Ayman al-Zawahiri Brainchild - Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent - Only Capable Of Small-Scale Regional Attacks: U.S. Official
New Age Islam News Bureau
26 September 2020
Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri | Flickr
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• India Questions Pakistan PM Imran Khan’s Claim to Be
Protector of Muslims at the UN General Assembly
• Baloch and Sindhis Protest Outside UN against
Pakistan's Human Rights Violations in Balochistan & Sindh
• Feeling Abandoned by Kabul, Many Rural Afghans Flock
to Join the Taliban
• Night Images Reveal Many New Detention Sites for
Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Region
• Saudi King Had Better Directly Face Iran If He Has
Scores To Settle: Yemen’s Ansarullah
• Israel Destroying Last Opportunity for Peaceful
Settlement: Abbas to UNGA
• US Asks Sudan to Normalize Ties with Israel In
Return For Coming off Terror List
North America
• Ayman al-Zawahiri Brainchild - Al-Qaeda in Indian
Subcontinent - Only Capable Of Small-Scale Regional Attacks: U.S. Official
• Israel's War to Censor Social Media Freedom of
Speech
• U.S. Prepares to Take Sudan off List of States That
Support Terrorism
• U.S. Commandos Use Secretive Missiles to Kill Qaeda
Leaders in Syria
• US media platforms censor top Palestinian activist under
Israeli pressure
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India
• India Questions Pakistan PM Imran Khan’s Claim to Be
Protector of Muslims at the UN General Assembly
• Terrorism, Clandestine Nuclear Trade Pakistan's 'Only
Crowning Glory' For 70 Years: India at UN
• NIA Court Convicts Kerala Man Who Joined IS In Iraq
• 2 top Lashkar commanders killed in op: IGP
• Indian diplomat walks out after Imran Khan raises
Kashmir issue at UN
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Pakistan
• Baloch and Sindhis Protest Outside UN against Pakistan's
Human Rights Violations in Balochistan & Sindh
• Pakistan PM Demands UN Action against ‘Rising
Islamophobia’ In Many Countries Including India
• Opposition Trying To Cause Army-Govt Rift: Imran
• Porous border, residents’ support behind APS
tragedy: probe body
• PM for taking parliamentary parties on board in
lawmaking
• PIMA To Hold Basic Life Support Workshops In 50
Mosques
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South Asia
• Feeling Abandoned by Kabul, Many Rural Afghans Flock
to Join the Taliban
• Surviving the Perils of the Bloodied
Bangladesh-India Border by Mostly Ethnic Santal and Catholic
• 65 Taliban insurgents killed in eastern Afghanistan
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Southeast Asia
• Night Images Reveal Many New Detention Sites for
Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Region
• Promote bilingualism to break schools deadlock
• Sabah polls a straight fight between Shafie and
Muhyiddin, says Ilham Centre report
• Manila will not seek pardon for Filipino drug
dealers convicted in Middle East
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Arab world
• Saudi King Had Better Directly Face Iran If He Has
Scores To Settle: Yemen’s Ansarullah
• US Threatens Baghdad with Sanctions over Iran-Backed
Militia Attacks In Iraq: Sources
• Emiratis Are 'Cheerleaders' For US Role in Middle
East: UAE Ambassador to Washington
• Adib presents government proposal to Aoun as
Hezbollah pressure grows
• Israel admits ISIS fighter in Iraqi prison is its
own and permits his return
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Mideast
• Israel Destroying Last Opportunity for Peaceful
Settlement: Abbas to UNGA
• Iran not buckling under to Trump's madman theory
threats
• Turkey orders 82 arrests, including Kurdish
opposition members, over 2014 protests
• Israeli forces clash with Palestinian protesters in
West Bank
• Ankara lashes out at Pelosi for suggesting Turkey
not democratic
• Netanyahu Endorses Construction Of Over 5,000 New
Settler Units In Occupied West Bank
• Iran: Saudi Arabia Source of Instability in Region
• Palestine’s Abbas calls on UN to arrange
international conference next year
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Africa
• US Asks Sudan to Normalize Ties with Israel In
Return For Coming off Terror List
• Algeria rules out rapprochement with Israel, says
ready to host meeting of Palestine factions
• At UN, Libyan premier urges rebels to lay down arms,
respect ceasefire
• Severe floods in South Sudan displace over 600,000
people, UN says
• Compensation deal between US, Sudan on embassy
attacks ‘close’: Acting FM
• One dead, multiple injured in clashes between GNA
factions in Libya’s Tajoura
• Suspected extremists abduct 3 non-Muslims in Kenya’s
north
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Europe
• Turkey’s Behaviour in Region Is ‘Explosive and
Dangerous’ To Its Neighbours, Says Cypriot Envoy
• French trial of 2015 terror attacks in Paris:
Testimonies of survivors
• New IRA Links Confirm Hezbollah’s Growing Terror
Threat in Europe
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-world-news/ayman-al-zawahiri-brainchild-al/d/122955
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Ayman al-Zawahiri Brainchild - Al-Qaeda In Indian Subcontinent - Only Capable Of Small-Scale Regional Attacks: U.S. Official
SEPTEMBER 25, 2020
Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri | Flickr
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In mid-March, AQIS published a special issue of Nawa e
Afghan Jihad praising the U.S.-Taliban agreement, which mirrored al-Qaeda’s
leaders’ statements on the deal.
Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), a
globally-banned terror group, is now probably capable of only “small-scale
regional attacks”, a top American counter-terrorism official has told
lawmakers.
AQIS was set up by al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in
2014 to expand the terror group’s influence in the region.
In South Asia, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent
(AQIS) has struggled to rebound from the death of its leader, Asim Umar, in a
U.S. military raid in Afghanistan in September 2019 and is probably only
capable of small-scale regional attacks, Christopher Miller Director, National
Counter-terrorism Center, told a Senate committee on Thursday.
Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee on the Threats to the Homeland, the top American
counter-terrorism official said that in mid-March, AQIS published a special
issue of Nawai Afghan Jihad praising the U.S.-Taliban agreement, which mirrored
al-Qaeda’s leaders’ statements on the deal.
Finally, al-Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan has been
reduced to a few dozen fighters who are primarily focused on their survival,
and are probably incapable of conducting attacks outside the country under
sustained CT pressure, Mr. Miller said.
According to Mr. Miller, since the Global War on
Terror began nearly two decades ago, the U.S. has significantly degraded
terrorist adversaries and made the U.S. a considerably harder target for them
to reach.
“Today’s terrorism threat to the U.S. and our allies
is less acute but more diffuse — emanating from more groups in more places than
it did in 2001,” he said.
While continued counter-terrorism pressure has
degraded the group’s Afghanistan-Pakistan senior leadership, in the near term,
al-Qaeda is more likely to focus on building its international affiliates and
supporting small-scale, readily achievable attacks in key regions such as East
and West Africa, said FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Simultaneously, over the last year, propaganda from
al-Qaeda leaders seeks to inspire individuals to conduct their own attacks in
the U.S. and the West. For example, the December 2019 attack at Naval Air
Station Pensacola demonstrates that groups such as al-Qaeda continue to be
interested in encouraging attacks on the U.S. soil, he said.
Mr. Miller told senators that 19 years ago, after the
shock of al-Qaeda’s devastating attacks abated, the U.S. set out to accomplish
three objectives; one, harden its borders; two, go overseas to destroy the safe
havens and sanctuaries of al-Qaeda and its associated groups and attrit their
combat forces; and three, address the drivers of instability that created al-Qaeda
by supporting like-minded partners in their efforts to combat Islamist
extremism.
“Due to the enormous dedication, selfless service and
sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Americans and like-minded foreign
partners, we have been remarkably successful in accomplishing the first two
objectives.”
“I sense that we are on the verge, if providence is
kind, of transitioning from a U.S.-led, partner-enable campaign to an era where
local and regional partners take the lead and we provide them niche support to
fill gaps in their security, intelligence, informational and legal
architectures,” he said.
“I must be clear and not histrionic. Our enemies will
successfully attack us again, as their adaptation and innovation are driven by
a profound hatred for what we represent. This is our terrorists’ dilemma and
their strategic advantage. They only need to be successful once while our
defences must be successful all the time for preventing a cataclysmic attack.
But our enemies have profoundly underestimated the resilience of the American
people time and again,” Mr. Miller said.
Mr. Miller wondered if the 9/11 al-Qaeda leaders
regretted their decision to attack the U.S.
“I’m confident the survivors must. They thought us
soft, and spoiled and morally unanchored. They are now either dead, imprisoned
or in hiding awaiting death or capture. Their ideology is debunked in the
overwhelming majority of this Islamic world.”
“No one today misjudges our resolve and commitment to
protecting the security of our citizens and using all available instruments of
national power against those that bring war and violence to our shores,” he
added.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/al-qaeda-in-indian-subcontinent-only-capable-of-small-scale-regional-attacks-us-official/article32694186.ece
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India Questions Pakistan PM Imran Khan’s Claim to Be
Protector of Muslims at the UN General Assembly
Yashwant Raj
Sep 26, 2020
Mijito Vinito, First Secretary, India Mission to UN
exercises India’s right of reply to Pakistan PM at UNGA (ANI Photo)
----
India on Friday slammed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran
Khan’s verbal attack on India at the UN General Assembly as a “new low” for the
world body on its 75th anniversary, and questioned his claim to be a champion
of Muslims when he is unable to protect them in his own country.
An Indian diplomat, who delivered India’s response to
the Pakistan PM’s diatribe, also sought to remind Khan of the “genocide”
perpetrated by his country on Muslims of erstwhile East Pakistan before it
became Bangladesh, without naming them.
India sought to target the Pakistan PM’s attempt to
position himself as a champion of Muslims to align himself with leading Islamic
countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
“This august forum witnessed today a new low on its 75th
anniversary,” said Mijito Vinito, a diplomat at the Indian permanent mission to
the UN, reading a statement under the UNGA debates’ “right of reply” rule,
which gives member countries an opportunity to respond if criticised.
“For someone who professes to be a champion of Islam,
this is also a country that has encouraged the killing of fellow Muslims merely
because they belonged to a different sect, or to a different region in
Pakistan, and through sponsoring terrorist attacks against its neighbours,” the
India diplomat said.
Vinito was referring to the killing of Muslims of the
Shia and Sufi sects in Pakistan by terrorists sheltered and supported by the
state, the large number of people killed and missing in Balochistan, a restive
province of Pakistan, and those killed in cross-border attacks in Kashmir.
The Indian diplomat went on to cite the most glaring
instance yet of a Muslim-majority country turning upon its own people. “This is
the country that brought genocide to South Asia 39 years back when it killed
its own people,” Vinito said, addressing Khan’s use of the word “genocide” in
his speech as he had attacked India without apparent evidence.
He added, “This is also the country that is shameless
enough not to offer a sincere apology for the horrors it perpetrated even after
so many years.”
The “genocide” the Indian diplomat referred to was the
killing of between 300,000 and 3,000,000 people in current-day Bangladesh,
mostly Muslims, by the Pakistan Army in 1971 to quell an independence movement
that succeeded eventually with the help of the Indian Army.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the
UNGA at 6.30pm India time.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/unga-india-questions-pakistan-pm-imran-khan-s-claim-to-be-protector-of-muslims/story-oABRr4VrGmA0VGhM39IaVL.html
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Baloch And Sindhis Protest Outside UN Against Pakistan's
Human Rights Violations In Balochistan & Sindh
Sep 25, 2020
BHRC and WSC on Friday, held a joint protest outside
the UN building at the Broken Chair in Geneva against Pakistan's human rights
violations.
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GENEVA: The Baloch Human Rights Council (BHRC) and the
World Sindhi Congress (WSC) held a joint protest outside the UN building at the
Broken Chair in Geneva during the 45th session of the United Nations Human
Rights Council (UNHRC) against the institutionalised state violence and other
forms of socio-economic and political suppression of the Baloch and Sindhi
people by the Pakistan military.
Human Rights defenders from various nationalities
including Pashtuns and Kashmiris who also suffer at the hands of the military
establishment of Pakistan, participated in the protest and expressed solidarity
with the Baloch and Sindhis. Samad Baloch, the secretary-general of the BHRC
led the protest whereas those who addressed the protest included the
secretary-general of WSC Dr Lakhu Luhana, Kaihan Mashriqwala leader of the PTM
Italy and a human rights defender Anila Gulzar.
The protestors called upon the United Nations and the
International community to live up to their mandate and commitments without any
hindrance and political pressures and make Pakistan, which is a signatory to
various human rights instruments, end its genocidal policies in Balochistan and
Sindh.
"Stop Abducting Baloch People",
"Pakistan Stop Baloch Genocide", "Stop Abducting Sindhi
People" were slogans chanted by the protesters while different roller
banners highlighting the various violations of human rights in Balochistan and
Sindh by Pakistan were put on display. "The perpetrators of crimes against
humanity in Balochistan must be tried in the International court of
justice" read one of the banners.
Following the protest, a memorandum documenting some
of the major human rights issues requiring urgent attention was also submitted
to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights by the
BHRC representatives.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/baloch-and-sindhis-protest-outside-un-against-pakistans-human-rights-violations-in-balochistan-sindh/articleshow/78323907.cms
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Feeling Abandoned by Kabul, Many Rural Afghans Flock
to Join the Taliban
BY STEFANIE GLINSKI
SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
MOMAND DARA, Afghanistan—Arman Omari grew up among
guns, drugs, and airstrikes, with control of his village changing hands several
times throughout his teenage years and with women largely absent from public
life. He learned to shoot before learning to write his name.
Sitting in an unfinished building in Momand Dara
district in the eastern province of Nangarhar, not far from the village in
Achin district where he grew up, Omari, 25, explained that he didn’t see a
future for his family the way Afghanistan is currently run. The gap between
relatively well-off urban areas and rural areas like his—bereft of clinics,
schools, or jobs—has only grown after nearly two decades of fitful efforts at
governance from leaders in Kabul.
That’s why last month he made a fateful decision—like
so many others, especially from rural Afghanistan. “I joined the Taliban
because the government is corrupt,” said Omari, a slender man with greasy,
shoulder-length hair, a trimmed beard, and kohl-rimmed eyes.
“There are two overriding laws—one for the rich and
one for the poor. People like me have no opportunities, and I’m hoping this
will change with an Islamic system in place,” Omari said. “The government has
failed us, so my hope is with the Taliban. If they come to power, I want to be
on their side.”
As Taliban militants and the Afghan government meet
for a first round of direct negotiations in Qatar, aiming to work out a final
peace deal and perhaps a power-sharing arrangement that could see the Taliban
return to power, the Islamist group is gaining momentum and recruits—especially
in rural areas like Omari’s. Almost 20 years after U.S. and international
troops first went into Afghanistan to root out the Taliban and vanquish al
Qaeda, the Taliban are now stronger than ever, controlling dozens of Afghan
districts, according to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations.
For many rural (and less well-educated) Afghans,
Taliban indoctrination finds a receptive audience, greased by the fact that the
Taliban use family, friends, and community connections to recruit new members.
Decades-old promises of a better life under the national government have failed
to materialize: Omari’s family is part of the 90 percent of Afghanistan that
lives below the national poverty line of $2 per day, according to the Afghan
Ministry of Economy. Three-quarters of Afghans live in rural areas, where even
basic services are in short supply; the Ministry of Education this month
revealed that 7,000 schools across the country don’t actually have
buildings—including in Omari’s native Achin district.
While many Afghans fear that a Taliban return to power
will bring the excesses of the 1990s—a harsh, austere interpretation of Islam
that imposed strict rules, summary justice, and the disappearance of women from
public life—for many poor, desperate, rural Afghans who’ve seen little good
come out of Kabul, the attitude is often: Why not give the Taliban a try?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/24/taliban-kabul-rural-afghans-join-peace-deal/?utm_source=iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1555151_
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Night Images Reveal Many New Detention Sites for
Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Region
SEPTEMBER 25, 2020
As China faced rising international censure last year
over its mass internment of Muslim minorities, officials asserted that the
indoctrination camps in the western region of Xinjiang had shrunk as former
camp inmates rejoined society as reformed citizens.
Researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy
Institute on Thursday challenged those claims with an investigation that found
that Xinjiang authorities had been expanding a variety of detention sites since
last year. Rather than being released, many detainees were likely being sent to
prisons and perhaps other facilities, the investigation found, citing satellite
images of new and expanded incarceration sites.
Nathan Ruser, a researcher who led the project at the
institute, also called ASPI, said the findings undercut Chinese officials’
claims that inmates from the camps — which the government calls vocational
training centers — had “graduated.”
“Evidence suggests that many extrajudicial detainees
in Xinjiang’s vast ‘reeducation’ network are now being formally charged and
locked up in higher security facilities, including newly built or expanded
prisons,” Ruser wrote in the report.
The Chinese government has created formidable barriers
to investigating conditions in Xinjiang. Officials tail and harass foreign
journalists, making it impossible to safely conduct interviews. Access to camps
is limited to selected visitors, who are taken on choreographed tours where
inmates are shown singing and dancing.
The researchers for the new report overcame those
barriers with long-distance sleuthing. They pored over satellite images of
Xinjiang at night to find telltale clusters of new lights, especially in barely
habited areas, which often proved to be new detention sites. A closer
examination of such images sometimes revealed hulking buildings, surrounded by
high walls, watchtowers and barbed-wire internal fencing — features that
distinguished detention facilities from other large public compounds like
schools or hospitals.
“I don’t believe this timing is merely coincidental,”
Timothy Grose, an associate professor of China studies at the Rose-Hulman
Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the ASPI project, said of the
accumulating evidence of expanding incarceration sites.
“In my opinion, we are witnessing a new stage in the
crisis,” he said. “Some detainees have been released, others have been placed
in factories, while others still have been sentenced.”
China has repeatedly refused to disclose the number of
detention sites and detainees in Xinjiang and elsewhere. ASPI researchers found
and examined some 380 suspected detention sites in Xinjiang. At least 61 of
them had expanded in area between July 2019 and July of this year, and of
those, 14 were still growing, according to the latest available satellite
images.
The researchers divided the sites into four security
levels, and they said that about half of the expanding sites were
higher-security facilities.
The researchers found signs that some reeducation
camps were being rolled back, partially confirming government claims of a
shift. At least 70 sites had seen the removal of security infrastructure such
as internal fencing or perimeter walls, and eight camps appeared to be
undergoing decommissioning, they wrote. The facilities apparently being scaled
back were largely lower-security camps, they said.
Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, authorities have
carried out a sweeping crackdown in Xinjiang, with as many as 1 million or more
people incarcerated in recent years, according to scholars’ estimates. The ASPI
report was issued one day after the sixth anniversary of a key moment in the
increasingly harsh campaign, the sentencing of Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uighur
scholar, to life in prison.
Late last year, Shohrat Zakir, chairman of the
Xinjiang government, told reporters in Beijing that the reeducation sites were
now housing only people who were there voluntarily, and that others who had
been in the facilities had “graduated.” Where to, he did not say.
The ASPI report builds on previous investigations that
also pointed to explosive growth in the prison population in Xinjiang over
recent years, even as the building of indoctrination camps appeared to peak.
Last month, BuzzFeed News found 268 detention
compounds in Xinjiang built since 2017. The news organization identified the
compounds with the help of spots blanked out of the online mapping service from
Baidu, the Chinese technology company.
An investigation by The New York Times last year found
that courts in Xinjiang — where Uighurs and other largely Muslim minorities
make up more than half of the population of 25 million — sentenced 230,000
people to prison or other punishments in 2017 and 2018, far more than in any
other period on record for the region.
Official sentencing statistics for 2019 have not been
released. But a report released by authorities in Xinjiang early this year said
that prosecutors indicted 96,596 people for criminal trial in 2019, suggesting
that the flow of trials — which almost always lead to convictions — was lower
than in the previous two years, but still much higher than in the years before
the crackdown took off.
