent. He went on to say:
“We will counter the Americans powerfully… We will help Syria counter…US
aggression. If the US does not want to leave our region, we will force it to
do that. For the Iranian regime. the US and Israel are interchangeable.”
Velayati’s words are significant in three respects:
Since Iraqi militias are fighting with the Syrian army in the southwestern
province of Daraa – and are scheduled to move with them on to the Quneitra
region – a decision to oust Iran and its proxies from Syria rests not only
with Damascus and Tehran, but also with Baghdad.
By this step, Iran has blocked projected deals for the removal of the
Iranian military and proxy presence from Syria that Presidents Donald Trump
and Vladimir Putin may seek to transact at their Helsinki summit on July 16.
Israel faces an increasingly heavy price for failing to disrupt Hizballah’s
insertion in the Syrian war in 2013.This action opened the door to Iran. The
price was compounded when the Netanyahu government refrained from preventing
the influx of Iraqi Shiite militias for boosting Syrian and Iranian military
strength in Syria. The IDF will have to take on this powerful force in
Quneitra to hold it back from the Golan border.
All these moves portend the launching of the Quneitra offensive in the next
48 hours – before or during the Trump-Putin summit. Syrian, Iranian and
Hizballah leaders will not hang around and wait for its outcome like Israel.
As a result of the Israeli government’s passive stance, the IDF is facing
active warfare on two major fronts, the Golan and the Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman
committed a disastrous mistake when they did not resist Hamas’ latest
bomb-for-bomb ultimatum. This gave the Palestinian terrorists parity with
the IDF and the freedom to call the shots on whether the Israeli communities
living next door live in peace. The Hamas example has given Iran, Syria and
Hizballah ideas about how to dictate the terms of war in Quneitra. Israeli
leaders have maintained that their hands are tied for crushing the Hamas
terror machine operating out of the Gaza Strip by the more substantial
threat from the north. By this inaction, they have condemned the IDF to
fight on two simultaneous fronts.
The Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News
published
on July 14-15/18
Israel Strikes Gaza,
‘Hamas’ Responds with Rocket Fire
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 14 July, 2018/The Israeli military
struck several “Hamas” sites in the Gaza Strip early Saturday after which
the group fired rockets and mortars toward Israel. There were no reports of
casualties on either side but the exchange threatened to spark a further
conflagration after weeks of tensions along the volatile border. The
military said its jets targeted two "Hamas" tunnels as well as other
compounds. Even as the airstrikes were being carried out, the military said
rockets began being fired toward Israel. It said six of them were
intercepted by the Iron Dome aerial defense system. No injuries or damage
were reported but warning sirens wailed in border communities for much of
the night. In a relatively rare admission, “Hamas” said it fired the rockets
to deter Israel from further action. Most of the recent rockets from Gaza
have been fired by smaller factions. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said it
was an "immediate response" that was meant to "deliver the message."On
Friday, thousands of Palestinians gathered near the Gaza border for their
near-weekly protest. A 15-year-old Palestinian who tried to climb over the
fence into Israel was shot dead. Later the military said an Israeli officer
was moderately wounded by a grenade thrown at him.
Queen Elizabeth to
Sheikh al-Azhar: The World is Counting on Religious Leaderships
Cairo - Walid Abdul Rahman/Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 14 July, 2018/Britain’s
Queen Elizabeth received at Windsor Castle on Thursday al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed
al-Tayeb, who was making his second visit to the Kingdom. She stressed to
the cleric that the world is “counting on religious leaderships to bolster
world stability and peace.” She also hailed the growing ties between al-Azhar
and the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Justin Welby. For his part, Tayeb
stressed that al-Azhar greatly values the close ties it enjoys with the
archbishopric, which he said is an example of coordination between various
religious and cultural leaderships. He stressed that al-Azhar’s seeks
dialogue and communication with all sides in order to cement the values of
coexistence and tolerance. He was in London to take part in the “Youth Forum
Peacemakers” that is organized by al-Azhar and the Archbishopric of
Canterbury. Tayeb is residing at the archbishop’s Lambeth Palace during his
stay in Britain. The forum is part of a series of dialogues between eastern
and western scholars. The initiative was launched by al-Azhar years ago in
order to bridge divides and launch cooperation between the two sides. The
“Youth Forum Peacemakers” is being led by a number of youths in order to
coordinate efforts and unify stances on modern issues, such as citizenship,
peace and combating extremist thought. The forum will witness an open
dialogue between youths and religious leaders, including Tayeb and Welby.
Positive Atmosphere Surrounds Hamas Talks in Cairo
Hamas logo/Asharq Al-Awsat/Anadolu Agency/Cairo - Sawsan Abu
Hussein/Saturday, 14 July, 2018/A Hamas delegation visiting Cairo this week
said a positive climate surrounded “comprehensive and constructive talks”
over the reconciliation between the Palestinian factions, political
developments of the Palestinian cause and the humanitarian situation in the
Gaza Strip. A Hamas delegation led by Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of the
movement’s political bureau and other group officials including Mosa Abo
Marzok, Khalil Al-Hayya, Hossam Badran, Ezzat Al-Rishq and Rohi Mushtaha,
concluded Friday a new round of talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas
Kamel in Cairo. The delegation’s four-day meetings discussed Egypt’s support
for measures aimed at easing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Palestinian
reconciliation.
A statement issued by the delegation on Friday said the Hamas round of talks
involved mechanisms to unite the Palestinian rank. Senior Hamas official
Mosa Abo Marzuk described the Cairo round of talks as "the most important
and comprehensive in terms of topics discussed." Asharq Al-Awsat learned on
Friday that the Hamas delegation expressed its hope to achieve
reconciliation and Palestinian national unity on a basis of partnership in
resistance and decision-making, adding that the best means for achieving
unity includes immediately lifting sanctions imposed by the Palestinian
Authority on Hamas. The delegation reiterated their hopes for reassembling
the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) through a new national unity
council according to the outcomes of the meeting of Palestinian factions in
Beirut in 2017, as well as a full and comprehensive execution of Cairo’s
2011 agreement between the factions without any redaction or selectivity. An
Egyptian source informed about the Palestinian reconciliation file said “a
positive, brotherly and frank atmosphere prevailed at the meeting in Cairo.”
The source praised the firm position of Egypt in supporting the rights of
the Palestinian people, mainly their right of return and establishing an
independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Iraq: Sistani Backs Basra Protests as Abadi Calls for Calm
Baghdad - Hamza Mustafa/Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 14 July, 2018/Iraq's top
Shiite authority voiced on Friday support for popular protests that have
been raging in the southern Basra region for a week. Representative of Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Abdel Mahdi al-Karbalai said: "It is not fair and
it is never acceptable that this generous province is one of the most
miserable areas in Iraq.” He urged the "federal and local government to deal
seriously with the demands of citizens", while also calling on demonstrators
to refrain from violence. “Had officials properly invested finances and
expertise away from petty calculations and stood against corruption, we
would not be witnessing such tragic circumstances today,” he added. Iraqi
Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi’s office, meanwhile, said that he had held a
series of meetings with the local government in Basra and with security
leaderships there as soon as he returned to the country. He flew straight
into the southern city from Brussels where he attended a NATO summit to
discuss the ISIS terrorist group, and immediately held talks with officials.
Hundreds of people holding Iraqi flags gathered outside the regional
headquarters in Basra city center Friday, with security forces including
riot police deployed heavily. The demonstrators have been protesting over
unemployment, rising living costs and a lack of basic services in the city.
Abadi in Basra ordered local officials to sort out "the legal status" of
security guards employed by the interior ministry at oil facilities, his
office said. These guards receive no benefits and work without contracts
unlike their peers at the interior ministry. At a later meeting with local
tribal leaders Abadi pledged to "spend the necessary funds for Basra,
including on services and reconstruction", a source close to the prime
minister told AFP. "People are hungry, there is no water, no electricity,"
protester Abdullah Khaled, 29, told AFP. Protests spread northwards as well
to other regions Friday as demonstrators took to the streets in the Dhi Qar,
Maysan and Najaf provinces. An AFP journalist reported several protesters
were injured as dozens forced their way into the waiting room at the airport
serving the holy city of Najaf despite a heavy police presence. Several
civilians and policemen were also injured in clashes around the governor's
home in the city of Nasiriyah, a medical source said. Media aide at the oil
ministry Assem Jihad, meanwhile, told Asharq Al-Awsat: “Oil exports from the
south have not been affected by the protests.” He revealed that a crisis
cell of concerned ministers and officials, headed by Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi
has agreed on a series of procedures in order to find a solution the
situation. An informed source later told Asharq Al-Awsat that Iraq has been
affected by the US sanctions imposed against Iran. He explained that the
sanctions have prevented the country from paying back debts piled up from
energy loans and worth some $100 million. In addition, he warned that
operation in the gas pipeline from Iran to Iraq may come to a halt soon if
Baghdad does not pay its dues to Tehran.
