Afghanistan's poppy crop - the source of most of the world's illicit opiates - appears to have suffered a devastating failure this year, according to US and Afghan officials, in a development that is likely to affect the course of the war as US-led forces withdraw.
US commanders and Afghan officials, who ascribe the poor harvest to blight, expect the Taliban to reel as opium revenues dry up in coming months.
"It's a blow to the insurgency," Kandahar Provincial Governor Tooryalai Wesa said.
The provincial government of Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... , which accounts for half of the country's opium cultivation, has hailed the blight as a "divine decree" by Allah himself.
The small crop, however, is also certain to bankrupt thousands of ordinary farmers, possibly pushing them to join the insurgency. Already, three farmers have did away with himself in Helmand because of the failed poppy harvest, local officials say.
Opium prices, meanwhile, have soared. A kilogram of dry opium now sells at the farm gate for more than $300, up from some $200 in March, and just $80 or so in 2009, according to United Nations ...Parkinson's Law on an international scale... surveys.
Such a high price is "scary," as it is likely to lead to increased opium cultivation next year, while also bringing a windfall to large-scale dealers who hoarded last year's stocks, cautioned Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the Afghanistan representative for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
"This is definitely not good news at all ... Those who already are hedging will definitely gain," Lemahieu said. "Who will lose out on this? The poor farmers, who often have engaged in expensive loans against the opium to be harvested.
I understand that's how farmers do things in the developed world, but do Afghan farmers have similar access to loans?
If you think security and stability, you can see the frustration and the anger building up."
Whether a blessing or a disaster, the poppy blight injects another complication to the US-led coalition's plans to transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces and withdraw most of their own troops by 2014, a transition discussed Sunday at the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... summit in Chicago.
Afghanistan was virtually poppy-free in 2001, the year when the country's Taliban rulers eradicated opium cultivation in a failed bid to win international recognition, and the UN disputes American assertions that the Taliban are the main beneficiaries of the Afghan narcotics trade.
"The narrative of the Taliban as the major player is something I do not take," Lemahieu said. "The narcos are not on the side of the Taliban, they are in collusion with the Taliban."
#3
Agreed B.P. After years of supporting the "War on Drugs", I look back and see the wake of devastation it has caused and tremble. Let's take about 2/3rds of the laws/regulations off the American people and see what a really free society can do.
#5
I'm sure we could develope a blight, probably a fungus. We could weaponize this current blight and spray it on their fields, like we do with Roundup to coca in South America.
We COULD, the question to me is: Why have we not already?
My little brother went to A-stan and came back very disillusioned. They would go out on patrol and walk through fields of poppies, but no coalition forces were allowed to destroy a single poppy. Reconcile that with the knowledge that those poppies are going to be the main source of funding for your enemy. But they would gladly courtmartial you if you chopped them down and lit them on fire.
I think I'd start to wonder just why the f*ck I was there too.
#6
Much more subtle breeding a hog for conditions and them just popping up out of nowhere, with incredible metabolism and appetite and quick breeding cycle, a previously undiscovered swine which must have been a cave dweller, chased out by the insurgents using the caves. Real wrath of allan stuff. If they could oink in an English accent could be the ghosts of Khyber back for revenge.
#7
Yeah, you weaponize a blight and go spraying it in places like Afghanistan and then people are gonna wonder why the American corn crop gets the blight.
I don't pretend to know who gets the money from the Afghan poppy crop but it is kinda funny how after the Americans invaded the place it became the world's leading producer of opium. From everything I'd heard before, the world's leading opium producing region was the Golden Triangle in southeast Asia. Whatever happened to that?
But then, it would be interesting to know where all that dope goes. Europe? America? Russia? China? Iran? You talk about biological warfare...a fertile imagination can come up with all kinds of conspiracy theories.
And as for a "really free society" where the people can smoke all the opium they want, just ask the Chinese how that worked for them. Maybe it's just as well if all the idiots smoke themselves to death. That's just Darwinism, right? I mean, think of all the people who can't quit cigarettes and then imagine them with opium or heroin. We won't have to worry about paying for their Social Security.
As for the War on Drugs being a failure, ask yourself: Is there anything our government does right? Anything at all? Somebody gets the money and the drugs keep flowing. Hell, we send guns to the Mexican drug cartels and they send us dope. That's a funny kind of a war.
