Just International

Exclusive: U.S. discloses secret Somalia military presence, up to 120 troops

By Phil Stewart

(Reuters) – U.S. military advisors have secretly operated in Somalia since around 2007 and Washington plans to deepen its security assistance to help the country fend off threats by Islamist militant group al Shabaab, U.S. officials said.

The comments are the first detailed public acknowledgement of a U.S. military presence in Somalia dating back since the U.S. administration of George W. Bush and add to other signs of a deepening U.S. commitment to Somalia’s government, which the Obama administration recognized last year.

The deployments, consisting of up to 120 troops on the ground, go beyond the Pentagon’s January announcement that it had sent a handful of advisors in October. That was seen at the time as the first assignment of U.S. troops to Somalia since 1993 when two U.S. helicopters were shot down and 18 American troops killed in the “Black Hawk Down” disaster.

The plans to further expand U.S. military assistance coincide with increasing efforts by the Somali government and African Union peacekeepers to counter a bloody seven-year insurgent campaign by the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab to impose strict Islamic law inside Somalia.

Those U.S. plans include greater military engagement and new funds for training and assistance for the Somali National Army (SNA), after years of working with the African Union Mission in Somalia, or AMISOM, which has about 22,000 troops in the country from Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Djibouti and Ethiopia.

“What you’ll see with this upcoming fiscal year is the beginning of engagement with the SNA proper,” said a U.S. defense official, who declined to be identified. The next fiscal year starts in October.

An Obama administration official told Reuters there were currently up to 120 U.S. military personnel on the ground throughout Somalia and described them as trainers and advisors.

“They’re not involved in combat,” the official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that until last year, U.S. military advisors had been working with AMISOM troop contributors, as opposed to Somali forces.

President Barack Obama last year determined that Somalia could receive U.S. military assistance.

Another official said American forces over the years had provided advice and assistance in areas related to mission planning, small unit tactics, medical care, human rights and communications. The official said U.S. forces in Somalia have also facilitated coordination, planning and communication between AMISOM troop contributors and Somali security forces.

SPECIAL OPS

The comments expand upon a little noticed section of a speech given early in June by Wendy Sherman, under secretary of state for political affairs. She publicly acknowledged that a “small contingent of U.S. military personnel” including special operations forces had been present in parts of Somalia for several years.

Still, it was not immediately clear from her remarks the extent to which U.S. personnel had been operating.

U.S. special operations forces have staged high-profile raids in the past in Somalia, including an aborted attempt in October to capture an al Shabaab operative in the militant group’s stronghold of Barawe. U.S. officials have acknowledged Washington’s support for AMISOM and Somalia’s struggle against al Shabaab.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials have been known to operate in the country.

U.S. troop numbers on the ground in Somalia vary over time, the officials told Reuters. Deployments are “staggered” and “short-term,” one official said. But the Obama administration official added that there was overlap in the deployments to allow for a persistent presence on the ground.

Asked about where U.S. forces were deployed, the administration official said they were “in locations throughout Somalia” but declined to elaborate further for security reasons.

The official declined to say precisely when the first U.S. military forces went back into Somalia, saying: “It was around 2007” and in support of AMISOM.

Asked about why Sherman chose to disclose the information, a State Department official told Reuters: “In the past, our assessment of the security situation in Somalia informed our decision to err on the side of force protection concerns and not divulge their presence.”

That’s changed, the official said. “We do not currently believe that acknowledging the U.S. presence will increase the already high threat to our personnel and citizens operating in Somalia.”

The announcement also reflects a deepening of the U.S.-Somali relationship and comes as the United States prepares to name its first ambassador for Somalia since 1993, who would initially be based out of the country due to security concerns.

“Absolutely there’s been a shift” in the relationship, an Obama administration official said.

Military trainers from the European Union are already on the ground in Somalia training soldiers after shifting their operations at the end of last year to Mogadishu from Uganda, where troops were previously drilled.

Phil Stewart has worked for Reuters since 1998 and reported from more than 30 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and Egypt. Before becoming a Washington D.C.-based military affairs and intelligence reporter, Phil covered terrorism, foreign affairs and the Vatican from Rome from 2004 until mid-2009.

2 July 2014

For such a time as this, what is required?

From The Rev. Dr.

Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, Jerusalem

For the last three months, approximately 200 Palestinian administrative detainees have been on a hunger strike to protest their detention without charge or trial.

On May 15, 2014, on Nakba day, a few weeks before the kidnapping of the three young Israelis, the Israeli army killed two Palestinian teenagers near Ramallah in cold blood.

On Monday evening, June 30, the Israeli army found the bodies of the three missing Israeli teenagers. On Tuesday morning, July 1, the Israeli army killed a 16 year old Palestinian in Jenin and some settlers tried to snatch a 9 year old boy in Beit Hanina, but he was rescued by his mother and some passersby. Early Wednesday morning July 2, settlers kidnapped a 17 year old boy from Shufat, killed him and burned his body. In addition, over the last two weeks over 10 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army some of them quite young and over 500 detained and hundreds injured.

We grieve with all the families – Palestinians and Israelis. We condemn the killings whether by the Israeli army, the unruly settlers, extremist Palestinians or unknown suspects. We uphold the sanctity of all human life Israeli as well as Palestinian, Jew as well as Muslim, Muslim as well as Christian.

For those who have eyes to see, all the killings that have taken place were senseless and the major culprit is the right-wing Israeli government. Its policy has been a total rejection of peace on the basis of the demands of international law. It refuses to share the land and accept a sovereign Palestinian state on only 22% of historic
Palestine that is willing to live in peace next to Israel. The government of Israel believes that it can turn back the wheels of history and create an ethnic/religious state. It believes that it can impose its will on the Palestinians because it possesses the military power and the technology that is needed.

This cannot happen. It is on the wrong side of history. History itself is against it, not only the Palestinians. The future of the world is for multiethnic,
multiracial, and multireligious communities living together. History is for diversity and not for uniformity. Israel’s right wing government is the culprit. It is responsible; it is the offender. It is cheating the Israeli and Palestinian youths of life because it is charting an ethnic and racist course of history that is untenable.

The good people of Israel, Palestine, and the international community must put a stop to this madness. Long ago Jesus quoted the Psalmist saying, “The meek will inherit the land.” The meek are the people of the land and they are the Israelis and the Palestinians, but they are not the arrogant exclusivists of this world. The exclusivists will
eventually pass away and someday new leaders will emerge, an Israeli Abraham Lincoln, or an Israeli De Klerk who will lead Israel to peace based on sharing the land where every person – man and woman, Israeli and Palestinian – will live as equal citizens with human dignity.

We call on our Palestinian sisters and brothers to continue resisting every act of injustice with nonviolent action; our religious leaders, Muslim and Christian, to raise the prophetic voice against injustice and oppression; and the Palestinian Authority to remain steadfast in its commitment to a unified government.

If the Israeli government wants peace, it must be transformed. It needs to believe in the power of peace that is based on justice and equality. For such a time as this, Israeli leaders need the courage and the will to do the following:

They need to realize that violence can only beget violence and that despair can only beget desperate actions. Therefore the state must stop the cycle of violence and the cycle of vengeance.

They need to address the root causes of the problems: racist laws, the military occupation, and the illegal settlements.

They need to stop all collective punishments, arbitrary killings, and extra judicial executions and let the rule of law take its due course. It is unjust to punish innocent persons for the actions of a suspected few.

They need to work with the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority to find the resolution of the conflict on the basis of international law that will guarantee the needs of peace and security for both Israel and Palestine.

We lament the inaction of world leaders in the face of the entrenchment of the occupation. They need to realize that ultimately the resolution of the conflict requires outside intervention. World powers helped create the conflict and world powers must help resolve it.
For such a time as this, “He told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

July 4, 2014

 

Behind the Sound Bites Lies the Hideous Truth

By Gerald A. Perreira

The Organization of North Atlantic Tribes (NATO) brought together the enemies of the Libyan revolution under one umbrella to achieve their desired outcome. This concoction of insignificant non-entities and murderous gangs parading as ‘jihadists’ are now fighting each other over the spoils of war. They have been handed a resource rich nation state and are now one of the major supporters of the Islamist death squads throughout the region.
Truth be told, Barak Obama is a political dunce. Soon after Obama became the first Black president of the United States, Hugo Chavez presented him with a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s excellent work, Open Veins of Latin America. Obama should have read it.

Hugo Chavez presenting Obama with a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s book, Open Veins of
Latin America.