Tight Security ahead of Trump-Putin Meeting in Helsinki
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/July 14/18/Finland may have largely shut down
for the summer holidays but officials and police have been drafted back into
work ahead of a historic summit in Helsinki between Donald Trump and
Vladimir Putin. Thousands of police officers, coastguards and rescue workers
who were on vacation have been asked to return, with demonstrators expected
to loudly protest the US-Russian presidential meeting -- although on a
smaller scale than the huge anti-Trump demonstrations in London earlier this
week. As tourists wander through the sunshine-filled streets, US secret
service agents in obligatory dark shades have occasionally been glimpsed
appearing to conduct security checks, as have Russian security personal.
Announced at the end of last month, the Trump-Putin summit is the largest
event of its kind in the Finnish capital since former US President Bill
Clinton and Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin met in 1994. Many Finns told
AFP they were excited the city was hosting the meeting, pleased the country
of 5.5 million people will likely be the centre of world attention for at
least a few hours on Monday. Finnish authorities have had to rush to ensure
logistics and security are ready on time. The government on Friday announced
it would reintroduce controls for travellers from the Schengen zone, 26
countries which are part of the European free movement area, to "identify
people posing risks" during the summit.
Activists will be exempt "as long as they will not pose a threat to public
safety and security and do not appear on certain registers and analyses,"
said deputy head of the Finnish Border Guard Kimmo Elomaa. The measures were
in place on Friday afternoon, according to an AFP correspondent at Helsinki
Airport. "We had only a couple of weeks (to prepare) and it is in the middle
of summer... so you can imagine!," Elomaa said. Nearly 2,000 journalists are
due to arrive in the country and, to keep stress-levels down, organisers
have installed a sauna in the press centre.
- 'Helsinki calling!'-More than a dozen demonstrations are planned between
Saturday and Monday, and authorities are expected to prevent mass crowds
from heading to the yellow 19th century presidential palace overlooking the
Baltic Sea, where Trump and Putin will meet.
Uniformed men have been using pressure washers to refresh the building's
facade ahead of the summit. The biggest protest rally, dubbed "Helsinki
Calling!", is billed on Sunday as focusing on issues that demonstrators say
the presidents neglect: human rights, democracy, freedom of expression,
inequality and the fate of refugees. "In Finland, we treat children as
people. We don't put them in cages," said Peter Vesterbacka, one of the
creators of the Angry Birds video game, referring to the Trump
administration's controversial policy of separating undocumented immigrant
children from their parents at the US-Mexico border. Sofi Oksanen, author of
the internationally acclaimed novel "Purge", is expected to read at the
rally texts by the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who is jailed in Russia
and has been on hunger strike since mid-May.
The protest hopes to attract 15,000 people, but as of Friday only a fraction
of that had declared they would attend the event on Facebook. Mass
demonstrations are relatively uncommon in Finland although the Gay Pride
parade last month broke an all-time record with 100,000 participants. As it
is the summer holidays, a large turnout at the anti-Trump and anti-Putin
protests is not expected. The youth group of the right-wing National
Coalition Party said it would take to the streets but only expected a modest
number of "between 20 and 30" participants. "To President Trump we are
saying: 'Make America Trade Again', for free trade, against trade war. To
President Putin our message is: 'Stop your illegal military occupation in
Ukraine'," the group's leader Henrik Vuornos told AFP. Helsinki police
spokesman Juha Hakola said the summit will be "calm and without problems".
Israeli Air Strikes Hit Gaza after Bloody Border
Protests
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/July 14/18/Israel's army said it had launched
air strikes targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip early Saturday, following
border clashes that saw a Palestinian teenager shot dead and many injured
including an Israeli soldier. The Israeli aerial bombardment came as rockets
and mortars were lobbed into southern Israel from the blockaded Palestinian
enclave. The health ministry in the Hamas-run Strip said that 220
Palestinians were injured in Friday's protests on the Gaza border in
addition to 15-year-old Othman Rami Halles who was shot dead. Israeli
fighter jets struck two "Hamas terror tunnels" one in southern Gaza and one
in the north as well as other infrastructure across the coastal territory,
Israel's military said in statements posted on Twitter. It said targets
included "complexes used to prepare arson terror attacks and a Hamas terror
training facility". According to witnesses in Gaza, there were no casualties
from the air strikes, which damaged Hamas military infrastructure. The army
said the strikes were conducted "in response to the terror acts instigated
during the violent riots that took place along the security fence" on
Friday. It also cited "continuous arson attacks damaging Israeli territory
on a daily basis with the launching of arson balloons from the Gaza Strip
into Israeli territory". During the strikes, militants in Gaza fired a total
of 31 mortar rounds at Israel, the army said, adding that six were
intercepted by its Iron Dome air defence system. Israeli media reports said
no one was injured in those attacks. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the
group was responsible for the mortar fire on Israel and that they were
carried out "in response to the Israeli air strikes".
"The protection and the defence of our people is a national duty and a
strategic choice," Barhoum said.
- Grenades and flaming tyres -Palestinians in Gaza have for months been
demonstrating against Israel's decade-long blockade of the territory and in
support of their right to return to lands they fled or were driven from
during the war surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948. Since the
protests and clashes broke out along the border on March 30, at least 140
Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. The majority were involved in
protests and clashes but others were seeking to breach or damage the border
fence. No Israelis have been killed. Israel's army said grenades, Molotov
cocktails, flaming tyres and stones have been hurled in the direction of its
soldiers, one of whom was injured by a grenade. Israel says its use of live
fire is necessary to defend its borders and stop infiltrations. It accuses
Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas of seeking to use the protests as cover for
attacks against Israel. Hamas has run Gaza since seizing it from the
Palestinian Authority amid deadly clashes in 2007. Since then, Israel has
maintained a crippling blockade on Gaza which it argues is necessary to
isolate Hamas. Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008.
Sharif in Custody as 132 Die in Pakistan Election
Violence
Disgraced former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was in custody on Saturday, a
day after the deadliest attacks in Pakistan's troubled election campaign
killed more than 130 people, including a candidate. In the southwestern
province of Baluchistan, a suicide bomber killed 128 people Friday,
including a politician running for a provincial legislature. Four others
died in a strike in Pakistan's northwest, spreading panic in the country.
The attacks came hours before Sharif returned from London along with his
daughter Maryam to face a 10-year prison sentence on corruption charges,
anti-corruption officials said. Maryam Sharif faces seven years in jail.
Mushahidullah Khan, a spokesman for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, said
Saturday that the ex-prime minister and his daughter were being held in
Adiala Jail, located outside the capital of Islamabad. Sharif has been
calling for supporters to vote for candidates from his party.
Khan said Sharif will appeal his conviction and apply for bail before the
deadline expires on Monday. He still faces two additional corruption trials,
both of which will be held inside the jail, said Khan. Security is being
cited as the reason. In the southern town of Mastung, candidate Siraj
Raisani and 127 others died when a suicide bomber blew himself up amid
scores of supporters who had gathered at a rally. The Islamic State group
claimed responsibility for the horrific bombing in southwestern Baluchistan
that wounded another 300 people, straining Baluchistan's health care
resources. The group gave no reason for the bombing. Raisani was running for
the election on the newly launched Baluchistan Awami Party ticket. Appeals
were made for donations of blood. Bodies overwhelmed the morgue as crying
family members arrived to collect their dead. On Saturday, banners decrying
the tragedy fluttered over empty streets as the provincial capital of Quetta
shuttered in mourning for the dead. Lawyers wearing black armbands canceled
court appearances. "Stop killing people, stop shedding blood" read one
banner, while another read: "Terrorism and terrorist should be curbed with
iron hands." At Quetta's main hospital Dr. Mohammad Waseem said there was an
overwhelming response to the appeal for blood mostly from university
students.
Student Ali Ahmed, 18, said he turned up to donate blood in response to an
appeal he read in a newspaper. "That was a big tragedy in Mastung, I am very
sad. If I can save a life with my blood, I am here to bleed for them," he
told The Associated Press. Within hours of the bombing in Mastung, Sharif
returned to Pakistan from London where he was visiting his ailing wife to
face corruption charges. Sharif's son-in-law is currently serving a one-year
prison sentence on the same charge, which stems from the purchase of luxury
apartments in Britain that the court said were bought with illegally
acquired money.
Ahead of Sharif's return, police swept through Lahore, arresting scores of
Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League party workers to prevent them from greeting
him at the airport.
In a video message Friday reportedly from aboard his aircraft en route to
Pakistan, Sharif said he was returning knowing he would be taken directly to
prison. Sharif has been banned from participating in politics, and his
brother Shahbaz Sharif now heads his Pakistan Muslim League and is
campaigning for re-election on July 25. In a televised appeal to supporters
from London earlier this week, Sharif said he was not afraid of prison and
asked people to vote for his party. He also used the opportunity to again
criticize Pakistan's powerful military, which has ruled the country directly
or indirectly for most of its 71-year history, saying Pakistan now has a
"state above the state." During his term in office, Sharif criticized the
military's involvement in civilian affairs and its efforts in fighting
extremists. Pakistani and international rights groups have accused the
military of seeking to maintain its influence in the country's politics by
keeping Sharif out of power. The military has denied the accusation. The
military also said it is only involved in elections at the request of
Pakistan's Election Commission. The army will deploy 350,000 security
personnel to polling stations throughout the country on election day.