“Even though the internment camps are obviously the
most headline-grabbing aspect of what’s happening, there’s been a much broader
effort from the beginning that has also included significant incarceration” in
prisons, said Sean R. Roberts, an associate professor at George Washington
University and author of “The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Campaign Against
Xinjiang’s Muslims.”
The United States has begun to take a more
confrontational stance toward China over the repression in Xinjiang. This year,
the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on officials responsible for
policy in the region, as well as the Xinjiang Production and Construction
Corps, which is both a farm conglomerate and a quasi-military security
institution. It has also imposed restrictions on imports of clothing, hair
products and technological goods from Xinjiang, but stopped short of banning
all cotton and tomatoes, two of the region’s key exports.
This week, the House of Representatives passed
legislation that would bar any imports from Xinjiang unless they were proven
not to have been produced using forced labour.
https://www.news18.com/news/world/night-images-reveal-many-new-detention-sites-for-uighur-muslims-in-chinas-xinjiang-region-2907403.html
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Saudi king had better directly face Iran if he has
scores to settle: Yemen’s Ansarullah
25 September 2020
A senior Yemeni Houthi Ansarullah official has asked
Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz to settle scores with Iran if he dares to face
the Islamic Republic directly.
Mohammed-Ali al-Houthi, the chairman of Yemen’s
Supreme Revolutionary Committee, made the remarks in a sarcastic tweet on
Friday.
“King Salman well knows the Yemenis are only fighting
the Americans who are using the Saudi soil and US-made weapons to wage a war
against the Yemeni nation,” al-Houthi said.
“If the Saudi king has scores to settle with Iran,
he’d better face the country directly,” he added.
The Yemeni official made the remarks in reaction to
the Saudi king’s virtual address to the 75th General Assembly of the United
Nations, in which he said Riyadh would not take its hands off the Yemeni nation
until it “gets rid of Iran’s domination”.
King Salman blamed the Islamic Republic for much of
the Middle East’s instability, and repeated a host of baseless accusations
against Iran, ranging from “sponsoring terrorism” to seeking weapons of mass
destruction.
The video of the speech was released on Wednesday
showing the aging monarch sitting at his office as he struggled to read the
text from papers, which he was grasping with both hands, without looking at the
camera.
The 84-year-old monarch accused Iran of providing
support to Yemen’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, which has been defending
the Arab country against the kingdom’s 2015-present war. He once again blamed
Iran for the 2019 Yemeni attacks against Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil
installations.
The Saudi ruler also took aim at the 2015 Iran nuclear
deal, claiming Tehran exploited the agreement to “intensify its expansionist
activities.” He also claimed “the kingdom’s hands were extended to Iran in
peace with a positive and open attitude over the past decades, but to no
avail.”
Iran strongly dismissed the king’s claims, and
highlighted the Saudi regime’s atrocities and civilian massacres in Yemen, of
which King Salman made no reference during the speech.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh
said the Saudis are engaging in such a blame game to “escape responsibility for
their own war crimes against Yemeni women and children.
“The continuous military and political defeats in
Yemen have sent Saudi Arabia into a state of delirium.”
“As the birthplace and origin of the ideas of Takfiri
terrorist groups and as the main financial and logistical supporter of
terrorism in the region, Saudi Arabia has, for many years, been pursuing a
policy of blame games and distorting the realities to escape accountability for
its crimes,” Khatibzadeh said.
“The Saudi regime’s support for and alignment with the
United States in keeping up the failed policy of ‘maximum pressure’ against
Iran as well as [the kingdom’s] attempts to expand relations with the occupying
Zionist regime and [paying] billions of dollars in bribe money to others from
the pockets of the people of the country, has not only failed to bring results
for them, but has turned Saudi Arabia into a humiliated entity among the Arab
states.”
Khatibzadeh also noted that the Islamic Republic, in
line with its responsible regional approach, has repeatedly warned the world
about “the Saudis’ miscalculations — which have inflicted heavy costs on the
region — and still stresses its principled policy of strengthening diplomatic
and dialog-based processes in the region and developing relations with all its
neighbors.”
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/634986/Yemen%E2%80%99s-Ansarullah-dares-Saudi-king-to-face-Iran-directly
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Israel destroying last opportunity for peaceful
settlement: Abbas to UNGA
25 September 2020
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said that
Israel is destroying its last chance for a peaceful settlement by pushing
forward with the US-devised “deal of the century,” a plot that unilaterally
grants Israel much of the occupied West Bank.
Addressing the 75th session of the United Nations
General Assembly on Friday, Abbas said the so-called plan would effectively
annex 33 percent of Palestinian land, a clear violation of previous
international accords.
“The Palestinian nation will continue with its endurance
and resistance, will never surrender and will eventually be victorious,” Abbas
said.
The Palestinian president called on UN
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to launch an international conference that
can make way for “a genuine peace process” early next year.
“Until when should the cause of the Palestinian people
remain without a fair resolution? A solution should be conceived on the basis
of international regulations.”
“Security, peace, stability and coexistence are not
possible under occupation,” he added.
Abbas added that Israel and the US seek to subvert
international regulations and accords with the “deal of the century.”
“The Palestinian Liberation Organization has not
granted any individual or country permission to represent it or the people of
Palestine,” he noted.
The PLO, which Abbas also chairs, has been
historically regarded as the official representative of the Palestinian people
in international agreements related to Palestine.
The Palestinian president also censured Bahrain and
the United Arab Emirates for the formalization of ties with Israel earlier this
month.
The states become only the third and fourth Arab
states to establish formal ties with the occupying regime after Egypt and
Jordan.
Abu Dhabi and Manama's agreements with Israel received
condemnation from Palestinians as a betrayal of their cause, a sentiment echoed
by Iran and Turkey and Muslim authorities throughout the region.
Amid increasing Israeli aggression, the Gaza-based
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and the Fatah Party - which rules the
West Bank as a faction of the PLO - have pledged unity against Israel’s
annexation plans.
On Thursday, the two groups reached a deal to hold the
first general elections across Gaza and the West Bank in nearly 15 years.
According to reports, parliamentary and presidential
polls will consequentially be scheduled within six months.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/635009/Israel-Palestine-Abbas-Peace
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US asks Sudan to normalize ties with Israel in return
for coming off terror list
26 September 2020
The United States is pressing Sudan to establish
diplomatic relations with Israel in return for removal of the Northeast African
country from a US list of states that sponsor terrorism.
Three Sudanese government officials familiar with the
matter, however, told Reuters news agency on Thursday that Khartoum is
resisting the linkage of the two issues.
“Sudan has completed all the necessary conditions” an
official said on condition of anonymity. “We expect to be removed from the list
soon.”
Back in 1993, the US designated Sudan as a state
sponsor of terrorism, cutting it off from financial markets and strangling its
economy over allegations that the government of former longtime leader Omar
al-Bashir was supporting “terrorism.”
Sudan’s interim government took power last year after
Bashir was overthrown by the army following mass popular protests. It is set to
remain in office until elections in 2022.
Sudanese officials argue that their country’s
designation as a state sponsor of terrorism is now undeserved as Bashir's
regime has been toppled, and Sudan has cooperated with the US on
counter-terrorism ever since.
Earlier this week, US officials indicated during talks
with Chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan, General Abdel Fattah
al-Burhan, that they want Khartoum to follow the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and
Bahrain in establishment of ties with the Tel Aviv regime.
“Sudan made clear to the American side that there is
no relationship between removing Sudan from the terror list and exploring
relations with Israel,” another Sudanese government source stated.
Even if a normalization deal is struck between Sudan
and Israel, the US Congress must still pass a necessary legislation to restore
Sudan's sovereign immunity.
Sudan wants the legislation passed before it reaches a
$335 million financial settlement with victims of al-Qaeda terror attacks on US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Sudan's lawyers in the United States said it had
already paid an additional $72 million to victims of the families of 17 US
sailors, who were killed during an attack on the USS Cole while it was docked
in Yemen’s Aden Port in 2000. The attack was apparently sponsored by slain
al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden who was living in Sudan prior to the attack.
“We want to ensure the passing of the immunity law so
that we can put an end to the settlements matter,” a Sudanese official said.
In February, Sudan's ruling council head Abdel-Fattah
al-Burhan met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda,
sparking anger among politicians and public at home, where anti-Israel and
pro-Palestine sentiments run high.
Sudan has been widely tipped to be the next Arab
country that would normalize ties with Israel after the UAE and Bahrain agreed
to do so as part of US-brokered agreements.
Netanyahu signed agreements with Emirati Foreign
Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Bahrain's Foreign Minister
Abdullatif Al Zayani during an official ceremony hosted by US President Donald
Trump at the White House on September 15.
Palestinians, who seek an independent state in the
occupied West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital view
the deals as betrayal of their cause.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas protested the
normalization deals with Israel, saying they will be fruitless as long as the
United States and the Israeli regime do not recognize the rights of the
Palestinian nation and refuse to resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees.
Kuwait reiterates unswerving support for Palestinian
cause, nation
Meanwhile, Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah
al-Khalid Al Sabah highlighted on Friday that his country firmly supports
Palestinians in their struggle to achieve their inalienable rights and to
establish an independent sovereign state with Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.
Addressing the General Debate of the 75th Session of
the United Nations General Assembly, Sabah emphasized that “the Palestinian
cause still has a central, historical and pivotal place in our Arab and Muslim
worlds.”
He noted that Kuwait's principled and firm position is
to support the Palestinian people in their struggle to obtain their legitimate
rights.
The Kuwaiti prime minister then underscored the
significance of resumption of so-called peace negotiations between Palestinians
and the Israeli regime, stating that the talks should bring an end to the
Israeli occupation and lead to creation of an independent Palestinian state on
the borders before June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.
Bahraini regime forces arrest poet critical of
normalization with Israel
Separately, Bahraini regime forces have arrested a
literary figure after he criticized the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom’s
normalization with the Israeli regime.
Bahraini activists said the forces arrested the poet
Abdul Hussein Ahmed Ali, days after he published a poem in condemnation of the
deal, the Arabic-language Bahrain Mirror news website reported.
“I am not flattering to those who speak this day ...
Let them hear my words far and wide … Bahrainis are proud, honorable and noble,
and do not accept the pledge of allegiance to a criminal and a perpetrator,” a
part of the poem read.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/26/635033/US-asks-Sudan-to-normalize-ties-with-Israel-in-return-for-coming-off-terror-list
--------
North America
Israel's war to censor social media freedom of speech
25 September 2020
By Walt Peretto
Israel and its agents are actively engaged in shutting
down freedom of speech in the United States on multiple fronts.
Zionist interests own or control virtually 100% of
America's mainstream media and are now lobbying major social media companies
such a Facebook, Twitter, Zoom, and YouTube, to censor any material that
challenges all the false or misleading narratives that are in Israel's
interests.
With air-tight media control, Israel was able to
successfully kill 3,000 people in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001
and blame it on patsies with Arab names, without any media or judicial inquiry
into the actual evidence. The internet has been proven more difficult to
control, but Israel is busy gaining more and more influence on social media to
the point that censorship is fast becoming the norm.
On Wednesday, Palestinian activist Leila Khaled was
scheduled to speak from San Francisco State University via Zoom
videoconferencing and the Israeli lobby was able to convince Zoom to refuse to
air the broadcast. The lobby cites accusations of anti-Semitism, Jew-hatred,
and accusations that speaker Khaled once engaged in terrorism over 40 years
ago.
Meanwhile, 9/11, less than 20 years ago seems to an
approved act of terrorism since it was done primarily by Israeli. Israel cannot
afford an even playing field when it comes to freedom of speech in America or
anywhere else because of their history of terrorism, spying, and infiltration
of virtually all important US institutions. Exposure of the truth via freedom
of speech would force Israel to finally face the rightful indignation of
virtually the entire world. If this ever happened their globalist one world
government aspirations would be irrevocably damaged.
If the United States had a free media, 9/11 could not
happen, elections would be more democratic, soldiers would not be sent overseas
to fight wars for Israel and their psychopathic globalists. Control of the
mainstream media and internet is a must if a one world government dystopia is
going to be achieved.
Ever since the founding of the United States in 1776,
psychopathic globalists based in Europe have had their eyes locked onto control
of this country. The War of 1812 was the first major attempt to
infiltrate---followed by several attempts to control the US money supply---and
then attempting to split the US by financing of the Civil War. Finally, the
permanent takeover of the US economy happened in 1913 when President Woodrow
Wilson's signed the Federal Reserve Act. Since then pathological European
globalists have been infiltrating virtually all major US institutions. In 1948,
these European interests founded the State of Israel and since then they have
seized control of all the mainstream media and are now working non-stop to
seize control of the internet.
Those of us who value freedom of speech and understand
its vital importance must expose Israel and their pathological allies by
setting up channels of free speech that are beyond their control. Without
freedom of expression we will all be living in a cashless, high-tech
surveillance, one world system of government with no recourse except to be
slaves to the global psychopath elite that Israel represents. Fighting this
evil must be done with full respect for the average, sane, everyday Jewish
people who have nothing to do with these pathological globalist aspirations.
This is not about any religion, skin-tone, ethnicity,
or culture---it has everything to do with organized groups of people who share
a common mental defect called clinical (primary) psychopathy. It is genetic and
it runs in families. With knowledge of these pathologies the world will begin
to make sense instead to the common people being mired in confusion and
thinking humanity can vote its way out of this impeding grave. The election
systems in the burgeoning one world order are controlled by the same
pathological interests. The time has come for humanity to wake up to
sociopolitical reality and develop counter strategies that have a real chance
to work.
Walt Peretto is a writer and researcher in Washington,
DC. He recorded this article for Press TV website.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/635013/Israel%E2%80%99s-war-on-freedom-of-speech-in-US
--------
U.S. Prepares to Take Sudan Off List of States That
Support Terrorism
By Lara Jakes
Sept. 24, 2020
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to
remove Sudan from a list of states that sponsor terrorism, seeking another
foreign policy victory before the election but putting at risk the compensation
for victims of terrorist attacks that American courts have concluded were
carried out with Khartoum’s support.
Sudan has been on the terrorism list since 1993 and,
as a result, has been restricted from receiving the global assistance that
would help stabilize its new government and foment democracy. Its delisting is
widely expected in the next few weeks, according to four people with direct
knowledge of the plan by the State Department.
That would also clear the way for Sudan to normalize
diplomatic relations with Israel in an accord similar to those the Trump administration
helped the Jewish state cement this month with the United Arab Emirates and
Bahrain and that President Trump celebrated at the White House last week with a
promise that other nations would soon join them.
A full diplomatic accord between Israel and Sudan
would be difficult, if not impossible, while Sudan remains on the American
terrorism list.
But the administration intends to move ahead without
legislation from Congress that would assure immediate compensation for victims
of bombings against American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the
destroyer Cole in 2000 and their families, who have expected to be paid a $335
million settlement from Sudan for harboring militants who carried out the
attacks.
“It’s basically enabling Sudan to get off the list
without any penalty,” said Riz Khaliq, a former Commerce Department official
who was injured in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
“There won’t be any reason for Sudan to make the
victims whole in any way,” Mr. Khaliq said on Wednesday. “They’ve gotten what
they wanted, and frankly the victims who were impacted by the terrorist list
are left high and dry.”
“That’s really painful and distressing,” he added.
The new plan would place the money in an escrow
account, to be released to victims once Congress gives Sudan immunity from
future legal claims for past terrorist attacks. But Congress refused to include
the legal protections in a spending bill that was negotiated this week, all but
certainly delaying the payout — if it happens at all — until after the election
on Nov. 3.
Officials cautioned that a final decision to remove
Sudan from the terrorism list must be approved by the White House.
But President Trump is not expected to wait for
Congress to act.
With six weeks before the election, Mr. Trump has
cited the warming ties among once-rival states in the Middle East and North
Africa as an example of his administration’s diplomatic prowess. Five
additional countries are considering formal relations with Israel, the
president said on Sept. 15, and officials have said they include Sudan.
“We’ll be signing up other nations,” Mr. Trump said at
the White House last week, shortly before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of
Israel signed the accords with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, with the
deputy Sudanese ambassador in the audience. “And these are very strong
agreements. These are very strong. This is really peace. This is serious
peace.”
Cementing diplomacy between Israel and Sudan would be
a coup for the administration, given their turbulent history.
It was in Khartoum after the Arab-Israeli War in 1967
that the Arab League announced its “three no’s” resolution, which opposed
peace, negotiations and recognition of Israel. That was widely recognized among
Arab states until President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt made a historic trip to
Jerusalem in 1977. Until last week’s accords, Egypt and Jordan were the only
two Arab states with formal diplomatic relations with Israel.
Sudan was placed on the U.S. list of state sponsors of
terrorism after officials concluded in 1993 that the government of its leader
at the time, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, provided refuge and other support to
Hezbollah and Palestinian groups. Only three other nations — Iran, North Korea
and Syria — are on the State Department list that restricts assistance from the
United States and, effectively, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
But in 2016, after Sudan cut its diplomatic ties with
Iran, the United States began easing sanctions against Khartoum to reward its
cooperation on counterterrorism missions and ending military attacks against
Sudanese citizens. The détente was fueled last year by Mr. al-Bashir’s ouster
and international efforts to support democracy in the new transitional
government.
Israel has cultivated its own nascent ties with the
country. In February, Mr. Netanyahu met with Sudan’s de facto leader, Lt. Gen.
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, for talks in Uganda that were reportedly arranged by
the United Arab Emirates. Days later, Sudan began allowing Israeli commercial
planes to fly in its airspace.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has the authority to
remove Sudan from the terrorism list without congressional approval. Meeting
last month in Khartoum with Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, Mr. Pompeo described
delisting Sudan as “a critical bilateral priority for both countries.”
The two men also “discussed positive developments in
the Sudan-Israel relationship,” according to a State Department summary of the
meeting. They spoke again on Sept. 12.
Sudan’s lawyer in Washington, Christopher Curran, said
the transitional government wanted to “fully rejoin the community of
respectable nations.” In a statement on Wednesday, he said that would happen by
Sudan entering into international trade, settling past liabilities and with
“the forthcoming dedesignation as a state sponsor of terrorism.”
Until recently, Mr. Pompeo has indicated he would wait
to take Sudan off the terrorism list until payments for the bombing victims are
assured.
But with a settlement between the United States and
Sudan snarled in Congress, officials said Mr. Pompeo was willing to move
forward.
Sudan insists it will hold the $335 million in
victims’ compensation in escrow until it receives legal immunity from Congress
to protect itself from new financial claims for past terrorist attacks. But
Sudan is unlikely to hold the money indefinitely, according to a government
representative for the country, given its rampant poverty, rapidly-weakening
economy and $60 billion in international debt.
The fragility of a yearslong process to bolster
Sudan’s stability and compensate terrorism victims alarmed a bipartisan group
of senators who noted in a Sept. 14 letter a “rare opportunity” for the United
States to help the country “move away from a regime that, for decades,
supported terrorism and stifled freedom.”
But Congress is divided over the administration’s
approach.
Some lawmakers have objected to unequal distribution
of payments for the victims of the East Africa embassy bombings that would
award American citizens far more than Kenyan and Tanzanian employees — nearly
all of whom are Black — who were foreign citizens at the time of the attacks.
Additionally, families of victims of the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks are seeking compensation since Sudan was a longtime haven for Al
Qaeda. Supported by lawmakers who represent the region, including Senator Chuck
Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, those families have
broadly objected to the immunity legislation before their own legal cases
against Sudan are resolved.
“Congress should not deny families of Sept. 11 victims
their day in court,” said Alex Nguyen, Mr. Schumer’s spokesman.