#9
If we were going to have a war on drugs we should have developed sterile versions of the various crops long ago and found a way to cross-breed them to eliminate those crops. It would be a lot better than the war on drug use.
[Al Ahram] Doctors Without Borders describes the situation in Sudan's Darfur as 'critical', as the government blocked shipments of medicines to a violence-plagued part of the turbulent region without giving clear reasons.
Sheer meanness makes sense to me...
Posted by: Fred ||
05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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Growing up in Africa, he used to hunt buffalo, a passion that still serves Geneva-based lawyer Enrico Monfrini well. His dogged pursuit of ill-gotten assets has made him the scourge of many of the world's dictators and kleptocrats.
An affable man with a sharp wit and a ready smile, the 67-year-old blends easily into a city of sprucely-dressed asset managers, bankers and lawyers, though his chosen calling would likely surprise many of them.
Working from an austere legal practice in central Geneva which belies its global reach, Monfrini has made his mark as a bounty hunter. In light of the Arab Spring, the available bounty may just have got a whole lot bigger.
Monfrini told Reuters in an interview he was already working on finding the assets of Tunisia's former ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali: "We're on a good track for finding some of the money."
Tunisian justice minister Nourredine Bouheiri said this week Ben Ali and his entourage were believed to have stashed billions of dollars in accounts around the world.
Since the start of the Arab Spring, Switzerland, the United States, Britain and others, have frozen several billion dollars belonging to regional strongmen and former leaders.
Like Irving Picard, the lawyer seeking fraudster Bernard Madoff's hidden assets, Monfrini is officially appointed to track down assets seized by former dictators like Haiti's Babydoc Duvalier and their cronies.
#2
The United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) entered into force in December 2005 and pushed signatory nations to set up legal frameworks identifying and outlawing corruption, and guidelines for international cooperation and asset recovery
Oh, restitution by a Geneva-based lawyer to the UN kleptocrats--I almost got excited over the thought of the missing trillions being recovered to the people.
#6
I'd luv to see DOG THE BOUNTY HOUNTER + BABE, BOYZ going into a major Geneva bank dressed, armed as they do + demanding to see a suspect's finance records.
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Supporters of Mali's coup leader have dealt a fresh blow to a return to democratic rule by saying they have chosen him to head an interim government, defying a deal mediated by regional leaders at the weekend.
The party of former parliamentary speaker Dioncounde Traore, who was named in the deal to lead the transition -- sparking angry protests in which he was beaten -- brushed off the statement by a pro-putsch coalition as "ridiculous".
The pro-coup Committee of Malian Patriotic Organisations (COPAM) said it had decided Tuesday at a meeting "to institute Captain Amadou Sanogo as president of the transition" in the west African nation.
On Sunday the junta had signed an accord mediated by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that 70-year-old Traore would lead the 12-month transition back to democratic rule.
But thousands of people who supported the March ouster of president Amadou Toumani Toure then erupted into the streets to protest the appointment of a former member of his government.
Scores of protesters besieged Traore's offices and physically attacked him on Monday, prompting widespread condemnation and calls for calm in what was considered one of the region's stable democracies before the crisis.
Sanogo and a group of low-ranking officers ousted the government on March 22, saying it was incompetent in handling a rebellion by armed Tuaregs in the north which broke out in January.
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05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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[Yemen Post] The former endowment minister Hamoud Al-Hitar has called the Yemeni government to engage in dialogue with Al-Qaeda bully boyz who are currently fighting the Yemeni army in Abyan. ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... He further urged the government to not allow foreign military interventions in Yemen, pointing out that they US attacks strengthen radicalization.
Al-Hitar ,who served as the head of a dialogue committee tasked with conducting dialogue with Al-Qaeda bully boyz from 2002 to 2006, issued a fatwa against suicide kabooms.
He condemned the suicide kaboom that killed about 100 soldiers and maimed hundreds others in Sana'a, stressing that the bomber committed a crime that Islam and all other regions forbid.