Friday's bombings underscored the security threat. The first one killed four
people in the northwest near the election rally of a senior politician from
an Islamist party. The explosion targeted candidate Akram Khan Durrani, who
escaped unhurt, and wounded 20 people, said local police chief Rashid Khan.
Durrani is running in the July 25 vote against popular former lawmaker Imran
Khan. He is a candidate of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, an election alliance of
radical religious groups. The attacks came days after a suicide bomber
dispatched by the Pakistani Taliban killed secular politician Haroon Ahmed
Bilour and 20 others at his rally in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous
sources published
on July 14-15/18
A Month
of Islam and Multiculturalism in Britain: June 2018
Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/July 14, 2018
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12695/islam-multiculturalism-britain-june
Karam Majdi, a 19-year-old failed asylum seeker believed to be from Egypt,
was sentenced to seven years in prison for raping a 14-year-old girl he met
online. Majdi claimed to be an unaccompanied minor from Syria when he
arrived in the UK in 2016.
During the 2018 Quds Day rally in London, Sheikh Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour
of the Islamic Centre of England sent a message "to the Jewish people of
Palestine": "You can be sure that the resistance will come, free Palestine,
and wipe Israel off the map."
A protection order was issued in Sheffield for three sisters, aged one, four
and six, deemed at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM).
June 1. Karam Majdi, a 19-year-old failed asylum seeker believed to be from
Egypt, was sentenced to seven years in prison for raping a 14-year-old girl
he met online. Majdi met the girl and a friend at East Croydon train station
in 2017 and raped her in a nearby youth hostel. Majdi claimed to be an
unaccompanied minor from Syria when he arrived in the UK in 2016.
June 2. A group of up to five "Asian" males drove over a teenage rugby
player and beat him with a golf club in an incident police described as a
hate crime. Police said Littleborough RUFC player Matthew Hayden, 17,
suffered a fractured skull in the unprovoked attack in Rochdale.
Littleborough RUFC said that a car in which Hayden was riding was rammed by
another car. When Hayden got out of the car, another car struck him; he was
then hit on the head with a golf club. The attackers shouted racial abuses
during the assault, which is being treated as a hate crime. Detective Mark
McDowall of Greater Manchester Police described the attack as "brutal,"
"unprovoked" and leaving Hayden with "life-changing injuries."
June 3. Paigham Mustafa, a Scots-Muslim writer, was threatened with death
after he wrote in a Facebook post that fasting between dawn and dusk during
the month of Ramadan is not decreed by the Quran. In a series of threatening
messages under the post, one critic said:
"Shut up or else you will get your head chopped off...shut up or else you
will be beheaded...shut up you kafir [disbeliever] dog... you will get
beheaded... we will kill you kafir."
A message sent by another critic said: "Quran says kill people like you. You
deserve to be killed. We will kill you." Mustafa replied:
"I think it is important to emphasize that it is not Islam that I am
against. I simply want to make people aware of those rituals that are not in
the Quran. I did not say that it is wrong to fast, but ritual fasting is not
decreed."
Mustafa and his family were offered police protection.
June 3. Pubs across Britain removed Saudi flags during World Cup soccer
games after offended Muslims complained that Islam bans drinking alcohol.
The brewery giant Greene King supplied decorations featuring the national
flags of all 32 teams to celebrate the World Cup, but because the Saudi flag
features Arabic words from a sacred Islamic text, Muslims complained to the
company that flying it outside pubs offends their religion.
June 3. London's Southwark Cathedral hosted an iftar dinner — a meal after
sunset during the month of Ramadan — as part of the program of events to
mark the anniversary of the London Bridge attack. The Bishop of Southwark,
Christopher Chessun, spoke about "a city of peace" and "a community of
peace" before inviting those gathered at the cathedral to exchange a sign of
peace with one another. A local community activist, Amir Eden, said:
"This event is another opportunity to bring people together, of different
religions and of no particular religion, to celebrate our love and
compassion for each other."
In London, Southwark Cathedral hosted an iftar dinner — a meal after sunset
during the month of Ramadan — as part of the program of events to mark the
anniversary of the London Bridge attack. (Garry Knight/Wikimedia Commons)
June 4. Safaa Boular, an 18-year-old woman from Vauxhall, south-west London,
was found guilty of plotting a jihadi in London. The plan made her one of
the youngest females to be charged and convicted of terrorism offenses in
the UK. Her older sister, Rizlaine Boular, 22, and their mother, Mina Dich,
44, both previously pled guilty to planning a knife attack in London. It was
the first all-female jihadi cell in Britain linked to the Islamic State.
June 4. Home Secretary Sajid Javid said that jihadis were "twisting their
faith." Javid said that after the attack on French satirical magazine
Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015, he had a heart-breaking conversation with
his 11-year-old daughter trying to explain what had happened:
"I had to explain that these murderers called themselves Muslims. That they
were invoking the religion of my parents, and my grandparents, and countless
generations of Javids before them.
"Of course, I know they are not true Muslims, but there's no avoiding the
fact that these people self-identify as Muslims."
June 6. Home Secretary Sajid Javid lashed out at critics who said that he is
"not Muslim enough" after he rejected claims of widespread Islamophobia in
the Conservative Party. He said he had been branded a "Coconut" and "Uncle
Tom" and some people had even questioned whether he was "really Muslim or
not." Javid, a "non-practicing" Muslim, insisted that "Muslims come in all
shapes and sizes."
June 10. During the 2018 Quds Day rally in London, Sheikh Mohammad Saeed
Bahmanpour of the Islamic Centre of England sent a message "to the Jewish
people of Palestine": "You can be sure that the resistance will come, free
Palestine, and wipe Israel off the map." He added:
"My message to the Zionist bunch, who are occupying Palestine, your days are
numbered, either you go yourself or we will try, we will drive you away. We
will kick you out of Palestine, that is a promise. I may be old, and I may
not see that day, but I promise the young people who are here, you will one
day see that day and you will march into Al-Quds."
June 11. A protection order was issued in Sheffield for three sisters, aged
one, four and six, deemed at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM).
Detectives from South Yorkshire Police's child abuse investigation and
safeguarding department were granted the order for the three girls after
they were identified as being at risk of being taken out of the country for
the procedure.
June 12. Oxford Against Cutting, a female genital mutilation (FGM) charity
in Oxford, launched a summer campaign across Oxfordshire, Berkshire and
Buckinghamshire to raise awareness among girls who may be at risk. Posters
were displayed at bus stops, schools, hospitals, community centers,
billboards and on buses. FGM was made illegal in the UK in 1985; the maximum
sentence would lead to a jail term of 14 years but so far no one has been
prosecuted for the crime.
June 13. Members of the Church of England clergy in Worcester East Deanery
lent their support to an ambitious £3 million (€3.4 million; $4 million) bid
by the Worcester Muslim Welfare Association to build a new mosque in the
heart of the city. Under the proposals, the association wants to build the
new mosque to cater to its growing number of worshipers. Senior figures from
St Nicholas Church, St Barnabas with Christ Church, St Martin's, St John the
Baptist in Claines and All Saints Worcester all showed their support for
construction of the new mosque to promote interfaith relations.
June 14. Non-Muslim police officers took part in an 18-hour fast for Ramadan
to help boost relations with the Islamic community. Northamptonshire Police
said the move was to "show unity" and "gain a better understanding" of the
local community during the Muslim holy month. Chair of the Northamptonshire
Association of Muslim Police, Sophia Perveen, said:
"When organizing this event, I didn't expect officers or staff to fast, as
it can be quite a shock to the system, however it was really encouraging to
see them give it a go.
"This helped to send a powerful message to the local community that officers
are willing to try different approaches to gain a better understanding of
different communities, their needs and how it impacts their lives."
June 15. Omar Mohamad, a 62-year-old man from Reading who hit a police
officer in the face with a cane at a Tommy Robinson rally in Hyde Park, was
spared a prison sentence. Sergeant Guy Rooney was severely bruised in the
face in the attack. Passing a 26-week suspended sentence, District Judge
Richard Blake said:
"While you do need that stick to walk with, you very much used it by
wielding it around as a weapon. You brought the stick round and struck the
officer in the face. There is no doubt that this was a very significant
injury that you caused with your stick.
"You're a man of sixty-two and of good character. You have got to sixty-two
without committing an offense. Given your poor health and your previous good
character it will be a suspended sentence."
June 16. A security camera caught a fast food delivery driver for a
Bangladeshi restaurant in Southgate, north London, ripping a Christian cross
from a woman's front door and throwing it on the ground before delivering
her food.
