THE government has been conducting negotiations with north African countries to extradite terrorist suspects held without charge at Belmarsh prison. Talks have been held between Baroness Symons, the Foreign Office minister, and the governments of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to draw up a treaty to deport terrorist suspects to their home countries, where they are also wanted. One of the men is an Algerian accused of attending a terrorist "camp" in Dorset. Another is said to be spiritual head of the group behind the Casablanca bombs in 2003.
The deal being negotiated by Symons, who visited the three countries last month, would give the government a way out of the row over the detention without charge of foreign terrorist suspects. On Friday Tony Blair signalled he was prepared to offer concessions to opponents of home detention for terrorist suspects. They are expected to include giving judges a role in imposing the so-called "control orders". Foreign Office officials confirmed last weekend that the talks with the three countries had dealt with security co-operation and counterterrorism. Algerian diplomatic sources said Britain had agreed to draft an agreement for mutual extradition.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 1:03:26 AM ||
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#1
Grab their asses in the middle of the night and put them on planes bound for their country of origin. Kick them out the door upon landing. What ever happens to them once that happens is not our problem.
This "league against cruel sports" thinking in the war against this moon cult will not work.
There are no more than 1500 armed militants in Chechnya, the republic's State Council Chairman Taus Dzhabrailov said on Friday. "As far as I know, the militants have a numerical strength limit of 1,500 men. This number is fully financed and supported from the East and from other countries," Dzhabrailov told a news conference at Interfax on Friday.
Separatist emissaries are operating in villages inside and outside Chechnya to recruit fighters to maintain their strength at the 1,500 limit, he said. "Tentatively, it can be said that about 1,000 militants are permanently in camps in the mountainous parts of the Chechen Republic. Their hard core consists of groups under the control of [Shamil] Basayev and Arab mercenaries, of whom there are about 300 to 400 men," Dzhabrailov said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 12:31:08 AM ||
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It was a little after 6 a.m. when the "bandits," as they are officially known, burst into the house with police hot on their heels.
Amid shouts, screams and the occasional burst of small-arms fire, 16 sleepy families in three adjoining houses tumbled into their bathrobes and slippers and out into the snow. The bandits holed up in the cluttered apartments. Police laid siege outside.
By the time it was over 16 hours later, the row of houses was little more than a pile of rubble, still licked by fire from flamethrowers and rocket-propelled grenades. The mangled and charred bodies of five bandits and one police officer lay among the ruins. Shortly after 10 p.m., a 44-ton T-72 battle tank rumbled over the wreckage and delivered the coup de grace, crushing any trace of life and the families' remaining possessions.
Here in Dagestan, a southern Russian region wedged between the troubled republic of Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, they call what happened Jan. 15 near the end of quiet Magistralnaya Street the One-Day War. The name is misleading in one respect, many agree: It was but one day of many.
The Chechen conflict has seeped beyond its borders into the northern Caucasus region, and Dagestan is one of the new fronts. The bandits, as the Russian authorities call them, are Muslim insurgents who have crossed over from Chechnya or launched battles on their home turf. The police, like those in many areas of Russia now, wear full camouflage and arrive at their house calls in armored vehicles equipped with battle gear.
Eleven Dagestani police officers have been killed since Jan. 1. Last year, 37 policemen died, including the chief of the Russian Federal Security Service's Dagestan bureau and the Interior Ministry's operations chief. The minister of information and national policy was assassinated in August 2003.
The region's worst outbreak of violence was September's seizure by militants from throughout the region of an entire school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan. The assault led to the deaths of 331 hostages. Battles between Russian forces and insurgents also have occurred in Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria republics, most recently on Sunday, when 100 police in armored personnel carriers brought a fiery end to a three-day siege at an apartment building in the town of Nalchik, killing up to three militants inside and arresting five in sweeps throughout the city.
A separate conflict broke out in Karachayevo-Cherkessia, leading the Kremlin to abruptly replace the local government this month.
Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev has long declared his intention to ignite war in the northern Caucasus and establish an Islamic state across the steep mountains and verdant plains that stretch between the Black and Caspian seas.
Increasingly, his army appears to be made up not only of Chechens, but recruits from the republics surrounding it — along with fighters from other Muslim lands. Few of these places are well-known. But if the recent incidents are pinpointed on a map, they trace a line of instability across the entire north Caucasus region — in some ways, Russia's nightmare scenario.
"It is becoming clearer and clearer that the Chechnya conflict is no longer an isolated one, confined to the borders of Chechnya, and it could even be said that the conflict has already lost its original ethnic and geographical localization," said Nikolai Silayev, a Caucasus analyst with the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. "The conflict is metastasizing."
Police in Dagestan, the mountainous republic that shares a 335-mile border with Chechnya, are mindful that they are a crucial line of defense. Russia's southern perimeter, the mutinous edge of the empire through much of modern history, is deeply vulnerable.
"We're walking on the edge of a razor here," Col. Abdul Musayev, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Interior police forces in Dagestan, confided recently. "We are the southern foundation, we are the bottom of Russia. If the disintegration of Russia happens, it will start in Dagestan."
Yet the kind of large-scale, military-style response displayed in Makhachkala has repercussions of its own. Critics of the Kremlin's policy in the Caucasus say Russia's focus on shootouts and abducting suspected collaborators, as well as the ongoing misery of civilians across the region, ensures the continual creation of new militants.