Congressional officials said that it was possible that
a last-minute deal could be reached — including one that would mollify some of
the families of Sept. 11 victims by making them eligible for $1 billion in
additional payouts from a separate Justice Department victims’ fund.
But it would be difficult to approve that before the
election, and some of those families questioned why the United States would
rush to remove Sudan from the terrorism list and discard its leverage to
enforce the payments.
“Foreign governments who have supported and harbored
terrorists should not be given a free pass by any administration, Congress, or
the global community,” Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg and Kristen
Breitweiser, whose husbands were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, said in a
statement. “They must be held accountable for their actions.”
There is also some opposition in Sudan to forming an
alliance with Israel, particularly among liberal-leaning officials in the
transitional government who for years have defended demands by Palestinians for
a sovereign state.
During last month’s meeting in Khartoum, Mr. Hamdok
told Mr. Pompeo that Sudan’s transitional government had no mandate to
normalize relations with Israel and instead was focused on stabilizing the
country before democratic elections in 2022.
But more recently, senior Sudanese officials have
reluctantly acknowledged that agreeing to normalize relations with Israel may
be the price of coming off the American terrorism list, according to people in
Washington and Khartoum who are familiar with the discussions.
“One has to wonder whether the Sudanese are genuinely
interested in a relationship with Israel, given the opposition it’s likely to
stir in Khartoum, and more interested in the attendant benefits of coming off
the state sponsor of terrorism list,” said Steven A. Cook, a Middle East and
North Africa expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“That’s clearly what’s driving them, and clearly they
know the best and easiest path there is through Tel Aviv,” Mr. Cook said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/us/politics/us-sudan-terrorism.html?utm_source=iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1555151_
--------
U.S. Commandos Use Secretive Missiles to Kill Qaeda
Leaders in Syria
By Eric Schmitt
Sept. 24, 2020
WASHINGTON — U.S. Special Operations forces, with no
fanfare, killed a top Qaeda leader in northwest Syria in an unusual drone
strike nearly two weeks ago.
They used a secretive weapon — a so-called Ninja
Hellfire missile on which the explosive warhead is replaced by long blades to
crush or slice its victim while minimizing risks to any civilians nearby. It
was the second time in three months that American commandos have killed a
senior Qaeda leader in northwest Syria with these specially designed missiles.
The strike illustrated the complexities of carrying
out operations against terrorist groups in a part of the world where the United
States and Russia have been warily pursuing their own objectives and
occasionally coming into conflict.
The recent ramming of an American ground patrol by a
Russian armored vehicle escalated tensions between the two rival powers in
northeast Syria. The clash prompted the Pentagon last week to dispatch Bradley
fighting vehicles and more fighter jet patrols to reinforce the more than 500
American troops helping stamp out remnants of the Islamic State there.
But in an opposite corner of the country, where the
United States has no troops on the ground, the military’s secretive Joint
Special Operations Command, with help from the C.I.A., is carrying out a shadow
war against a different terrorist threat — a small but virulent Al Qaeda
affiliate — that American officials say is plotting attacks against the West.
The Pentagon will not say much about the latest Reaper
drone strike in northwest Syria. Maj. Beth Riordan, a spokeswoman for the U.S.
Central Command, confirmed a military strike near Idlib on Sept. 14 against the
Qaeda affiliate in Syria, but offered no details.
Other American military and counterterrorism
officials, as well as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that the
Hellfire missile strike killed Sayyaf al-Tunsi, a Tunisian who was a senior
planner of Qaeda attacks against the West, including the United States. U.S.
military officials said Mr. al-Tunsi’s death would disrupt operations of the
Qaeda affiliate, called Hurras al-Din.
On Thursday, the government’s top counterterrorism
official hinted at the clandestine campaign to destroy the group’s leadership,
without offering specific details, most of which remain classified.
“In Syria, Hurras al-Din — a group made up of several
Qaeda veterans — has suffered successive losses of key leaders and operatives,
which, along with conflicts with other violent extremist factions and the
erosion of its safe haven in Idlib Province, has stunted the group’s growth,”
Christopher Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told
the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The Qaeda leaders in Syria have sought to operate in
urban areas, calculating that American forces will be wary of carrying out
missile strikes that could harm civilians.
But the modified Hellfire missile carries an inert
warhead. Instead of exploding, it hurls about 100 pounds of metal through the
top of a target’s vehicle. If the high-velocity projectile does not kill the
target, the missile’s other feature almost certainly does: six long blades
tucked inside, which deploy seconds before impact to slice up anything in its
path.
The Hellfire variant, known as the R9X, was initially
developed nearly a decade ago under pressure from President Barack Obama to
reduce civilian casualties and property damage in the United States’
long-running wars on terrorism in far-flung hot spots such as Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.
The weapon has been used perhaps a half-dozen times in
recent years, American officials said, typically when a senior terrorist leader
has been situated but other weapons would risk killing nearby civilians.
Conventional Hellfire missiles, with an explosive
warhead of about 20 pounds, are often used against groups of individuals or a
so-called high-value target who is meeting with other militants. But when
Special Operations forces are hunting a lone leader, the R9X, called the Ninja
by commandos, is now often the weapon of choice.
American Special Operations forces used a R9X missile
in June to kill Khaled al-Aruri, the de facto leader of the Qaeda branch in
Syria. He was a Qaeda veteran whose jihadist career dates to the 1990s.
American officials confirmed the use of the unusual missile in two earlier
instances, one by the C.I.A. in northwest Syria and one by the Joint Special
Operations Command in Yemen.
The center of the latest drone strikes is Idlib
Province, whose population has ballooned to more than three million people
during Syria’s civil war. It contains a witch’s brew of violent Islamic
extremist groups, dominated by the Qaeda-linked organization Hayat Tahrir
al-Sham, formerly the Nusra Front. Syrian military forces, backed by Iranian
and Russian firepower, have targeted the group.
Hurras al-Din emerged in early 2018 after several
factions broke away from the Nusra Front, which at least publicly has since
distanced itself from Al Qaeda’s overall leadership in Pakistan. Hurras al-Din
is the successor to the Khorasan Group, a small but dangerous organization of
hardened senior Qaeda operatives that Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s leader, sent
to Syria to plot attacks against the West.
The Khorasan Group was effectively wiped out by a
series of American airstrikes several years ago. But with as many as 2,000
fighters, including seasoned leaders from Jordan and Egypt, Hurras al-Din is
much larger and has operated in areas where Russian air defenses, at least
until recently, have largely shielded its members from American airstrikes and
the persistent stare of American surveillance planes.
Moscow dispatched military aid and advisers to Syria
in late 2015 to support the beleaguered government of President Bashar
al-Assad.
“The group remains committed to preparing for external
attacks despite its current focus on targeting Syrian forces,” a United Nations
counterterrorism assessment concluded in July.
Hurras al-Din is considered so dangerous that as
recently as this summer, the Pentagon took the unusual step of using a special
hotline to Russian commanders in Syria to allow the Special Operations forces
to conduct uncontested airstrikes against the Qaeda leaders. Previous strikes
have also attacked training camps in Aleppo and Idlib Provinces.
These are rare attacks west of the unofficial dividing
line between American forces to the east of the Euphrates River, and Russian
and Syrian government troops to the west of the river.
“As for the Russians, we do deconflict flights in
northwest Syria,” said one senior American military official. “While they don’t
particularly like us being there, most of the time they don’t object.”
Terrorism analysts say internecine tensions between
the two Qaeda-related groups in Syria have boiled over in recent months, posing
another problem for Hurras al-Din.
“As of late June, battlefield conflicts between Hurras
al-Din and the Nusra Front continued to escalate, prompting Al Qaeda to issue a
public statement condemning the fighting,” Mr. Miller, the counterterrorism
chief, said on Thursday.
Terrorism analysts say these tensions and the
increasing American drone strikes are putting more pressure on Hurras al-Din.
“Al Qaeda in Syria is in a hard spot,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, a terrorism scholar
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They don’t have much room to
maneuver.”
But other analysts point to reports that some Qaeda
operatives may have fled to other parts of Syria or across the border into
Lebanon, and could continue plotting from there.
“We’re on borrowed time with Al Qaeda in Idlib,” said
Jennifer Cafarella, a national security fellow at the Institute for the Study
of War in Washington.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/us/politics/missiles-al-qaeda-syria.html?utm_source=iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1555151_
--------
US media platforms censor top Palestinian activist
under Israeli pressure
25 September 2020
US social media companies have canceled under alleged
pressure from Israeli lobbies a webinar that was due to be held at an American
university by a senior member of a Palestinian resistance group.
The webinar was supposed to feature Leila Khaled, a
top Palestinian activist and resistance icon, but was blocked by major Silicon
Valley companies of Facebook, YouTube and Zoom.
Khaled, who is also a member of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was due to deliver a speech through the
webinar at San Francisco State University (SFSU) on Wednesday.
The video conferencing platform, Zoom, initially
prohibited the university from using its software to host the event, titled
"Whose NARRATIVES? Gender, Justice and Resistance,” and the webinar was
also restricted by Facebook, which has a lengthy history of censoring
Palestinians on behalf of Israel.
Later, the event went ahead via YouTube but shortly after
it began, the company cut off the video stream and replaced it with a notice
that said, “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Terms of
Service.”
Many Palestinians and rights activists censured the
social media platforms for censoring the webinar’s content and limiting free
speech, and said the event was cancelled due to pressure from the Israeli
regime and Zionist lobbying groups.
Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, one of the organizers of the
event, shared an email he sent to the San Francisco State University regarding
the cancellation of the webinar and lashed out at the obnoxious move.
“This censorship violates our freedom of speech and
academic freedom as a faculty to teach, deprives our student from the right to
learn, and denies the general public the right to hear from speakers who are
not readily available on mainstream media," the email read.
"We therefore expect the university to seriously
and publicly challenge Zoom’s attempt to control higher education and the
content of our curriculum and classrooms,” it added.
Over 2,000 people also signed a petition to support
academic freedom on Palestine in support of the webinar and underlined that,
“The SFSU is under attack from the ultra-right-wing Zionists for hosting a
conversation with Palestinian freedom fighter, Leila Khaled.”
The petition described Khaled as a “powerful,
inspiring figure,” and said, “She’s more than just a freedom fighter. Leila is
a mother, a wife, and a national icon. Leila Khaled proved that a woman and a
mother have a place in resisting Israeli occupation and colonialism. What Leila
proves to us most is that everyone has a place in the Liberation of Palestine.”
Reports said Israel’s lobby organizations attempted to
get federal and state governments involved in shutting down the webinar, with
the Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel group that uses lawsuits to harass supporters
of Palestinian rights, recently sending a letter to the National Security
Division of the US Department of Justice to dissuade the SFSU from hosting Khaled.
Moreover, Israeli authorities have expressed
satisfaction about the cancellation of the webinar and a number of pro-Israel
groups have also taken credit for pressuring the platforms to call off the
event.
The event is the latest example of US-based media
platforms censoring Palestinian content online.
Earlier this year, more than 50 Palestinian
journalists and activists had their profiles deleted or deactivated by
Facebook, for what the social platform claimed "not following Community
Standards", leaving many frustrated and confused about the real reason
behind the move.
US President Donald Trump has given Tel Aviv the green
light to annex large parts of the West Bank and Jordan Valley in his
self-proclaimed “deal of the century,” which was unveiled in January with the
aim of legitimizing Israel’s occupation and re-drawing the Middle East map.
Trump’s scheme largely gives in to Israel’s demands
while creating a Palestinian state with limited control over its own security
and borders, enshrining the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s “capital”
and allowing the regime to annex settlements in the West Bank and the Jordan
Valley.
The United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), and
some Arab countries have all said annexation would violate international law
and undermine the prospects of establishing a sovereign Palestinian state on
the 1967 boundaries.
The Palestinians want the occupied West Bank as part
of a future independent state with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/635005/US-social-media-Leila-Khaled-webinar-Israeli-lobbies
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India
Terrorism, clandestine nuclear trade Pakistan's 'only
crowning glory' for 70 years: India at UN
Sep 26, 2020
UNITED NATIONS: The "only crowning glory"
that Pakistan has to show to the world for the last seven decades is terrorism,
ethnic cleansing, majoritarian fundamentalism and clandestine nuclear trade,
India said in a scathing response on Friday, slamming Pakistani Prime Minister
Imran Khan's "incessant rant" and "venom" in the UN General
Assembly.
"This august forum witnessed a new low on its
75th anniversary. The leader of Pakistan today called for those who incite hate
and violence to be outlawed. But as he went on, we were left wondering, was he
referring to himself?" first secretary in the permanent mission of India
to the UN Mijito Vinito said, making India's right of reply.
The strong rebuttal came after Khan spoke about
India's internal affairs, including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, during his
pre-recorded video statement at the high-level general debate. Vinito, who was
sitting at India's seat in the UN General Assembly hall for the general debate,
walked out when Khan started his usual "diatribe" about India.
"This hall heard the incessant rant of someone
who had nothing to show for himself, who had no achievements to speak of and no
reasonable suggestion to offer to the world. Instead, we saw lies,
misinformation, war mongering and malice spread through this Assembly,"
the young Indian diplomat said.
Slamming Pakistan for its record as a nation, Vinito
said, "The only crowning glory that this country has to show to the world
for the last 70 years is terrorism, ethnic cleansing, majoritarian
fundamentalism and clandestine nuclear trade."
Alluding to the "stellar record" of
Pakistan, he said this is the country that has the "dubious
distinction" of hosting the largest number of terrorists proscribed by the
United Nations, a reference to terror masterminds such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)
founder Hafiz Saeed and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) head Masood Azhar.
"This is the same country that provides pensions
for dreaded and listed terrorists out of State funds. The leader whom we heard
today is the same person who referred to terrorist Osama Bin Laden as a
'martyr'" in the Pakistani Parliament in July, Vinito said.
He added that it is Pakistan that brought genocide to
South Asia 39 years ago when it killed its own people and it is also the
country that is "shameless enough" not to offer a sincere apology for
the horrors it perpetrated even after so many years.
India asserted in its right of reply that Khan,
"who spewed venom today", admitted in 2019 in public in the US that
his country still has about 30,000-40,000 terrorists, who have been trained by
Pakistan and have fought in Afghanistan and in the Indian Union Territory of
Jammu and Kashmir.
"This is the country that has systematically
cleansed its minorities, including Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and others,
through the abuse of its blasphemy laws and through forced religious
conversions," Vinito said, adding that "for someone who professes to
be a champion of Islam, this is also a country that has encouraged killing of
fellow Muslims merely because they belonged to a different sect or to a
different region in Pakistan and through sponsoring terrorist attacks against
its neighbours".
Pakistan has consistently used UN platforms, including
the high-level General Assembly sessions, to rake up the issue of Jammu and
Kashmir, but has repeatedly found no resonance with the international community
for its "diatribe".
India strongly asserted that Jammu and Kashmir is its
"integral and inalienable part" and the rules and legislations
brought in the Union Territory are strictly its internal affairs.
"The only dispute left in Kashmir relates to that
part of Kashmir that is still under the illegal occupation of Pakistan. We call
upon Pakistan to vacate all those areas that it is in illegal occupation
of," Vinito said, adding that what should instead be on the agenda of the
UN is Pakistan's "deep state and its unrelenting political and financial
support to terrorist organisations and mercenaries, which are a threat to
global peace and security".
"The only way for Pakistan to become a normal
country is to abjure its moral, financial and material support to terrorism,
turn its attention to the problems faced by its own population, including its
minorities, and stop misusing UN platforms to further its nefarious
agenda," India said.
The words used in the General Assembly by Khan
"demean" the very essence of the United Nations, Vinito said, adding
that "for a nation that is deeply buried in medievalism, it is
understandable that the tenets of a modern civilised society such as peace,
dialogue and diplomacy are farfetched".
Pakistan's delegate then made a response to India's
right of reply.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/terrorism-clandestine-nuclear-trade-pakistans-only-crowning-glory-for-70-years-india-at-un/articleshow/78327545.cms
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NIA court convicts Kerala man who joined IS in Iraq
Sep 26, 2020
KOCHI: The special court in Kochi for NIA cases on
Thursday found Thodupuzha native Subahani Haja Moideen guilty in the case
relating to his travel to Iraq to join the Islamic State and wage war against
that country, a nation in alliance with India. The court will pronounce the
quantum of sentence on Monday.
Moideen, 36, was found guilty of several offences,
including criminal conspiracy, waging war against Asiatic power in alliance
with India under, being a member of a terrorist organisation, among others. He
said he believes in peace and urged the court to consider his age and family
situation while deciding quantum of punishment. Senior prosecutor for NIA,
Arjun Ambalapatta told the court Moideen has no remorse and should be given
life imprisonment.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/nia-court-convicts-kerala-man-who-joined-is-in-iraq/articleshow/78327360.cms
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2 top Lashkar commanders killed in op: IGP
Sep 26, 2020
SRINAGAR: Top Lashkar-e-Taiba commanders Adil Bhat, who
was involved in the August 14 Nowgam attack in which two cops were killed, and
his Pakistani aide Abu Rehan were slain in an anti-terror operation in Sirhama
area in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district on Friday morning, IGP (Kashmir
Range) Vijay Kumar said. Later in the day, four youth were injured in an
explosion at the encounter site after an undetected explosive went off.
Bhat was a resident of Larve in Kakapora area of south
Kashmir’s Pulwama district. Rehan, meanwhile, was known to be active since March
2019, the IGP said at a press conference in Srinagar. The encounter began late
Thursday after security forces, on receiving information. Holed-up ultras
opened fire at the team, triggering a gunfight.
Few hours later, an explosion took place while a group
of people was clearing debris from the house razed in the operation. The
injured Sirhama residents were identified as Muhammad Yasin Rather, Shahid
Yousuf, Irfan Ahmed Bhat and Mudasir Ahmed Magray.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/2-top-lashkar-commanders-killed-in-op-igp/articleshow/78327337.cms
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Indian diplomat walks out after Imran Khan raises
Kashmir issue at UN
Sep 26, 2020
The Indian delegate at the UN General Assembly meeting
in New York walked out of the hall when Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s
pre-recorded statement was played on Friday.
The delegate, a junior diplomat named Mijito Vinito
from the 2010 batch of the Indian Foreign Service, picked up his papers and
left the hall as Khan’s speech was played on a large overhead screen.
Khan raised the Kashmir issue, as he has done in
recent speeches to multilateral bodies, and criticised the Indian government on
several issues.
After Khan’s speech, TS Tirumurti, India’s permanent
representative to the UN, tweeted that the country would use the “right of
reply” facility to respond to the Pakistani premier’s address.
“PM of Pakistan statement a new diplomatic low – at
75th UN General Assembly. Another litany of vicious falsehood, personal
attacks, war mongering and obfuscation of Pakistan’s persecution of its own
minorities & of its cross-border terrorism. Befitting Right of Reply
awaits,” Tirumurti said in his tweet.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address
the UN General Assembly through a video statement on Saturday.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/indian-delegate-walks-out-during-pakistan-pm-imran-khan-s-speech-at-un/story-GlQiOjgqFNJzCBNOgmj9FO.html
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Pakistan
Pakistan PM Demands UN Action against ‘Rising
Islamophobia’ In Many Countries Including India
By Ayaz Gul
September 25, 2020
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Pakistan Prime Minister Imran
Khan has urged the United Nations to universally outlaw what he called rising
Islamophobia in many countries, including neighbouring India.
In a prerecorded speech to the U.N. General Assembly
on Friday, the Pakistani leader denounced the fresh publication of cartoons of
the Prophet Mohammed by Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly.
“Muslims continue to be targeted with impunity in many
countries,” Khan said. He added that rising trends of religious hatred and
violence “in the name of freedom of speech” have accentuated Islamophobia.