He urged Yemenis raise awareness about the risks of terrorism and immunize youth against fundamental ideologies. Al-Hitar managed to persuade Al-Qaeda bully boyz to give up violence in the period from 2002 to 2005
In an interview with the state-run Al-Jumhoria newspaper last month, he attributed the expansion of Al-Qaeda in Yemenm to the lack to a serious political approach to combat the terrorism, insecurity Yemen has lately witnessed
Al-Hitar who resigned in protest at crimes committed against peaceful protests in 2011 said that Al-Qaeda was propped up with the aim of distorting the image of the peaceful struggle in the South and the peaceful uprising that broke out in 2011.
He accused some military and security leaders of cooperating with Al-Qaeda, stressing that they provided the organization with weapons and ordnance in Rada of Baida and Zinjibar and Jaar of Abyan. "Ansar Al-Shariah (supporters of the Islamic Law) is a mixture comprised of Al-Qaeda krazed killers, elements of the armed Southern Movement and supporters of the former president President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh" ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... he added.
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05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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Why can't our officials keep their mouths shut?
In a rare public admission of the covert cyber war against extremists, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says cyber experts based at the State Department hacked Yemeni tribal websites, replacing Al Qaeda propaganda that bragged about killing Americans.
#6
I must've dreamed it - I can't find any confirmation
The famous fog of news, Bobby -- first reports are often mistaken in the details. Glenmore's article says:
"Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll Al Qaeda attacks have taken on the Yemeni people," Clinton said Wednesday.
In response, "Extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the Internet," she said.
#8
This is NOT good, and represents yet another instance of the White House and administration leaking our Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP). I can nearly hear General Kieth Alexander screaming from front porch.
#9
Rare Public admission? Why can't our officials keep their mouths shut?
It's all about the glorious pat on the back, see what I did, or more like see how good it is on my watch
Even at the detriment of so many and putting good peoples lives in more danger
I have no respect for this WH group of clowns
We can't afford any more "rare admissions" for cripes sake
#10
Rare Public admission?
Why can't our officials keep their mouths shut?
It's all about the glorious pat on the back, see what I did, or more like see how good it is on my watch
Even at the detriment of so many and putting good peoples lives in more danger
I have no respect for this WH group of clowns
We can't afford any more "rare admissions" for cripes sake
Posted by: Jan ||
05/24/2012 15:52 Comments ||
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[Al Ahram] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... will give its impoverished neighbour Yemen aid worth $3.25 billion, the kingdom's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told a meeting in Riyadh Wednesday, urging other nations to take similar steps.
"To ensure Yemen's security and stability, the kingdom will provide $3.25 billion to support development projects there which will be agreed upon with the Yemeni side," he said at the opening of the Friends of Yemen meeting.
"The Yemeni government is exerting courageous efforts, but without the help of its brothers and friends, Yemen will not be able to solve the crises it is facing," said Prince Saud.
Yemeni Prime Minister Mohammed Basindawa pleaded at the meeting for aid for Yemen which was rocked by an uprising last year that forced former strongman President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... to step down in February.
"The hope is in the political and economic support needed to overcome the transitional period and put an end to the budget deficit," Basindawa said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Don't believe it till you see it, Yemen.
Posted by: American Delight ||
05/24/2012 6:51 Comments ||
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[Yemen Post] Yemen is on the brink of a catastrophic food crisis, seven aid agencies said today (23 May 2012) with 10 million people -- 44 percent of the population -- without enough food to eat. The aid agencies warned that malnutrition rates recorded by the UN in some parts of the country were alarming, with one in three children severely malnourished.
Ministers from the UK, Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... and other countries are set to meet at the Friends of Yemen conference in Riyadh today. The agencies - CARE, International Medical Corps, Islamic Relief, Merlin, Mercy Corps, Oxfam and Save the Children -- called on those attending the meeting to scale up efforts to tackle the crisis. The UN humanitarian appeal for the country is just 43 percent funded -- a $262 million shortfall.
Penny Lawrence, Oxfam's International Director, who is visiting Yemen, said:
"Yemeni families are at the brink and have exhausted their ways of coping with this crisis. A quarter of the population has fallen into debt trying to feed their families. Mothers are taking their children out of school to beg on the streets to get money to survive. Donors are focused on politics and security, but failure to respond adequately to the humanitarian needs now will put more lives at risk, further entrench poverty and could undermine political transition in the country."