At that time, Hugo Chavez, Muammar Qaddafi and a number of other revolutionary and progressive leaders saw a glimmer of hope with Obama’s election. It was not that these leaders did not understand the nature of the American political system. Of course, they understood only too well that all talk of US democracy is a sham. They knew that the US political system offers a mere façade of democracy which allows for the rule of capital, and that both Republicans and Democrats are ideological-political expressions of the same ruling class. The ballot box cannot undo the power elite in American society.
They also knew that Obama was a political neophyte – a novice on the global stage – but a seemingly intelligent one – at least that’s how it appeared back then. It seemed that he might have the empathy and intelligence to listen and learn. Unfortunately he did not, and the rest is history. At that moment, soon after his election, when he appointed an array of advisors with connections to all manner of nefarious forces, including well known Zionists, the hope faded. Obama chose drones over his promise of diplomacy and dialogue, and chose to appease the forces of white supremacy, over his promise to bring about meaningful change.

It quickly became apparent that the Black face in the White House was the latest addition to white supremacy’s arsenal. Ill-informed and therefore easily misinformed, Obama has committed one foreign policy blunder after another with nightmarish consequences, especially for the Global South. When Obama made the fallacious comment that ‘Qaddafi had lost all credibility and that he must go’, it was obvious that he was being fed misinformation by deceptive forces bent on redesigning Africa and the Arab world. Under his presidential watch, even morons like McCain have thrived rather than being discredited, and have been used to galvanize support for the Obama’s incoherent and irrational foreign policy.

Recently I heard a sound bite that went like this, ‘Libya is in chaos as the armed militias that overthrew Qaddafi wage war on each other’. Notice how the pro-imperialist media conveniently remove the mass murderers in Britain, the US, France, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from the equation, even though it is crystal clear that without their intervention in Libya, the Jamahiriya could never have been overthrown, precisely because there was never a popular uprising against Qaddafi and the revolution. Even former Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, in a statement he made during a meeting of his party, Forza Italia, was forced to admit that: ‘This has nothing to do with a popular uprising. The Libyan people love Qaddafi, as I was able to see when I went to Libya…Powerful people decided to give life to a new era by trying to oust Qaddafi.’
The fact is, there was a popular uprising in support of Qaddafi and the Jamahiriya and against the invaders. This has become even clearer in the aftermath of the invasion, as more than 2.5 million Libyans have been forced to flee their country, and this is only the number of those who have been documented at border crossings and by refugee organizations. The real figures are much higher. When you consider that the total population was 6 million prior to the invasion, you then realize how devastating the situation has become. Libya is in chaos and the suffering is tangible. Imagine in the recently held elections, only 630,000 people turned out to vote. That is not a low show – that is a no show.

The popular uprising in Libya was in support of the Jamahiriya: during the invasion of Libya, 1.7million people, 95% of the population of Tripoli and one third of the entire population of Libya, gathered in downtown Tripoli in perhaps the largest demonstration in world history to support Qaddafi and the revolution.
In contrast, the recent elections in Libya held on June 25th, 2014 saw polling booths all over Libya empty – only 630,000 people turned out to vote.
Qaddafi really did create a Jamahiriya – translated as a state of the masses. The Libyan people stayed away from the polls in droves – it was probably the most impressive election boycott in history.

As Qaddafi outlined in The Green Book, ‘Democracy means, literally, the authority and sovereignty of the people – the entire people. It is not a monolithic product as the West would like us to believe’

Authority of the People certainly does not exist in the US or Europe.

Michael Parenti, in his ground-breaking work, Democracy for the Few, pointed out the framers and shapers of the US constitution, people like Elbridge Gerry, Alexander Hamilton and even George Washington, were all contemptuous of democracy. Gerry is on record referring to democracy as ‘the worst of all political evils’. Alexander Hamilton advocated for a strong state to ‘check the imprudence of democracy’. And Washington, who once traded an African slave for a barrel of molasses, cautioned those who were drafting the constitution not to produce a document to please the people.
The entire US political system is a sham, not just today but from its inception, and every country has the right and should be prepared to defend their gains and national dignity against re-colonization in the guise of their fallacious notions of ‘multi-party democracy’, ‘human rights’ and ‘rule of law’.

It is important to note that the so-called rebels never won a single battle during the invasion of Libya; everything was handed to them on a platter by the imperialist ground and air forces. With the overthrow of the Jamahiriya and the murder of Muammar Qaddafi, this bizarre concoction of monarchists, thugs parading as Jihadists and other reactionary forces are now at each other’s throats. They most definitely have no clue as to how to put together a plan to re-build and govern Libya.

What has resulted from the overthrow of the Libyan Jamahiriya is so hideous that even the imperialists don’t have the stomach for it. Libya hardly gets a mention now – the odd sound bite here and there. And anyway, who cares? Now that Qaddafi and the Jamahiriya are gone and Africa is once again a playing field for all and sundry, the mission is accomplished.

Qaddafi’s extensive popularity and influence throughout Africa, along with the fact that Libya was prepared to throw its economic might behind the Pan-African project, acted as a bulwark to all who wanted to lay their hands on Africa’s resources. And that is just about everyone. Even the Saudi’s and Qatari’s are buying up large tracts of African land to grow food and ensure their food security into the future. As I have said in so many previous articles, every modern, high-tech society must have access, one way or the other, to African resources. It is estimated that if access was to stop for even two weeks, the so-called developed world would grind to a halt. Rather than embracing this position of African power and strength, something Qaddafi tried to convince the continent’s leaders to do, they chose instead to prostrate themselves before their erstwhile colonial masters. Unfortunately, African countries, with a few exceptions, are governed by neo-colonial elites who pay lip service to Pan-Africanism and African unity. Rather than opposing this new wave of re-colonization they are actually acting as facilitators at worst, and at best, hopeless and helpless in the face of it.

Let us not commit the same error as the imperialist media and take white supremacy out of this equation. The great African leaders and movements of our time, who have fought for the true independence, dignity and unification of Africa, have been stalked and preyed upon by Western intelligence agencies and eventually have almost all been overthrown, murdered and/or demonized. There are too many to mention here. So let us not fall into the white lie that somehow ‘African regimes are all corrupt and oppressive.’ The fact is that every time, and there have been countless times, that a progressive regime comes to power anywhere in Africa or for that matter any part of the Global South, the imperialist mission is ‘Regime change by any means necessary’. And this entails backing anyone who can do the job, including throat slitting ‘Jihadists’ in Africa and the Arab world, to fascist outfits in Venezuela.

This is why they can be supporting and equipping the Islamists in Syria against the Assad regime on the one hand, while frantically talking with Nouri al Maliki about how to destroy the same group in Iraq on the other. Henry Kissinger put it in a nutshell when he uttered the now infamous dictum: ‘We have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies – we only have permanent interests’.

Of course, none of this is new – they have always operated this way. Western imperialism, by its very nature, has worked closely with extreme right-wing and fascist forces in every corner of the globe against revolutionary regimes and movements. In the high-tech age, the Empire has simply widened and deepened its dragnet, perfecting its surveillance and propaganda techniques, in its now desperate attempt to stay in control. However, no matter what the Empire does – none of dem can stop da tide. It is plain for all to see that the sun is setting on this Empire. The US and Europe’s influence in world affairs is waning faster than they can do damage control. They now want to talk to Iran but Iran does not want to talk to them without conditions. How the tables can turn. And Kerry is pleading with the Kurds to prevent what he is referring to as ‘the collapse of Iraq’. Surely he knows that Iraq collapsed a long time ago. Even US support for the neo-Nazis in the Ukraine is back-firing on them. In their attempt to undermine and discredit Russia and Putin, they have rather strengthened their hand.

Sometimes the enemy can be the best teacher.

‘Propaganda becomes ineffective the moment we are aware of it’, so stated Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister.

I doubt that anyone, anywhere, does not see through the lies, deception and blatant hypocrisy emanating from Western capitals. Their propaganda has, as Goebbels suggests, worn completely thin. The less obvious issue is how are we to deal with the new set of events that have emerged with the overthrow of the Libyan Jamahiriya.

Remember Qaddafi’s words? ‘The fight if it is not won in Libya will be coming to you. Prepare for it. Prepare traps for the invaders. You must defend your corners…build your defenses for they are coming if they manage to pass Libya.’ That has surely come to pass.

What is now taking place in Mali, Nigeria, Central African Republic (CAR) and most recently Iraq, are not isolated events, but are all part of the fallout from what happened in Libya. The so called ‘rebels’ of Libya are closely related to all the other Al-Qaeda inspired ‘rebels’ in the region – from Syria to Nigeria. Handing them an oil rich nation, i.e. Libya, has strengthened them beyond their wildest dreams and they are now running riot on all fronts – heavily armed and frighteningly emboldened.

A Muslim woman in Nigeria demonstrates against the terror of Boko Haram

They range from Ansar Beit al-Maqdis in Egypt to Ansar al Sharia in Libya and Tunisia, to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali, Algeria and Mauritania, to Al Nusra Front and Al Dawlah al Islamiyah fi al Iraq wa al Sham (The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – ISIS/ISIL) to Boko Haram in Nigeria. They are all part of the same Al Qaeda inspired, Salafist network of murderous thugs, being financed, supported and equipped by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the US, Britain and a number of other European states.