“We stress that willful provocations and incitement to
hate and violence must be universally outlawed,” Khan said. “This assembly
should declare an ‘International Day to Combat Islamophobia’ and build a
coalition to fight this scourge.”
Khan again assailed Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s Hindu nationalist government for allegedly turning the country into a
state sponsor of religious hatred and violence against nearly 200 million
minority Muslims who live in India.
“They believe that India is exclusively for Hindus and
others are not equal citizens,” the Pakistani leader said.
India’s U.N. representative, T.S. Tirumurti, took to
Twitter to denounce Khan’s speech, calling it “a new diplomatic low” full of
“vicious falsehood.”
Pakistan’s military tensions with India have escalated
since August 2019, when the Indian government revoked a decades long
semi-autonomous status for India-administered two-thirds of Kashmir and split
it into two union territories.
Islamabad, which administers the remaining one-third
of the disputed Himalayan region, rejected the move, saying that Kashmir is an
internationally recognized disputed territory under a long-standing U.N.
Security Council resolution and neither country can unilaterally change the
status.
Both nuclear-armed South Asia rival nations claim
Kashmir in its entirety and have fought two wars over it.
Increased bilateral tensions in recent months have led
to almost daily military skirmishes along the Line of Control, which separates
Pakistan- and Indian-ruled parts of Kashmir, rendering almost ineffective a
2003 mutual cease-fire truce.
Khan warned Friday “India is playing a dangerous game
of upping the military ante against Pakistan in a nuclearized environment” to
divert attention from Indian "illegal actions and atrocities" in
Kashmir.
India alleges Pakistan trains and arms Kashmiri
insurgents fighting New Delhi’s rule.
Islamabad rejects the charges, saying it provides only
diplomatic, political and moral support to what Pakistan describes as an
indigenous struggle for Kashmir’s freedom.
India’s August 2019 action coupled with a security
clampdown in Muslim-majority Kashmir has drawn criticism from U.N. and global
rights defenders.
Indian security forces have arrested thousands of
Kashmiris, including politicians and civil society activists, to deter violent
protests against its actions.
Khan has routinely used international platforms to highlight
the plight of Muslims, but critics say his persistent silence, like that of
leaders in many other Muslim countries, on China’s alleged abuses against its
Muslim minority Uighur population undermines Pakistan’s argument.
Islamabad and Beijing maintain close economic and
military ties. In recent years, the relationship has cemented in the wake of
billions of dollars in Chinese investment in Pakistan, building roads, ports,
power plants, industrial zones and other major infrastructure projects.
https://www.voanews.com/south-central-asia/pakistan-pm-demands-un-action-against-rising-islamophobia
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Opposition Trying To Cause Army-Govt Rift: Imran
Syed Irfan Raza
26 Sep 2020
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday said
the opposition wanted to create a rift between the government and armed forces,
claiming that he had been aware of politicians’ meetings with army leadership.
The prime minister in a meeting with news directors of
some private TV channels said he had no fear of the opposition, as he would go
for by-elections in the country if all opposition members gave resignation from
the assemblies.
When contacted, a participant of the meeting said Mr
Khan was asked if he knew about politicians’ meetings with Chief of Army Staff
(COAS) Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Director
General Lt Gen Faiz Hameed last week. The premier replied he always knew about
such meetings as well as about the recent particular meeting.
The prime minister, however, refused to comment on the
meeting in which, according to the railways minister, top opposition leaders
including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shahbaz Sharif and
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari were present. “I
[am] always aware of such meetings but what I can say about the people who meet
military leadership in secret,” the prime minister was quoted as saying.
Asked whether he was invited to the meeting or not, Mr
Khan explained that the meeting was actually called from security point of view
to brief the heads of political parties taking part in upcoming elections in
Gilgit-Baltistan. “I have no need to attend the meeting because it was security
related,” the prime minister said.
“Secondly, I did not want to sit with the opposition
leaders who always tried to blackmail the government over even the recent
legislation on Financial Action Task Force-related bills in the parliament,” Mr
Khan declared. The opposition was not happy to see “unprecedented” harmony between
the government and the army he said, adding that they wanted to create a rift
between the civil-military leadership. “Army does 100 per cent what I ask it.
Army honoured my decision on different important issues like return of Indian
pilot Abhinandan to India, opening of Kartarpur Corridor for Sikh pilgrims,
policies on Afghanistan and India etc,” he said.
Mr Khan said the army followed the manifesto of ruling
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) because its leadership was not corrupt. However,
he rejected the impression that the PTI government came into power with the
army’s help. However, he added, “Whereas the army had laid foundations of both
PML-N and PPP.”
Answering another question, Mr Khan said he would not
give any National Reconciliation Ordinance-like relief to the “corrupt
politicians” and would hold by-elections if the opposition gave resignations
from assemblies.
He was of the opinion that the [major] opposition
parties always took Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman
with them, because their followers would not take to the streets.
The prime minister said former president Pervez
Musharraf had committed a blunder by giving NRO to the politicians, paving the
way of unprecedented corruption for one decade.
About the recent speech of PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif
aired through video link from London, Mr Khan said he allowed airing of his
(Nawaz’s) speech on TV channels to “give a level-playing field” to the
opposition. “I would have been blamed for subjugating the right of speech if I
had not allowed media to televise his speech,” he said. But the opposition
party leader was toeing an agenda of India that was why his speech was given a
lot of media coverage in the neighbouring country, the prime minister said.
“Nawaz Sharif always blackmailed the army that was why
he could not maintain good relations with such institutions, but now our
government and the army have unprecedented harmony and this always irritates
the opposition,” he added.
Talking about the Gilgit Baltistan assembly elections
in November, Mr Khan said India wanted to create unrest in GB and spending a
lot of money to meet its nefarious designs.
He said India also wanted to create a sectarian crisis
in Pakistan by killing religious leaders of Shia and Sunni sects of Islam. He
claimed that two groups from Islamabad had been busted recently, as they
intended to kill religious leaders belonging to the two sects.
About the sugar “mafia”, Mr Khan said the government
was taking stern action against the sugar barons involved in the sugar crisis
so that they could not increase price of the commodity in future.
About the recent increase in the prices of 94
life-saving drugs, Mr Khan backed the decision and said their prices had not
been increased for over 15 years, with the result that they had vanished from
the market. “Now the supply of these medicines will improve,” he said.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1581623/opposition-trying-to-cause-army-govt-rift-imran
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Porous border, residents’ support behind APS tragedy:
probe body
Nasir Iqbal
26 Sep 2020
ISLAMABAD: A judicial commission appointed around two
years ago to inquire into the Dec 16, 2014 terrorist attack on the Army Public
School (APS) in Peshawar has observed in its report that the tragic incident
plagued success stories of the armed forces which otherwise deserved
deification.
Equally incomprehensible is the inertia on part of the
Askari Guards as well as the deputed static guards to the initial heavy firing
and blasts by terrorists until Mobile Vigilance Team (MVT) patrolling in the
vicinity and Quick Response Force (QRF) arrived, regretted the 525-page inquiry
report that was furnished before the Supreme Court on Friday.
The deadly attack had left 147 people, including 132
schoolchildren, martyred when militants had stormed the APS-Warsak school in
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s capital around six years ago.
A three-judge SC bench, headed by Chief Justice of
Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed, on Friday ordered the federal government to make public
the report of the commission that completed it on June 26, 2020. The court had
appointed one-member judicial commission comprising Justice Mohammad Ibrahim
Khan of the Peshawar High Court on Oct 5, 2018 to hold inquiry into the
incident.
Commission was formed in Oct 2018 to investigate
attack on Army Public School in Peshawar
The court had ordered Attorney General for Pakistan
Khalid Jawed Khan last month to get the federal government’s instructions
regarding the judicial commission’s report.
The report, which comprises statements of the
aggrieved families, evidence led by the bureaucracy, police and military as
well as discussions and observations, highlighted the belated response to the
terror attack. Had the force shown a little response and could engage the
militants in the very beginning of the attack, the impact of the incident might
have been less, the report highlighted. Nevertheless, the movement of the
militants towards the adjacent toddlers’ block was restricted by the valiant
soldiers of the MVT-2 and QRF on their arrival and thus further devastation in
that block was foiled, it said.
While expressing sympathy with the parents of the
martyred students, the chief justice during the hearing assured the families
that those responsible for the tragedy would not be spared.
The Dec 16 incident was not a painful and unfortunate
event for them only, but the horrendous act also jolted every citizen of our
beloved land, observed Justice Mohammad Khan in the report.
It said the country remained at war with the enemy
that carried occult activities and let loose terrorism, which hit the highest
points in 2013-14, but this did not obligate the authorities to hold that the
country’s sensitive installations and soft targets could be forsaken as a prey
to the terrorist attack.
Entry of terrorists
The entry of the terrorists from the cross-border
(Afghanistan) till their infiltration into the doomed school’s perimeter
befooling the security apparatus could be attributed to mainly the porous
north-west border and Afghan refugees’ movement across the border in view of
the understanding inter se the government and international agency regarding
refugee’s unrestrained movement, the report said. Above all, it added, the
assistance provided to the fanatics from the inhabitants of locality,
especially in this particular episode, was palpable and unpardonable.
“I can perceive it with utmost honesty that when one’s
own blood and flesh commit treachery and betrayal, the result would always be
devastating,” Justice Khan observed deploring that it diminished and
compromised the security apparatus efforts and augmented and intensified the
accomplishment rate of the enemy’s nefarious plan.
No agency, how capable and able in terms of manpower,
infrastructure and technology could outperform the impact of any attack
effortlessly when infidels are within the inside, the judicial commission
reported.
The report mentioned the three-layered security
protocol namely the static guards at the outer gates, two MVTs patrolling in
the vicinity of the APS for vigil, the QRF destined at a distance of around 10
minutes from the APS and the Rapid Response Force (RRF) of police for response
within Peshawar cantonment. One MVT was beguiled towards the smoke erupted from
the vehicle set ablaze by the terrorists as part of their plan while leaving the
premises of APS unattended, it said, adding this act alone gave an edge to the
militants to break into APS from backside where the MVT had to patrol.
Though the other MVT did respond it wasn’t capable to
buy the much needed time for the QRF and the RRF to overpower the terrorists
before they could cause the catastrophe.
The generic threat alert issued by the National
Counterterrorism Authority (Nacta) was in fact attributed to all the academic
institutions run by the armed forces with the sole objective to target the army
families as retribution for the unstoppable and successful military operations
against the terrorists hideouts particularly operations Zarb-i-Azb and
Khyber-I, the report said.
The report also mentioned how the aggrieved parents
moaned that the operation was considerably delayed because of belated arrival
of the Special Services Group (SSG) Commandoes without any plausible reason,
whereby the terrorist acquired enough time to accomplish their plan of causing
maximum damage in terms of loss of lives of innocent souls.
The aggrieved parents also recorded their reservations
regarding the capacity of the militants to bring huge arms and ammunitions
enabling them to engage in fighting till late hours of the day.
According to the report, most of the aggrieved
families complained that notwithstanding their arrival at the site, the police
were not allowed to enter the premises, giving the parents skewed hope of
safety of their children. They questioned how the combat operation and
evacuation activity could be conducted simultaneously. Though the aggrieved
parents themselves observed the activities of military-men/security agencies,
they formulated their own opinion based on circumstantial and incidental events
happened that day.
The parents questioned when terrorists committed
massacre in the first 15 minutes of the attack, why army after arrival could
not eliminate the militants sooner? Likewise, the reason of continuation of the
battle since morning till late evening shrouded them in mystery, as none could
answer them for long till this day of commission’s proceedings. They questioned
how the evacuation of Shuhada/injured/survivors and military operation was
conducted in chorus? Thus while casting doubt on “genuineness” of the force’s
response, they also alleged that the police were not allowed entry into the APS
though they had reached ahead of the armed forces on the day of the incident.
They also complained that accurate information was not
shared with the curious parents who were in utter despair fearing for their
children’s safety on the fateful day and at the end, they found their kids
brutally killed and injured by the terrorists.
Justice Khan in his report acknowledged that the
anguish endured by the bereaved families was beyond possible stretch of human
imagination. Also, the report acknowledged the efforts of the armed forces in
consoling and placating the agonies of parents of the shuhada and other
victims, compared to the pains taken by such institutions in tragedies of this
magnitude elsewhere in the world.
Recommendations
The commission also made certain recommendations such
as medical and psychological treatment of the injured, parents and siblings of
the Shuhada, provision of free education to the injured, provision of secondary
and higher education to the siblings of the Shuhada, naming schools and other
prominent places in the name of the Shuhada, conferring the honorary rank of
Captain on the Shuhada students etc.
Justice Khan observed that the nation was proud of the
sons and daughters who embraced martyrdom in the tragic incident and paid
salute to the innocent lives, acknowledging them as the real heroes of the
motherland.
The commission also appreciated the role of the
Pakistan Military in uprooting the menace of terrorism from the country after
the incident and for their unflinching support to the victim families. The
armed forces demonstrated valour and endurance throughout their fight against
the peril, the report said, adding the bereaved families and armed forces were
two limbs of the same body, as the grievance and outcry of the former could be
attributed to multilateral factors. No external force, how high or powerful it
could be, could intrude and dilute this sacred relationship between the
citizens of Pakistan including the bereaved families and the armed forces.
Meanwhile, the federal government assured the court
that the recommendations of the commission would be shared with all relevant
authorities to ensure strict compliance. The government admitted that it was
obligation of the State to continue to provide for the welfare of those injured
in the incident and where possible, extend worldly comforts for the members of
the bereaved families. The government said the government had also awarded 22
Shuhada with Tamgha-i-Shujaat and Sitara-i-Shujaat (civil awards).
https://www.dawn.com/news/1581631/porous-border-residents-support-behind-aps-tragedy-probe-body
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PM for taking parliamentary parties on board in
lawmaking
26 Sep 2020
ISLAMABAD: Removing a provision of public hanging of
rapists from the anti-rape bill, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday said he
wanted to take all parliamentary parties on board in future legislation.
During a meeting with National Assembly Speaker Asad
Qaiser at the Prime Minister House, he said the anti-rape bill would be
introduced in the National Assembly in its next session.
A source privy to the meeting told Dawn that the bill
had suggested stern action and exemplary punishments for those involved in the
sexual abuse of women and children, including chemical and physical castration
of habitual rapists. They will also be registered so that police could keep a
vigilant eye on them.
“The prime minister desired to take along other
parliamentary parties in the legislative process in the best public interest,”
said an official press release issued by the Prime Minister Office after the
meeting.
It said the prime minister discussed matters related
to legislation, measures of public interest and welfare with the speaker.
Prime Minister Khan said the legislature had an
important role to play in protecting and upholding the rights of the people
under the Constitution and law.
“Treasury members will continue to play their due role
in any reforms or amendments required to the existing laws,” he added.
Later, Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari, in
a separate press conference, said the prime minister had excluded the provision
of public hanging from the anti-rape bill while other exemplary punishments for
rapists had been suggested.
On Sept 14, the prime minister called for public
hanging of those involved in sexually assaulting women and children or
physically castrating them so that they could not commit such crimes in future.
Universal health coverage
The prime minister directed the Punjab government to
launch the facility of universal health coverage for the residents of two big
cities of the province.
He was presiding over the review meeting on the
National Health Card Programme to provide quality services to deserving people
in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The meeting was attended by Special Assistant to the
Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan, Punjab Health Minister Yasmin
Rashid, KP Health Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra, Parliamentary Secretary Dr
Nausheen Hamid, secretaries of relevant departments and senior officials.
The prime minister was informed that the Sehat Sahulat
Programme had been extended to 36 districts of Punjab with 5.1 million families
registered under it.
The meeting was told that the beneficiaries of the
programme had increased during the tenure of the present government with 80,389
people benefited from the facility this year.
During the last one-and-a-half months, around 1.3
million families had been registered, whereas 235 hospitals were included in
the panel.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1581661/pm-for-taking-parliamentary-parties-on-board-in-lawmaking
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PIMA to hold basic life support workshops in 50
mosques
September 26, 2020
Islamabad : The Pakistan Islamic Medical Association
(PIMA) has embarked on a unique initiative that seeks to guide and train common
citizens about first aid measures that can and should be provided to someone
who suffers a sudden cardiac or respiratory arrest, especially where basic
facilities to save precious lives are not available.
This lifesaving project was first initiated on a large
scale by the British Islamic Medical Association, and was later on adopted by
all doctors’ associations including PIMA, affiliated with the Federation of
Islamic Medical Associations (FIMA).
September 26 has been marked for holding life support
sessions in mosques all over the world. As an active partner of this campaign,
PIMA had arranged sessions on basics of emergency care in 48 mosques of 16
cities across Pakistan last year as well. The project is of utmost importance,
especially for Third World and under-developed countries like Pakistan where
emergency services are none-existent in far-flung areas of the country.
The Incharge of PIMA’s lifesaving project, Dr. Abdul
Aziz Memon, said a large number of people suffer cardiac arrests at home or at
their workplaces and lose their lives due to lack of awareness about basic life
support techniques. He further assured that many lives can be saved with Cardio
Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) training, which is simple to learn. CPR is an
emergency first-aid procedure that is applied to maintain respiration and blood
circulation in a person whose breathing and heartbeat suddenly stops.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/720309-pima-to-hold-basic-life-support-workshops-in-50-mosques
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South Asia
Surviving the Perils of the Bloodied Bangladesh-India
Border by Mostly Ethnic Santal and Catholic
September 25, 2020
For generations Patrick Baskey and his family have
been living undisturbed in Kurmoil village in the Dhamoirhat area of Naogaon
district in northern Bangladesh, close to the Indian border zone.
Several hundred villagers, mostly ethnic Santal and
Catholic like the Baskeys, rely on agriculture, fishing and day labour for a
livelihood.
Like most of Bangladesh’s 18 border zones with India,
it is notorious for illegal activities including smuggling of goods and cattle,
human trafficking and trespassing, leading to torture, arrest and killings by
members of India's Border Security Force (BSF) at regular intervals.
“Often people trespass into India illegally for
various purposes like migration, employment and smuggling. A syndicate
consisting of Bangladeshi and Indian people as well as some officials of the
local administration are involved in illegal activities. People get arrested,
tortured and shot dead by the BSF, and all of them are Bangladeshi citizens,”
Baskey, 29, told UCA News.
“Some poor people do it for an income and others do it
to get rich quickly. Lack of employment, low income and greed can be blamed for
such activities that sometimes cost lives.”
Baskey is a member of Christ the King of Peace Church
in Chandpukur of Naogaon in the Diocese of Rajshahi. The parish, set up in
1979, has about 5,230 indigenous Catholics spread around 60 villages, some within
two kilometers of the Indian border.
No local Christian, despite being poor, will resort to
such illegal activities because of the considerable risks to their lives, so
there have been no abuse or killing of Christians in decades, he said, adding
that priests, nuns and catechists always warn Catholics about the dangers of
illegal activities on the border.
“Involvement in illegal activities is not always about
poverty but also due to a decline in morality. On the other hand, abuses and
killing people by shooting are violations of human rights and unacceptable,”
Baskey added.
Keeping people away from border
Father Fabian Mardy, the former parish priest of
Chandpukur Church, said alerting Catholics to the dangers of illegal activities
on the border has been a priority for years.
“In my seven years in the parish, I never heard any
Christian had been abused or killed at the border as they don’t do anything
that can threaten their lives. Also, we always keep in touch with our people in
the border zone and make them aware of various risks,” Father Mardy, parish
priest of Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, also in Naogaon district, told UCA
News.
The priest strongly condemned arbitrary shootings and
killing of unarmed civilians at the border by the BSF.
“If people commit crimes, they can be arrested and
punished, but no one should be victims of extrajudicial shooting and killing.
Both governments must work better to bring border killing to zero,” the priest
said.