In Makhachkala, an estimated 60 residents whose homes were destroyed spent three weeks in a seedy downtown hotel with no heat, no food deliveries and no change of clothes. Only after they protested in the streets this month did officials repair the heat and begin delivering small aid packages.
"There is literally nothing left of our house. No walls, nothing. As of today, we have nothing," said Tigran Magomedov, 33. "We were put up in these absolutely cold rooms. People waited and waited, and finally, they ran out of patience."
His sister, Berliant Magomedova, 35, said citizens did not support the insurgents but were fed up with the police.
"Who can say the situation is getting better?" she asked. "The cops get killed by the dozen on a regular basis. If they had been doing their jobs, they wouldn't have allowed those terrorists to enter our house."
Jasmina Dzamalova's 6-year-old daughter was inadvertently left inside the building with the militants until her husband went back in during the standoff and won the girl's release.
"It is a war going on, I can tell you that," the 28-year-old literature teacher said. "It is dangerous to live here. We're afraid all the time. You send your kids to school, and you wonder, are they going to come back? You go to the market, and you're afraid, because you don't know which market they're going to use as a target next.
"God forbid," she added, "that any mother should have to go through what I went through that day."
But it was just one of many violent confrontations in the region. On the same day as the siege on Magistralnaya Street, several special forces officers were dispatched to a house in a suburban town just outside of Makhachkala. But before they could burst through the front door, the suspected militant, 51-year-old Magomedzagir Akaev, opened fire.
The commander of the unit and two officers died along with Akaev.
Twelve days later, there was a six-hour battle between police and militants in Nalchik. It left seven insurgents dead and nearly 20 apartments destroyed or damaged. Authorities quickly brought in repair crews, getting most families back into their homes within three weeks.
Then, back in Dagestan on Feb. 2, the republic's deputy interior minister and three of his bodyguards were killed on the main street of Makhachkala by unknown gunmen who blocked the path of their car and opened fire.
On the same day, the administrator of Dagestan's Khasav-Yurt district was saved from a roadside bomb by the armor plating in his Mercedes limo.
Chechen officials are as capable of spreading mayhem as the insurgents. This was illustrated Jan. 10, when police in Dagestan stopped the car of a Chechen woman, Zulai Kadyrova, and two of her bodyguards. The car and its occupants had no proper documents, police said, but it turned out that Kadyrova was the sister of Chechnya's deputy prime minister and presidential security force leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Kadyrov drove to her rescue with 150 men, about eight of whom forced their way into the police station. There, they aimed their guns at several officers, shoving them and punching them in the stomachs with their rifle butts, before departing with Kadyrova. Dagestan prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the case.
Dagestan's interior minister, Adilgerey Magomedtagirov, has survived two assassination attempts and on Dec. 30 buried one of his senior lieutenants, Col. Gadzhiramazan Ramazanov, chief of the operational department.
Yet he enthusiastically endorses Moscow's line that the insurgents are mere bandits who can be rounded up and put out of business with enough good police work. The same official line has held that the number of Chechen insurgents has remained constant at about 1,500 for the last several years, though dozens are reported killed every month.
"It's only a matter of time before they are all apprehended," Magomedtagirov said in an interview. "Of course, as long as these people continue to run into the woods, these conflicts are bound to continue. Because as a rule, they don't surrender. But I can tell you that, sooner or later, we'll get to every single one of them and hold them to account."
Critics doubt it.
"This process of new people running to the mountains is quite explicable. People do this because they do not know how to protect themselves from the arbitrary rule of the current authorities," said Tatyana Kasatkina, executive director of Memorial, a human rights center in Moscow.
"People get summarily rounded up in mop-up operations, they are tortured, and very often their dead bodies are discovered, or they simply vanish without a trace," she said. "And no appeals to the prosecutor bodies or other law-enforcement bodies yield any results. It is all too obvious why some people prefer to hide in the mountains and correct the wrong the best way they know how — with weapons in their hands."
The incident on Magistralnaya Street started when police got word that several insurgents were operating a safe house just down the street, purportedly under the direction of the "emir" of the Jennet (Paradise) Islamic cell in Dagestan, Ruslan Makasharipov.
Makasharipov, 33, is a former translator for Basayev and Saudi-born militant Khattab, who operated training camps for extremists in Chechnya before dying of poisoning in 2002 — allegedly after receiving a letter from Russian agents.
Since then, he is believed to have overseen many operations in Dagestan. Authorities say his group has been responsible for most of the major assassinations in the republic since 1999.
Surveillance cameras outside the safe house allowed the inhabitants to flee before police closed in, and in the ensuing chase they ended up barricaded in the complex down the street.
After the shootout, police searched the safe house and found what they believed were signs that the insurgents were planning a "Beslan-type" operation. One of the militants — identified as Makasharipov's cousin — was wearing an explosive belt. Police found hand grenades, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, guns and 330 pounds of explosives in the house and a nearby car.
Authorities first announced that Makasharipov had been killed in the operation. But the only bodies they have been able to identify are of three young Dagestanis. They are analyzing the DNA of the other two bodies, one of which is so maimed that, in Col. Musayev's words, "it fit into a plastic grocery bag."
"Right now, there's exactly the same probability that he's alive as that he's dead," Musayev said.
Last week, militants struck again. On Feb. 13, a highway patrol car was blown up by a roadside bomb in the Dagestani town of Stepnoy, killing one police officer and injuring three. On Wednesday, a car bomb exploded near the regional administration building in the town of Kizlyar, just as three senior government officials were driving by. A woman passing by was killed and six other people were wounded.