Even Nouri al Maliki denounced Saudi Arabia’s financial and moral support for these murderous gangs, including The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), currently destabilizing Iraq and the region.

Why doesn’t the West declare Saudi Arabia and Qatar sponsors of terrorism? Because in line with their foreign policy, once again, we find that one of the most oppressive regimes in the world – the House of Saud – is the darling of the US and Britain. The so-called war on terror is a myth. It is selective, hypocritical and immoral. In reality they all work in tandem, one minute friends; the next minute enemies, hence the coining of the term ‘frenemies’.
It is interesting to note that these so-called Jihadists have not attacked one Israeli/Zionist military target, in fact their actions often serve the interests of the Zionist state and they find themselves acting in unison. Israel has repeatedly bombed Assad’s forces in support of the ‘Jihadists’. And more recently, while these pretenders to Islam are busy fighting imperialism’s wars, Israel is once again bombing the Palestinians.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the two major global hubs of Wahhabism, have, over the years, been promoting this deviant doctrine that masquerades as Islam, throughout Africa and the Indian sub- continent. Their target market: large groups of unemployed, impoverished and un-educated youth. Backed by Petro dollars, they provide them with scholarships to Saudi Arabia and Madrasas in Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of Africa where they are housed and fed for free and indoctrinated in Wahhabism.

Arrested Boko Haram members. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have, over the years, been promoting their deviant doctrine that masquerades as Islam, throughout Africa. Their target market: large groups of unemployed, impoverished and un-educated youth.

A complete distortion of Islam, Wahhabism is intolerant and hostile to Christians, Shias, Alawis, and any progressive Muslim leader who disagrees with Wahhabism is declared an apostate. The Saudis had declared Muammar Qaddafi an apostate as far back as the early 70s, when he dared to question their teaching and practices.

In a speech delivered in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1939, Abul Ala Maududi, one of the ideologues of the present day Islamist marauders stated, ‘Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth, which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam, regardless of the country or the nation which rules it.’ The entire text of this speech was later published in booklet form under the title Jihad in Islam.

Maududi’s organization, Jamaat-e-Islami has had a longstanding relationship with the CIA. As far back as the 1970s they worked hand in hand with the US to remove the progressive Pakistani Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and install Pakistani dictator, General Muhammad Zia-ul- Haq, and with the CIA in Afghanistan against the Soviets.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate stretching from Iraq to the Mediterranean is not a new concept, it is just that it is now receiving attention in the Western media as these groups gain momentum. This battle between the Islam of Prophet Muhammad and this hijacked version of Islam has been raging for centuries. From its inception in 1969, the Libyan revolution had been in the forefront of the struggle to keep these deviant forces and their reactionary ideology at bay, which is why Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE were so eager to lead the charge against Muammar Qaddafi and the Jamahiriya.

Boko Haram in Nigeria is a good example of this reactionary and authoritarian ideology. These deviant Islamic groups are being used by the Western imperialist powers in collusion with Saudi Arabia and Qatar to re-divide and carve up Africa and to destroy what little is left of the Pan African project. Chaos and instability is the perfect cover for re-colonization. While the Western imperialists use Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the ‘Jihadists’, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and ‘the Jihadists’ are also using the imperialists. They too have designs on Africa and the Arab world and since they are the frontline, and it is their ideology that is being fought for, it is a dangerous path the US is treading. In the end, the US must emerge as the losers in this ‘game of thrones’. This is evident already with the events unfolding in Iraq. Whichever way it goes – the US is the big loser.

Syrian ‘Jihadists’ from the Al Nusra front have slit the throats of Christians who refused to convert to Islam even though the Prophet of Islam made it abundantly clear that there is no religion by compulsion.

In his final communiqué, Qaddafi asked ‘What Sharia are you looking for other than the one which we have, since we were the first to bring Quran as the Law of Society in the Jamahiriya. Is it the Sharia of injustice, oppression, cowardice, murder, insanity and drugs? Is it the Sharia that elevates the rat with his gun to allow torture, rape and theft? No! That is not Sharia, ignoring all that is in the Qur’an.’

And that brings us to General Khalifa Haftar who is waging a military campaign in Benghazi against Ansar Al Sharia and other Islamist gangs claiming that the NATO/CIA installed Libyan regime is supporting them.

Haftar is himself a CIA operative from way back. In the 1980s, during the Libya-Chad war, this rogue general betrayed the Libyan forces, with intelligence support from France and the USA; he facilitated the capture of more than 600 Libyan troops. Haftar was briefly imprisoned in Chad before being moved to the United States where he resided for years, while being prepared for the events that unfolded in 2011 with the invasion of the Libyan Jamahiriya. During the invasion he was returned to Libya by his handlers in Washington, where he assisted in coordinating the so-called rebels. Now Libya has been abandoned by the so-called liberating forces of Western imperialism and left to stew in the ensuing chaos – just like Iraq. Haftar is today being used by the Americans to reign in the very murderous militias that the same Americans unleashed only yesterday on Libya.

Haftar is one of those hideous creatures of US imperialism. He is now openly accusing the Arab supremacist regime in Khartoum of supporting the ‘Islamist’ militias in Libya. Haftar is no genius but this is laughable. The Regime of Omar Al Bashir played a pivotal role in the destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriya. Certainly Haftar was on the ground when Sudanese troops were sent in to combat Loyalist forces in Kufra and in other locations near the Sudanese border. Haftar was right there when Sudan provided weaponry to the ‘Islamist’ gangs during the invasion of Libya so why is he crying about the Khartoum Regime now?

Haftar is hedging his bets. He demonstrated long ago that he could be bought by the highest bidder. He wants power and he wants to show the Americans and Europeans that he can reign in the Islamists. Washington and Brussels are also hedging their bets, keeping channels of communication open with both sides – all sides.

What Must Be Done?

The battle lines are clear – do not be confused. This is not a Christian–Muslim battle or a Sunni-Shia conflict. Rather it is the same old fight dressed up in different clothing, the age old battle between true religion and false religion – which rages inside both Islam and Christianity. It is the battle between oppressed and oppressors, between the revolutionary forces of Pan-Africanism and White supremacy, between the forces for economic justice and human dignity and those who wish us to remain subjugated under imperialism and capitalism’s yoke. It is a struggle between all those who believe that a new world is possible and those who proclaim the so-called end of history.

The time has surely come for a broad based alliance of revolutionary and progressive forces to come together to fight the forces of fascism being unleashed around the globe. This was the reason for the establishment of the World Mathaba in Tripoli, Libya in the early 80s. Mathaba is an old Arabic word which roughly translates as ‘the coming together/meeting point of forces for the purpose of achieving a shared objective’. The only criteria for admission to the World Mathaba, was that the member organization openly declared its opposition to fascism, racism, Zionism, capitalism and imperialism worldwide. Ideological uniformity beyond that was not asked for hence, the Mathaba was able to bring together an extremely broad alliance of revolutionary forces, including Muslims, Christians, Pan-Africanists, indigenous peoples’ organizations and revolutionary groupings of every hue.

Let us put our petty differences aside as we prepare to face this great battle that is surely coming our way – no matter where we stand.

The battle that is coming has been in the making for a long while – so has the resistance that will oppose it. The destruction of The World Mathaba and the Jamahiriya is not an end but a closing of one phase only to open the next phase, its forces empowered and strengthened by all the preparation and networks already forged.

As Qaddafi said, in his final communiqué to the peoples of the world, ‘Do not be afraid of power – possess it. Do not believe their trumpets. Whoever listens to the trumpets is making a mistake. You have your own Mathabas to go to for information and to meet and deliberate. Pay no heed to them. By now this should be clear to you. Fire is water, water is fire. Know that the future is yours, governments are finished, a new era of the masses is coming…’

Gerald A. Perreira is a founding member of the Guyanese organizations Joint Initiative for Human Advancement and Dignity and Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG) and International Secretary for ARM (African Revolutionary Movement). He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al Fateh revolution and was an executive member of the World Mathaba based in Tripoli.

3 July 2014

Number of Palestinian Children in Israeli Jails ‘Surpasses 250′

By maannews.net

The number of Palestinian children in Israeli jails has surpassed 250 in the wake of the ongoing military search campaign in the West Bank, a Palestinian Authority lawyer said Tuesday.

“Israel is violating international children’s rights agreements by detaining Palestinian minors, and it is trying to cover up these violations with the story of the three missing settlers,” Hiba Masalha said in a statement.

The Israeli army launched a massive military campaign in the West Bank following the disappearance of three Israeli teenagers from the Gush Etzion settlement on June 12. Israeli forces have arrested hundreds of Palestinians and killed five throughout the search for the teens, who Israel alleges were kidnapped by Hamas.

“Detaining Palestinian children from their houses in the middle of the night without informing their parents and families of the reasons for their detention is kidnapping,” Masalha added.