Like Chandpukur Parish, Queen of Fatima Church in
Ruhea in Thakurgaon district of Dinajpur Diocese, has not seen any Christian
casualties in recent decades. The parish has about 7,514 Bengali and indigenous
Catholics, with hundreds living in villages close to the border.
“Local Christians are mostly farmers and day laborers,
and they never go to the border, so there has been no abuse or killing of
Christians in the past years. We always advise them to remain alert so that
they don’t face any troubles,” Father Anthony Sen, convener of the diocese's
Justice and Peace Commission, told UCA News.
The priest also deplored the torture and killing of
people at the border by Indian forces irrespective of their religious or ethnic
background.
“This is a gross violation of human rights. India is a
big and powerful country, but it does not mean its forces can do whatever they
like and keep shooting and killing people at will. We are frustrated to see
border forces of both nations holding meetings and promising to stop border
killings, but now and then Bangladeshi people are being killed,” Father Sen
said.
While churches in border areas score successes in
helping people evade casualties at the hands of Indian forces, in many places
Bangladeshi people continue to be killed.
Unabated border killings
Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority South Asian nation of
over 160 million, shares a border of about 4,100 kilometers with Hindu-majority
India, its giant eastern neighbor.
Despite India’s support for Bangladesh’s War of
Independence from Pakistan in 1971, its border forces have adopted a lethal
policy that has left several thousand people, mostly unarmed Bangladeshi
villagers, shot and tortured to death in the past decades.
India has also constructed a barbed wire fence
encircling Bangladesh to stop illegal immigration, smuggling and other crimes
on the border.
In a 2010 report, New York-based Human Rights Watch
dubbed the BSF a “trigger-happy” force that follow a “shoot-to-kill” policy and
termed Bangladesh-India border zones “South Asian Killing Fields” due to
unabated killings. No one has been held responsible or prosecuted for the
killings.
A series of diplomatic exchanges and joint meetings of
border forces of the two nations have been held in recent years in an attempt
to stop the use of excessive force and lethal weapons. The killings have
declined but not stopped, rights groups say.
At the end of the 50th meeting between director
generals of Border Guards Bangladesh and India's Border Security Force on Sept.
16-19, promises were made to stop border killings, prioritize human rights and
introduce joint patrols to curb smuggling and trafficking of drugs and arms.
Rights activists, referring to earlier promises, are
skeptical about the new pact.
So far, 34 Bangladeshi people have been shot and
tortured to death by the BSF at the border in 2020, according to Ain-O-Salish
Kendra (ASK), a Dhaka-based rights group. It has documented a total of 43
killings on the border.
“Even if crimes are committed at border zones, killing
is in no way acceptable. There are laws to punish people if they engage in
crimes, but they cannot be shot at like birds to kill. While India needs to act
as a responsible neighbor, Bangladesh needs to be vocal against such rights
violations,” Nina Goswami, senior deputy director at ASK, told UCA News.
“We would like to see meetings are held not only for
the sake of meetings but also to bear fruit and stop abuses and killings.”
Efforts to curb crimes on the border will continue to
increase, said Lt. Col. Foyzur Rahman, spokesman for Border Guards Bangladesh,
but he didn’t elaborate on activities to stop killings by Indian counterparts.
“We try to tackle criminal activities, which are daily
realities in border areas. Our efforts to maintain close connections with
Indian forces and to curb crimes and killings have increased and will
continue,” Rahman told UCA News.
https://www.ucanews.com/news/surviving-the-perils-of-the-bloodied-bangladesh-india-border/89652#
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65 Taliban insurgents killed in eastern Afghanistan
September 24, 2020
KHOST, Afghanistan: Afghan security forces have killed
65 Taliban militants during an intense battle in eastern Afghanistan, officials
said Thursday, as fighting rages between the two sides despite ongoing peace
talks.
The latest bloodshed came late Wednesday after the
Taliban stormed a military headquarters building in the Wazi Khwa district of
Paktika province.
“The fighting lasted several hours and in a
retaliatory attack by the Afghan forces, the Taliban suffered heavy
casualties,” Paktika police spokesman Shah Mohammad Arian told AFP.
“In the clash, 65 Taliban fighters were killed and 35
others were wounded. Unfortunately, three police forces were martyred and six
others wounded.”
Bakhtiar Gul Zadran, the head of Paktika provincial
council, confirmed the information.
The Taliban did not immediately comment.
The violence came a day after the Taliban said they
had killed 28 Afghan paramilitary policemen in Uruzgan in southern Afghanistan.
The violence comes as Taliban and Afghan government
negotiators are meeting in Doha, where they are trying to find a way to end 19
years of war.
A hopeful start to the peace talks September 12 was
immediately marred by fresh violence across Afghanistan.
Negotiations are moving slowly, with the two sides
trying to thrash out various parameters before deciding an agenda.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1739541/world
--------
Southeast Asia
Promote bilingualism to break schools deadlock
Sharifah Munirah Alatas
September 26, 2020
The problems surrounding the nation’s language policy
have lingered for decades. The endless debates continue, over the teaching of
English, the positions of vernacular schools and of Bahasa Malaysia; the
question of national patriotism and the rising unemployability of university
graduates.
The constant debates demonstrate how self-centred and
ethnocentric our leadership has been for decades.
For all the grandiose statements made by former prime
ministers, and our vision to become a developed nation by 2020, 2030 or 2050,
we are still unwilling to solve our education problems: we are still arguing
about whether English is important, or if our Federal Constitution has
provisions to promote bilingualism or multilingualism in our system.
Prof Shad Saleem Faruqi of Universiti Malaya recently
alluded to the fact that our leaders need “the wisdom, political courage and
educational vision”. They need to acknowledge there are no legal impediments to
the use of English, vernacular and native languages in our schools and tertiary
institutions.
There are provisions under the Education Act, the
National Language Act and the Private Higher Education Act.
The US has never promoted English as its official
language. For all intents and purposes, it has no official language. The
country has also been a developed nation for more than a century, and the
world’s superpower for more than half a century.
Its founding fathers did not see the need to declare
an official language as English was the dominant language. There was no need to
“protect it”. For the US, no official language was declared because they did
not want to “offend their non-English speaking fellow Americans who helped
fight for independence”. This represents the wisdom and political courage
mentioned above.
On the flip side, our founding fathers declared Bahasa
Malaysia as the official language. The majority of Malaysians are Malays, so
the Malay language was already dominant. Hypothetically, the Malay language
(like Islam) should not need to be “protected”. Rather, it should automatically
be the patriotic glue that binds the nation together.
Language was used as a racial and religious tool
So, where is our educational vision?
Problems emerged when Malaysians started to politicise
race and religion. Language was used as a tool to drive a wedge between the
races and religions. The political game seeped into the education system. The
situation was compounded when our nation began to trail behind in regional and
global productivity and marketability. We have our leaders to blame for this.
Rising university graduate unemployment, backwardness
in technological and scientific innovation and a diminishing role in global
competitiveness have caused us to argue more about education policies. Instead
of pooling our resources to rise to the global economic challenges, our leaders
chose to bicker endlessly about which race and language is supreme, and which
language and religion needed protection.
It is obvious that our leaders have a very selfish and
narrow educational vision. Since 2003, the same issues have been highlighted,
ad nauseum. We are forever reading about unemployable university graduates due
to their poor command of English at job interviews.
Polls conducted over the decades have consistently
indicated that the majority of Malaysians want their children to be more
proficient in the language. Parents are frustrated that their children’s
economic future will be in jeopardy because they lack English communication
skills.
The problem is the ill-intentions of nationalists
The issue is not about our Federal Constitution,
failure to understand it or fear about dwindling patriotism. The problem lies
in the ill-intentions of nationalists, Malay and non-Malay, who use the issue
of language to construct narratives which serve selfish political ends.
One narrative is that the Malays feel that teaching
students in English will erode national identity and patriotism and make the
students less Islamic, more immoral and westernised. In 2003, when former prime
minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed introduced the teaching of science and mathematics
in English (PPSMI), the grades for those subjects drastically fell.
Mostly, it was the rural Malays who were
disadvantaged. However, this had a lot to do with the poor quality of teachers
assigned, and poor infrastructural and supplemental facilities in the rural
schools. The problems were very practical and not some ideological rejection
based on patriotic sentiments or fear of abandoning Islam.
Recently, Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin had
suggested abolishing ALL streams, including religious streams at the primary
level. Earlier, a rather inexperienced politician had called for the abolition
of vernacular schools, saying they were a hindrance to nation building. He
should have studied the matter in more detail.
Nation building is a complex phenomenon. The US has
been a progressive and united nation, whose citizens are largely patriotic.
This is despite having not declared an official national language. The young
politician mentioned above should read more and learn to contextualise, not
politicise his statements. All he has shown is his irresponsible,
politically-motivated and hurtful intentions to many non-Malay Malaysians.
Where’s the evidence about integration?
Another narrative says vernacular education is
necessary at the primary level. It would not be advisable to defer vernacular
education to the secondary level. The view also suggests we lack empirical
evidence that single-stream primary education leads to more integration
compared to single-stream secondary education.
This is true. It shows that the decades of arguing
about language and education has not been taken seriously. If it was, by now
there would be an abundance of socio-psychological, linguistic, historical and
anthropological studies and publications on the matter.
For decades there has been a steady decline in the
quality of school and university graduates. A columnist recently wrote “a
complacent public allowed extremist leaders to dominate almost every area of
our lives, including education, and today, we reap the benefits”.
This is not true. Our public has not been complacent.
In fact, we have been continuously upset and confused because our leaders keep
changing the language policy every few years. They keep grabbing “the wrong end
of the cow”. Our leaders are complacent, not the public.
The fact that Malaysia is falling behind in global
competitiveness, scientific and technological advancements is not because of
the decline in the quality or use of Bahasa Malaysia. It is also not because
vernacular schools have produced more unpatriotic Malaysians.
Backwardness caused by unethical leaders
The crux of the matter lies in the overall
backwardness of our people, led by a regressive and unethical leadership. More
than a thousand years ago, the Arabic language advanced the subjects of
science, mathematics, engineering, physics, philosophy and medicine. Today, it
is English that does this.
The Arabic language is not to blame, but rather the
moral decline of Muslim leaders and their over indulgence in the material
aspects of life. Neither language nor religion should be blamed.
Since we have a national language, the language of
instruction should be in Bahasa Malaysia. However, a large quota of our mental
efforts and physical resources should be directed at how we teach English as a
second language. We must acknowledge that educators have to be able to teach a
high level of English as a second language, the way it is done in the
Netherlands, Finland and China. It is also insufficient or half-baked to focus
the teaching of English only for certain subjects such as science and
mathematics.
Our educational vision should be to develop Malaysians
who are truly bilingual in Bahasa Malaysia and English. Since Malaysia is
naturally a multicultural and multi-linguistic nation, our vernacular languages
are part of our national identity and should not be silenced.
Our leadership should prioritise bilingualism, but not
be fanatical about abolishing our vernacular languages. Find the political
will, intellectual capability and financial resources to do it. Stop the
endless debates.
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2020/09/26/promote-bilingualism-to-break-schools-deadlock/
--------
Sabah polls a straight fight between Shafie and
Muhyiddin, says Ilham Centre report
25 Sep 2020
BY DANIAL DZULKIFLY
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 25 — The highly-anticipated Sabah
state election is a contest between two political personalities only, namely
Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and caretaker Chief Minister Datuk Seri
Shafie Apdal, according to a report by think-tank Ilham Centre.
The report, dubbed “The Executive Summary of the Sabah
State Election 2020: Voting Patterns and Predictions”, stated that Shafie has a
clear advantage due to his campaign strategy.
“This state election is actually a clash between
Shafie Apdal and Muhyiddin Yassin. The latter comes across as very diligent and
even his campaign schedule has been quite packed in Sabah.
“After examining their appeal, Shafie has the greater
advantage of the two. Muhyiddin’s popularity in the peninsula seems to be quite
limited here,” the report said in reference to Sabah.
“In this regard, Shafie has the edge due to his firm
leadership in terms of seat distribution, use of symbols and choice of
candidates. He demonstrated his ability to finalise the distribution of Warisan
Plus seats despite being pressured by PKR during negotiations.
“At the same time, Shafie took the bold approach of
dropping old, non-performing candidates and replacing them with new faces who
are relatable to local voters,” added the report.
In contrast, Opposition alliance Gabungan Rakyat
Sabah’s (GRS) direction remains unclear, with Muhyiddin failing to resolve seat
allocation disputes among its component parties.
“Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN), on the other hand,
took the approach of presenting almost 90 per cent new candidates.
“However, the stubbornness and ego of their leaders in
refusing to comply with the ‘straight-fight’ clash requirement is likely to
give Warisan Plus a slight advantage in some seats.
“Further, the lukewarm relationship between Bung
Moktar and Hajiji Noor makes it hard to predict how Umno and Bersatu supporters
will vote on polling day,” said the report, referring to Sabah Umno chief Datuk
Seri Bung Moktar Radin and Sabah Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia chief Datuk
Hajiji Noor.
“Our observations in the field found that the Umno and
Bersatu machinery did not cooperate with one another. This also had an indirect
effect on their respective supporters.”
However, in this state election, Ilham Centre found
that Sabahans indicated that they now prefer to vote for a candidate rather
than a party.
“Some voters are very mature in evaluating the
candidates who will be elected. ‘Radu’ (fights) and clashes can cause a change
in voting pattern from being for a party to a candidate,” said the report.
Polling takes place tomorrow, with 447 candidates
vying for 73 state assembly seats.
https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2020/09/25/sabah-polls-a-straight-fight-between-shafie-and-muhyiddin-says-ilham-centre/1906726
--------
Manila will not seek pardon for Filipino drug dealers
convicted in Middle East
September 25, 2020
MANILA: Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin
said on Friday that he had instructed Philippine ambassadors in the Middle East
to exclude convicted Filipino drug dealers from prisoner exchange programs and
let the law of the host countries take its course.
“I won’t allow the pardon of convicted Filipino drug
dealers in the Middle East,” Locsin said on his Twitter account.
“My orders to my ambassadors there is exclude drug
dealers from prisoner exchanges.”
Echoing President Rodrigo Duterte’s stand on drug
offenders, he said: “You destroy my people I will . . . let the law abroad
destroy you.”
He stressed that unlike in Indonesia, Filipino drug
dealers in the Middle East “were not fooled.”
He was apparently referring to the case of Mary Jane
Veloso, which made international headlines when the Philippine woman was
sentenced to death by Indonesian authorities in 2010 for carrying 2.6 kilograms
of heroin in her luggage.
Veloso was scheduled to face the firing squad in April
2015 but was given a last-minute stay of execution after an appeal by then
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III.
She denied knowledge about the heroin and insisted
that she was tricked into carrying the drug-laden luggage by her
Philippine-based recruiter who promised her a job in neighboring Malaysia.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III, meanwhile,
expressed his support for Locsin’s stand on drug convicts.
“Exactly my position when I was Dangerous Drugs Board
chairman! Korek (correct)!” he said also in a Twitter post.
It was not immediately clear what prompted Locsin’s
statement, but the Department of Foreign Affairs, which he leads, was involved
in a recent prisoner exchange with the UAE.
Earlier this month, 95 Filipinos detained for various
offenses in the UAE were released and allowed to return to the Philippines in
exchange for two UAE nationals pardoned by Duterte.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1740051/world
--------
Arab world
US
threatens Baghdad with sanctions over Iran-backed militia attacks in Iraq:
Sources
Joseph
Haboush
25
September 2020
The
United States has threatened to shut its embassy in Baghdad in a
strongly-worded message delivered to Iraq’s president in recent days over
continued attacks against US targets by Iran-backed militias, sources familiar
with the matter said Friday.
US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent a “very tough message” to Iraqi President
Barham Salih regarding Washington’s frustration, which included the threat of
sanctions on top Iraqi officials, an Iraqi political source said.
For
all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
US
and Iraqi political sources briefed on the content of the message told Al
Arabiya English that the threat of sanctions and limits on dollar transactions,
including withholding badly-needed aid through the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund for Iraq, were all raised by Pompeo.
The
US State Department said it does not comment on the Secretary of State’s
private diplomatic conversations with foreign leaders when asked about the
matter.
“We
have made the point before, however, that the Iran-backed groups launching
rockets at our Embassy are a danger not only to us but to the Government of
Iraq, neighboring diplomatic missions, and residents of the former
International Zone and surrounding areas,” a State Department official told Al
Arabiya English.
The
US has around 5,200 troops stationed in Iraq, although Washington announced
that it would reduce the number to about 3,000.
Meanwhile,
rocket attacks continue against bases housing US or Coalition forces. In
August, three Katyusha rockets fell in the vicinity of Baghdad International
Airport.
That
attack followed at least five attacks directed at US interests in Iraq within
one week, including four blasts against convoys carrying supplies to bases
housing US forces, a rocket attack on an air base north of Baghdad and a rocket
attack near the US Embassy in the capital.
This
week a former Iraqi official acknowledged the message sent by Pompeo.
Hoshyar
Zebari, the former finance and foreign minister, said the “recent stern
warning” from Pompeo meant that “Iraqi leaders have to rise to the challenges
posed by armed militia to target US diplomatic & military installations.”
The
US has been patient with Iraq, and the international community will follow
Washington’s calls to help Baghdad or not, Randa Slim of the Middle East
Institute think-tank said.
“The
US waited for the Iraqi government to stop attacks on its assets in Iraq and
have been very patient. The international community will take its cues from
Washington if it were to refuse to offer assistance to Iraq,” Slim told Al
Arabiya English, adding that an IMF assistance package was needed for Iraq.
The
State Department official said that the US was working to secure financial
support for Iraq from the international community and various private-sector
businesses. But “the presence of lawless, Iran-backed militias remains the
single biggest deterrent to additional investment in Iraq.”
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2020/09/26/US-threatens-Baghdad-with-sanctions-over-Iran-backed-militia-attacks-in-Iraq-Sources
--------
Emiratis
are 'cheerleaders' for US role in Middle East: UAE ambassador to Washington
25
September 2020
The
UAE's ambassador to the United States has described officials in his Persian
Gulf country as “cheerleaders” for the US role in the Middle East, saying the
recent normalization agreement between Abu Dhabi and the Israeli regime would
not have taken place without the White House's tutelage.
Speaking
Thursday at a virtual meeting with the Anti-Defamation League, a pro-Israel
group which tracks anti- Semitic attacks, Yousef al-Otaiba commended US
President Donald Trump for brokering the UAE-Israel deal in “less than four
weeks.”
Otaiba
then sought to paint a rosy picture of Washington’s role in the region, saying,
“We're not only in the pro-US camp. We are the cheerleaders of the pro-US
camp.”
In
an op-ed published in Israel’s largest Hebrew language daily Yedioth Ahronoth
last June, Otaiba promoted normalization with Israel.
He
was among the three Arab ambassadors who attended Trump’s January unveiling of
his so-called Middle East plan, dubbed the deal of the century.
The
so-called deal of the century envisions Jerusalem al-Quds as “Israel’s
undivided capital” and allows the Tel Aviv regime to annex settlements in the
occupied West Bank and Jordan Valley. The plan also denies Palestinian refugees
the right of return to their homeland, among other controversial terms.
Trump’s
plan was immediately rejected by the Palestinians, and has triggered waves of
protest around the globe.
Otaiba
went on to allege on Thursday that the UAE-Israel deal kept the “two-state
solution alive.”
“What
we did was we put time on the clock. Now how the parties use that time on the
clock to their advantage, that's ultimately their decision,” the UAE ambassador
said.
Israel
and the UAE agreed to a US-brokered deal to normalize relations on August 13.