"It's premature to talk about victory. But we know the situation in the battlefield like the back of our hand," said Zagir Arukhov, Dagestan's minister of national policy and information. Arukhov, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the concept of Islamic jihad, or holy war, succeeded the assassinated official.
"Today, when these clashes occur, it is the law-enforcement bodies who are on the front lines," he said. "They are really like a safety net, which the terrorists aspire to remove so they can intimidate the entire society and impregnate it with their teachings.
"We will never allow anything like this to happen," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 12:28:38 AM ||
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#1
God the Russian police are so inept. If it wasn't so serious it would be comical.
2 religions that need to face a universal and world wide ban Islam and Scientology.
Paul Hiltemann had already noticed a darkening mood in the Netherlands. He runs an agency for people wanting to emigrate and his client list had surged.
But he was still taken aback in November when a Dutch filmmaker was shot and his throat was slit, execution style, on an Amsterdam street.
In the weeks that followed, Mr. Hiltemann was inundated by e-mail messages and telephone calls. "There was a big panic," he said, "a flood of people saying they wanted to leave the country."
Leave this stable and prosperous corner of Europe? Leave this land with its generous social benefits and ample salaries, a place of fine schools, museums, sports grounds and bicycle paths, all set in a lively democracy?
The answer, increasingly, is yes. This small nation is a magnet for immigrants, but statistics suggest there is a quickening flight of the white middle class. Dutch people pulling up roots said they felt a general pessimism about their small and crowded country and about the social tensions that had grown along with the waves of newcomers, most of them Muslims."The Dutch are living in a kind of pressure cooker atmosphere," Mr. Hiltemann said.
There is more than the concern about the rising complications of absorbing newcomers, now one-tenth of the population, many of them from largely Muslim countries. Many Dutch also seem bewildered that their country, run for decades on a cozy, political consensus, now seems so tense and prickly and bent on confrontation. Those leaving have been mostly lured by large English-speaking nations like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, where they say they hope to feel less constricted.
In interviews, emigrants rarely cited a fear of militant Islam as their main reason for packing their bags. But the killing of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a fierce critic of fundamentalist Muslims, seems to have been a catalyst.
"Our Web site got 13,000 hits in the weeks after the van Gogh killing," said Frans Buysse, who runs an agency that handles paperwork for departing Dutch. "That's four times the normal rate."
Mr. van Gogh's killing is the only one the police have attributed to an Islamic militant, but since then they have reported finding death lists by local Islamic militants with the names of six prominent politicians. The effects still reverberate. In a recent opinion poll, 35 percent of the native Dutch questioned had negative views about Islam.
There are no precise figures on the numbers now leaving. But Canadian, Australian and New Zealand diplomats here said that while immigration papers were processed in their home capitals, embassy officials here had been swamped by inquiries in recent months.
Many who settle abroad may not appear in migration statistics, like the growing contingent of retirees who flock to warmer places. But official statistics show a trend. In 1999, nearly 30,000 native Dutch moved elsewhere, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. For 2004, the provisional figure is close to 40,000. "It's definitely been picking up in the past five years," said Cor Kooijmans, a demographer at the bureau.
Ruud Konings, an accountant, has just sold his comfortable home in the small town of Hilvarenbeek. In March, after a year's worth of paperwork, the family will leave for Australia. The couple said the main reason was their fear for the welfare and security of their two teenage children.
"When I grew up, this place was spontaneous and free, but my kids cannot safely cycle home at night," said Mr. Konings, 49. "My son just had his fifth bicycle stolen." At school, his children and their friends feel uneasy, he added. "They're afraid of being roughed up by the gangs of foreign kids."
Sandy Sangen has applied to move to Norway with her husband and two school-age children. They want to buy a farm in what she calls "a safer, more peaceful place."
Like the Sangens and Koningses, others who are moving speak of their yearning for the open spaces, the clean air, the easygoing civility they feel they have lost. Complaints include overcrowding, endless traffic jams, overregulation. Some cite a rise in antisocial behavior and a worrying new toughness and aggression both in political debates and on the streets.
Until the killing of Pim Fortuyn, a populist anti-immigration politician, in 2002 and the more recent slaying of a teacher by a student, this generation of Dutch people could not conceive of such violence in their peaceful country.
After Mr. van Gogh's killing, angry demonstrations and fire-bombings of mosques and Muslim schools took place. In revenge, some Christian churches were attacked. Mr. Konings said he and many of his friends sensed more confrontation in the making, perhaps more violence.
"I'm a great optimist, but we're now caught in a downward spiral, economically and socially," he said. "We feel we can give our children a better start somewhere else."
Marianne and Rene Aukens, from the rural town of Brunssum, had successful careers, he as director of a local bank, she as a personnel manager. But after much thought they have applied to go to New Zealand. "In my lifetime, all the villages around here have merged, almost all the green spaces have been paved over," said Mr. Aukens, 41. "Nature is finished. There's no more silence; you hear traffic everywhere."
The saying that the Netherlands is "full up" has become a national mantra. It was used cautiously at first, because it had an overtone of being anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim. But many of those interviewed now state it flatly, like Peter Bles. He makes a long commute to a banking job in Amsterdam, but he and his wife are preparing to move to Australia.
"We found people are more polite, less stressed, less aggressive there," Mr. Bles said. "Perhaps stress has a lot to do with the lack of living space. Here we are full up."