The statement said Palestinian children are often subjected to violence upon being arrested and interrogated in Israeli prisons.
Sixteen-year-old Talal Khalid Sayf was detained on May 3, 2014, and claims to have been beaten badly by Israeli soldiers during the arrest process, the statement said.

Sayf was left with his nose and mouth bleeding, and was also struck in the stomach and back.

Islam Mahmoud Haimouni, 17, was detained from his home on Dec. 18, 2013, according to the statement. He was taken from his home into an Israeli military vehicle and beaten until he lost consciousness.

Sixteen-year-old Hassan Sharif Ghawadrah was beaten so badly during his detention on Nov. 13, 2013 that he was taken to the hospital, before spending 15 days in solitary confinement, the statement said.

Additionally, an interrogator in Huwwara prison beat 17-year-old Musleh Hatem Mifleh in the face and pulled his hair until he confessed, the statement said.
According to a 2013 report by the UN’s Children’s Fund, Israel is the only country in the world where children are systematically tried in military courts and subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”

Over the past decade, Israeli forces have arrested, interrogated, and prosecuted around 7,000 children between 12 and 17, mostly boys, at a rate of “an average of two children each day,” UNICEF said.

24 June 2014
(Ma’an – www.maannews.net)

ISIS Unleashes Unknown Trajectory

By Iqbal Jassat

The Arabian Peninsula, which until recently held an exciting prospect of revolutionary change, is overwhelmed in contrasting moods swinging between depression and guarded optimism as internecine wars dominate it.

Allready pundits familiar with the history and politics of the region are predicting that the Peninsula will not be the same.

Borders arbitrarily drawn by colonial powers following World War 1 are destined to undergo dramatic changes. In other words the conflict-ridden legacy of Sykes-Picot is being forcefully transformed to a new future, albeit uncertain.

The movement known as ISIL or ISIS is credited for spearheading this campaign. Claims attributed to it reveal that it’s mission will not be complete in the absence of gaining key locations in Iraq.

Since it launched a blitzkrieg a few weeks ago, many strategic regions have fallen to it. It now seems poised to capture Baghdad if some news reports are to be believed.

Overnight the world’s attention has been drawn to witnessing a remarkable military conquest by a non – state actor of a region that for centuries has been an intellectual and cultural hub of the Muslim world.

If the Arabian Peninsula is destined for fundamental transformation from nation-states to an undefined Khilafat (Caliphate), the starting point many argue is Syria followed by Iraq.

Many others will argue that such radical change has to occur in Islam’s heartland which carries a post-Ottoman colonial family name: Saudi Arabia and therefrom liberate the rest of the Peninsula.

In the current mix of carnage and violent emphasis on sectarianism, questions about the the real goals of ISIS and who is driving it remains unanswered.

Suspicion that the Saudi monarchy is applying deceptive tactics by declaring ISIS a “terrorist” outfit while using it as a proxy to destabilise Iran’s influence in Iraq is not without foundation.

Neither is it an improbability given the role it has played in arming and financing certain opposition groups in Syria.

The Saudi factor in scuttling Egypt’s first and only democratically elected government is equally relevant to understand how and why it uses it’s “religious” muscle to remove potential threats to its oligarchy.

Bahrain and Yemen are two more countries where Saudi intervention protects these brutal dictatorships and allows them to flout every known convention on human rights.

So to add to the unanswered questions, it would be useful to know whether ISIS plans to extend it’s mission of restoring the Khilafat by storming and subduing the House of Saud.

And what about America? Is it sufficient to allow John Kerry’s spindoctoring to influence public opinion without interrogation?

Some analysts point to the Obama strategy of effecting change in pursuit of hegemonic interests without American boots on the ground.

Having been rebuffed by the Maliki regime which resulted in Washington having to witness its military influence whittling in Iraq, the Obama administration needs to restore its unchallenged supremacy.

Without implying that ISIS is an American bogeyman, it must be said that the current crisis places Maliki firmly back in the hands of the Pentagon. Argued differently it is pretty clear to most observers that if not for ISIS, Maliki would not be on his knees begging America to save him.

Israel as usual seems to be keeping a low profile. As a dominant military power with an entrenched intelligence network, it cannot claim not to have an interest in seeing the curtailment of Iran’s influence in Iraq and beyond.

Having failed to mobilise America’s military in preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and knowing that it’s propaganda war against the Islamic Republic has lost currency, Israel remains committed to igniting fires.

Between Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia there exists a neat convergence of interests that ties in perfectly with the Pentagon’s.

Redrawing the map of the Arabian Peninsula while retaining the dominance of Zionism alongside an unelected British inspired monarchy cannot be reconciled with legitimate demands for change as encapsulated by the Arab Spring.

The test for ISIS will be whether it sets its sight on Mecca and Jerusalem or seeks only to fragment Iraq into cantons defined by sectarianism.

As tensions rise in the midst of a renewed refugee crisis and the spotlight of the world is on ISIS, many commentators are reviewing the futility of America’s illegitimate wars in the Muslim world.

At the same time warnings about immense danger resulting from exploiting sectarian divisions and how it could engulf the Peninsula in a perpetual cycle of violence have been issued by responsible Muslim leaders.

Will it impact on the direction of the trajectory unleashed by ISIS is anyone’s guess.

Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of Media Review Network.

27 June 2014

When Islam came to Australia

bbc.com

Few Australians are aware that the country’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had regular contact with foreign Muslims long before the arrival of Christian colonisers. And Islam continues to exercise an appeal for some Aboriginal peoples today, writes Janak Rogers.

The white lines are faint but unmistakable. Small sailing boats, picked out in white and yellow pigment on the red rocks of the Wellington Range in Arnhem Land, northern Australia, tell a different story from the one most Australians accept as the history of their nation.

They are traditional Indonesian boats known as praus and they brought Muslim fishermen from the flourishing trading city of Makassar in search of trepang, or sea cucumbers.

Exactly when the Makassans first arrived is uncertain.

Some historians say it was in the 1750s, but radiocarbon dating of beeswax figures superimposed on the cave paintings suggests that it was much earlier – one of the figures appears to have been made before 1664, perhaps as early as the 1500s.

They apparently made annual trips to gather the sea cucumbers, which fetched a high price because of their important role in Chinese medicine and cuisine.

The Makasssans represent Australia’s first attempt at international relations, according to anthropologist John Bradley from Melbourne’s Monash University – and it was a success. “They traded together. It was fair – there was no racial judgement, no race policy,” he says.

Quite a contrast to the British. Britain designated the country terra nullius – land belonging to no-one – and therefore colonised the country without a treaty or any recognition of the rights of indigenous people to their land.

Some Makassan cucumber traders stayed, married Aboriginal women and left a lasting religious and cultural legacy in Australia. Alongside the cave paintings and other Aboriginal art, Islamic beliefs influenced Aboriginal mythology.

“If you go to north-east Arnhem Land there is [a trace of Islam] in song, it is there in painting, it is there in dance, it is there in funeral rituals,” says Bradley. “It is patently obvious that there are borrowed items. With linguistic analysis as well, you’re hearing hymns to Allah, or at least certain prayers to Allah.”

One example of this is a figure called Walitha’walitha, which is worshipped by a clan of the Yolngu people on Elcho Island, off the northern coast of Arnhem Land. The name derives from the Arabic phrase “Allah ta’ala”, meaning “God, the exalted”. Walitha’walitha is closely associated with funeral rituals, which can include other Islamic elements like facing west during prayers – roughly the direction of Mecca – and ritual prostration reminiscent of the Muslim sujood.

“I think it would be hugely oversimplifying to suggest that this figure is Allah as the ‘one true God’,” says Howard Morphy, an anthropologist at Australian National University. It’s more the case of the Yolngu people adopting an Allah-like figure into their cosmology, he suggests.

The Makassan sea cucumber trade with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples ended in 1906, killed off by heavy taxation and a government policy that restricted non-white commerce. More than a century later, the shared history between Aboriginal peoples and Makassans is still celebrated by Aboriginal communities in northern Australia as period of mutual trust and respect – in spite of some historical evidence that this wasn’t always the case.

“I’m a historian and I know that the Makassans, when they came to Arnhem Land, they had cannons, they were armed, there were violent incidents,” says Regina Ganter at Griffith University in Brisbane. But many in the Yolngu community are wedded to a view of the sea cucumber trade as an alternative to colonialism, she says, and even consider the Makassans long-lost relatives. When she mentioned the Makassans’ cannons to one elder in the tribe, he dismissed it. “He really wanted to tell this story as a story of successful cultural contact, which is so different to people coming and taking your land and taking your women and establishing themselves as superior.”

This wasn’t the only contact between Muslims and Aboriginal peoples. In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the pearl-shelling industry brought so-called “Malays” from south-east Asia to work as indentured labourers in Broome on the north-west coast of Australia. Much like the Makassans, Malays intermarried with local Aboriginal people and brought with them Islamic religious and cultural practices. Today, plenty of families in Northern Australia have names that bear the mark of these interactions, like Doolah, Hassan and Khan.