Under the agreement, the Tel Aviv regime has supposedly agreed to
"temporarily" suspend applying its own rule to further areas in the
West Bank and Jordan Valley that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had
pledged to annex.
While
Emirati officials have described the normalization deal with the Tel Aviv
regime as a successful means to stave off annexation and save the so-called
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli leaders have
lined up to reject the bluff of Abu Dhabi's crown prince and de facto ruler of
the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, that Israel's annexation plans
were off the table.
Netanyahu
has underlined that annexation is not off the table, but has simply been
delayed.
The
Israeli prime minister signed agreements with Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh
Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Bahrain's Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al
Zayani during an official ceremony hosted by Trump at the White House on
September 15.
Palestinians,
who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, with East
Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital view the deals as betrayal of their cause.
Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas protested the normalization deals with Israel, saying they
will be fruitless as long as the United States and the Israeli regime do not
recognize the rights of the Palestinian nation and refuse to resolve the issue
of Palestinian refugees.
Friedman:
UAE has to wait 7 years to receive F-35
An
early hurdle in UAE-Israeli relations has been Abu Dhabi’s push to acquire
American F-35 stealth fighter jets.
The
Trump administration, on the other hand, is studying how to structure an
agreement without running afoul of Israel as any deal must satisfy decades of
agreements with the Tel Aviv regime.
A
longstanding American tradition maintains that any US weapons sold to the
Middle East must not impair Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME),
guaranteeing US weapons furnished to the regime are “superior in capability” to
those sold to Washington’s regional allies.
US
Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said on Wednesday it would likely take six
to seven years before the UAE receives the F-35 stealth aircraft.
“The
Emiratis have been trying to get the F-35 for six or seven years. The delivery
time is probably another six or seven years from now, if they got [approval to
purchase the aircraft],” Friedman said in an interview during a Jerusalem Post
newspaper conference.
The
Reuters news agency, citing sources close to the US-UAE negotiations, said on
Tuesday that the two sides hope to have an initial agreement on the sale of the
warplanes to the Persian Gulf state for UAE National Day, celebrated on
December 2.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/634977/Emiratis-are-cheerleaders-for-US-role-in-Middle-East-UAE-ambassador-to-Washington
--------
Adib
presents government proposal to Aoun as Hezbollah pressure grows
NAJIA
HOUSSARI
September
25, 2020
LEBANON:
As Lebanon’s Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib continues his efforts to
form a new government, on Friday he presented to President Michel Aoun a
proposal for “distributing the ministries to various sects before setting a
final formula on who will be nominated to these ministries,” sources said. The
two men will meet again on Saturday for further discussions.
Adib
is facing sustained pressure from Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, who have
raised their demands to insist that all ministerial positions are filled by
Shiites, and not only the key role of minister of finance.
This
has jeopardized his efforts to form a “government that satisfies everybody,”
based on a French initiative that calls for the appointment of a small team of
independent specialists representing all religious sects, who are not members
of the main political parties.
Government
sources said: “Adib, during his meeting with representatives of Hezbollah and
the Amal Movement on Thursday evening, refused to accept from them a list of
names of Shiites from which to choose a minister of finance.”
During
his Friday sermon the following day, the Grand Jaafari Mufti Ahmad Qabalan
said: “We insist on nominating our ministers and we refuse to accept that
anyone else will do that for us, no matter who he is.”
Economic
experts said on Friday that the continuing debates about the formation of the
government are a “waste of precious time,” which is a luxury Lebanon does not
have. They criticized the continued prioritization of political interests over
the best interests of the country and warned that “it is a matter of life or
death for the Lebanese people.”
They
pointed out “thousands have lost their businesses and tens of thousands have
lost their jobs, and 55 percent of the Lebanese people are living below the
poverty line. There is a shortage of essential products, and the reserves of
the Banque du Liban (the Lebanese Central Bank) have withered away.” Meanwhile
there has been a brain drain of professionals and businessmen leaving the
country, “which threatens to deprive Lebanon of one of its strongest and most
important assets.”
Adib
faced further obstacles from Hezbollah allies on Friday when Suleiman Frangieh,
leader of the Marada Movement, announced that he does not agree that the Prime
Minister-designate should choose who represents his party in the government
without consulting with him.
Meanwhile,
Talal Arslan, leader of the Lebanese Democratic Party, called on Adib to “show
respect to parliamentary blocks.”
Others
warned that the president cannot approve a list of ministers he does not know,
and that giving a Shiite party the finance portfolio must not deny other sects
the right to ministries that they claim.
“The
French initiative is blocked due to the conflict between particular interests
and regional and international calculations,” said Lebanese MP Bilal Abdallah.
“The country cannot stand this any more and it might collapse if things
continue the way they are.”
He
added that he hopes Adib will continue his efforts to form a government and
give the French initiative a chance.
Lebanese
academic Dr. Hares Sleiman said: “The options of Hezbollah and Amal Movement
are determined by their priorities: do they want to defend Iran’s quota … or do
they want to have the livelihood of the Lebanese people as their priority,
including their supporters and the Shiites of Lebanon?”
He
added: “(Amal Movement leader and Speaker of the Parliament Nabih) Berri wants
the Ministry of Finance at a time when there is a shortage of money, and the
international community is demanding the dismissal of those who are corrupt and
the implementation of reforms to save the Lebanese economy.
“So
would Berri accept an independent government that satisfies the demands of
protesters in the streets so that Lebanon would enjoy internal, Arab and
international support? If he does that, he would be conspiring against
Hezbollah and its allies in power. If he does not, then the caretaker
government of Hassan Diab will stay, and the crisis and the sanctions will
continue.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1740096/middle-east
--------
Israel
admits ISIS fighter in Iraqi prison is its own and permits his return
Jack
Moore
Sep
25, 2020
Israel
has acknowledged the existence of an Arab Israeli ISIS fighter who has
languished in solitary confinement at a northern Iraqi prison without trial for
more than two years, according to a letter obtained by The National. It says he
would be allowed to return home if he can reach Israel’s borders from Iraq,
despite a lack of formal ties between the two countries.
When
US forces captured Mohammed Khalid in a December 2017 raid in eastern Syria
following four years spent fighting for ISIS across the group's self-proclaimed
state, Israel kept the case of the Palestinian from Israel's Arab-majority
Northern Triangle area, and his whereabouts, in the dark.
But
after The National interviewed him at an Iraqi Kurdish counter-terrorism
facility and tracked down his family in northern Israel, the Israeli government
finally acknowledged his existence in the state’s first comments on his case,
one fraught with legal implications and that counter-terror experts said was
the first they had witnessed of a state refusing to even recognise a foreign
fighter as its own – let alone allow his repatriation.
All
evidence pointed to Israeli knowledge about his case despite its denials.
Before Khalid’s capture, the family say they were questioned about him on
numerous occasions at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. Since then, their repeated
attempts to obtain information about him from the Israeli government since
October 2018 have been ignored. Khalid himself said Israeli security agents
approached him at least twice before he fled to Syria.
After
he was captured, the 29-year-old from the northern Israeli town of Umm Al Fahm
was transferred between American forces, the Jordanians, the Iraqis in Baghdad
and the Kurds in Sulaymaniyah, according to Iraqi officials, who say Israel
rejected his return when Jordan offered him back.
In
the October interview, he admitted that he fought for the terror group, denied
committing crimes on the battlefield and defended rape, slavery and the murder
of journalists. He is an unashamed militant who is unwanted by his country and
viewed as a traitor, and whom the Israeli government has repeatedly denied
knowledge of until now.
In
the letter dated February 18, 2020, titled 'Entry to Israel', and sent to the
Khalid family lawyer by the Israeli Ministry of Justice in English, Hebrew and
Arabic, government lawyer Omri Ben-Zvi told the family attorney, Hussein Abu
Hussein: "I would like to inform you that according to relevant government
officials, the State does not prohibit the entry of Mr Mahameed to the
territory of Israel."
The
government referred to Khalid, whose full name is Mohammed Khalid Mohammed, as
Muhammad Muhameed.
Mr
Ben-Zvi did not respond to a request for comment on which government officials
approved of Khalid’s return, nor the discrepancy in the Israeli government’s
policy. At least two Arab ISIS fighters, unlike Khalid, have had their Israeli
citizenships revoked since ISIS rose to global attention in 2014, according to
Israeli officials.
An
Israeli Justice Department spokesperson said policy regarding admission into
Israel is directed solely by the Minister of Interior, who “consults with the
relevant security authorities fighting abroad for terrorist organisations”.
Both
an Israeli interior ministry official and spokesperson for the Shin Bet,
Israel’s domestic spy agency, declined to comment.
After
Israel’s admission, there is now a growing effort to bring the hardened fighter
back to Israel, where his family want him to face justice and serve any prison
sentence meted out. Mr Hussein told The National that he had connected the
family with the Red Cross in Jerusalem “in order to make the needed efforts to
find their son, enquire about the conditions of his detention and bring him
back”.
The
Red Cross refused to comment, saying that the agency “works directly with
families in need of tracing their loved ones and treats cases with strict
confidentiality.” But Khalid’s sister, Tala, said there “aren’t any updates” on
his case. A family lawyer in Mr Hussein’s office said: “The family is
frustrated and is afraid that the maximum they will get is a telephone call
with their son”.
The
family had sporadic contact with Khalid after he fled northern Israel for the
southern Turkish city of Adana in August 2013, where he was smuggled into Syria
to fight with rebels, before defecting and joining the ranks of ISIS. He cut
off contact with the family in late 2016, and they thought he was dead, until
The National revealed his location. His family now want him to face his
punishment at home, instead of a far away land with no judicial oversight.
“Even
if it’s 10, 15 years here in prison, it would be better. At least we [would]
know where he is,” Mousa, Khalid's father, told The National in November.
Even
though Israel said it is willing to receive Khalid, its lack of formal
diplomatic relations with Iraq means his repatriation, and any subsequent
trial, remains unlikely, but acknowledging his existence paves the way for an
eventual return.
An
Iraqi Kurdish intelligence official said Khalid is still in detention in
Sulaymaniyah as his situation “remains the same as before”: that of a “prisoner
of war” caught fighting coalition forces. The Kurdish counter-terrorism forces
with whom he is detained are part of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of
Iraq. As non-state actors, they have no obligations under international law,
nor the formal ability to conduct a proper trial by international standards.
A
number of Iraqi Kurdish officials have long held clandestine relations with the
Israelis, who have worked to boost Kurdish independence ambitions in return for
help with Iraqi recognition of Israel.
While
officials and politicians in Baghdad have been consistently opposed to the
normalisation of ties with Israel, many Kurdish officials privately express
hope for a future deal that brings Israeli money and tech to their
semi-autonomous region of Iraq.
Yet,
on the matter of Khalid’s incarceration, they say there has been no agreement
with his home country.
“There’s
no deal of any sort. There is no communication between Iraq and Israel,” the
Kurdish intelligence official said. “We’re not holding him on their behalf.”
“How
can they take him back? Israel and Iraq have no relations whatsoever.”
An
alternative to repatriation to Israel is a trial under Iraqi law. Such trials
have been criticised by rights groups for severe due process violations, as
well as the prospect of torture faced by suspects.
The
United Nations, which first commented on his case in October, is clear that he
should be returned to Israel for trial because of his prolonged incarceration
in solitary confinement, which scientific research shows can have a degenerative
impact on prisoners, leading to incidents of self-harm, and in the worst cases,
death by suicide.
“If
there is evidence of Mr Mahameed being ill-treated, and extensive solitary
confinement could constitute ill-treatment, then the Kurdish authorities are
violating their obligations under the law of war, and Israel, knowing of his
conditions of detention, should, in my opinion, seek his removal,” Agnes
Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, told The
National.
“The
nature of the crime committed by Mr Muhameed does not strip him of (all) his
rights as an Israel citizen and certainly not the rights related to his life
and dignity,” she said. “From this standpoint, Israel is under an obligation to
ensure he is not the subject of torture or ill-treatment, and it ought to take
all measures to prevent his life from being arbitrarily taken.”
But
the global body’s repeated call for justice to be administered to Khalid,
according to international human rights law, continues to remain a low priority
for those involved in his case.
“[At
the] end of the day…[there is] not a lot of interest in anyone to release an
ISIS fighter who doesn’t even deny he was a terrorist,” the Kurdish
intelligence official said.
“Will
they charge him if they take him back?” he asked. “If they can’t charge him,
then do they really want to let a terrorist back into their country?”
https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/israel-admits-isis-fighter-in-iraqi-prison-is-its-own-and-permits-his-return-1.1082940?utm_source=iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1555151_
--------
Mideast
Iran
not buckling under to Trump's madman theory threats
25
September 2020
By
Kevin Barrett
Hossein
Dehqan, who is a former defense minister and current advisor to the Supreme
Leader of Iran, has spoken out to warn the United States that if it acts
against Iran, it will receive a decisive response and that the Americans should
not twist the lion's tail.
Mr.
Dehqan said that Trump is "an anarchist. He's ready to wreak havoc on his
own society. And he's an anarchist in every sense of the word." Well, I
often agree with people in Tehran about these things, but in this case, I have
to differ with Mr. Hossein Dehqan, because calling Donald Trump an anarchist is
an insult to anarchists. Anarchism is an honorable political philosophy that
does include a minority of crazy bomb throwers and idiots like Trump, but the
theoreticians of anarchism, people like Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Bakunin and so
on, are actually quite respectable. And many would argue that they won their
debates with the communists back in the 19th century.
So
don't call Trump an anarchist. Call him a madman, because that's what he is. He
is psychologically unhinged, and thousands of mental health professionals have
gone on record making that point. So Trump is pushing the madman theory of
power way past its limits. President Nixon created the madman theory of
American power. He and Henry Kissinger hatched a scheme to convince the North
Vietnamese that Nixon was a madman and he might drop nuclear weapons on them,
so they should surrender.
Well,
we all know how well that worked. Nixon tried to play the madman and he was
fairly convincing in certain respects. But Trump is more like a method actor
who just completely gets into his role, so much that I don't think he knows the
difference between his madman role and any other role he might play in life.
The guy really is over the top. He's an extreme narcissist, completely
deficient in reality testing, doesn't know the difference between truth and
lies. So you can't really call him a liar. Most other American politicians are
worse liars than Trump. Because Trump is so crazy, he can't tell the
difference, and in fact he blurts out the truth far more often than most
American politicians do.
So
Trump is a lunatic and his speech to the United Nations that Mr. Dehqan was
referring to or responding to is a perfect demonstration of Trump's absolute
lunacy.
In
that speech, Trump rambled on, screaming about the “evil Chinese” who were
responsible for COVID. And he bragged in an extremely megalomaniacal fashion
that the United States is doing the most, the biggest and best mobilization
since the Second World War, and we're producing all these ventilators (which of
course are killing people). And we will distribute a vaccine and defeat the
virus and so on. He's making it sound like the United States is heroically
succeeding against COVID, when in fact it's the biggest disaster in the entire
world, thanks to Trump.
Trump
is trying to lay all the blame at the feet of China, just attacking China on
every imaginable basis as well as several unimaginable ones. And then he goes
on to rant and rave about how his insane hostility towards Iran, which is his
payback to kosher nostra kingpins like Sheldon Adelson and Bibi Netanyahu, who
hacked the voting machines in swing states and put him in office, that this is
somehow also succeeding when it obviously isn't.
Iran
is not buckling under to Trump's madman theory threats and his murderous
killing of Iranians through sanctions, his murder of General Soleimani, who was
lured to Baghdad on false pretenses of a peace plan and murdered in cold
blood—and Trump is at the United Nations bragging about it. If there's anybody
who deserves to be dealt with that way, it's Donald Trump, it’s not Gen
Soleimani, and more and more Americans feel that way.
The
entire country, at least everybody with an IQ over 100 and a 6th grade plus
education, is tearing their hair out right now at the possibility that this
madman, who has said that he will not accept the results of the elections, is
going to carry out his threat and try to mobilize his heavily armed supporters
(who fortunately are mostly morons) and turn the country into civil chaos after
the upcoming non-election, which he says will go much better if there are no
ballots. And then if the outcome will be pre-determined and peaceful, he says.
This man is nuts.
How
could he ever have risen to a position of dog catcher in Podunk Iowa, much less
President of the United States? It must be some kind of cosmic joke.
Kevin
Barrett is an American author, journalist and radio host with a Ph.D. in
Islamic and Arabic Studies. He has been studying the events of 9/11 since late
2003. He recorded this article for Press TV website.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/635023/Iran-not-buckling-under-to-Trump's-madman-theory-threats
--------
Turkey
orders 82 arrests, including Kurdish opposition members, over 2014 protests
25
September 2020
Turkey
on Friday ordered the arrest of 82 people including members of a pro-Kurdish
opposition party over violent protests in 2014 against an attack on the Syrian
Kurdish town of Kobane.
Protesters
flooded streets in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast that October, accusing the
Turkish army of standing by as the ISIS-besieged Kobane in plain view just
across the Syrian border. The protests led to the deaths of 37 people.
For
all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
Turkish
authorities accuse the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has
fought for greater autonomy for the southeast since 1984, of inciting the
demonstrations.
They
also accuse the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) of links to the PKK
and supporting the protests. The HDP, the third largest party, denies links to
terrorism.
Former
HDP leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag have been in jail since
2016 on charges related to the Kobani protests.
In
a statement on Friday, the Ankara prosecutor's Terror Crimes Investigation
Bureau said arrest warrants had been issued over "several calls made to
invite the public to the streets and carry out terror acts."
Those
detained on Friday included the mayor of the northeasterly Kars province, Ayhan
Bilgen, and former lawmaker Sirri Sureyya Onder, both prominent HDP figures, as
well as some party executives.
Mithat
Sancar, the party's current co-leader, said the AK Party of President Tayyip
Erdogan "wants to intimidate the opposition and spread fear among the
public by silencing the HDP."
He
said the HDP's own requests that the Kobani protests be investigated had been
dismissed.
Since
local elections in 2019, Ankara has removed dozens of mayors belonging to the
HDP, accusing them of links to terrorism, and appointed trustees in their
place. Two HDP lawmakers have been ejected from parliament since elections in
2018 after being convicted on terrorism charges.
Eleven
others were ejected in the previous term.
The
Ankara prosecutor's office is now preparing proceedings against seven more HDP
lawmakers that could lead to their immunity being lifted to allow them to be
charged, the state-owned Anadolu news agency reported.
The
PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European
Union.
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2020/09/25/Turkey-orders-82-arrests-including-Kurdish-opposition-members-over-2014-protests
--------
Israeli
forces clash with Palestinian protesters in West Bank
25
September 2020
Israeli
forces have clashed with Palestinians taking part in protests against the
Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, leaving a number of people
injured.
Hundreds
of Palestinians rallied in the village of Kafr Qaddum in Qalqilya City on
Friday to protest against the settlements. They also urged the Emirati and
Bahraini people to reject the normalization deals reached between their
governments and the Israeli regime.
On
September 15, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed US-brokered
normalization agreements with Israel at the White House — a move that was
condemned by the Palestinian government and people as a betrayal of their
cause.
Israeli
troops fired rubber-coated metal bullets, sound bombs and tear gas canisters at
the protesters in Kafr Qaddum, leaving seven Palestinians, including a
journalist, injured. Dozens of others suffered breathing problems because of
inhaling the tear gas.
Palestinian
people also gathered in Khlet Hassan district in the city of Salfit to protest
against the settlements.
They
also condemned the UAE and Bahrain for attempting to normalize relations with
Tel Aviv, stressing that the Palestinian people would continue to defend their
land.
In
the district of Bab Al Zawia in al-Khalil (Hebron) City, a number of
Palestinians suffered breathing problems due to the tear gas fired by Israeli
forces, who also used stun bullets and sound bombs against the demonstrators.