Georgia Savva, a 48-year-old Greek Orthodox finance worker, had just been
about to leave for work when she noticed the Palm Sunday cross that had been
on display on her front door for years had been torn into pieces and left
scattered on her doormat. She said:
"It doesn't matter what your personal view is, you do not treat people like
that. People are all too aware of things that are anti-Muslim, or
anti-Semitic, but there isn't even a name for things that are
anti-Christianity."
June 18. The trial began of Mohiussunnath Chowdhury, a 27-year-old man from
Luton, for driving his car at a police van and reaching for a blade in
London in August 2017. The court heard how he attacked police with a samurai
sword outside Buckingham Palace out of hatred for the Queen. Chowdhury
shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is greatest") as two officers grappled with
him. The court also heard the contents of a suicide note he sent to his
sister:
"Tell everyone that I love them and that they should struggle against the
enemies of Allah with their lives and their property. The Queen and her
soldiers will all be in the hellfire. They go to war with Muslims around the
world and kill them without any mercy. They are the enemies that Allah tells
us to fight."
June 18. Sikander Khan of Park Hill in Rochdale was sentenced to four years
in prison after a jury found him guilty of trespassing with intent to commit
a sexual offense. The court heard how the victim was asleep at her home with
her children and Khan went into the house without permission and made his
way upstairs with the intent of sexually assaulting her. He went into the
woman's bedroom, but the victim woke up and confronted him. Police said he
"fabricated a web of lies" to talk his way out of it.
June 22. Khawla Barghouthi, a 21-year-old who came to Britain from Tunisia a
decade ago, was sentenced to two years and four months in prison for failing
to tell police that Britain's first all-female jihadi cell was plotting an
attack in London. Barghouthi was friends with Rizlaine Boular, 22, who had
planned an atrocity in London with her younger sister Safaa Boular, 18, and
mother Mina Dich, 44. Judge Mark Dennis QC said:
"You appear to be a caring and intelligent person. However, not only did you
fail to report the matter or fail to raise the alarm with anyone in the days
before your arrest, thereby helping to save others from harm including your
friend herself, but you appear to have done little, if anything, actively to
dissuade her from her violent course."
Barghouthi was also told she faces automatic deportation when she completes
her prison term.
June 22. Mustafa Musa, the principal of an Islamic boarding school dubbed
the "Muslim Eton," was fired after police uncovered weapons and more than
£400,000 (€450,000; $530,000) in cash at his son's apartment at the
facility. Armed police were called to the Darul Uloom school, an independent
Islamic school in Chislehurst, southeast London, on May 30 after reports of
a man brandishing a firearm. Musa was subsequently arrested on suspicion of
money laundering. The Department for Education filed a lawsuit to shut down
the school, citing concerns over the safety of its 155 pupils. Westminster
Magistrates' Court ruled that the school could remain open after agreeing
that Musa and his son will have "no involvement whatsoever" with the school
in the future.
June 23. The Mail on Sunday reported that up to 80 of the 193 people
convicted of terrorism offenses between 2007 and 2016 will be eligible for
release this year. Among them is Anjem Choudary, who is due for release in
October after serving less than half of a five-and-half-year sentence for
inviting support for the Islamic State. Choudary, 51, will be kept under
curfew in a taxpayer-funded safe house in North London and prevented from
preaching in person or on the internet.
June 25. Shamraize Bashir, a 34-year-old man from Bradford, avoided prison
after he blamed an anti-Semitic tirade on smoking cannabis during Ramadan.
Bashir was arrested at Manchester airport after disembarking from a flight
from Tel Aviv. He reported reduced fellow passengers to tears with a barrage
of anti-Semitic insults. A probation report read to the court said:
"He suggests cannabis use prior to the flight and particularly during
Ramadan might have affected his behavior. But there is a low risk of serious
harm and a low risk of reoffending."
June 26. Khalid Ali, a 28-year-old plumber-turned-bombmaker from Edmonton in
north London, was convicted of planning a terror attack in Westminster and
making bombs for the Taliban. Prosecutors said Ali, who was arrested in
April 2017, was caught carrying three knives for use in a "murderous attack"
on politicians and police. Ali said he wanted to deliver a "message" to
British authorities, but claimed that the knives were for protection. An Old
Bailey jury convicted him of preparing an act of terrorism in the UK and two
counts of possessing an explosive substance with intent. Ali will be
sentenced on July 20.
June 27. Sameena Ahmed, a 47-year-old woman from Thornhill Lees, pleaded
guilty to charges of assault and assault by beating. She said that she
assaulted her pregnant neighbor because she was suffering from a headache
due to fasting during Ramadan.
June 29. The Charity Commission, the charities regulator, announced that it
had opened an investigation into the Fazal Ellahi Charitable Trust, which
operates a mosque in Birmingham. An imam at the mosque was convicted of six
counts of encouragement of terrorism and two counts of encouraging support
for a proscribed organization in relation to a series of sermons and classes
for children he gave at the mosque.
June 30. Mubarek Ali, a 35-year-old ringleader of a grooming gang in
Telford, was released from prison less than halfway into a 14-year prison
sentence. Ali was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2013 for running a
"squalid" grooming gang targeting vulnerable young girls, some just
13-years-old, and selling them for sex around the country. Telford MP Lucy
Allan expressed outrage over a decision:
"Victims and members of the public would have expected a 22-year sentence to
mean that the community could have time to heal and victims would be able to
get on with their lives.
"What we see in this case is that the one of the main perpetrators is being
released into the community only five years after the trial.
"What is unacceptable that in this case there was no attempt by the
authorities to reach out these young women and prepare them for this wholly
unexpected event.
"Worse still is the prospect that this person may be returned to Telford and
naturally this has caused huge anxiety to victims."
*Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
© 2018 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here
do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone
Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be
reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of
Gatestone Institute.
Three Reasons Why Trump May End the ‘Forever War’
Hal Brands/Bloomberg/July 14/18
Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor at the Henry A.
Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of
Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. His latest book is "American Grand
Strategy in the Age of Trump."No modern president has made more of his
determination to break out of the patterns set by his predecessors than
Donald Trump — and on issues ranging from free trade to North Korea to
dealing with allies, he has done so. When it comes to America’s war in
Afghanistan, however, Trump has simply been more of the same. Both George W.
Bush and Barack Obama made big promises about the U.S. mission in
Afghanistan, only to vastly scale back their ambitions over time. Trump is
settling into the same groove. As we reach a NATO summit at which the
alliance will once again discuss its involvement in the “forever war,”
Afghanistan has become the “forgotten war” under yet another American
president.
The forgetting started early. After 9/11, the U.S. overthrew the Taliban,
routed al-Qaeda and installed a representative government. Bush spoke of a
“Marshall Plan” that would produce a thriving, democratic Afghanistan.
Those promises soon ran up against the tremendous demands of nation-building
in a society ravaged by decades of war, and then the diversion of resources
and attention needed when the administration shifted focus to Iraq. By
Bush’s second term, the situation was deteriorating rapidly, and U.S. forces
could do little more than hold the line. “In Afghanistan, we do what we
can,” explained Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. “In Iraq, we do what we must.”
Barack Obama initially pledged to recommit to the “necessary war” in
Afghanistan, and he pushed nearly 60,000 additional troops into the fight in
2009-2010. Yet even as Obama was approving those deployments, he was
blanching at the high costs of a prolonged counterinsurgency mission, and he
was losing faith in the corrupt, incompetent government of Hamid Karzai. By
2011, a thoroughly disillusioned Obama had initiated a steady draw-down of
U.S. forces; by 2015-2016, there were fewer than 10,000 U.S. troops
remaining in Afghanistan.
Enter Trump. Unlike Obama, Trump had never considered Afghanistan a good or
necessary war, and his first instinct — as he publicly acknowledged — was to
complete the withdrawal his predecessor had started. Yet his advisers,
notably former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of
Defense James Mattis, gradually persuaded him to modestly escalate the U.S.
presence in hopes of rolling back Taliban gains and keeping the pressure on
resurgent terrorist groups. “We will push onward to victory,” Trump declared
in August 2017.
Yet no sooner had he intensified the war than he seemed to forget about it.
Trump has yet to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan (although his Secretary of
State, Mike Pompeo, did so earlier this week); he hardly speaks in public of
the U.S. mission there.
The most unconventional of presidents has fallen into the convention set by
his predecessors: Promising victory in Afghanistan, and then promptly
shoving that conflict into the background.
This pattern has persisted in large part because the U.S. war in Afghanistan
has settled into a strategic and political equilibrium. On the ground, that
equilibrium entails doing enough not to lose, but not enough to win. Under
three presidents, America has made the investments necessary to prevent the
Taliban from sweeping back into power and terrorists — al-Qaeda and now ISIS
— from again making Afghanistan their playground. Yet under three
presidents, the U.S. has declined to go all-in for sufficient time to crush
the Taliban militarily or to create a stable Afghan government that could
survive an eventual U.S. departure. That reluctance has stemmed from both
the unceasing difficulty of these tasks and because the resulting costs of a
more decisive approach would compromise other missions and objectives, at
home and abroad. And so although presidents have occasionally tried to
change the equilibrium — Obama planned, for a time, to withdraw U.S. forces
entirely before his presidency ended; Trump was tempted to do likewise —
they have ended up muddling through.