Meanwhile, the forbidding deserts of central Australia gave rise to a separate Muslim influx.

In a quiet suburb of Alice Springs, a town of 26,000 people in the heart of central Australia, there sits an unlikely building: a mosque. Its minaret rises against the backdrop of the craggy rock and red dirt of the MacDonnell Ranges.

It is called the “Afghan Mosque”, and for a reason. Between 1860 and 1930 up to 4,000 cameleers came to Australia, bringing their camels with them. Many were indeed from Afghanistan, but they also came from India and present-day Pakistan.

They played a key role in opening up the deserts, providing supplies to remote mission stations, and helping to lay crucial national infrastructure like the Overland Telegraph Line and the Ghan Railway line, which still runs today, crossing the Australian desert from north to south. “Ghan” derives from “Afghan”, as the train’s logo of a cameleer makes plain.

“My grandfather’s father, he was a camel driver,” says 62-year-old Raymond Satour. “They had their own camels, over 40 camels,” he says. “On the camel train itself, that’s when they met the Aboriginal people that were camping out in the bush, and they got connected then – that’s how we are connected to Aboriginals.”

Far from their homes on the sub-continent, Afghan cameleers built makeshift mosques throughout central Australia, and many intermarried with Aboriginal peoples.

The work of the Afghan cameleers dried up in the 1930s, when motorised vehicles began to remove the need for the animals. Today, the Afghan Mosque in Alice is mostly filled with first-generation immigrants from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. But worshippers from the mosque regularly visit the homes of some of the Afghan-Aboriginal descendants, including that of Raymond Satour. “The brothers come and hold prayer ceremonies and teachings,” he says. “We’re learning, and it’s helping us keep alive our connection to Islam and the old Afghans.”

These historical contacts have an echo in the present day, as a steadily growing number of Aboriginal people convert to Islam. According to Australia’s 2011 census, 1,140 people identify as Aboriginal Muslims. That’s still less than 1% of the country’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population – and it should be said that Aboriginals are also becoming born-again Christians – but it’s still almost double the number of Aboriginal Muslims recorded in the 2001 census.

Anthony Mundine, a former two-time WBA super middleweight champion and an IBO middleweight champion boxer, is perhaps the most high-profile Aboriginal Muslim convert. He takes inspiration from the American Black Power movement, especially from civil rights activist Malcolm X, a former leader of the Nation of Islam.

“Malcolm’s journey was unbelievable,” agrees Justin Agale, who is of mixed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent and converted to Islam 15 years ago. “Here was a man who was interested in social justice and in furthering the cause of his people but he was also interested in his own spiritual journey to truth.”

Agale is one of a number of Aboriginal people who, fairly or unfairly, have come to associate Christianity with the racism of colonial Australia.

“One of the things that the colonialists were very successful in Australia in doing was teaching the indigenous people that God hated us, and that we were unwanted children, that we were being punished for being savages,” he says.

By contrast, he sees Islam as a “continuation” of his Aboriginal cultural beliefs. Agale’s ancestors in the Torres Strait, the Meriam people, observed something they called Malo’s Law, which he says was “in favour of oneness and harmony”, and he sees parallels in Islam. “Islam – especially the Sufi tradition – has clear ideas of fitra and of tawhid, that each individual’s nature is part of a greater whole, and that we should live in a balanced way within nature.”

This sense of the compatibility of Aboriginal and Islamic beliefs is not uncommon, says Peta Stephenson, a sociologist at Victoria University. Shared practices include male circumcision, arranged or promised marriages and polygamy, and similar cultural attitudes like respect for land and resources, and respecting one’s elders.

“Many Aboriginal people I spoke with explained these cultural synergies often by quoting the well-known phrase from the Koran that 124,000 prophets had been sent to the Earth,” says Stephenson. “They argued that some of these prophets must have visited Aboriginal communities and shared their knowledge.”

For some Aboriginal converts, however, the appeal of Islam is not one of continuity, but a fresh start. Mohammed – not his real name – was once homeless and an alcoholic, but he found the Islamic doctrines of regular prayer, self-respect, avoidance of alcohol, drugs and gambling all helped him battle his addictions. He has now been sober for six years and holds down a steady, professional job.

“When I found Islam it was the first time in my life that I felt like a human,” he says. “Prior to that I had divided up into ‘half this, quarter that’. You’re never a complete, whole thing.”

Mohammed rejects the criticism that has been levelled at him by some Aboriginal people that he turned his back on his traditional way of life. He believes Aboriginal culture was destroyed by colonialism.

“Where is my culture?” he asks. “That was cut off from me two generations ago. One of the attractive things about Islam for me was that I found something that was unbroken.

“Do you go for something that is going to take you out of the gutter and become a better husband and father and neighbour? Or do you search for something that you probably never had any hope of ever finding?”

24 June 2014
www.bbc.com

Washington cannot absolve itself from ISIS’ rise

By Nile Bowie

The rapid advance of radical Islamist militants across sections of northern and western Iraq has shaken the embattled government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to its core. As the country maneuvers to stave off the jihadist surge, the integrity of the Iraqi nation-state hangs in the balance.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have deepened their hold over Iraq’s Anbar province and western border crossings, while groups of volunteers are enlisting to defend their communities following a decree issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s highest religious authority.

Iraqi Army units have fled their posts in besieged regions through the country to help reinforce and fortify the capital, Baghdad, and other areas under threat. As Shiite militias respond to Ayatollah Sistani’s call to arms, ISIS militants are attempting to consolidate control over Sunni regions by capitalizing on popular disenchantment with Maliki’s government.

Sectarian bloodletting on a wide scale now seems inevitable, as the United States deploys 300 military advisers and prepares to carry out airstrikes against ISIS positions. The official position in Washington is that Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government, which began overtly sectarian policies following the US withdrawal in 2011, has alienated the Sunnis and created conditions for their rebellion.

On a recent trip to Iraq, US Secretary of State John Kerry made clear that the Obama administration wants Maliki out, in favor of a more representative leader capable of bridging sectarian differences and uniting the country. Washington, however, is also prepared to take military action against ISIS before any new government is formed.

Maliki’s Shiite populism

There is indeed some basis for the criticism leveled against Maliki, who is widely accused of stoking “Shiite chauvinism” and alienating Sunnis by discriminating against them politically and economically. Sunnis have taken part in several mass demonstrations over the past year, and were accused of being Ba’athists and members of al-Qaeda as the government met the protests with force, killing dozens and making mass arrests.

Sunni tribesman called for jihad against Maliki in response to the government’s crackdown on protests in the town of Hawija last year, though the peaceful nature of the Sunni protest movement is debatable. Demonstrators in Hawjia were armed and set fire to two military vehicles, while others made attempts to capture government checkpoints in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province.

 

Maliki is also accused of ruling unilaterally and escalating tensions against Kurdish and Sunni communities through his pursuit of Shiite populist policies. Others in the Shiite camp, such as the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have openly criticized Maliki and pushed for laws to limit his authority. It should also be remembered that Maliki’s sectarian policies have been implemented against a backdrop of near-daily suicide bombings, mostly targeting Shiites, in the southern regions of Iraq.

The Islamic State of Iraq, the precursor to ISIS, claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings throughout the country in recent years, which further incited sectarian animosity. Sunnis are largely uncomfortable with the notion of Shiite governance, as evidenced by large sections of the community not taking part in Iraq’s first parliamentary elections. Many Sunni groups have instead resorted to insurgency.

Sunnis also view a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad as being beneficial to Iran, which they view as a hostile regime. Maliki’s blanketing characterization of Sunni protests, as a revolt by al-Qaeda-style elements may not have been fair, but it was generally believable for many Shiites and Kurds given the prevalence and traumatizing impact of regular sectarian bombings.

The growth of ISIS

Even with Maliki’s flaws considered, it would be unreasonable to shoulder all on the blame for the current situation on his government’s sectarian leanings. The Obama administration has characterized Maliki as the problem precisely to absolve its responsibility for creating conditions for ISIS to thrive and expand, and also to downplay the destabilizing effects of the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.

The rise of ISIS is often described in US media as the unfortunate result of the Obama administration’s reluctance to support rebels in the Syrian civil war fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Proponents of regime change in Damascus argue that radical groups like ISIS have emerged due to insufficient support for moderate rebel groups.

This argument is entirely discredited by the substantial support given to rebel groups by the CIA, sanctioned by the Obama administration, which has supplied rebels with weapons, training, communications equipment, cash assets, and diplomatic backing. The United States has been heavily involved in coordinating rebel advances in Syria since the start of the war in 2011.