Space is indeed at a premium here in Europe's most densely populated nation, where 16.3 million people live in an area roughly the size of Maryland. Denmark, which is slightly larger, has 5.5 million people. Dutch demographers say their country has undergone one of Europe's fastest and most far-reaching demographic shifts, with about 10 percent of the population now foreign born, a majority of them Muslims.
Blaming immigrants for many ills has become commonplace. Conservative Moroccans and Turks from rural areas are accused of disdaining the liberal Dutch ways and of making little effort to adapt. Immigrant youths now make up half the prison population. More than 40 percent of immigrants receive some form of government assistance, a source of resentment among native Dutch. Immigrants say, though, that they are widely discriminated against.
Ms. Konings said the Dutch themselves brought on some of the social frictions. The Dutch "thought that we had to adapt to the immigrants and that we had to give them handouts," she said. "We've been too lenient; now it's difficult to turn the tide."
To Mr. Hiltemann, the emigration consultant, what is remarkable is not only the surge of interest among the Dutch in leaving, but also the type of people involved. "They are successful people, I mean, urban professionals, managers, physiotherapists, computer specialists," he said. Five years ago, he said, most of his clients were farmers looking for more land.
Mr. Buysse, who employs a staff of eight to process visas, concurred. He said farmers were still emigrating as Europe cut agricultural subsidies. '"What is new," he said, "is that Dutch people who are rich or at least very comfortable are now wanting to leave the country."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 1:01:53 AM ||
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#1
Uh....Frau Sangen, hate to break it to you, but Norway's got the same problem you're running away from.
Why don't you all stay home and force your politicians to do something about the homicidal bums your country has welcomed with open arms (and much holier-than-thou-ness).
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/27/2005 1:09 Comments ||
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Article: "What is new," he said, "is that Dutch people who are rich or at least very comfortable are now wanting to leave the country."
You gotta love it. European political parties are cynically encouraging Muslim immigration to compete with each other at the polls, thereby hastening the day that Muslim majorities, followed by Muslim strongmen, will rule Europe. What I find interesting is that democracy accompanied by mass immigration and the welfare state is leading to the end of Europe as the home of white Europeans.
#4
Yes Norway faces the Muslim hordes as well but this problem is facing all of western Europe. See The Weekly Standard issue # 22 for the scoop on Sweden. Malmo, second or third largest city in Sweden is now 25% Muslim, 90% of them are unemployed, living off the Swedish welfare system.
Posted by: Juan ||
02/27/2005 2:04 Comments ||
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The title should say emigrate - as in outbound. Newsflash for the Dutch - you won't find sanctuary anywhere, except maybe Antarctica. You will find common cause, if you have the stones for the fight and the sacrifices required to make a stand, in those few places actively opposing Islam. Put up or shut up is the order of the day.
#7
This has been going on unremarked for years. Educated, skilled and succesful people leave to be replaced by poor unskilled people whose ambition is to live on welfare. Something has to give.
Sobiesky . . . this is not tapeworm. A tapeworm will live off the host, giving some bad side effects, but allowing the host ot live.
This is cancer of the heart and it will eat the heart out of the Europaean democracies and leave the hollow shells filled with Islamic hate.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/27/2005 8:01 Comments ||
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Even sadder to think is that when these lot get wherever they're running away to, they'll start trying to make the new place more like home. Same stupid mushy politics and unwillingness to confront the problems they created. They'll be like Typhoid Marys - bringing the ideological infection with them.
#13
Which is why the US is not on that list of English-speaking countries being mobbed with requests. Their model couldn't work in their own country once there was any diversity at all ... it would work even worse here.
Posted by: too true ||
02/27/2005 10:14 Comments ||
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Even sadder to think is that when these lot get wherever they're running away to, they'll start trying to make the new place more like home
#15
Is anyone actually surprised by the 'Surrender and Run' tatic by Europeans? Contrast that with the Minuteman project in Arizona and see the the great divide in our cultures. If a Professor was shot and had his throat cut, I think the public (maybe not academic) response would be totally 180 from Europes. I notice they are not coming to the U.S., GOOD we don't like quiters either.
#19
Shipman, That assumes that they won't try to reconstruct the Europe that was so wonderful before the wogs came. But they will. With the consequences mhw sets out.
Good discussion about today's Steyn column at Austin Bay's. Steyn comments on Bay's attack on the column.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 13:58 Comments ||
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#20
Damnit! I'm trying to be positive here Mrs. D! :)
#21
Unfortunately, Shipman, there's not a lot to be positive about. The good people have already left, driven out by the socialists and transies. Those people are productive and go-getters. There aren't a lot of them left over there, though.
Now comes the people who screwed up the place and want to not take responsibility for their actions. They then want to screw up their host country the same way, and presumably will flee again when they ruin it.
As Pappy noted, it's the same within the US. Some of us fled California because of the runaway leftist government and are more conservative or libertarian than the native Zonies. Others, though, want to make Arizona a drier version of California. Oh, well. I'll be dead in 30 years or so.
Will the last Christian leaving the Netherlands, breach the dykes?
Armed Islamist militants that operate in Europe are also helping support the armed insurgency in Iraq, one of Europe's foremost experts on such groups told Reuters. Spanish High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon, who has been investigating Islamist militants in Spain since 1991, warned that groups such as the Algerian Salafist movement and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group were particularly dangerous for Europe. "They are groups that have membership inside and outside Europe and in any case we have to keep close watch on the relationship these groups have with others like Ansar al-Islam," Garzon told Reuters in an interview late on Friday. "It's obvious that this type of terror groups are perfectly operative 
The threat from this type of terrorism is real, it's constant, it's current and it will continue to be."