That tendency has been reinforced by the political equilibrium. Americans
have not exactly been screaming for their leaders to spend more blood and
treasure in an underdeveloped, landlocked country in southwest Asia. But no
president has wanted to be the leader who pulls out of Afghanistan and then
sees the country fall apart again — thereby creating a potential threat to
the U.S.
Obama learned that there is a political cost to such failure in 2014, when
ISIS overran much of Iraq following the withdrawal of U.S. troops. That
precedent played a key role in preventing him from winding down the mission
in Afghanistan in 2015-2016. America may be stuck in a rut in Afghanistan,
but that rut still seems more comfortable — politically and strategically —
than the alternatives. That rut, moreover, is not an entirely bad place to
be. The U.S. does have real — if limited — interests in Afghanistan. It may
well be worth keeping 10,000 or so U.S. troops there if doing so prevents
the Taliban from winning the war and keeps ISIS and al-Qaeda from
re-consolidating safe havens that they could use to execute major terrorist
attacks. Particularly if the U.S. fights in a relatively inexpensive way,
and if the NATO allies keep defraying the costs of the mission through troop
contributions and economic support, such a commitment is probably
sustainable.
As the U.S. war in Afghanistan completes its 17th year, however, the looming
question is whether the equilibrium could break at some point. There are
three plausible scenarios in which it could do so.
First, the U.S. could conceivably find itself in a much bigger confrontation
— even an outright war — against Russia in the Baltics, or against North
Korea and its nuclear program. Either such conflict would consume vast
resources, which could easily make the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan seem
like an unaffordable luxury. This scenario is frightening but hardly
impossible, given the tensions in both of these areas and the propensity for
risk-taking that both Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un have shown.
Second, NATO’s support for the Afghan mission could break. The Europeans
have counterterrorism interests in Afghanistan, but the countries that have
stuck with the mission for so long have done so mostly because they want to
please the U.S.
Trump, however, has taken such an adversarial approach to the alliance that
some members may eventually decide that they have better uses for their
troops and money. This won’t happen overnight; NATO actually increased its
own commitment to Afghanistan after Trump’s escalation in August 2017,
taking the number of non-U.S. NATO troops from roughly 5,000 to 8,000. But
if Trump succeeds in driving a wedge between Washington and its
transatlantic partners, the Afghanistan mission will not remain insulated
from the effects.
Third, Trump could simply decide to call it quits. Where Trump differs from
Bush and Obama is that he never had any real enthusiasm for the Afghan
campaign. He is also somewhat less vulnerable to the political costs of
withdrawal because he made an opposition to prolonged nation-building
missions a central plank of his campaign. In 2017, Trump’s gut instinct — to
get out — was overcome by the nearly unified opposition of his key advisers.
But the Trump we saw in 2017 is not the Trump we have seen more recently.
Trump 2.0 is trusting his instincts, overruling (and sometimes firing) the
“adults” who oppose him, and grabbing control of policy on issues from trade
to the Iran nuclear deal in ways that deliberately antagonize U.S. allies.
If Trump concludes that the U.S. is not getting closer to “victory” in
Afghanistan — that marginal progress and the avoidance of defeat is all he
can hope for — he may eventually decide that a full break from the
strategies and commitments he inherited is the right move after all.
Syria’s uprooted adapt to coexisting on the margins
AP/14 July 2018/
JARABLUS, Syria: When Hikmat’s mother managed to sneak back into their home
city of Aleppo, now controlled by government forces, she found a single word
spray-painted in red on their house: “Confiscated.” Same with the family
store and another house. Their farm, south of the city, is probably lost to
them as well, in territory recently recaptured by Syrian forces. This is the
new reality for displaced Syrians who supported the armed opposition
challenging President Bashar Assad or who lived in areas once held by the
opposition. Now driven elsewhere, they face the prospect that they may never
be able to return.Around half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million
has been uprooted — the overwhelming majority of them Sunni Muslims, who
were among the first to rise against the government in 2011. Nearly 6
million fled abroad, while 6.6 million are displaced within Syria.
Roughly a third of the displaced are crammed into areas that remain outside
government hands in northern Syria: rebel-held Idlib province and a
neighboring Turkish-controlled enclave. Thrown together from different parts
of the country, they have to adjust to a strange new hybrid society where
former city dweller and former village farmer, uneducated and educated,
liberal and conservative now live side by side in tent camps or rented
homes, with different accents, cuisines and customs. They all share the
realization that this may be their future.
“I see this as a long-term thing. It is not a year or two and we will
return. No!” Hikmat said, speaking recently in Jarablus, a
Turkish-administered town in northern Syria. “All (our properties) are
gone.”He spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name to
protect his family, because some relatives can still access government-held
areas. As the government regains control of opposition areas further south,
the number of displaced constantly grows. UN officials say 2018 has seen the
largest wave of displacement since the war began in 2011. The government has
called on those who left homes to return, but the military victories are
often followed by revenge attacks and unilateral confiscation of properties
by government militias. Separately, a new property law, known as Law 10,
allows the government to expropriate properties it deems abandoned in areas
zoned for development. Expropriations under the law haven’t begun, but
already the government has zoned off recaptured suburbs of Damascus for
redevelopment, meaning many homes would be vulnerable because residents are
gone, mostly to the north.
That has triggered accusations the law is part of a design to socially
engineer a new Syria, a charge the government denies.
“This law is not about dispossessing anyone,” Assad said in an interview in
May with the Greek newspaper Kathimerini. He said opponents were trying “to
create a new narrative about the Syrian government in order to rekindle the
fire of public opinion in the West against the Syrian government.”
Broad outlines of demographic shift are clear. The government now holds just
over 60 percent of Syria’s territory, and there are still Sunnis in those
areas, though there are no firm figures how many. But the Sunni population
has been greatly reduced in the heartland of Syria — the Mediterranean coast
and the belt of the most prosperous, cosmopolitan urban areas, running from
Aleppo in the north down to Damascus. In the process, the government
reinforced its support base, traditionally among minorities who depend on
Assad. Hikmat, who was once a radiologist, said he believed his house in
Aleppo was seized by government supporters known as “shabiha” in revenge
because, in 2012, when his part of the city broke away from the government,
opposition fighters defeated the local shabiha militia and confiscated its
commander’s property. Since fleeing Aleppo in 2016 as government forces
retook rebel-held sections of the city, Hikmat has had to move twice more
before ending up in Jarablus. Some displaced have had to move as many as two
dozen times, getting further from their homes.
Now Hikmat is dealing with life in the territory he and other displaced
refer to as the “rural north,” almost as if it’s a new province. He lamented
the loss of cosmopolitan Aleppo. His clinic was in one of the city’s posh
neighborhoods, his boss was an Armenian, his colleagues Christians. In
Jarablus, he runs an orphanage for children from Aleppo, and he worries that
here they are forgetting city life. The kids are losing their distinct
Aleppo accent, their last link to their home, he said. Aleppo is known as
Syria’s food capital because of its elaborate dishes, and the food habits in
their new home were a shock to some of the children. Some of them laughed at
a teacher — himself displaced from eastern Syria — for eating a traditional
plate of rice and meat with his fingers.
Omar Aroub, who was evacuated more than 14 months ago from his home in the
city of Homs, still can’t find a job. Homs was once the heart of the
uprising against Assad but is now almost empty of its Sunni population. The
20-year-old Aroub lives in a tent camp in Jarablus with hundreds of others
displaced from his Homs neighborhood of Al-Waer. Theirs was the last
district of the city to fall after years of bombardment and siege that
wreaked destruction and pushed residents to near starvation. He said the
only work in Jarablus was to join one of the Turkish-backed armed groups. A
neighbor who joined makes $90 a month and has begun building a house.
“Everyone is now building houses because they realized they’re going to be
here for a while,” Aroub said.
Newly displaced Umm Khaled can’t fathom what life has come to. She arrived
in April in Al-Bab, another Turkish-administered town, escaping the
government capture of Ghouta, a once relatively prosperous agricultural
region on Damascus’ outskirts. She finds it unbearable being crammed into a
tent camp with few services and hundreds of others. People from her hometown
of Douma, in Ghouta, are more conservative and the men keep heavy watch over
the women, she said. She covers her face with a veil and wears gloves. “This
life is not for us,” she said. “We Doumanis are difficult. Our men are
difficult. ... There will be problems between the different people because
of different mentalities.”Abdulkafi Alhamdo, a 33-year-old English teacher,
has run into cultural differences after fleeing from Aleppo to Idlib, the
last remaining opposition stronghold. People there regularly drop by each
other’s homes, while Aleppans are more private, he said, so his new
neighbors were flustered. “They say why are they not visiting us? Are they
upset?” he said. His Aleppo accent also stood out, bringing jokes from his
students. All that was fine, but he said he was hurt when Idlib locals
accused him of failing to defend Aleppo and questioned his sacrifices in
one-upmanship over who paid a higher price for the cause. When Alhamdo and
his colleagues decided to commemorate their expulsion from Aleppo, locals
asked them not to, fearing a gathering could draw government airstrikes. The
experience, he said, has made him more compassionate for newcomers as
thousands more continue to roll in, mostly Sunnis, impoverished and
staunchly anti-government. Coming here “is easier than going to the regime
hell,” he said. “Demographic change ... is the worst thing that happened in
Syria, much worse than the destruction.”