Yemen's political crisis last year increased hunger in the country as food and fuel prices surged. Hunger has doubled since 2009. A quarter of the hungry -- some 5 million people -- are in need of urgent emergency aid. In Hodeidah and Hajjah, child malnutrition rates are double the emergency level. The UN estimates that 267,000 Yemeni children are facing life threatening levels of malnutrition.
Conflict in the north and south the country is also exacerbating the crisis. Over the last two months, nearly 95,000 people have been forced to leave their homes as a result of conflicts, bringing the number of people displaced in the country to close to half a million.
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05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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Pakistan's problematic relationship with the US plunged to new depths as Senators warned of aid cuts after the jailing of the surgeon who helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden.
Shakeel Afridi was found guilty of treason, sentenced to 33 years in prison and fined 320,000 rupees (£2,200) under an archaic tribal justice system that has governed Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt since British rule. Afridi was not entitled to a lawyer but was given a chance to defend himself and has a right to appeal the verdict, officials said.
Gosh, all those brave Pakistani supreme court justices and Afridi didn't even have a mouthpiece?
Critics said he should not have been tried under tribal law for an alleged crime that took place outside the tribal belt, in the town of Abbottabad where he ran a fake vaccination programme designed to collect bin Laden family DNA.
Ooooh that's clever! Thanks MSM for outing the news...
The US government said Pakistan had no basis to hold Afridi, who is reportedly in poor health and being kept away from other prisoners to avoid any danger to his life.
Time to stage another rescue mission. And offer sanctuary to Afridi and his family...
"Anyone who supported the United States in finding Osama bin Laden was not working against Pakistan, they were working against al-Qaeda," Pentagon press secretary George Little said.
Well my fellow commissioners, it would appear that or Dr. Afridi was the cause of all of this unpleasantness, and he has been jugged! Any reports on his illness? Little more for us to discuss, lets have some chai, shall we?
#3
Update
US cuts $33 million in aid to Pakistan over Osama bin Laden doctor sentence
The US is to cut $33 million from the aid it sends Pakistan over the jailing of the doctor who helped the CIA hunt for Osama bin Laden, in a fresh blow to the battered relations between the two states.
In a desperate bid to generate funds for terrorism, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) outlaws have robbed Karachi banks of US $18m (Rs. 1.6 billion) since 2009, police told Central Asia Online May 21. Were these non-Islamic banks, that charged interest? That would justify the robberies...
Several activists of TTP ... have confessed confessed, or 'confessed'?
to police that they have committed bank robberies to provide money to the organisation, said Khurram Bari, superintendent of the Karachi Polices Special Interrogation Unit (SIU), which interrogates suspects linked to terrorism or terror-financing cases.
Police accuse militants of involvement in at least 28 robberies since 2009, including 18 of the 39 bank heists in 2010-2011. In 2011, Taliban militants robbed Karachi banks of about Rs. 500m (US $5.5m), according to a Karachi police internal report. That total included Karachis biggest bank robbery of the year, a heist of more than Rs. 90m (US $990,000) from a Muslim Commercial Bank (MCB) branch, police said.
Pro-Taliban elements have infiltrated private security agencies meant to protect the banks, according to police.
Police have struck back, arresting 42 TTP activists in 2010 and 2011 in connection with various robberies, Bari said. In those two years, the police recovered Rs. 110m (US $1.2m) and various weapons from the suspects, who face trial in different Karachi courts, he said. Recovered something like 20% of the loot (presumably in addition to the amounts set aside for the hands of various police and government officials) - not to bad a solution rate; I wonder if 'confessions' helped.
[Dawn] Difa-e-Pakistain Council (DPC), an alliance of religious and political parties, has announced to postpone its long march scheduled from May 27 against reopening of the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization.... supply routes to Afghanistan.
This was announced by Liaquat Baloch, Secretary General of Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... (JI) and chairman steering committee of the DPC in a presser here at JI headquarters on Wednesday night.
DPC leaders Maulana Amir Hamza, Allama Tahir Ashrafi, Amirul Azim, Maulana Abdul Malik, Maulana Abdur Rauf Farooqi, Allama Shamsur Rahman, Qari Mansoor Ahmed and others were also present.