Ansar al-Islam is one of the most active and best known groups attacking the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq. Garzon said the Iraq war had inspired the recruitment of new holy warriors "in general," but declined to characterize that recruitment in Europe. Garzon, who on Monday begins nine months' leave to teach at New York University, has conducted several investigations into suspect Islamist activity including one probe that led him to charge Osama bin Laden with mass murder. He had been following a suspected al Qaeda cell in Spain at the time of Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and then ordered the arrest of the suspects for fear they might also attack. The trial of some two dozen of them is due to begin within months.
Garzon said it was impossible to measure how serious the Islamist militant threat was. But ever since the early 1990s they have "set up bases in key points" of Europe, where they have fabricated false identity papers and raised money for jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya, Algeria and now Iraq, Garzon said. A year ago, one group became the first to launch a serious attack in Western Europe with the Madrid train bombings, for which more than 70 people have been arrested, around half of whom are still in jail or under court supervision. In his just published book "A World Without Fear" Garzon notes that in January 2004 bin Laden ordered followers to attack occupation forces in Iraq, where Spain had 1,300 troops sent by the former conservative government, but said the Madrid train bomber did "not necessarily" take it as an order target Spain. "The idea of committing a major attack could have come from within the (Madrid train bombing) group itself or it could have come from abroad 
It's not important who the bosses are. There may not have been any, or there may have been an emir who acted as a catalyst and indoctrinated the others, but it doesn't even have to been an emir. The groups could have acted on their own or in coordination with others," Garzon said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 12:21:40 AM ||
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BERLIN — German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in comments released yesterday that he was satisfied the US has no intention of attacking Iran in the standoff over the country's nuclear programme.
How would he know?
During a European tour this week that included a meeting in Germany with Schroeder, US President George W. Bush addressed worries in Europe and the Middle East about the US stance. Bush said it is "simply ridiculous" to say the US is preparing a strike on Iran. "He said the words 'Iran is not Iraq' deliberately — no one, and that includes the American government, is thinking of military action against Teheran," Schroeder said in an interview with the weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
We've got other irons in the fire, not that we're telling you what they are.
However, the newspaper quoted Schroeder as saying he had made clear to Bush that Germany would not participate in any possible military action. Schroeder was one of the leading opponents of the US-led war in Iraq two years ago.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005 12:10:12 AM ||
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#1
However, the newspaper quoted Schroeder as saying he had made clear to Bush that Germany would not participate in any possible military action.
I think he made it clear before and during the Iraq conflict. But whatever Bush told Schroeder about US mil intentions in Iran, S bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 1:01 Comments ||
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However, the newspaper quoted Schroeder as saying he had made clear to Bush that Germany would not participate in any possible military action.
Glad that's settled.
We wouldn't want our buddies allies to get in the way do something they don't approve of, now would we?
Herr Schroeder, I know you don't care if the mullahs get nukes 'cause you think they're going after us. And you're right, of course.
They're going after us first. Then, if the various and sundry Euros don't capitulate to the Caliphate, guess where they're going next?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/27/2005 1:14 Comments ||
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If Schroeder actually believes this, then he should send those businessmen back into Iran. Y'know, the ones who took their cue from Halliburton and began leaving Iran about a month ago. Sounds like a plan.
#5
Heh isn't this sorta like when the French said the US had no plans to attack Afghanistan right after 9/11 because the French weren't told of any plans therefore no such action could even be contemplated. I remember how that turned out.
#6
We have to flatten Syria first, so we'll be a bit distracted for the moment. Meanwhile Iran can go calling on anyone else stupid enough to add to the target list.
#7
no one, and that includes the American government, is thinking of military action against Teheran,� Schroeder said
Fortunately, Berlin's relations with Israel are as close as those with the U. S. so the MMs will sleep the sleep of the innocent tonight.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 10:12 Comments ||
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They've got pills that good?
Posted by: too true ||
02/27/2005 10:14 Comments ||
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I really have to comment on the first five posting's are you really up at that hour
writing to Rantburg?? Barbara 1:14 a.m.,
.com 2:28 a.m., someone 2:46 a.m., Valentine 2:55 a.m. WHEN DO YOU SLEEP??
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
02/27/2005 21:07 Comments ||
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#11
As someone commented to me today, Cold. But funny.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 21:11 Comments ||
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EST Andrea
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 21:11 Comments ||
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#13
Ha ha ha hahahahaa!
Dubya is getting even -- he's setting them all up for the big fall. Before Dubya lays his Royal Flush on the table, all of these Old Europe stooge politicians are going to think they've won. And then, when Dubya triumphs, they'll have to complain to Condi -- assuming they get past her office lobby. I'll bet Rummy will make the first press release after the bombs drop, too. Priceless!
Posted by: Tom ||
02/27/2005 21:34 Comments ||
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A senior Conservative Party politician wants an investigation into an Algerian-Canadian who served a prison term in France for extremist activities but who has now returned to Canada. "It's startling to think he has returned to Canada," Peter MacKay told CTV Newsnet on Saturday, referring to Fateh Kamel, 44.