ISIS has emerged as the most efficient, discipline, and well-funded jihadist group in history, and it cannot have arrived at this position without enormous funding and support from external forces. Washington’s direct involvement in aiding ISIS is difficult to ascertain, but the Obama administration cannot pretend to be unaware that Saudi Arabia – its closest ally in the region – has been financing ISIS and affiliated groups throughout the duration of the war.

As the principal state-sponsor of radical jihadist groups operating in Syria and the puritanical Wahhabi ideology, Saudi Arabia is the party most responsible for the rise of ISIS. The Obama administration has largely turned a blind eye to the Kingdom’s operations in Syria because radical fighters have proved to be the most effective on the battlefield. US allies such as Qatar and Turkey have also played a significant role in aiding the rebels, and by extension, ISIS.

Furthermore, the Obama administration has contributed multi-million dollar budgets to supplying Syrian rebels with weapons, which have logically found their way into the hands of the most proficient fighters, who are self-evidently in the ISIS camp. Other voices in the US political establishment claim that Obama’s withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011, under an agreement made during the Bush administration, has contributed the current crisis.

Divide-and-rule policies

Despite how these arguments are weaved into the official narrative in American media, Washington’s interventions, rather than its reluctance to intervene, have exacerbated the crises in Syria and Iraq. The violence and disorder plaguing Iraq cannot be divorced from the Iraq War and the legacy of Washington’s flawed attempts at nation building by the notorious neoconservatives following the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Paul Bremer, in his position as Governor of Iraq, entirely dismantled Iraq’s central government, state institutions, and armed forces with the stroke of a pen. Colonial divide and rule policies were put in place under the Bush administration that saw the rise of Shiites into positions of power to offset the Sunnis and the Ba’athists.

The failed attempt at nation building fueled sectarian divisions by favoring certain tribal groups and religious sects that were seen to be more advantageous and amenable to US interests, which inalterably and artificially restructured Iraqi society based on the dictates of neoconservative analysts and think-tanks.

Al-Qaeda and groups like it never existed in Iraq before the US occupation. Despite the deep sectarian rifts unfolding today, modern Iraq was known as a relatively secular state up until the 1970s. Divisions were still political rather than sectarian under Saddam Hussein, though his attempts to consolidate power by banning all political entities led to the politicization of places of worship, giving rise to political activism with more religious dimensions.

The sectarian explosion that has taken place since cannot be attributable to the previous regime. Figures such as Tony Blair and John Kerry have attempted to distance themselves from the anarchy of present day Iraq, but such unabashed dishonesty is to be expected from these men, who would prefer to blame Maliki for the disorder, primarily because he has moved too closely to Iran and has ceased to behave a like the leader of a US client regime.

The Obama administration isn’t wrong in calling for an inclusive leadership in Baghdad, but it is using the advance of ISIS – which it undeniably contributed to by varying degrees of separation – as a means for ushering in a friendlier government. Maliki was never the preference of Washington; he prioritized relations with Damascus and Tehran and rejected American demands that any US military forces stationed in Iraq be shielded from prosecution or lawsuits.

Iraq finds itself tangled in a complicated web of terrorism, interventionism, and sectarian violence. The immediate priority is pushing back against ISIS, which seeks to create an Islamic state encompassing both Syria and Iraq into a borderless caliphate. Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has voiced his disapproval of US intervention, and likely suspects that Washington is aiming to shuffle the leadership in Baghdad to the detriment of Tehran.

As US airstrikes are soon expected, Baghdad will continue to look towards Iran for assistance, which will likely provide the kind of training and support that allowed the Syrian army to consolidate and make gains against ISIS across large swathes of Syria. An inclusive and coordinated multi-sectarian force would be critical in thwarting the advance of ISIS, whether such a path is even possible at this stage remains to be seen.

Nile Bowie is a columnist with Russia Today, and a research affiliate with the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). He is also a Just member.

26 June 2014

Syrian Refugees In Turkey

By Lilly Martin

Syrian women are not downtrodden and voiceless in general. The west portrays Arab women as lacking rights or oppressed compared to American women. There are differences, but in some cases the Syrian women have more rights.

For example: the Syrian civil code, or law, is based on the FRENCH civil code, which I suppose goes back to the period of French occupation 1920-1946. Legally speaking, the Syrian legal system follows this French pattern. However, when it comes to FAMILY LAW, such as: marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance, the Syrian system in the Islamic law. By Islamic law a women retains her maiden name, and she has full possession of all monies and properties she may own prior to marriage, and after marriage. Her husband can never ask for, or coerce her to give him money or property. Her stuff is hers forever.

Socially: the Syrian mother rules the house. This also goes back to the Koran, since it states that the home is commanded by the woman. The man’s job is to provide financially, but her job is to organize and conduct the working of the home. She asks for ‘stuff’ and it had better show up, or else. Syrian women are very strong personalities. You can say they are demanding, aggressive and they know how to complain. I have thought this probably comes from the fear of possibly being oppressed by males, so they over compensate and come out looking stronger than men. It is well known that Syrian homes are run by the female. Men dress up and look important when they leave the house to go into the real world, but at home the female is running the show.

Of course, in every stereo-type and generalization there are glaring exceptions to the case.

Syrian women are all educated. Syria is compulsory education at least through the 9th grade, and most do go through the 12th. Not everyone goes to University, but it is FREE of charge to anyone who will study and keep high grades. Syria is full of female Teachers, Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers and Judges. The Syrian government has a number of high level females, and the Parliament has a fair share of females.

Now I have set the stage, with some back story, and I will begin to tell you about some Syrian female refugees. The ‘revolution’ began in March 2011. The area surrounding Idlib (North East from Latakia) was a hot-bed of rebels. These were the first FSA. They got the cooperation of Turkey, a key sponsor of the crisis, and they took their wives, children and aged parents to Turkey, Gaziantep, and created a tented refugee camp there. This was the very first refugee camp of the Syrian crisis. I can look up the actual date, but I suppose it must be later 2011. Right away we heard of Turkish guards there who raped Syrian women and girls. Syrian women are not afraid to yell rape. They do not have any cultural hang-ups about the word Rape. They aren’t afraid of their husband, brother or father killing them out of ‘honor’ like they do in Pakistan. Syria doesn’t have many rapes, but their fair share of crimes, as does everywhere. But, rape is treated as a crime, just like stealing or murder, and there is no fear factor for a women or girl to state she was raped.

There were even many pregnancies because of these rapes. I think that the Turkish guards, who had no previous experience with refugee camps, probably thought they could get away with abusing these poor refugees, because they looked at them as homeless, and without rights. They probably regarded them as political pawns in a game, and since all the males were away in Syria fighting with FSA, these women and girls were ‘fair-game’.

The source of these stories were the women themselves. They gave many interviews about these claims to journalists who visited the camps. They began to demand to go HOME, back to Syria. They claimed not only the abuse, but also no proper shelter, no toilets, not enough water, and general bad living conditions. Turkey gets heavy snow in winter, so this is not the best place to sleep in a tent.

But, the Turkish government said “You can not go home.” That is when they put up the barbed wire and guard towers. I hope at the same time they also told their guards to STOP raping. The refugee camp turned into a concentration camp. Women wanted to go home to Syria, but Turkey could not allow it, because they needed the refugees in order to send an international message that: #1. Syria’s government is so bad on the civilians, that they have to flee to Turkey; #2. The refugees are coming more and more, proving the crisis is getting worse, not better. #3. Turkey is the savior of poor Syrians.

What does Turkey get out of housing the refugees? #1. They make a huge amount of money off international aid agencies who are providing for the refugees. #2. They make huge amounts of money off Saudi Arabia , from donations to help the refugees, as well as other Arab Gulf countries. #3. Turkey enjoys the PR image of caring, modern, democratic country, worthy of EU membership, because of their humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee influx. (Way to go Turkey!!!)

Why won’t Turkey allow Syrians to return home? #1. It would appear that the crisis in Syria is improving, and they do not want that image going out. They must make the refugees look bigger and bigger. If they can’t keep the refugees inside Turkey, then there is no more crisis. They need to crisis to last forever.

The Turkish started out paying the Syrian refugees $1,000.00 per month for a family of 4. They were promised it would not be a long war. The FSA were also on a payroll, but they were paid in Turkey in US dollars by a Saudi official. I do not know what pay-checks are being paid now.

During this crisis, Angelina Jolie, in her capacity as UN rep, has visited Gaziantep at least 2 times. I left messages for her at the UN, but she never replied. I had wanted to tell her that the women and children she was visiting were not just innocent victims of war, but in fact were part of the Free Syrian Army, they were the wives, daughters and sisters of the rebels.

But, after all is said and done, those women and children are not all there out of support of FSA. There are plenty of women who are not asked for their political stance, they are forced into living as a refugee just because their father, husband, brother chose to be a rebel. They may support that, or not.

I feel very strongly that those women and children in the various refugee camps have suffered a great deal, and that it is time for them to come home.