Baloch said that the long march was postponed as Pakistain did not announce the restoration of NATO supplies during the Chicago summit. He added that the organising committee has decided to continue the protests across the country against the NATO and the US.
Baloch said that the heads of DPC would meet in JI Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... office on May 26 and a convention of Ulema, students and labourers would be held near Quaid's mausoleum to press for stoppage of NATO supplies.
He also condemned the killing of innocent people in Bloody Karachi.
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05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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Iran's navy said Thursday it saved an American-flagged cargo ship that was being attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Oman.
An Iranian warship responded to a distress signal from the US-flagged Maersk Texas, a cargo ship of 150 metres (500 feet) and 14,000 tonnes, which was besieged by "several pirate boats," the navy said in a statement reported by the official IRNA news agency.
The cargo vessel "was saved by the navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran" on Wednesday, IRNA added.
The pirates "fled the scene as soon as they spotted the presence" of the warship. Maersk Texas "thanked the Iranian navy and sailed towards its destination safely," it added.
It was the first time the Iranian navy protected a US ship from pirates.
Maersk Line told AFP that its vessel, Maersk Texas, had "thwarted an attack by multiple pirate skiffs at noon local while transiting the Gulf of Oman, northeast of Fujairah" but denied it had been helped by the Iranian navy.
"Maersk Texas heard from the Iranian navy over radio to the initial distress call, but our vessel received no assistance from the Iranian navy," spokesman Kevin Steers said in an email sent to AFP in Washington.
"All hands onboard are safe and unharmed, and the vessel is proceeding on its voyage," he added.
Talks between world powers and Iran on its nuclear program have stalled over Iran's reluctance to advance without sanctions concessions.
The talks Wednesday in Baghdad between Iran and Russia, the United States, China, Britain France and Germany ended inconclusively, multiple media reports said, because Iran wanted a hold on major European oil sanctions set to kick in July 1 in exchange for staying at the table.
Western powers have emphasized that sanctions would remain in place until Iran provably made its program more transparent and suspended some enrichment of uranium -- a key demand of Israel, which has expressed concern that Iran is buying time with the talks.
It was not clear when talks would resume; they could be delayed until next month, according to various media.
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Western experts say evidence increasingly suggests that Iran is close to a capability to build a nuclear weapon.
Hopes began to fade Wednesday that a fresh round of talks with Iran would help ease tensions over Tehrans disputed nuclear program after Iran slammed a new package of proposals by Western powers as inadequate.
The package contained what U.S. officials said were confidence-building measures that Iran would need to take to show that its nuclear program is not aimed at producing a weapon, including a reduction in the degree to which the country is enriching uranium, from 20 percent to 5 percent.
....
Iran countered the proposal with a five-point package, which included broadening the focus of the talks to incorporate the escalating conflict in Syria, which is emerging as a battleground for influence between the United States and its regional allies and Tehran, which is closely aligned to the regime in Damascus.
U.S. officials said they rejected the inclusion of any issue other than Irans nuclear program in this round of talks.
#1
Wotta surprise! You could knock me over with a 2x4. There is no way you could have predicted this. Unless you were, like, paying attention and stuff.
[An Nahar] Russia is ready to host direct talks between the Syrian regime and rebel representatives, a top official said Wednesday, in a bid to end 14 months of bloodshed that has claimed over 10,000 lives.
Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said peace mediator Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... 's deputy was trying to secure agreement with the fractured foreign-based Syrian opposition on who could meet Bashir al-Assad's Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa.
"Russia has proposed starting this dialogue in Moscow, considering the opposition's fear of coming to Syria and the authorities' refusal to hold a meeting in Cairo under the auspices of the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... ," Bogdanov said in comments posted by the foreign ministry.
The Syrian strongman appointed Sharaa as his official negotiator last year. But the rebels had previously rejected negotiations because of the raging violence and the regime's refusal to offer real power to Assad's foes.
Moscow has hosted several more moderate Syrian groups in the past year who do not represent the main Syrian National Council opposition movement.
Bogdanov did not say how or whether either Assad or the Syrian opposition has responded to Russia's offer.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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[Al Ahram] The Free Syrian Army, which is seeking the overthrow of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs... 's regime, on Wednesday denied abducting a group of Shiite Lebanese pilgrims inside Syria.