On Saturday, the National Post reported that Kamel was convicted in France in 2001 of "participating in a criminal association for the purposes of preparing acts of terrorism" after being arrested in Jordan in December 1999. He had also supplied fake passports to militants. Kamel was sentenced to eight years, but was freed after four for good behaviour. He reportedly arrived in Montreal on Jan. 29. Kamel has a wife and son here. "Given the conviction in France and his previous involvement with terrorist activity, including close associations with a terrorist organization linked to al Qaeda and linked as well to Ahmed Rassam ... it's very, very disturbing to think Kamel is back in the country," says MacKay, the Tories' deputy leader and public safety critic. Ressam is better known as the Millennium Bomber. The former Montrealer was caught trying to smuggle a bomb into the United States in 1999 that was to be used to attack Los Angeles International Airport.
Kamel is associated with GIA, which is the French acronym for the Algerian Armed Islamic Group. MacKay thinks Canada should be doing "everything we can" to send Kamel back to his native Algeria. While he didn't have any information on the matter, MacKay said he "hoped" that France had informed Canada about Kamel and that CSIS is monitoring the man's whereabouts. "This is the type of individual who should be of real concern to Canadian officials at Immigration and CSIS and poses a real threat to Canadians," he says.
A spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, who is also in charge of public security, wouldn't say much other than the federal government was aware of Kamel's return. "Certainly this gentleman is a Canadian citizen and we're aware of his arrest and conviction in France, but we don't comment on any individual or operational matters around persons of interest," Alex Swann told The Canadian Press. "He is a citizen and he has the right to return to Canada."
This article starring:
AHMED RASAM
al-Qaeda
Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan
FATEH KAMEL
Algerian Armed Islamic Group
Peter MacKay
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 12:10:17 AM ||
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Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, has for the first time publicly criticised troops levels in Iraq and spoken of the rifts between himself and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, that undermined his role as architect of American foreign policy.
Mr Powell, in his first interview since resigning last November, also told The Telegraph of his "dismay" at the deterioration in relations between America and Europe and of his "disappointment" with France.
While holding back from blaming Mr Rumsfeld by name for the problems that eventually persuaded him to resign, Mr Powell showed that much of the innuendo and leaks surrounding his volatile relationship with the defence secretary had been well-founded.
Admitting that Mr Rumsfeld's controversial plan to fight the war with limited troop numbers had been an outstanding success, Mr Powell said the "nation building" that followed had been deeply flawed.
There had been "enough troops for war but not for peace, for establishing order. My own preference would have been for more forces after the conflict."
Mr Powell said he had warned President George W Bush over dinner in August 2002 that the problem with Iraq was not going to be the invasion but what followed.
He told him: "This place will crack like a goblet and it will be a problem to pick up the bits. It was on this basis that he decided to let me see if we could find a United Nations solution to this."
Mr Powell told Charles Moore, the former editor of The Telegraph who conducted the interview outside Washington, that he regretted the fall-out with Europe over the Iraq war.
He also found Mr Rumsfeld's reference to "New Europe" and "Old Europe" unfortunate.
"I never used the phrase," he said. "It just wasn't a useful construct. I don't think the president ever used it.
"We've got a lot more work to do with European public opinion."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 1:20:06 AM ||
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#1
He chooses to give an interview to the Telegraph?
#2
OT PD. Wasn't dissing the Hustler, I want to rent about 48 (from Davis-Monthian, Planes R Us) to the IDF for a weekend special. It would be ideal for a mid-range hi-lo-lo-hi 3 day getaway.
#3
Can't wait for Colin's next interview where he tells where he would have gotten the troops and how he would have gotten them into Iraq after his State Department botched Turkey. Colin should remove himself from politics, devote himself to good works and begin his memoirs.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 10:09 Comments ||
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#4
Read the whole interview, folks. Colin defends the prez, and the MSM is going to lay into him for that.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005 12:06 Comments ||
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#5
"We’ve got a lot more work to do with European public opinion."
Why? Their media is going to do what it can to counter anything we do, so why bother?
#6
Dr Steve - He still talked to the Telegraph, of all sources, and aired private squabbles - positively airheaded quotables. Pfeh. He has fallen far and he has joined the Shalikashvili ranks.
Ship - I love the Hustler. Saw it up close - my father (whose world I got to ogle every other weekend for a day at a pop) was part of the team which invented the clamshell escape pod. Later he was a GD VP. Most of the highlights of my otherwise totally-fucked childhood were when he took me and my brother to Carswell and to air shows. The Hustler ranks second only to the B-70 in pure unadulterated awesomeness - though it was only once with the B-70 - it crashed after leaving the Ft Worth air show enroute to California. The Hustler set 19 different records - and was the first delta-wing supersonic bomber. It just boggled at low altitude - saw it do a low altitude pass (under 500 ft) at Mach 1.6 - as it would do on a bombing mission inside enemy territory - and I damned-near wet my pants. I was 8 at the time.
There's even something for a swabbie to love: "Internally, the B-58 is framed like a Navy destroyer, with transverse duralumin spars, corrugated for strength, spaced only 11 to 15 inches apart running from one wing margin through the fuselage to the opposite wing."
And this: "An irresistible attention-getter, a voice warning system, has been developed for the Hustler: into the masculine chatter in the pilot's earphones a soft feminine voice (pre-recorded, unfortunately) breaks in with one of twenty announcements--'weapon unlocked,' 'hydraulic system failure,' 'check for engine fire,' 'nose too high.'"
There is widening unease within the Central Intelligence Agency over the possibility that career officers could be prosecuted or otherwise punished for their conduct during interrogations and detentions of terrorism suspects, according to current and former government officials.