Three long years of Iranian isolation
Camelia Entekhabifard/Arab News/July 14/18
On the third anniversary of the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, there
are many doubts about whether this historic agreement can survive. US
President Donald Trump has never concealed his dislike for the deal, and
argues that his predecessor Barack Obama gave too many concessions to Iran.
Since he became president, Trump has withdrawn from the agreement, and
unless Iran engages in talks about its ballistic missile program and
regional meddling, he will reimpose sanctions. European signatories to the
deal are looking for ways to help Iran, but in their hearts they must doubt
whether this regime is worth the effort. As for its regional neighbors,
Iran’s engagement with them ranges from little to none. Tehran has
arrogantly ignored them. During previous international sanctions, the
UAE, for example, behaved like a good neighbor. Its ports remained mostly
open to Iranian trade, and it provided some banking access. However, Iran’s
relations with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain soured, and mobs attacked Saudi
diplomatic missions in Tehran and Mashhad in January 2016. Iran has never
apologized to Saudi Arabia for those attacks, nor shown any interest in
improving relations. Perhaps the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are too
busy in Syria and Iraq, or using Houthi militias in Yemen, with the aim of
dominating the region. Peaceful relations with the rest of the world require
trust, and there is none of that in Iran at the moment. Even foreign
investors, who might have been expected to rush to compete for opportunities
in the large and relatively untouched Iranian markets in the wake of the
nuclear deal, hesitated. They preferred to test the waters before swimming
in this unknown pool.
For investors, Iran was simultaneously attractive and unsafe. Mobs attacked
the UK embassy in Tehran in 2011, and before that, in 1980, the US embassy.
They took American diplomats hostage for 444 days. Canada severed diplomatic
ties with Iran and closed its embassy in Tehran in 2012, because of Iran's
support for the Assad regime in Syria.
Iran has never apologized to Saudi Arabia for those attacks, nor shown any
interest in improving relations
The other side of the story is the suffering of the Iranian people
themselves. The regime rules them with an iron fist, while wasting their
wealth on military adventures in pursuit of its regional ambitions in
Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Against this background, it is understandable that
foreign investors were so slow in showing up in Iran. No one knows if the
regime has a Plan B to survive this turmoil. President Trump believes he can
force them to the negotiating table. He said last week: “They’re treating us
with much more respect. I know their economy is collapsing. But I'll tell
you this, at a certain point they’re going to call me and say ‘Let’s make a
deal.’ They’re feeling a lot of pain right now.” However, here was Ali Akbar
Velayati, senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, speaking last
Friday: “Tehran does not want talks with the United States and does not
think US President Donald Trump is worthy of being addressed by Iran."We do
not want to have talks with the Americans, and if the Americans have an
illusion that we will approach them and offer to negotiate, we do not need
that.”Nevertheless, everything has a price. When they meet this week, we
will see what Russian President Vladimir Putin has to sell President Trump.
Camelia Entekhabifard is an Iranian-American journalist, political
commentator and author of Camelia: Save Yourself By Telling the Truth (Seven
Stories Press, 2008). Twitter: @CameliaFard
A united NATO is in America’s interests
Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/July 14/18
No one was naive enough to believe last week’s NATO summit would go
smoothly. There are obviously deep divisions between the current US
administration and a number of the organization’s leading European members
about its mission, its purpose, and how much each member should pay for it.
For most of NATO’s nearly seven-decade existence, its summits have been
conducted in a spirit of camaraderie — albeit with robust discussions —
bearing in mind that its main aim is to deal with external enemies, not
internal disagreements.
Nevertheless, few imagined that US President Donald Trump would go in all
guns blazing at the very first meeting, launching a diatribe against one of
its most powerful members. He accused Germany of being under Moscow’s
control because of its dependency on Russian energy supplies. This was the
precursor to a summit that lived up to expectations that it would be the
most divisive in NATO’s history. Even before reaching European shores, Trump
had tweeted: “First meeting — NATO. The US is spending many times more than
any other country in order to protect them. Not fair to the US taxpayer.”
Before the summit, Trump had demanded that all European countries raise
their defense spending to 2 percent of their GDP. Now, out of the blue, the
president made a new demand: That his European allies spend 4 percent of GDP
on military expenditure — even more than the US does. Was it a deliberate
spoiler? Was it a random outburst? Or was it a negotiating tactic — setting
an unrealistic figure that would make 2 percent seem like a bargain?
In fact, there is a near consensus among other members of NATO that they
should pay more toward not only the cost of the organization, but also of
other international organizations. Previous American presidents, including
Barack Obama, made it clear to European states that they could not expect
the US to carry a disproportionate economic burden, let alone a military
one, in defending them and maintaining international peace and political and
economic stability.
Few imagined that US President Donald Trump would go in all guns blazing at
the very first NATO meeting.
But it is the dictatorial tone and manner in which these demands are now
being made that infuriates America’s allies. Previous NATO summits have been
choreographed showpieces for projecting unity and common purpose while
divisions and disagreements are kept behind closed doors. Now it is all done
in the glare of publicity, oversimplifying complex issues and benefiting
only those — including the Kremlin and terrorist groups — who would like to
see a weakened NATO.
Some question whether NATO is even necessary in the post-Cold-War age.
However, there is no other international collective security mechanism to
preserve peace and stability and protect liberal democracies.
NATO does not only benefit Europe. It also serves US national interests,
even if there are reservations about whether it is the most cost-effective
tool for ensuring America’s security. If anyone thought the alliance was
surplus to requirements with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it quickly
became evident that was not the case. Challenges began to mount from all
directions and it became an even more complex task to defend the interests
and values of member states. Wars, genocide, terrorism, the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, cybersecurity, trafficking of narcotics and of
people, have all posed threats that NATO plays a key role in containing. No
single country or combination of countries could replace NATO in doing so.
It is indisputable that the US has carried more of the financial and
military burden than other countries, but it is equally indisputable that
the US has benefited enormously from NATO. And there are historical reasons
for the extra burden.
When NATO was established, Europe was taking its first steps in the long
process of recovery from the devastation of the Second World War. America,
meanwhile, was taking the first steps on its march to superpower status.
The US, unlike Europe, suffered no destruction on home soil. It helped
rebuild Europe through the Marshall Plan, but it also created the political
and economic conditions for its superpower status, while establishing the
strategic depth to contain the Soviet Union.
NATO has supported US operations even when many of its members disagreed
with them. It has provided peacekeeping forces where US missions have gone
wrong. And America’s military-industrial complex, the biggest arms industry
in the world, benefits greatly from the sale of weapons to NATO countries.
NATO allies have hosted US bases for decades, and paid much of the cost.
They have sent tens of thousands of troops to fight in Afghanistan, saving
the US huge sums of money. And in the entire history of NATO, Article 5, the
principle of collective defense, has been invoked only once — in support of
the US after 9/11. All of which shows more commitment to America’s cause
than Washington has so far been willing to admit.
To threaten NATO’s future by setting an arbitrary figure on how much each
member state should spend on defense is to ignore the organization’s
contribution to American national interests in political, security and
economic terms.
One can only hope that his anti-NATO stance is just another Trump publicity
stunts to rally his supporters and get some public attention, while behind
closed doors serious discussions are taking place on the real challenges to
the free world that come from beyond the organization.
Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s
University London, where he is head of the International Relations and
Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program
at Chatham House. Twitter: @YMekelberg
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do
not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view
EU becomes center of Iran’s terrorist operations
Hamid Bahrami/Al Arabiya/July 14/18
On Monday, July 2, 2018, Belgian Federal Intelligence and Security Agency
and Federal Prosecutor’s Office reported that they had thwarted a major
terrorist plot of the Iranian regime at the heart of Europe by arresting a
husband and wife near Brussels.
The arrested couple are Belgian nationals of Iranian descent and wanted to
commit a bomb attack in Villepinte (France) on Saturda,y June 30, 2018, at a
conference held there by the Iranian opposition coalition, the National
Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
According to the Belgian Public Prosecutor’s office, Assadollah Assadi, a
diplomat, who served as the number third-ranking diplomat in Iran’s embassy
in Vienna and a member of President Rouhani's Ministry of Intelligence and
Security (MOIS), was arrested in Germany as the “contact person” of the
couple.