"The FSA is not at all responsible for the operation," Mustafa al-Sheikh, a high-ranking FSA officer, told AFP by telephone from Istanbul.
"This is an attempt to distort the image of the FSA. The FSA does not believe in this methodology," said Sheikh, the head of the group's military council.
Leb's state news agency on Tuesday reported that the FSA had kidnapped 13 pilgrims in Syria's northern Aleppo ...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... province.
Syrian state media too blamed the FSA for the abductions, which were feared to heighten sectarian tensions in Leb over the revolt in neighbouring Syria.
Sheikh said the Syrian regime "treats the FSA as a scapegoat. We condemn this abduction, which does not represent the values of the (Syrian) revolution."
The kidnapping "is no doubt the work of the regime, which wants to sow chaos in the region," Sheikh added.
Syria's main opposition coalition issued a statement Wednesday calling for the prompt release of the group, adding that it too believed the Syrian regime could be involved in the kidnapping.
The Syrian National Council "does not think it is impossible that the regime is involved in this operation," in order to sow "disorder" in neighbouring Leb, the group said.
The group was reportedly kidnapped as they headed home to Leb from a pilgrimage in Iran.
The news prompted their families and thousands of supporters to pour out into the streets of Beirut's mainly Shiite suburbs to demand their release.
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05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Speculation was rife on Wednesday among Syrian anti-regime activists over the alleged "killing" of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad's Despoiler of Deraa... brother-in-law who is also Syria's deputy defense minister.
Assef Shawkat, former head of military intelligence, was poisoned, according to anti-regime activists. The authorities in Damascus ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... could not be reached for comment and have not responded publicly to the claim.
According to anti-regime activists, Shawkat was being buried on Wednesday in his hometown, which they identified as Madhale, near the Mediterranean coastal city of Tartous.
Several activists quoted by Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television said black flags were flying in Madhale in mourning.
On their Syrian Revolution Facebook page, online anti-regime activists wrote that: "Assef Shawkat is being buried right now in his home town Madhale ... God curse him. He was poisoned."
They said Shawkat's body was transported to a hospital near his hometown that was emptied of patients on Tuesday evening.
Speculation over Shawkat's fate first emerged on May 20 when Al-Jazeera ... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means the Peninsula, as in the Arabian Peninsula. In recent years it has settled in to become slightly less biased than MSNBC, in about the same category as BBC or CBS... and Al-Arabiya television broadcast an amateur video showing a man claiming responsibility on behalf of a rebel group for killing six regime stalwarts.
They included Shawkat, Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar, Defense Minister Daoud Rajha, national security chief Hisham Bakhtiar and Hassan Turkmeni, assistant to the vice president.
Turkmeni appeared on state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
this week to dismiss the reports, while Shaar denied them in a telephone interview, accusing Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya of "lies and slander."
But Shawkat has not made any public appearance or personally denied the reports, though he rarely makes public statements.
According to Peter Harling, an expert on Syria with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, the reports are "essentially unconfirmed for now.
"What is interesting is this story's success, regardless of its factual grounding," Harling told Agence La Belle France Presse. "A month ago, Syrians would not have believed, conveyed, invested in such news and it would not have spread.
"The regime then appeared particularly strong. Now there is a sense that the armed opposition is on the offensive."
A member of the inner circle of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar, Shawkat rose quickly through the ranks of power after he married the late leader's only daughter, Bushra, in the 1990s.
But Shawkat's relations with the Assad clan were not always smooth. Bashar's powerful brother Maher Assad allegedly shot him in the stomach in 1999.
The two men were named in leaked version of a preliminary U.N. report as possible suspects in the 2005 liquidation of Lebanese ex-premier Rafik Hariri.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
But Shawkat's relations with the Assad clan were not always smooth. He was poisoned.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The former endowment minister Hamoud Al-Hitar has called the Yemeni government to engage in dialogue with Al-Qaeda 
Yemen is on the brink of a catastrophic food crisis, seven aid agencies said today (23 May 2012) with 10 million people -- 44 percent of the population -- without enough food to eat. The aid agencies warned that malnutrition rates recorded by the UN in some parts of the country were alarming, with one in three children severely malnourished.
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means 