For example: I volunteer at a tented refugee community in Latakia, they are all from Aleppo, and have been here almost 2 years. These are from the same sect as those who went to Turkey, but these people did not want to play into the hands of the enemies of Syria. They preferred to suffer out the war right here in their own country, where at least they could be assured of free education and medical, as well as help on food, etc.

The Syrian refugees in Turkey have not had any education for 3 years. Those children have lost 3 years of learning. How will they catch up? When? The UN does check on them, and did a special seminar about how to promote education. But nothing happened. Turkey can not help with education, since they do not read or write either Arabic or English. The Syrian educational system is all Arabic and English and the Turkish system is Turkish only. That puts all the burden on UN, and they can’t bear it.

I think all parties thought that the Syrian crisis would be over soon and these minor inconveniences would be short lived. However, that was under-estimated.

I feel very strongly that the women and children of Gaziantep should be brought home to Syria before Sept 10th 2014, as that is back to school day. I want those kids to start the school year in Syria. The schools exist and they are all free, the teachers are here, all we need is those kids to come home.

The problem is: #1. Turkey will not allow them to leave, for the reason previously detailed, and #2. WHERE would they go? Their homes were mainly in the North of Syria, which still has terrorist infestation. We would need to designate a SAFE area for them, and then prepare homes or tents. This is do-able.

I could ask for Angelina Jolie, or others like her, to be an international neutral party to negotiate with Turkey, in order for them to be released. I can imagine Turkey and even the UN would want to complain, “But it is not safe for them to go home.” But, we can see that the people of HOMS have returned home, and the refugees from Lebanon are now pouring into the Qalamoun area, since it is safe again. There would have to be a safe area for them to settle at, for the purpose of getting the kids plugged back into educational system.

Lilly Martin is an American woman living in Latakia with her Syrian husband and their family. She has not been an activist until a war came to her doorstep.

24 June, 2014
Countercurrents.org

Egypt’s So-Called Justice System Is The Guilty Party And The World Should Act

By Alan Hart

Could it be that the three Al-Jazeera journalists have been found guilty and each sentenced to seven years in jail to enable Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to pardon and free them in order to give the impression that he is a kind, forgiving man and not on his way to becoming the Arab world’s most ruthless and repressive tyrant?

Only the coming days or weeks will give us the answer but while we wait I think the governments of the world should act. What could they do? For starters they could isolate Sisi’s Egypt diplomatically by expelling its ambassadors and withdrawing their own.

The conviction of Peter Greste, Mohammed Fahmy and Bahar Mohamed for allegedly supporting a terrorist organization has nothing whatsoever to do with justice. It’s all about sending a Zionist-like message to the world – “The truth is whatever the masters of Egypt say it is and anybody who tells and spreads an alternative version of events will be punished.”

On the social networks there was instant and universal condemnation of the Egyptian court’s politically motivated decision but there is no reason to suppose that governments will act.

The U.S. has, in fact, rewarded Sisi for his intimidation and suppression of all opposition to date. The day before the Egyptian court delivered its decision, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Cairo and with him came the announcement that the U.S. has released $575 million in military aid to Egypt that had been frozen since the removal of President Mohammed Morsi in a coup last year.

In what were described as “candid” talks with Sisi, Kerry emphasised “our strong support for upholding the universal rights and freedoms of all Egyptians including the freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.”

If Kerry and his boss truly believe that Sisi has any intention of upholding those rights and freedoms they are, to say the least, naive in the extreme.

Kerry also pledged that Washington would “stand with the Egyptian people in the fight for the future they want.”

I find myself wondering what America’s position will be when in that fight Egyptians turn against Sisi.

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews.

24 June, 2014
Alanhart.net

 

The New Oil Wars in Iraq

By Michael Schwartz

Events in Iraq are headline news everywhere, and once again, there is no mention of the issue that underlies much of the violence: control of Iraqi oil. Instead, the media is flooded with debate about, horror over, and extensive analysis of a not-exactly-brand-new terrorist threat, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). There are, in addition, elaborate discussions about the possibility of a civil war that threatens both a new round of ethnic cleansing and the collapse of the embattled government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Underway are, in fact, “a series of urban revolts against the government,” as Middle Eastern expert Juan Cole has called them. They are currently restricted to Sunni areas of the country and have a distinctly sectarian character, which is why groups like ISIS can thrive and even take a leadership role in various locales. These revolts have, however, neither been created nor are they controlled by ISIS and its several thousand fighters. They also involve former Baathists and Saddam Hussein loyalists, tribal militias, and many others. And at least in incipient form they may not, in the end, be restricted to Sunni areas. As the New York Times reported last week, the oil industry is “worried that the unrest could spread” to the southern Shia-dominated city of Basra, where “Iraq’s main oil fields and export facilities are clustered.”

Under the seething ocean of Sunni discontent lies a factor that is being ignored. The insurgents are not only in a struggle against what they see as oppression by a largely Shiite government in Baghdad and its security forces, but also over who will control and benefit from what Maliki — speaking for most of his constituents — told the Wall Street Journal is Iraq’s “national patrimony.”

The Deconstruction of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq

Does anyone remember what Iraq looked like a dozen years ago, when Saddam Hussein still ruled the country and the United States was about to invade? On the one hand, Iraqis, especially Shiites and Kurds, suffered under the iron heel of an oppressive dictator — who may have killed 250,000 or more of his own people during his 25-year reign. They also struggled against the privation caused by U.S.-led sanctions — some estimates at the time placed the number of sanction-caused infant deaths alone at 500,000.

On the other hand, the country had a number of successful export-oriented industries like leather goods and agricultural products like dates that offered employment to hundreds of thousands of relatively well paid workers and entrepreneurs. It also had a resilient electrical, water, and highway infrastructure (though increasingly decrepit thanks to those sanctions). In addition, it had a best-in-the-region primary and higher educational system, and the finest (free) health care in the Middle East. In a nation of 27 million people, it also had — in comparison to other countries in the area — a large, mainly government-employed middle class of three million.

These pluses all flowed from a single source: the 2.5 million barrels of oil that Iraq produced each day. The daily income from the sale of the “national patrimony” undergirded the country’s economic superstructure. In fact, the oil-based government budget was so ample that it supported Hussein with multiple palaces, enriched all his relatives and allies, and financed his various wars, both on other countries and on Iraq’s Kurds and Shiites.

This mixture of oppression and prosperity ended with the U.S. invasion. Despite denials that it would ever touch the Iraqi “patrimony,” the Bush administration went straight for those oil revenues, diverting them away from the economy and into “debt payment” and soon enough, a pacification campaign. Despite promises from Washington that, under an American occupation, production would soon rise to six million barrels per day, the struggle to take control of energy production out of Iraqi hands ended up crippling the industry and reducing production by 40%.

In fact, the occupation government was a whirlwind of economic destruction. It quickly began dismantling all government-run (and oil-subsidized) industrial plants, bankrupting the private industries that depended on them. It disrupted or destroyed commercial agriculture, again by discontinuing Saddam-era oil-financed subsidies and by air attacks on insurgents in rural areas. It imposed both austerity measures and a “de-Baathification” program on the country’s educational and medical systems.

Since most Iraqis holding any position of significance had no choice but to belong to Saddam’s Baath Party, this proved a disaster for middle class professionals, a majority of whom found themselves jobless or in exile in neighboring countries. Since they had managed such systems, often under increasingly terrible conditions, the effect on the management of the electrical, water, and highway infrastructure was devastating. Add in the effects of bombing campaigns and the privatization of maintenance and you had a lasting disaster.

When, in 2009, the Obama administration first began withdrawing U.S. combat troops, Iraqis everywhere — but especially in Sunni areas — faced up to 60% unemployment, sporadic electrical service, poisoned water systems, episodic education, a dysfunctional medical system, and a lack of viable public or private transportation. Few Westerners remember that, in 2010, Maliki based his election campaign on a promise to remedy these problems by — that figure again — increasing oil production to six million barrels per day. Since the existing production was more than sufficient to operate the government, virtually all of the increased revenues could be used to reconstruct the country’s infrastructure, revive the government sector, and rehabilitate all the devastated public services, industries, and agricultural sectors.

The Corrupt Legacy of the U.S. Occupation

Despite his obvious Shia sectarianism, Sunnis gave Maliki time to fulfill his campaign promises. For some, hopes were increased when service contracts were auctioned off to international oil firms with the aim of hiking energy production to that six million barrel mark by 2020. (Some, however, just saw this as the selling off of that national patrimony.) Many Iraqis were initially reassured when oil production began to rise: in 2011, the Hussein-era mark of 2.5 million barrels per day was finally reached, and in 2013 production finally exceeded 3.0 million barrels per day.

These increases raised hopes that reconstruction from the invasion and occupation era would finally begin. With oil prices holding steady at just under $100 per barrel, government oil revenues more than doubled, from about $50 billion in 2010 to more than $100 billion in 2013. This increase alone, if distributed to the population, would have constituted a windfall $10,000 subsidy for each of the five million Iraqi families. It also would have constituted a very promising down payment on restoring the Iraqi economy and its social services. (The electrical system in itself required tens of billions of dollars in new investment simply to restore it to inadequate pre-war levels.)