However, Germany’s federal prosecutor on Wednesday, July 12, charged Assadi
for conspiracy to commit murder. Historically, the theocracy has pursued a
policy of assassinating dissidents in Europe. Since the 1979 revolution,
there are at least 10 known Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks, some of which
were recently listed by the US State Department. In 1997, a German
court issued an international arrest warrant for Iranian intelligence
minister for the assassination of Secretary-General of the Kurdistan
Democratic Party of Iran in Mykonos Greek restaurant in Berlin in 1992.
The Iranian regime has assassinated NCRI members in Europe. Kazem Rajavi,
the representative of the NCRI, was gunned down by the MOIS agents on April
24, 1990, as he was driving to his home in Coppet, a village near Geneva.
If the theocracy does not face serious punishments, the Western citizens
should expect more fatal terrorist operation in the near future as the
regime is collapsing inside Iran. Two of the hitmen were later discovered in
France and arrested by French police. But despite a warrant for their arrest
by the Swiss authorities, the French government put them on a direct flight
to Tehran “for national reasons”. The decision to allow Tehran’s terrorist
agents to escape prosecution drew international condemnation, including from
the United States.
New strategy
But after six months of constant anti-regime protests in Iran, the MOIS has
implemented a new strategy to eliminate the opposition that the regime
officials blame for organizing the nationwide uprising. On March 22, 2018,
two Iranians were arrested in Tirana, Albania, on the charge of plotting
terrorist attack against thousands of Iranian opposition members. The MOIS
uses Iran's embassies in the EU countries as a center for planning,
organizing and carrying out its terrorist operations. This was highlighted
again earlier this week by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who went on
to warn Tehran that its actions have “a real high cost.”After destabilizing
the Middle East, it seems that the Iranian regime now has set its target on
EU using the same means, terrorism. As the EU leaders are using every
diplomatic and political resource to preserve the nuclear deal in order to
safeguard their economic interests, the MOIS takes advantage of the
fruitless talks to target EU citizens and Iranian dissidents in Europe.
However, some EU countries appear to take the threat seriously. The
Netherlands rightfully expelled two Iranian embassy staffers as persona non
grata in June. The authorities did not disclose the reason but the Dutch
intelligence service deem it serious enough to take the decision to expel
them. Had the terrorist plot in Paris on June 30 been successful, many
innocent people and members of parliament from around the world who attended
the gathering would have been killed.
Attacks by Tehran on Europe
When the ISIS terrorist operations in Europe are condemned as unacceptable
and ruthless, one should ask why the EU leaders are willing to overlook
similar vicious terrorist attacks by Tehran on European territory. Their
appeasing approach threatens the Union’s security and should be reversed by
bringing the arrested Iranian diplomat in Germany to justice and taking
steps to close Iran’s embassies in the EU member-states, which the regime
uses as command center for organizing terrorist operations in the EU. If the
theocracy does not face serious punishments, the Western citizens should
expect more fatal terrorist operation in the near future as the regime is
collapsing inside Iran.
Religious TV channels: The Shirazi family’s path to
influence
Hassan Al Mustafa/Al Arabiya/July 14/18
In my previous article, I had discussed the religious television channels
that support the reference of Ayatollah Sayyid Sadiq Al-Shirazi. Competition
over the launching of such channels has increased due to the power and
influence they provide or the godly rewards they may bring!
This race among followers has attracted the attention of Saudi researcher
Dr. Tawfiq Al-Saif and who on May 20, 2014 wrote on his Facebook page about
a local cleric who tried to launch a satellite television channel called
Imam Hussein.
“Is there a need for a new version that (clones) is similar to available
versions? Isn’t this like building a hussainia (a Shiite congregation hall)
next to another hussainia? Will he spend on this channel through legal
rights? If so, shouldn’t this spending be used for more urgent matters, such
as extreme poverty which exists in the city of the channel’s owner,” Al-Saif
inquired. The points Al-Saif has raised are actually discussed by many other
Shiite intellectuals, especially who think money is being squandered and
that these satellite television channels are actually producing quite the
opposite results and draw for Shiites a bleak stereotype that’s contrary to
their reality and to the future which the new generation aspire for.
Funding and income sources
The large number of channels for one reference has raised plenty of
questions about funding and income sources. The opponents of the Shirazi
Movement accuse these channels of receiving money from foreign and Arab
intelligence apparatuses and voice surprise that channels like Fadak
continue to broadcast from the UK without any disciplinary measures taken
against them by Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, despite its
content that incites sectarianism, hatred and intolerance. Sheikh Mohsen
Araki, Secretary-General of the World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools
of Thought, told the Iranian Mehr news agency that the “Shirazi Movement is
an organized group and a political party that pursues special political aims
and is completely supported by foreigners,” adding: “I have irrefutable
documents (to back) what I am saying.”
Sources at Imam Shirazi Center for Studies and Research denied there is
foreign funding and told Al Arabiya.net that “most Shiite channels which
were founded upon the encouragement of religious references originally rely
on donors and subscriptions,” adding that “this reference paid hefty prices
because it maintained its independence and refused dependency on others.”
Sources familiar with the establishment of religious satellite television
channels note that these channels do not cost operators much and rely on the
money received by legal rights and from Khums funds received from the
reference. This is in addition to donations by Shiite businessmen in the
Gulf, Iraq and Pakistan.
These channels’ viewers notice that now and then there are advertisements
which urge people to donate saying that making donations contributes to
spreading the idea of Shiism around the world. Funds thus flow into the
channel thanks to the faithful’s donations. The amount of money however is
not huge, and it does not meet all of the channel’s needs. This is why some
channels have stopped broadcasting and have shut down. The points Al-Saif
has raised are actually discussed by many other Shiite intellectuals,
especially who think money is being squandered and that these satellite
television channels are actually producing quite the opposite results and
draw for Shiites a bleak stereotype that’s contrary to their reality and to
the future which the new generation aspire for. What these channels have in
common are the employees’ humble wages, volunteers, cheap production and
reliance on airing recorded lectures from mosques and hussainiat. This can
be seen in their humble technical capabilities which reflect the limited
budget and which rely on the owners’ and supervisors’ personal efforts and
their capability to attain new sources of income. What can be noted too are
the few commercial advertisements and their weak earnings.
The channel of the one family!
Al-Shirazi has an esteemed status within the programs aired by the channels
affiliated with it. Lectures of current reference Ayatollah Sayyid Sadiq Al-Shirazi
and of his sons Hussein and Ahmad are aired on these channels. This is in
addition to airing the lectures of Sayyids Mohammed Reza, Morteza, Jaafar,
Mahdi and Mohammed Ali, the sons of late Sayyid Mohammed al-Shirazi. The
dominant presence of Al-Shirazi family and promoting it via these channels
turned its figures into an advertising material for a specific reference and
family, as if it’s exclusive to a specific political and intellectual
movement. Researcher Bassem al-Zaydi denies this by saying: “These channels
are not limited to Shiites and the muqallideen (those who conform to the
teaching of another) of Sayyid Shirazi but they are general channels that
aim to convey the tolerant message of Islam to the entirety of humanity.”
The viewers of these channels can also see how the religious lecturers and
scholars who are hosted mostly belong to the Shirazi Movement. This is
except for few channels like CH 4 Teen which broadcasts lectures for Saudi
religious figures that do not belong to the Shirazi Movement like Sayyid
Monir al-Khabbaz and Sayyid Hassan al-Nimr. This is perhaps due to the fact
that some of those who supervise these channels belong to the Shirazi
Movement in Saudi Arabia and enjoy “relative moderation” compared with the
rest of the channels.
Confirming eligibility
It is no coincidence that the Shirazi Movement established the channel
Alhawza Alilmiyya TV as its jurisprudential eligibility has been doubted
since the 1960s when many of the seminary scholars in Iraq opposed the
reference of Sayyid Mohammed al-Shirazi and doubted his capability to issue
fatwas (religious edicts). Sayyid Shirazi continued to attract the new
generation of the then-faithful youth. Despite its expansion and influence,
this reference was still described as “religiously shallow” and accused of
lacking jurisprudential depth. This pushed its followers to establish the
television channel Alhawza Alilmiyya TV. It’s as if they want to prove that
they are legitimate sons of the ‘hawza’ and that they are part of it and
that they deliver lectures and sermons. The aim of this move is to prepare
the second generation of Al-Shirazi to assume the post of religious
reference following Sayyid Sadiq, especially the late Sayyid Mohammed Reza
Al-Shirazi, the son of Sayyid Mohammed, was the most likely to succeed his
uncle but he died in 2008.