Until now, only one C.I.A. employee, a contract worker from North Carolina, has been charged with a crime in connection with the treatment of prisoners, stemming from a death in Afghanistan in 2003. But the officials confirmed that the agency had asked the Justice Department to review at least one other case, from Iraq, to determine if a C.I.A. officer and interpreter should face prosecution.
In addition, the current and former government officials said the agency's inspector general was now reviewing at least a half-dozen other cases, and perhaps many more, in what they described as an expanding circle of inquiries to determine whether C.I.A. employees had been involved in any misconduct.
Previously, intelligence officials have acknowledged only that "several" cases were under review by the agency's inspector general. But one government official said, "There's a lot more out there than has generally been recognized, and people at the agency are worried."
Of particular concern, the officials said, is the possibility that C.I.A. officers using interrogation techniques that the government ruled as permissible after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks might now be punished, or even prosecuted, for their actions in the line of duty.
The details of some of the inquiries have been reported, but the government officials said other cases under review have never been publicly disclosed. Officials declined to provide details of all the cases now under scrutiny. They would not say whether the reviews were limited to incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, where C.I.A. officers have been particularly active, or whether they might extend to cases from other countries, possibly including secret sites around the world where three dozen senior leaders of Al Qaeda are being held by the agency.
The officials said that the concern within the ranks had been growing since the agency's removal of its station chief in Baghdad, Iraq, in December 2003 in part because of concerns about the deaths of two Iraqis who had been questioned by C.I.A. employees.
The reason for the station chief's removal has not been previously disclosed. Former and current intelligence officials say the action occurred nearly four months before a wider pattern of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became publicly known. The removal was ordered by senior officials at C.I.A. headquarters in Washington within several weeks of their learning about the deaths of the Iraqi prisoners in separate incidents.
In response to the reviews, the C.I.A. has already made a number of significant changes to its rules on interrogation and detention as a new safeguard against problems, the officials said.
Asked about the inspector general's reviews, an intelligence official described them as a robust effort on the part of the C.I.A. to ensure that its conduct had been proper. "The inspector general is working collaboratively with counterparts in the military services in all investigations," the official said.
The agency has referred some cases to the Justice Department for a review of possible criminal charges under the federal torture law, which forbids extreme interrogation tactics, and under civil rights laws more commonly used in police brutality prosecutions. Justice Department officials said that prosecutors working in a special unit in Alexandria, Va., were conducting criminal inquiries into the possible mistreatment of detainees by nonmilitary personnel, but that they would not discuss what cases were being reviewing or whether they would charge anyone with crimes.
Justice Department officials would say only that several cases involving civilian employees of the government had been referred to the department. They would not discuss which cases were under scrutiny or what agencies had sought the department's review. But they said such reviews would seek to determine whether the facts in the cases warrant prosecution under several federal statutes, among them the civil rights laws, which bar government employees from using excessive force, and the federal torture law, which forbids the use of extreme interrogation techniques on detainees.
In one of the cases that contributed to the removal of the station chief, an Iraqi named Manadel al-Jamadi died under C.I.A. interrogation in a shower room at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 4, 2003. It is probable that he died of wounds inflicted by commandos of the Navy Seals who struck him in the head with rifle butts after they and C.I.A. officers captured him. But former intelligence officials said there were still questions about the role played by a C.I.A. officer and contract interrogator who had taken custody of Mr. Jamadi and were questioning him at Abu Ghraib at the time of his death.
Mr. Jamadi had not been examined by a physician at the time he was brought to Abu Ghraib, because the C.I.A. officers had circumvented procedures in which he was to have been registered with the military.
The death was among the most notorious to emerge from the incidents at Abu Ghraib that became public last spring, in part because the man's body was photographed wrapped in plastic and packed in ice.
In another widely publicized incident, an Iraqi commander, Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, died after he was shoved head-first into a sleeping bag by Army interrogators, after several days of questioning that also involved at least one C.I.A. officer. An autopsy showed that General Mowhoush died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression" showing "evidence of blunt force trauma to the chest and legs," according to Army officials.
In both those cases, American military personnel are facing disciplinary proceedings, including hearings in Colorado in which several Army soldiers are being tried on murder charges. The death at Abu Ghraib is still being investigated by the C.I.A.'s inspector general, and has been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, the current and former intelligence officials said.
None of the reviews at the C.I.A. have been completed, but they include a broad assessment of detention and interrogation procedures in Iraq, the officials said. Already, they said, senior officials at the C.I.A. have ordered broad changes as a result of the review, including some that would impose strict limits on the use of coercive techniques used to extract information from suspected terrorists, the officials said.
Intelligence officials had previously described the shakeup of the C.I.A.'s Baghdad operations as related to concerns about the officer's capacity to manage the agency's large and fast-growing station in Iraq. But in recent interviews, current and former intelligence officials said that while those accounts were partly accurate, the action was also prompted by concerns that the Baghdad station chief had not paid enough attention to issues surrounding the detention and interrogation of prisoners.
There is no indication that the former station chief, who has since left the C.I.A., is under any kind of criminal scrutiny, the officials said.
To date, the C.I.A. has publicly acknowledged possible wrongdoing in a case of prisoner abuse in only one case, involving David Passaro, a civilian who had been working under contract for the C.I.A in Iraq. Mr. Passaro is awaiting trial in federal court in North Carolina in connection with the June 21, 2003, death of a prisoner in Afghanistan a day after being beaten during an interrogation.