But none of this oil wealth trickled down to the grassroots, especially in Sunni areas of the country where signs of reconstruction, economic development, restored services, or jobs were hard to discern. Instead, the vast new revenues disappeared into the recesses of a government ranked by Transparency International as the seventh most corrupt on the planet.

Demanding a Share of the National Patrimony

So here’s where Iraqi oil, or the lack of its revenues at least, comes into play. Communities across Iraq, especially in embittered Sunni areas, began demanding funding for reconstruction, often backed by local and provincial governments. In response, the Maliki government relentlessly refused to allocate any oil revenues for such projects, choosing instead to denounce such demands as efforts to divert funds from more urgent budgetary imperatives. That included tens of billions of dollars needed to purchase military supplies including, in 2011, 18 F-16 jets from the United States for $4 billion. In a rare moment of ironic insight, Time magazine concluded its coverage of the F-16 purchase with this comment: “The good news is the deal will likely keep Lockheed’s F-16 plant in Fort Worth running perhaps a year longer. The bad news is that only 70% of Iraqis have access to clean water, and only 25% have clean sanitation.”

In all fairness to Maliki, his government did use some of the new oil revenues to begin restaffing wrecked government agencies and social service institutions, but virtually all of the new employment went to Shia citizens in Shia areas, while Sunnis continued to be fired from government jobs. This lack of employment — which meant, of course, the lack of oil money — has been key to the Sunni uprising. As Patrick Cockburn of the British newspaper, the Independent, wrote,

“Sunni men were alienated by not having a job because government funds were spent elsewhere and, on occasion, suddenly sacked without a pension for obligatory membership of the Ba’ath party decades earlier. One Sunni teacher with 30 years’ experience one day got a crumpled note under his door telling him not to come to work at his school any more because he had been fired for this reason. ‘What am I to do? How am I going to feed my family?’ he asked.”

With conditions worsening, Sunni communities only became more insistent, supplementing their petitions and demonstrations with sit-ins at government offices, road blockades, and Tahrir Square-type occupations of public spaces. Maliki’s responses also escalated to arresting the political messengers, dispersing demonstrations, and, in a key moment in 2013, “killing dozens” of protestors when his “security forces opened fire on a Sunni protest camp.” This repression and the continued frustration of local demands helped regenerate the insurgencies that had been the backbone of the Sunni resistance during the American occupation. Once lethal violence began to be applied by government forces, guerrilla attacks became common in the areas north and west of Baghdad that the U.S. occupiers had labeled “the Sunni triangle.”

Many of these guerrilla actions were aimed at assassinating government officials, police, and — as their presence increased — soldiers sent by Maliki to suppress the protests. It is notable, however, that the most determined, well planned, and dangerous of these armed responses targeted oil facilities. Though the Sunni areas of Iraq are not major centers of oil production — more than 90% of the country’s energy is extracted in the Shia areas in the south and the Kirkuk region controlled by the Kurds — there are ample oil targets there. In addition to a number of small oil fields, the “Sunni triangle” has almost the entire length of the only substantial pipeline that exits the country (to Turkey), a significant refinery in Haditha, and the Baiji petroleum complex, which contains an electrical power plant serving the northern provinces and a 310,000 barrel per day oil refinery producing a third of the country’s refined petroleum.

There was nothing new about local guerrillas attacking oil facilities. In late 2003, soon after the U.S. occupation cut off the flow of oil revenues to Sunni areas, residents resorted to various strategies to stop production or export until they received what they felt was their fair share of the proceeds. The vulnerable pipeline to Turkey was rendered useless, thanks to more than 600 attacks. The Baiji and Haditha facilities held insurgents at bay by allowing local tribal leaders to siphon off a share — often as much as 20% — of the oil flowing through them. After the U.S. military took control of the facilities in early 2007 and ended this arrangement, the two refineries were regularly subjected to crippling attacks.

The pipeline and refineries returned to continuous operation only after the U.S. left Anbar Province and Maliki once again promised local tribal leaders and insurgents (often the same people) a share of the oil in exchange for “protecting” the facilities from theft or attack. This deal lasted for almost two years, but when the government began cracking down on Sunni protest, the “protection” was withdrawn. Looking at these developments from a petroleum perspective, Iraq Oil Report, an online industry newsletter that offers the most detailed coverage of oil developments in Iraq, marked this as a key moment of “deteriorating security,” commenting that the “forces guarding energy facilities… have historically relied on alliances with locals to help provide protection.”

Fighting for Oil

Iraq Oil Report has conscientiously covered the consequences of this “deteriorating security” situation. “Since last year when attacks on the [Turkish] pipeline began to increase,” the North Oil Company, in charge of production in Sunni areas, registered a 50% drop in production. The pipeline was definitively cut on March 2nd and since then, repair crews have been “prevented from accessing” the site of the break. The feeder pipeline for the Baiji complex was bombed on April 16th, causing a huge spill that rendered water from the Tigris River undrinkable for several days.

After “numerous” attacks in late 2013, the Sonangol Oil Company, the national oil company of Angola, invoked the “force majeure” clause in its contract with the Iraqi government, abandoning four years of development work on the the Qaiyarah and Najmah fields in Nineveh Province. This April, insurgents kidnapped the head of the Haditha refinery. In June, they took possession of the idle plant after government military forces abandoned it in the wake of the collapse of the Iraqi army in the country’s second largest city, Mosul.

In response to this rising tide of guerrilla attacks, the Maliki regime escalated its repression of Sunni communities, punishing them for “harboring” the insurgents. More and more soldiers were sent to cities deemed to be centers of “terrorism,” with orders to suppress all forms of protest. In December 2013, when government troops began using lethal force to clear protest camps that were blocking roads and commerce in several cities, armed guerrilla attacks on the military rose precipitously. In January, government officials and troops abandoned parts of Ramadi and all of Falluja, two key cities in the Sunni triangle.

This month, faced with what Patrick Cockburn called a “general uprising,” 50,000 troops abandoned their weapons to the guerrillas, and fled Mosul as well as several smaller cities. This development hit as if out of nowhere and was treated accordingly by much of the U.S. media, but Cockburn expressed the view of many informed observers when he termed the collapse of the army in Sunni areas “unsurprising.” As he and others pointed out, the soldiers of that corruption-ridden force “were not prepared to fight and die in their posts… since their jobs were always primarily about making money for their families.”

The military withdrawal from the cities immediately led to at least a partial withdrawal from oil facilities. On June 13th, two days after the fall of Mosul, Iraq Oil Report noted that the power station and other buildings in the Baiji complex were already “under the control of local tribes.” After a counterattack by government reinforcements, the complex became a contested area.

Iraq Oil Report characterized the attack on Baiji by insurgents as “what could be an attempt to hijack a portion of Iraq’s oil revenue stream.” If the occupation of Baiji is consolidated, the “zone of control” would also include the Haditha refinery, the Qaiyarah and Hamrah oil fields, and “key infrastructure corridors such as the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline and al-Fatha, where a collection of pipelines and other facilities deliver oil, gas and fuel to the center and north of the country.”

Further proof of this intention to control “a portion of Iraq’s oil revenue stream” can be found in the first actions taken by tribal guerrillas once they captured the power station at Baiji: “Militants have caused no damage and instructed workers to keep the facility online” in preparation for restarting the facility as soon as possible. Similar policies were instituted in the captured oil fields and at the Haditha refinery. Though the current situation is too uncertain to permit actual operation of the facilities, the overarching goal of the militants is clear. They are attempting to accomplish by force what could not be accomplished through the political process and protest: taking possession of a significant portion of the proceeds from the country’s oil exports.

And the insurgents appear determined to begin the reconstruction process that Maliki refused to fund. Only a few days after these victories, the Associated Press reported that insurgents were promising Mosul citizens and returning refugees “cheap gas and food,” and that they would soon restore power and water, and remove traffic barricades. Assumedly, this will be funded by upwards of $450 million (of oil money), as well as gold bullion, reportedly looted from a branch of the Central Bank of Iraq and assorted other banks in the Mosul area.

The oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein was racked with insurgency, and when vicious repression failed, it delivered a portion of the vast oil revenues to the people in the form of government jobs, social services, and subsidized industries and agriculture. The oppressive United States occupation was racked with insurgency precisely because it tried to harness the country’s vast oil revenues to its imperial designs in the Middle East. The oppressive Maliki regime is now racked with insurgency, because the prime minister refused to share those same vast oil revenues with his Sunni constituents.

It has always been about the oil, stupid!

Michael Schwartz is a Distinguished Teaching Professor, Emeritus, of sociology at Stony Brook State University.

24 June, 2014
TomDispatch.com