Strange discourse
What also distinguishes these channels is the absence of music and any woman
who does not wear the ‘hijab’. This is in addition to women’s limited
presence and complete absence of any other secular or liberal thought. These
channels also focus on ritualistic rhetoric that relies on lamentation and
broadcasting the processions of the Husseini funeral in its bloodiest
images: tatbir (striking oneself with a sword on the head), flagellation and
walking on coal. These practises are rejected by many Shiite religious
references and they’ve actually issued fatwas (religious edicts) saying
these are “religiously prohibited.” However, the Shirazi satellite
television channels brag about broadcasting them live. The strange discourse
which depends on dreams and the sectarian rhetoric as seen in the lectures
of Sayyid Mohammed Baqir Al-Fally, Sheikh Abdulhamid Al-Mohager and others
also dominate these channels. This contributed to creating a “shabby
populistic culture that did not exist within the Shiite intellect that’s
based on ijtihad (independent reasoning) and knowledge. It also distorted
the biography and history of Imam Hussein and deviated from the bigger aim
represented in justice.”
Commenting on this “superstitious” rhetoric which the Shirazi channels are
accused of promoting, Zaydi said: “It’s enough to review Imam Shirazi’s
researches which addressed law, politics and economics and to look at the
cultural institutions and studies and researches centers” to know his
opinion about the reference’s approach which confirms “the importance of
work and ijtihad and doing the best to spread a peaceful culture and free
thought and establish developmental institutions.”
Zaydi denied any relation between the reference of Sayyid Sadiq Shirazi and
the sectarian rhetoric of some of his followers and said: “Throughout its
history, this reference has dissociated itself from any sectarian, political
or religious conflict, and it actually had a great role in strengthening
social peace.”
Editor-in-chief of ‘Al-Sahel’ magazine Sheikh Habib al-Jumayaa thinks
Zaydi’s statements are important but they apply to the Shirazi Movement in
its previous “renaissance” version and not on the version currently depicted
by satellite television channels. He said: “Sayyid Mohammed Al-Shirazi was
really concerned in developing Islamic culture and adopted a rhetoric which
believes in pluralism, tolerance and distance from whatever incites strife
among Muslims. However, these channels adopted a different rhetoric where
reasoning is absent and which relies on dreams. There is a state of
stillness within the Movement as they do not criticize these channels and do
not review their negative impact on people. What’s required is to develop
the Islamic rhetoric and be open to others and to be able to endeavor into
the future and not live with superstitions and in the past!”
Researcher Sheikh Ahmed al-Katib thinks this strange rhetoric is the product
of shallow thinking. “The absence of a deep intellect and the Shirazi
Movement’s lack of a substantial cause and focusing on shallow and
ritualistic issues are what produced these channels’ current discourse.”
Limits of influence The reference of Sayyid Sadiq Al-Shirazi is not the most
spread among Shiites in the world. There are more influential references
like Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani. However the Shirazi Movement’s media
activity had influence on a wide category of the public, specifically the
religious ones or those who feel marginalized and persecuted based on their
sect!
There are more moderate satellite television channels like AlIman TV which
follows the reference of late Sayyid Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah or AlMaaref
TV which is supervised by Habeeb Al-Kazemi. However since these channels did
not resort to a “populist” rhetoric as is the case is with the Shirazi
channels, they failed to garner a wide audience which thinks it’s watching a
duel with sectarian Salafist channels like Wesal TV and Safa TV! Therefore,
Shiite channels that adopt a moderate rhetoric do not appeal to their
sentiment. The channels which do are those which they think have the
bravery, power and capability to defeats rivals! “These channels incite
strife between Sunnis and Shiites,” said a reader who commented on the
previous article. This opinion may represent the point of view of a large
number of Shiites in the Gulf and who live in diverse societies where the
Shiite spectrum varies between Islamic, civil, liberal and leftist movements
and which adopt an intellect that is different than these channels. Sheikh
Habib al-Jumayaa said: “There is a vital discussion and wide critique of
these channels whose discourse cannot keep up with the questions of the new
generation which does not acknowledge red lines or prohibitions. This
generation thus questions everything and seeks evidence, while these
channels’ approach is based on indoctrination.”
Intellectual crisis The shallow intellect seen in most of the programs
aired by Shirazi television channels is only a part of the knowledge crisis
that Sunni and Shiite religious channels suffer from. It’s a reflection of
the inability of Islamic movements to understand the changes of the modern
era, to use thought more bravely while practicing ijtihad and to develop an
enlightening rhetoric that meets believers’ current needs. This intellectual
decline pushed many of the first Shirazi pioneers to defect from the
movement. This is what the next article of Al Arabiya.net’s series on Al-Shirazis
will discuss.
Positive outcomes after exposure of violations in Iraqi
elections
Adnan Hussein/Al Arabiya/July 14/18
Iraqis, or at least the majority of them, were not waiting for the temporary
Iraqi electoral commission to say anything to be certain that there has been
forgery in the May parliamentary elections. Many Iraqis were aware of this
fraud long before the new commission realized it. This commission, which is
made up of nine judges, was this time formed by the Supreme Judicial
Council. The decision to form this commission was made by the parliament
which term has ended. This parliament had formed the previous electoral
commission whose work is now suspended and had rejected all demands to
include judges to guarantee integrity. The Iraqis know this fact about
forgery because all past electoral processes sparked controversies, protests
and allegations of manipulating the will of the electorate, whether through
buying votes, promising a position in state offices, giving economic and
social incentives to businessmen and clan elders, applying political or
social pressure and by using violence along by consciously rigging the
results of the election in favor of influential parties in order to maintain
their dominance. However, the powerful political class has always found a
way to reach a settlement among each other to secure their benefits and
interests. As a result, violations in the electoral process and the forging
of results were overlooked.
Rigged game of the elite
The movement that called for boycotting elections was aware of this reality
that infests each electoral process: manipulation and forgery. Those who
called for boycotting the elections believed that there is no use going to
vote centers since the results were fixed in advance.
Manipulating the results of the elections and forging its results were
always the work of the dominant powers, which are usually the powers of
political Islam, whether Sunni or Shiite. Those who carry out the rigging
are the officials working at the electoral commission and its staff members,
who are selected by the same powerful elite that control the work of the
parliament, the government and the entire political process. After the
official acknowledgement of the massive irregularities in the elections, the
new Iraqi parliament and the government that will be formed by it will not
be able to revert to the quota system that was bedrock for the corruption.
The commission which is described in the constitution as independent never
enjoyed independence, just like other "independent" bodies, which posts were
distributed by the powerful parties in accordance with the sectarian and
nationalist quota system. This same quota system has also been adopted in
the distribution of civil, military and security positions, in a clear
contrast to the constitution.
The re-counting and sorting done by the new temporary commission in centers
and locations whose results have been challenged in a number of Iraqi
provinces is expected to reveal more cases of manipulation of the election
results. This can directly show the wrongdoings and achieve justice for
those who won and who lost the May elections. The process is likely to show
that some people have already won the election, but the votes of their
voters had been unjustly and aggressively taken, in lieu of those who have
lost and became winners by manipulation. Those who have “lost” by
manipulation would be able to reclaim their votes and those who have “won”
will lose the votes given to them unjustly.
Opportunity for major reform
There are mid-to-long term benefits of this re-counting and sorting and
exposing of the manipulation process. The first is that the new parliament,
which will convene after the completion of the current counting process and
the announcement of the final real results, will find it necessary to
reconsider the electoral commission, and will have to reform it in
accordance with the stipulations of the constitution that it has to be an
independent body that should be structured in a way that it is not under the
influence of the dominant parties. This is supposed to be applied to other
"independent" bodies that have been deprived of independence, neutrality and
impartiality.
More importantly, officially admitting that manipulation of the electoral
process and forgery will raise questions about the integrity of the
electoral process as a whole, calling for a reassessment of the electoral
law — the unfair electoral system (Sainte-Laguë) and the parties’ law. These
are the main demands of the protest movement that began three years ago for
political, administrative and economic rehabilitation. The current
government and the former parliament have both failed at meeting these
demands.
Challenging the credibility of the electoral process must include the
credibility of the political process in action since 2003 and which is
established on sectarian and nationalist quotas. This has great importance
for the Iraqi national democratic forces which call for establishing a
democratic secular civil government based on national identity and
citizenship to replace the current governance which was established by the
alliance of Islamist and nationalist parties. This governance did not only
fail in providing an appropriate alternative to Saddam Hussein's regime, but
it also increased armed sectarian and nationalist conflicts and worsened the
phenomenon of administrative and financial corruption, thus weakening the
foundations of the state and society, ruining the national economy and
crippling socio-economic development much needed by Iraq to repair the
effects of dictatorship and the disastrous wars of Saddam's regime.
After the official acknowledgement of the massive irregularities in the
elections, the new Iraqi parliament and the government that will be formed
by it will not be able to revert to the quota system that was bedrock for
the corruption in the political and administrative sphere. Adopting this
quota system would lead to the rise of a protest movement, bigger and
stronger than it was in 2015. Among this movement’s results are the downfall
of several important figures in the recent elections and the decline of
others’ influence. This time, these groups will not dare challenge the
popular will, like they did before, because they fear the serious
consequences that can impact them and their influence in the future
political process.