Similar
clashes also took place between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the village
of Asira al-Qibliya in Nablus. A number of Palestinians were hit by bullets and
suffered breathing problems during the clashes.
The
clashes occurred when Israeli forces and settlers attacked an event organized
by residents and activists to till lands at risk of being seized by Israeli
authorities.
More
than 700,000 Israelis live in settlements built since the 1967 Israeli
occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem
al-Quds.
On
Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the construction
of over 5,000 units in the occupied West Bank, in contravention of international
law.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/635004/Israeli-forces-clash-with-Palestinian-protesters-in-West-Bank
--------
Ankara
lashes out at Pelosi for suggesting Turkey not democratic
25
September 2020
The
Turkish foreign minister has slammed US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “blatant
ignorance” for suggesting that Turkey is not democratic.
In
remarks meant primarily against US President Donald Trump, Pelosi had said the
US president “admires [Russian President Vladimir] Putin… [North Korean leader]
Kim Jong-un… [and President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan in Turkey,” suggesting that
they presided over non-democratic regimes.
Turkish
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a tweet on Friday that Pelosi’s rise
to the position of the speaker of the House of Representatives was “what is
truly worrisome for American democracy, given her blatant ignorance.”
“You
will learn to respect the Turkish people’s will,” Cavusoglu said, addressing
Pelosi.
The
Turkish president’s top press aide, Fahrettin Altun, also decried Pelosi’s
comments as “careless.”
Trump
had earlier said that he wouldn’t accept the results of the upcoming
presidential election in November if he loses, preemptively refusing to concede
and setting America up for political chaos. Pelosi said in reaction to that
remark that Trump was living in America, not in Turkey.
Altun
said power routinely transferred in Turkey on peaceful and democratic terms.
“When
was the last time that there was no peaceful transfer of power in Turkey — with
the exception of military coups?” Altun asked on his Twitter account in
English. “And we remember who supported those attacks against Turkish
democracy, too.”
“It’s
against the US national interest and the spirit of an alliance to denigrate
Turkey in an attempt to score domestic political points,” he said.
Turkey
is angry at the United States for refusing to hand over US-based opposition
figure Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara says orchestrated a July 2016 coup in the
country.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/635012/Ankara-lashes-out-at-Pelosi-for-suggesting-Turkey-not-democratic-
--------
Netanyahu
endorses construction of over 5,000 new settler units in occupied West Bank
25
September 2020
Israeli
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved the construction of thousands
more homes in the occupied West Bank, in complete defiance of international
outcry against the Tel Aviv regime’s policies of land grab and illegal settlement
expansion in the occupied Palestinian lands, a report says.
Palestinian
Arabic-language Ma’an news agency, citing a report published by Israel’s
Channel 7 media network, reported that the 70-year-old chairman of Likud
political party had given the green light for plans to build over 5,000 units,
after more than six months during which such construction had been frozen.
The
report added that there have been contacts between settlement leaders and
Netanyahu over the past few days, where Jewish extremists have called on the
Israeli premier to end the freeze on settlement construction activities in the
West Bank or face large-scale protests against his administration.
Israel
and the UAE agreed to a US-brokered deal to normalize relations on August 13.
Under the agreement, the Tel Aviv regime has supposedly agreed to
"temporarily" suspend applying its own rule to further areas in the
occupied West Bank and the strategic Jordan Valley that Netanyahu had pledged
to annex.
While
Emirati officials have described the normalization deal with the Tel Aviv
regime as a successful means to stave off annexation and save the so-called
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli leaders have
lined up to reject the bluff of Abu Dhabi's crown prince and de facto ruler of
the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, that Israel's annexation plans
were off the table.
The
Israeli prime minister has underlined that annexation is not off the table, but
has simply been delayed.
Netanyahu
signed agreements with Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al
Nahyan and Bahrain's Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani during an official
ceremony hosted by US President Donald Trump at the White House on September
15.
Palestinians,
who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza with East
Jerusalem as its capital, view the deals as betrayal of their cause.
Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas protested the normalization deals with Israel, saying
they will be fruitless as long as the United States and the Israeli regime do
not recognize the rights of the Palestinian nation and refuse to resolve the
issue of Palestinian refugees.
More
than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli
occupation of Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem
al-Quds. All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.
The
UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the
occupied Palestinian territories in several resolutions.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/634966/Netanyahu-endorses-construction-of-over-5,000-new-settler-units-in-occupied-West-Bank-
--------
Iran:
Saudi Arabia Source of Instability in Region
Sep
25, 2020
Takht
Ravanchi made the remarks in reaction to the Saudi King Salman's anti-Iran
remarks at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.
"Saudi
Arabia has been a source of instability in the region for decades," the
Iranian ambassador said.
The
following is the full text of Takht Ravanchi's statement addressing the UN
General Assembly:
In
the name of God the most Compassionate, the most Merciful
Your
Excellency,
I
am writing to you with regard to a statement made by the delegation of the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on 23 September 2020, in the course of the general
debate of the seventy-fifth session of the General Assembly, wherein unfounded
allegations were raised against my country, all of which are hereby rejected
categorically.
Indeed,
through a series of fabrication and disinformation, Saudi Arabia desperately attempts
to distract attention away from its dark long record in harboring, financing,
inducing and arming the most dangerous terrorist networks, disseminating hate
speech and extremist ideology, sowing the seeds of sectarian division, pursuing
destabilizing, disruptive and subversive policies and practices in the region
as well as the crimes it continues to commit for over six years in Yemen in
flagrant violation of the basic principles of morality and humanity and rules
of international law, particularly international humanitarian law, entailing
its international responsibility.
Saudi
Arabia has been a source of instability in the region for decades. It is a
well-established fact that Saudi Arabia was the main financial supporter of the
Iraqi dictator, Saddam, in his eight-year aggression against the Islamic
Republic of Iran in which he committed numerous crimes, including the use of
chemical weapons against Iranian and Iraqi cities and citizens.
With
respect to the role of Saudi Arabia in supporting terrorist groups, it has now
become quite evident that this country’s Wahhabi ideology is the main inspiring
source of the most dangerous terrorist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL) and Al-Qaida and through its petrodollars, Saudi Arabia
has served as the main financier of such terrorist groups.
Another
living example of the destructive policies of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in
the region is its almost six years of aggression, death and destruction in
Yemen, in which thousands of civilians, including women and children, have been
killed, and homes, mosques, hospitals, schools, marketplaces, diplomatic
missions and even wedding and funeral ceremonies have been targeted. Such
crimes have been so brutal and horrible that the United Nations placed this
country at the top of the list of global child-killers.
Although
later, for clear non-professional reasons, its name was dropped from that list.
This country still uses starvation as a war tactic and continues to prevent the
entry of fuel, food, medicine and medical equipment to the most populated areas
in Yemen amid the extremely serious health situation as a result of the
coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, further deteriorating the already
critical humanitarian situation in Yemen.
Reiterating
that restoration of peace and security in the region requires a genuine
dialogue with the active and constructive engagement of all regional countries
based on mutual respect, inclusivity and basic principles of international law,
and recalling the Hormuz Peace Endeavour (known as HOPE), launched by the
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the seventy-fourth session of the
General Assembly (A/74/581-S/2019/933) -- which has received positive reactions
from a number of regional countries -- I would like to underline that relying
on foreign forces whose main interests are to sell more deadly weapons to this
region has not produced security for the region. Instead, the regional
countries should resolve their differences through dialogue and rely on their
own capabilities to promote peace and security in the region. In this context,
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is called upon to accept such a call for dialogue
among all littoral States of the Persian Gulf.
Here,
I should express our appreciation to the presidents of the Security Council for
the months of August and September 2020, as well as to thirteen of its
members—especially Russia and China—who twice said a decisive and resounding
“NO” to the unlawful US attempt to exploit the Council and its Resolution 2231.
This
is a victory not just for Iran, but for the global community—during the
transitional international order in the post-Western world—that an aspirant of
hegemony is humiliated in such self-created isolation.
Ladies
and Gentlemen
Where
can you find precedent for a government to renege, without any reason, on the
outcome of 13 years of multilateral talks—also attended by its predecessor,
shamelessly violate a resolution of the Security Council and even punish others
for abiding by a UNSC resolution? And simultaneously claim to be seeking
negotiations and a “big deal?"
The
United States can impose neither negotiations, nor war on us.
Life
is hard under sanctions. However, harder, is life without independence.
Political
freedom at home is important. We—as the oldest democracy in the Middle East—are
proud of our people determining their destiny and will not trade domestic
freedom with foreign interference.
Democracy
is the sovereign right of a nation, and not the right of interference by an outsider—let
alone a terrorist and interventionist outsider that remains captive to the
illusions of 19 August 1953, when its predecessors overthrew the only democracy
in the Middle East through a coup d’état.
Dignity
and prosperity of our nation are essential for us; and they are attained
through diplomacy relying on national will coupled with resilience.
We
are not a bargaining chip in US elections and domestic policy.
Any
US administration after the upcoming elections will have no choice but to
surrender to the resilience of the Iranian nation.
And
for the world: Today is the time to say “no” to bullying and arrogance. The era
of dominance and hegemony is long over. Our nations and children deserve a
better and safer world based on the rule of law.
Now
is the time for the right choice.
I
thank you for your attention.
https://en.farsnews.ir/newstext.aspx?nn=13990704000223
--------
Palestine’s
Abbas calls on UN to arrange international conference next year
25
September 2020
Palestinian
president Mahmud Abbas appealed Friday to the United Nations to arrange an
international conference on the peace process, in the wake of Gulf Arab
recognition of Israel.
In
an address to the UN General Assembly, Abbas asked Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres to convene the meeting “early next year” and bring in “all relevant
parties.”
For
all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
“The
conference should have full authority to launch a genuine peace process based
on international law,” Abbas told the virtual General Assembly in a recorded
address.
“It
should aim to end the occupation and grant the Palestinian people their freedom
and independence in their own state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem
as its capital and settle final-status issues, notably the refugee question,”
he said.
The
United Arab Emirates and Bahrain earlier this month agreed to recognize Israel,
a major coup Israel and diplomatic win for US President Donald Trump.
The
two Arab states, while saying they still support a Palestinian state, share
concerns of Israel and the United States about neighboring Iran.
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2020/09/25/Palestine-s-Abbas-calls-on-UN-to-arrange-international-conference-next-year
--------
Africa
Algeria
rules out rapprochement with Israel, says ready to host meeting of Palestine
factions
25
September 2020
Algeria
has once again rejected any normalization of relations with the Israeli regime,
saying that Algiers is prepared to host a meeting of Palestinian factions as
part of its efforts to support the Palestinian cause.
Ammar
Belhimer, the Algerian minister of communication and the government spokesman,
told Lebanon's al-Mayadeen TV channel that the cause of Palestinian nation is
the top issue of Algeria.
“The
Palestinian nation’s cause is a sacred one. Algeria considers it as its most
important cause. This is a matter of fairness, and our position is clear,
straightforward, and fixed on it,” he said.
The
spokesman said Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has on various occasions
stressed the country would not welcome and support normalization of relations
with Israel.
In
his Thursday virtual address to the 75th General Assembly of the United
Nations, the Algerian president said the right of the Palestinian people to
have a state with Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital cannot be traded away.
“Once
again, we express our firm support for the Palestinian people and their
inalienable and non-negotiable right to establish their independent, sovereign
state with al-Quds as its capital,” Tebboune said, stressing that the
Palestinian cause remained a “sacred cause for Algeria and its people”.
In
his Friday comments, the Algerian spokesman echoed the president’s remarks and
said, “Algeria’s position is always clear and transparent, and that is
non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and [finding] a
peaceful and internal solution to settle the crises.”
The
spokesman expressed his country’s preparedness to invite all Palestinian groups
to a comprehensive meeting in Algeria considering the amicable ties it has with
them.
He
also reiterated his country’s call on the Arab League to revise its structure
and mechanism so that its operation would become more effective and serve the
interests of all countries without any exception.
Palestinian
factions have praised President Tebboune for his government's strong opposition
to any bids aimed at establishing ties with Israel, calling on Arab rulers to
follow suit and reject normalization.
The
factions, in a joint statement released on Monday, lauded Algeria’s stance as
“the authentic Arab position that embraces and supports the Palestinian cause,”
al-Mayadeen reported.
On
Sunday, Tebboune strongly criticized the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain over
signing normalization agreements with the Tel Aviv regime at the White House
last week.
The
Algerian president emphasized that his country would never be part of an
agreement to normalize relations with the Tel Aviv regime.
Palestinians,
who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, with East
Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital view the normalization deals with Israel as a
betrayal of their cause.
Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas protested the agreements last Tuesday, saying they will
be fruitless as long as the United States and the Israeli regime do not
recognize the rights of the Palestinian nation and refuse to resolve the issue
of Palestinian refugees.
On
15 September, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed US-brokered
normalization agreements with Israel at the White House – a move that was
rejected by the Palestinian government and people.
Abu
Dhabi said the normalization deal was an effort to stave off Tel Aviv’s planned
annexation of the occupied West Bank, however, Israeli leaders said the
annexation plans are not off the table.
Opponents
believe the normalization efforts have been in the offing for many years as
Israeli officials have made official visits to the UAE and attended conferences
in the Persian Gulf country which had no diplomatic or other ties with the
occupation state.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/634983/Algeria-normalization-Israel-
--------
At
UN, Libyan premier urges rebels to lay down arms, respect ceasefire
25
September 2020
The
head of the Libyan government has called on rebel forces under the command of
renegade general Khalifa Haftar to lay down their weapons and respect a
ceasefire that aims to stop violence and help resume oil production in the
conflict-ridden North African country.
In
a video speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Libyan Prime
Minister Fayez al-Sarraj warned against the lack of commitment to last month’s
ceasefire by Haftar’s militias in eastern Libya and said the rebels would be
held to account for any possible casualties due to the ceasefire violations.
"We
have not yet seen cooperation from armed groups and the aggressive
militias," Sarraj said in his video address.
"In
fact, we have only seen hostile remarks from their spokesmen and violations by
their forces. Therefore we would hold them responsible for any military
confrontations and any resulting casualties and destruction,” he added.
The
head of the UN-recognized government also said, "We want peace, not
war," and added that the Tripoli-based administration had
"welcomed" the announcement of the ceasefire and the resumption of
oil production in eastern terminals controlled by Haftar’s forces.
Libya’s
Government of National Accord (GNA) and a Haftar-backed parliament in the
eastern city of Tobruk agreed last month on a ceasefire and the holding of
elections by next March.
Sarraj
also called on Thursday for the United Nations’ support in organizing the
upcoming vote and said, "Libyans have waited too long for these elections,
which will end the legitimacy crisis.”
After
recent talks between the two sides in Morocco, the Libyan premier said he was
willing to resign as a new government comes together.
Several
Libyan cities have in recent weeks been the scene of protests against deteriorating
living standards, largely caused by a rebel blockade of energy exports since
the beginning of the year. The blockade imposed by Haftar’s militias has cost
the oil-rich African country 6.5 billion dollars in lost revenue.
Libya,
which sits atop the largest oil reserves in Africa, initially plunged into
chaos in 2011, when a popular uprising and a NATO intervention led to the
ouster of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Since
2014, two rival seats of power have emerged in Libya, namely the GNA led by Sarraj,
and another group under Haftar’s command which is based in the eastern city of
Tobruk and supported militarily by forces loyal to him — known as the so-called
Libyan National Army (LNA).
The
strongman, who is primarily supported by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and
Jordan, launched a deadly offensive to capture the capital Tripoli, the seat of
the GNA, in April last year. Despite intense fighting, he has so far failed to
achieve his objective of ousting the internationally-recognized government, and
the offensive has stalled outside the city.
Turkey
has been of significant help to the Tripoli-based government in its defense
against the LNA.
Last
month, the GNA declared a ceasefire and called for an end to a blockade imposed
by the rebels on oil facilities in eastern Libya.
Haftar
dismissed the calls, but said last Friday he would lift his blockade on oil
outputs for one month,and that he had agreed with the GNA on "fair
distribution" of energy revenue.
The
rebels started the blockade of the oil facilities in January, when they managed
to take control of oil fields and export terminals in the east.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/09/25/634972/Libyan-government-Fayez-al-Sarraj-ceasefire-Khalifa-Haftar-oil-production
--------
Severe
floods in South Sudan displace over 600,000 people, UN says
25
September 2020
Severe
flooding in South Sudan has forced more than 600,000 people to flee their homes
since July, the United Nations said, after months of torrential rains caused
the Nile to burst its banks.
The
impoverished East African nation is struggling to recover from a five-year
civil war and was already suffering severe food shortages.
For
all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
Scientists
say the unusual rains are caused by a cyclical weather pattern that has been
exacerbated by climate change.
The
coronavirus pandemic is also complicating the response, said United Nations
humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan Alain Noudéhou.
For
more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page.
Costs
for delivering aid have risen with the need to protect aid workers and families
are forced to squeeze together on thin slivers of land.
“With
the flooding, people had to move to higher ground and there’s not much higher
ground,” he said on Thursday during a visit to flood-hit areas.
He
said the UN had allocated $10 million to help flood victims but needed $40
million more by the end of the year.
Around
him, families waded through water or tried to herd bedraggled chickens away
from sodden piles of belongings.
Kok
Manyok, 70, said he was sleeping under the trees after fleeing from his village
Dorok in August with his grandchildren.
“The
water level reached almost halfway up my body,” he said, motioning to his chest
as he spoke in his native Dinka language.
“There
are no shelters for me and my grandchildren, our cattle are gone and we are
sleeping under a tree.”
Families
were living off of leaves and sorghum, said Matthew Hollingworth, the country
director of the UN’s World Food Program (WFP).
“That
is not enough to keep them healthy and fit,” he said. Some food was due to be
distributed next month but there was not enough to go round, he said.
South
Sudan’s civil war erupted two years after the country won its independence from
Sudan in 2011 and ended with a peace deal signed between the main parties in
2018.
But
not all armed groups signed the deal and low-level clashes, banditry and
attacks on aid workers continue.
The
conflict displaced around a third of the 12 million population, creating the
worst refugee crisis in Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2020/09/25/Severe-floods-in-South-Sudan-displace-over-600-000-people-UN-says
--------
Compensation
deal between US, Sudan on embassy attacks ‘close’: Acting FM
24
September 2020
Sudan’s
acting foreign minister said Thursday that a compensation agreement for the
families of victims of two 1998 terrorist attacks on US embassies in Africa is
within sight.
“We
are very close to getting that signed and done with,” Omar Gamaledinne told
reporters during a visit to Geneva to meet United Nations refugees and human
rights chiefs.
For
all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
“As
Sudanese we think that if we can do it yesterday, it is better for us, because
we can move on to something else.”
Gamaledinne
stressed that he was not aware of any deadline set by US Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo, although the US administration is pressed for time ahead of the
November 3 presidential election.
With
a deal finalized, Khartoum will be better placed to say to Washington “let’s
end this once and for all,” and lift Sudan from its list of state sponsors of
terrorism, he added.
The
sanctions -- source of an investment drought for the country -- date back to
1993, when Sudan under president Omar al-Bashir become an outcast for having
hosted Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The
crisis worsened with the 1998 embassy attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam,
which killed more than 200 people.
Washington
has changed its tone in recent years, as Bashir began to cooperate in the fight
against terrorism and played the peace game in South Sudan.
The
United States reconnected with Khartoum under former president Barack Obama,
and talks have been moving towards striking Sudan from its blacklist.
The
2019 revolution that swept Bashir from power sped up the progress.
“Now
we are to get ourselves out of that list, which the US is using as leverage to
get some benefits of the relationship that it has with Sudan, which is
completely legitimate,” Gamaledinne said.
“That
is why we are engaging with the rest of the world and trying to call on the
country’s friends to call on the United States to end that embargo and to get
Sudan lifted off ‘state sponsors of terrorism’,” he said.
Gamaledinne
said that without a compensation deal, subsequent Sudanese governments could
find themselves embroiled in court cases that could drag on “indefinitely.”
His
plan would see Khartoum pay into a blocked account from which the funds would
only be paid under certain conditions -- including Sudan’s removal from the
blacklist -- to the United States to compensate the plaintiffs.
US
media cited the total amount as being $335 million.
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2020/09/25/Compensation-deal-between-US-Sudan-on-embassy-attacks-close-Acting-FM
--------
One
dead, multiple injured in clashes between GNA factions in Libya’s Tajoura
25
September 2020
One
person was killed and multiple others were wounded during clashes between
different groups within the Government of National Accord (GNA) in the Libyan
town of Tajoura, according to Al Arabiya sources.
No
further details were provided.
Since
2014, Libya has been split, with a government controlling the capital, Tripoli,
and the northwest, while military leader Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi rules the
east.
Haftar
is supported by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, while the GNA is
backed by Turkey.
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/north-africa/2020/09/25/One-dead-multiple-injured-in-clashes-between-GNA-factions-in-Libya-s-Tajoura
--------
Suspected
extremists abduct 3 non-Muslims in Kenya’s north
By
TOM ODULA
9/24/20
NAIROBI,
Kenya — Officials in Kenya say three non-Muslim bus passengers were abducted by
suspected Islamic extremists in Kenya’s northern Mandera county that borders
Somalia.
Armed
gunmen, believed to be Somalia’s al-Shabab rebels, stopped a bus about 30 kilometers
(18 miles) from Lafey town and ordered everyone out. The attackers picked three
passengers from 54 on the bus and ordered the rest to leave, regional police
chief Rono Bunei told The Associated Press Thursday.
“We
are still pursuing them in an effort to rescue them alive. We are wondering how
they (the attackers) knew the three were on board the bus,” he said.
He
said it’s not clear why the bus did not have a police escort, a requirement for
commercial transport traveling in Mandera county which has been hard hit by
violence from Somalia’s extremists.
Al-Shabab
has vowed retribution on Kenya for sending troops to Somalia to fight the
rebels. Since 2011 Somalia’s rebels, who are linked to al-Qaida, have launched
scores of deadly attacks in Kenya.
The
government repeatedly said since 2014 that it is mandatory for public buses
traveling through Mandera county to have armed police escorts.
Al-Shabab
rebels have often attacked buses and have singled out and killed non-Muslim
passengers. In November 2014, 28 non-Muslims were killed in an attack after
they were pulled off a Nairobi-bound bus near Mandera.
In
December last year al-Shabab killed 11 police officers who were pulled from a
bus that was taking them back to duty in Mandera county.
Since
December, al-Shabab has increased the frequency of its attacks in five Kenyan
counties along the Somali border that have been named as hotspots for extremist
violence. They are Lamu, Garissa, Wajir, Tana River and Mandera counties.
In
January the extremists overran Manda Bay Airfield in Lamu county, a key
military base used by U.S. counterterror forces in Kenya, killing three
American Department of Defense personnel and destroying several U.S. aircraft
and vehicles.
The
frequency of attacks slowed in the months of April, May and June as the
coronavirus started spreading in many African towns, including al-Shabab’s base
in Somalia. Since July Kenya’s security forces have experienced an increase in
their vehicles being hit by roadside bombs.
http://www.therepublic.com/2020/09/24/af-kenya-extremist-abductions/?utm_source=iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1555151_
--------
Europe
Turkey’s
Behaviour in Region Is ‘Explosive and Dangerous’ To Its Neighbours, Says
Cypriot Envoy
September
26, 2020
NEW
YORK: Turkey is engaged in an “expansionist and imperialistic policy” that is
creating “very, very explosive and dangerous” problems for neighboring
countries, according to Andreas Mavroyiannis, the permanent representative of
Cyprus to the UN.
Turkey
and Greece have been fighting over Cyprus for decades. In 1974, the ruling
Greek military junta staged a coup in an attempt to incorporate the island into
Greece. In response, Turkey invaded and, after gaining control of the north,
unilaterally declared the establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern
Cyprus.
Almost
50 years later, tensions between Greece and Turkey continue to run high and
recent developments, including a dispute over rights to energy resources in the
eastern Mediterranean, have raised concerns that they could escalate into open
conflict.
Last
year, Ankara signed a maritime accord with the Libyan Government of National
Accord and began gas exploration operations in areas of the Mediterranean
Greece considers part of its economic zone. More recently, Turkey sent survey
vessels close to areas the Cypriot government have licensed to multinational
companies to explore for oil and gas.
“Recently,
we have this more hegemonic Turkish policy in the area,” said Mavroyiannis in
an exclusive interview with Arab News. “(It is an) expansionist and
imperialistic policy that creates problems for all neighbors.
“The
(Turks) are trying to create a fait accompli and the situation is very, very
explosive and dangerous.”
He
conceded that his country’s small size and lack of military power means that
its options for responding to Ankara’s actions are limited to diplomatic and
political channels.
“But
this is (only the situation) for us,” said Mavroyiannis. “I understand and
appreciate that for other neighbors — and in particular Greece, which is now
the focus of the Turkish expansionist policies — it is very different.
“Greece
not only has the means to react (but) it is compelled to use those means if
Turkey continues with its current violations of international law and of
maritime zones.”
The
dispute between Greece and Turkey escalated in August when Ankara sent survey
vessels, accompanied by Navy warships, to explore gas reserves in the eastern
Mediterranean. During the standoff that followed, Greek and Turkish warships
were involved in a minor collision.
Athens
subsequently announced significant weapons purchases, along with plans to
expand its armed forces.
However,
Turkey’s activities in the region have repercussions not only for Cyprus and
Greece, said Mavroyiannis. One way or another, all neighboring nations —
including Egypt, Israel and Syria — are affected, he added, and Ankara’s
policies should be of concern to the entire Arab world.
France
sides with Greece and has urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to
“refrain from any new unilateral action likely to provoke tensions, and to
engage without ambiguity in the construction of an area of peace and
cooperation in the Mediterranean.”
While
France has adopted an aggressive stance, as evidenced by heated exchanges
between Erdogan and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, Germany has struck
a more conciliatory tone, proposing incentives for Ankara in return for
deescalation.
“Those
(two European) schools of thought are two sides of the same coin,” said
Mavroyiannis. “On the one hand the stick, and on the other hand the carrot.
“(If)
Turkey accepts the approach of Germany and we have deescalation, (then) of
course, the relationship will improve. If (the Turks) don’t (it must be made)
clear that there are consequences. (Turkey) has to understand that there is no
free ride.”
Despite
intensive diplomatic efforts, in Cyprus the dispute between Turkish and Greek
Cypriots remains as tense as it was four decades ago. The most recent round of
talks between the two sides collapsed in 2017.
During
his speech to the 75th General Assembly of the UN this week, Cypriot President
Nicos Anastasiades, who leads his country’s internationally recognized
government, reaffirmed his commitment to resuming reunification talks with
Turkish Cypriots, “but not at gunpoint.”
Following
a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Berlin last November,
both sides in Cyprus agreed to wait until after the presidential election in
Northern Cyprus that was scheduled for April this year before resuming
negotiations. However, the election was delayed until October 11 as a result of
the COVID-19 pandemic.
During
his opening remarks at the General Assembly, Guterres stressed the importance
of confidence-building measures from all parties, and warned against any
further “unilateral actions” that might further stoke the fear of war in the
eastern Mediterranean.
“To
resume actual, substantive negotiations, we need to have the right atmosphere —
we cannot negotiate under duress,” Mavroyiannis said.
“The
message from the secretary-general is this: there is a need for those who don’t
abide by the rules to stop their activities and to allow the negotiations to
move forward.
“So,
for us, (this is) a clear message to Turkey to stop all those violations of
international law (and) of Cyprus’s maritime zones, to create a climate
conducive to negotiation.”
Mavroyiannis
also expressed regret over what he described as the suffering that has been
inflicted on the region by the decision of the US to reduce its presence and
withdraw troops. This, he said, has emboldened Erdogan.
“The
US is the number one world power,” he said. “Turkey and the US are also
partners in NATO. I believe that the US has a lot of leverage and we would like
them to exercise it.
“At
the end of the day, for us the most important thing is to have our place under
the sun, and to continue having seamless cooperation with all our neighbors to
promote peace and security and prosperity in the eastern Mediterranean.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1740191/world
--------
French
trial of 2015 terror attacks in Paris: Testimonies of survivors
By
SARAH CHEMLA
SEPTEMBER
25, 2020
As
the French trial of the January 2015 terror attack in Paris continues, the
testimonies of the kosher supermarket victims' families and hostages were heard
this week.
One
after the other, those affected by the terrible killings of the kosher
supermarket in Paris were recounting their part of the story, their feelings as
well as how the last few years were impacted by this tragic attack that either
robbed them of a loved one, or left an unerasable trauma on their memory.
During
Tuesday's and Wednesday’s proceedings, witnesses and relatives of the four
Hyper Cacher victims — Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Michel Saada and Philippe
Braham — spoke before the court.
The
father of Yohan Cohen, one of the four victims murdered by the Islamist gunman
Coulibaly, broke down during court testimony on Tuesday as he recalled the
virulent antisemitism behind the atrocity.
“Why
this gratuitous wickedness, why this hatred of the Jew?” screamed Eric Cohen
before the Paris courtroom where 14 suspects in the three days of terrorist
attacks that gripped the French capital are currently on trial.
Cohen
remembered that on the day of the attack, while terribly worried for Yohan, he
was given the incorrect news that there had been no fatalities during the siege
at the market. “I told myself that I would see my son again, that was huge.”
In
fact, it was discovered that at the time of the siege, the media didn't know
about the victims, and that the terrorist himself called the television's
channels to establish the number of dead and hostages.
"He
didn't notice to read on the TV that there were only hostages and no
dead," explained police commander Christian Deau at the proceedings, a
police commander.
Tragically,
Yohan's father continued, adding that “half an hour later, we were told there
had been four deaths…it was a punishment twice over.”
“It’s
not just a child who died, it’s a whole family that died," declared in
from of the court Yohan’s uncle. “Today I hope that we will find the culprits
[guilty]. Taking people's lives, there is nothing more terrible.”
As
the details of the siege were laid out before the courtroom, Cohen and other
relatives heard of how Yohan, who was shot immediately by the terrorist Amedy
Coulibaly, took more than three hours to die from his wounds. Coulibaly at one
point asked the other hostages whether they wanted him to “finish off” Cohen,
in order to silence his moans.
The
trial also learned of the heroism of Yoav Hattab, a shopper at the market who
tried to snatch one of the automatic rifles being carried by Coulibaly, which
happened not to be working, and was shot dead by the terrorist as he did so.
“The
hostages were released, but not my son Yoav — he tried to kill Amedy
Coulibaly,” Binyamin Hattab, father of Yoav, told the court.
“My
son was shot in the head, he was 21 years old. Our life has changed since. We
had a very difficult time," Binyamin said. “I lived with the Muslims in
Tunis. The Muslim community in Tunis, they cried with me. For my son. They are
my brothers."
“I can't forget what happened. I can’t stand
it. Why the hatred?," he added. “My son came into the store and bought a
bottle of wine that cost him life".
“I
am proud of my son, there is a commandment to save human beings," he
reminisced. "I ask for justice for the people who hurt my son. They tore
me apart. I want them to have what they deserve."
Yoav
is buried in Jerusalem.
The
sister of murdered victim Michel Saada recalled in her testimony that her
brother had often expressed concern at rising antisemitism in France. He used
to tell her that “you can’t stay in France anymore if you’re a Jew.”
“That sentence, it keeps coming back to me,”
Annie-Laure Saada said.
“He
was very lucid about what was happening in France, in Europe,” she said, “and
particularly about the threat of antisemitism. He was preparing to go and
settle permanently in Israel, to be close to his children, and yet he loved
France viscerally.”
Valerie
Braham, the wife of victim Phillipe Braham, cried before the court as she
described the impact of her husband’s murder upon their young family.
“My
husband was my rock, and I died with him,” Mrs. Braham said.
“When
the assault happened, I looked at the screen. I even thought that I saw him. We
were told by the police that there were victims, later that there were no
victim. Everything was turned upside down. I called the people, the hospitals,
no one could answer me. The president of the community knew, I didn’t know, how
to find out the truth. I saw my brother-in-law chatting with him and I
understood, but I didn't want to.”
“I
said, ‘But what's going on?’...”
“My
brother-in-law couldn't even look at me,” she remembered, in tears. “I didn't
believe it. Until I saw him, I couldn't believe it.”
She
said that her children “know that it was a bad man who killed their father but
they don’t understand why.”
“My
children are growing up without their daddy, our last child doesn’t even
remember him.”
The
court also heard testimony from two workers at the Hyper Cacher — Zarie Sibony,
a cashier, and Lassana Bathily, a market assistant.
Sibony
remembered the scene with the terrorist, saying: "I saw the bodies of
Yohan and Mr. Braham. I thought he was doing it for money. I offered him to
take it all. He laughed and said to me: 'you really think I came for money!’”
He
explained her “that he was part of the same team as the Kouachi, that they had
coordinated,” the Kouachi being the terrorists who massacred 12 people at the
offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo two days previously
Then
she recalled that he told her: "You Jews love life too much, you think
life is the most important, while death is the most important,” adding that he
intended to die as a “martyr.”
“I
wanted to survive,” said Sibony, adding “I was going to do everything to
survive. Whatever he was going to ask of me I was going to do it.”
She
remembered Coulibaly telling her "You are the two things I hate most in
the world, you are Jews, and you are French."
Sibony
described the terrorist, who was killed by police at the end of the siege, as
cold-blooded and contemptuous toward his victims for the duration.
Coulibaly
interrogated all the hostages at the market, asking them their religious
affiliations, she said. All but two were Jewish.
“You
have chosen the wrong day to go shopping in a kosher store,” he told the group.
Lassana
Bathily’s testimony centered meanwhile on his own role sheltering hostages in
the toilet and storage rooms in the basement of the market while Coulibaly was
upstairs.
“It
was a Jewish store, I was a practicing Muslim, but there was no problem,
everyone respected each other,” Bathily recounted.
Bathily
said he remembered Yohan Cohen, his fellow employee from 2013, as a “brother.”
Originated
from Mali, like Coulibaly, Bathily received French citizenship in recognition
of his heroism in protecting the hostages.
Francis
Kalifat, President of the Crif, organization for Jewish communities in France,
declared that: "It was important to remember that these victims of
antisemitism are not the only ones."
He
quotes the names of Sébastien Selam, Ilan Hamili, the names of the Jewish
victims of Mohamed Merah, Jonathan Sandler, his two sons Arieh and Gabriel,
aged 5 and 3 respectively, as well as Myriam Monsonego, 7, Yohan Cohen, Yoav
Hattab, Michel Saada, Philippe Braham, Sarah Halimi, Mireille Knoll.
"All
murdered on the grounds that they 'were Jews."
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/january-2015-terror-attacks-in-france-the-trial-643534?utm_source=iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1555151_
--------
New
IRA Links Confirm Hezbollah’s Growing Terror Threat in Europe
Con
Coughlin
Sep
24, 2020
The
latest allegations that senior representatives of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia
met with members of a breakaway Irish terrorist group have highlighted the
growing extent of the Iranian-backed organisation’s operations in Europe.
For
decades, Hezbollah's primary focus has been the Middle East, where the terrorist
organisation – working in conjunction with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps (IRGC) – has been responsible for conducting attacks designed to create
political instability and discord. In recent years, however, it has gradually
expanded its operations farther afield, with its terror cells operating from
locations in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Now
there is fresh evidence that it is investing in its terrorist network in Europe
by establishing arms caches in several countries and building links with
terrorist and criminal organisations on the continent. The most recent proof of
this has emerged after members of an Irish dissident group were arrested on
terrorism charges last month following claims they met with Hezbollah officials
at Iran’s embassy in Dublin.
As
The National reported this month, Irish and British security officials believe
that former members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) sought to
revive long-standing contacts with Hezbollah in an attempt to obtain finance and
weapons for the New IRA (NIRA), a fanatical offshoot of the Irish republican
movement that is bitterly opposed to the Good Friday Agreement between Northern
Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Dissident
Irish republicans have been waging a militant campaign against the police and
security forces in Northern Ireland since 2009, and were held responsible for
the killing of Irish journalist Lyra McKee in April last year.
According
to officials investigating the Hezbollah plot, Irish dissidents were seeking
advanced bomb-making technology previously used by Hezbollah in Lebanon and
Iraq. They were in advanced talks with Hezbollah to strike a deal that would
have greatly enhanced NIRA’s ability to attack British security forces,
including the use of sophisticated improvised explosive devices.
Nine
NIRA members have now been arrested following a long-running operation by MI5,
the British security service.
Among
those detained was Dr Issam Hijjawi Bassalat, a Palestinian, who has been
charged with terrorism offences. At least two of those detained are said to
have attended a commemoration ceremony at the Iranian embassy in Dublin
following the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani by a US drone
strike in January.
From
the IRA’s perspective, the claims that NIRA members are attempting to link up
with terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah should not come as a big
surprise. Irish republicans have a long history of associating with global
terror groups and rogue regimes. In the past, the IRA received weapons and
other forms of support from the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the Libyan
regime of Muammar Qaddafi, Colombian insurgents Farc and Basque terrorist group
ETA.
The
suggestion, however, that senior Irish republicans have been attempting to form
a terror pact with Hezbollah is an illustration of the organisation’s growing
influence among Europe’s criminal and terrorist networks.
This
month, the US State Department accused Hezbollah of storing caches of weapons
and ammonium nitrate, the same material responsible for the devastating
explosion at Beirut’s port last month, at bases throughout Europe. According to
Nathan Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism co-ordinator, Hezbollah
has been steadily building up its weapons stockpiles on the continent with the
aim of preparing for terrorist acts that may be ordered by Tehran.
Describing
it as a “clear and present danger to the US” and its allies, Mr Sales said that
intelligence reports showed Hezbollah had weapons in Belgium, France, Greece,
Italy, Spain and Switzerland, while “significant” ammonium nitrate cashes had
either been discovered or destroyed in France, Greece and Italy.
“We
have reason to believe that this activity is still under way,” Mr Sales said in
a recent video briefing in Washington. “Why would Hezbollah stockpile ammonium
nitrate on European soil? The answer is clear. It can conduct major terror
attacks whenever its masters in Tehran deem it necessary.”
The
threat to European security posed by the growth of Hezbollah’s terrorist
network was highlighted this week following the conviction of two suspected
terrorists for the murder of five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in 2012.
Meliad
Farah, a Lebanese-Australian, and Hassan El Hajj Hassan, a Lebanese-Canadian,
were found guilty of helping plan the bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in an
operation prosecutors claim was carried out on the orders of Hezbollah. The
organisation has denied any involvement in the attack, and the whereabouts of
the two convicted men are not known. But European Union officials accepted that
there was sufficient evidence to point to its involvement in the attack, and
responded by placing its military wing on its terrorism blacklist.
The
latest revelations come against a deepening background of tensions between the
US and Iran over its controversial nuclear programme. This week, the Trump
administration announced it was re-imposing sanctions against Tehran, a move
that prompted fierce opposition from other members of the UN Security Council
committed to maintaining the nuclear deal struck with Iran in 2015.
But
while the European signatories to the deal – Britain, France and Germany – have
opposed Washington’s decision, the introduction of fresh sanctions against Iran
by the US could provoke Tehran to launch a fresh wave of terror attacks,
including against targets in Europe.
https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/new-ira-links-confirm-hezbollah-s-growing-terror-threat-in-europe-1.1082993?utm
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