The reviews come after the Justice Department's repudiation of an August 2002 legal opinion that had served as the foundation for rules that guided the C.I.A. in how far its officers and contractors could go in using coercive techniques to extract information for prisoners during interrogations. Some current and former intelligence officials have expressed concern that the repudiation undermined some of the legal authority that the Bush administration had provided for the agency's role in detention and interrogation.
In public testimony last week, Porter J. Goss, the director of central intelligence, declined to say how many C.I.A. reviews of possible misconduct involving prisoners were under way or when they might be completed. But he told the Senate Intelligence Committee that while the North Carolina case was the only one to have been made public, "a bunch of other cases" were now under review by the inspector general.
"What I can't tell you is how many more might come in the door," Mr. Goss added. Mr. Goss, who took over in September, said that a report ordered by one of his predecessors had produced "10 recommendations or so" involving interrogation and detention, and that "about, I think, eight of those have been done."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 12:15:43 AM ||
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#1
Rule #1: No Witnesses.
Rule #2: This Does NOT Mean "Kill Witnesses".
Rule #3: If the military won't do it, it could probably get you in trouble.
Rule #4: Trouble is NOT your business. Your business is mission accomplishment.
Rule #5: "The bomb" will either go off or it won't. Your watching it won't help, either way.
Rule #6: Letting someone go often gets you more results than any other means.
Rule #7: The most effective interrogators provide coffee and cigarettes.
Rule #8: "Nobody ever looks for a body in a cemetery."
Rule #9: "Never bring a knife to a gunfight."
Rule #10: When in doubt, go. It was there before you arrived, it will probably be there after you leave.
#3
This is the crux of the problem for Ops and it always has been:
How do we take the bad guys out without becoming the bad guys ourselves?
Sometimes the "bad guy" methods are the only ones that work due to cultural issues - but after the first break, the others fall in line.
Sometimes urgency demands expedient methods. Problem is EVERYTHING becomes urgent to people up the food chain, if you use "field expedients" and they seem effective.
WHat most people seem to never know or figure out is that the effectiveness of the "expedient" methods drops rapidly, and you are stuck with no real recourse. That is, "bad-cop:bad-cop" only works for a while, and only if there was a "good-cop" somewhere along the way as a contrast.
Put more simply:
All stick and no carrot will eventually cause Ivan/Abdul/Pedro/Chiang to callous up and go silent in resignation, or else just start talking his head off telling you whatever he thinks you want to hear, regardless of the truth.
Either way you've blown a source because absent corroboration, you have no idea if anything he says is worth knowing.
I don't envy Porter Goss his job - hell its tough enough just carrying out policy, much less formulating it, in this kind of a flip-flop black-white world.
#4
This is the crux of the problem for Ops and it always has been:
How do we take the bad guys out without becoming the bad guys ourselves?
Sometimes the "bad guy" methods are the only ones that work due to cultural issues - but after the first break, the others fall in line.
Sometimes urgency demands expedient methods. Problem is EVERYTHING becomes urgent to people up the food chain, if you use "field expedients" and they seem effective.
WHat most people seem to never know or figure out is that the effectiveness of the "expedient" methods drops rapidly, and you are stuck with no real recourse. That is, "bad-cop:bad-cop" only works for a while, and only if there was a "good-cop" somewhere along the way as a contrast.
Put more simply:
All stick and no carrot will eventually cause Ivan/Abdul/Pedro/Chiang to callous up and go silent in resignation, or else just start talking his head off telling you whatever he thinks you want to hear, regardless of the truth.
Either way you've blown a source because absent corroboration, you have no idea if anything he says is worth knowing.
I don't envy Porter Goss his job - hell its tough enough just carrying out policy, much less formulating it, in this kind of a flip-flop black-white world.
#5
This is the crux of the problem for Ops and it always has been:
How do we take the bad guys out without becoming the bad guys ourselves?
Sometimes the "bad guy" methods are the only ones that work due to cultural issues - but after the first break, the others fall in line.
Sometimes urgency demands expedient methods. Problem is EVERYTHING becomes urgent to people up the food chain, if you use "field expedients" and they seem effective.
WHat most people seem to never know or figure out is that the effectiveness of the "expedient" methods drops rapidly, and you are stuck with no real recourse. That is, "bad-cop:bad-cop" only works for a while, and only if there was a "good-cop" somewhere along the way as a contrast.
Put more simply:
All stick and no carrot will eventually cause Ivan/Abdul/Pedro/Chiang to callous up and go silent in resignation, or else just start talking his head off telling you whatever he thinks you want to hear, regardless of the truth.
Either way you've blown a source because absent corroboration, you have no idea if anything he says is worth knowing.
I don't envy Porter Goss his job - hell its tough enough just carrying out policy, much less formulating it, in this kind of a flip-flop black-white world.
Case Adds to Outrage for Muslims in Northern Virginia
FALLS CHURCH, Va., Feb. 25 - When the Saudi police burst into a classroom at the Islamic University of Medina during final exams two years ago and whisked away an American exchange student named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, his imprisonment swiftly reverberated among Muslims in this Washington suburb.
Mr. Abu Ali was never charged, and he spent 20 months in a Saudi prison where his family says he was whipped, tortured and starved. This week, he was finally returned to Virginia - only to face an accusation by American prosecutors that he had plotted with members of Al Qaeda to assassinate President Bush.
The charge has outraged members of Northern Virginia's growing Muslim population and escalated a conflict with federal law enforcement authorities over terrorism investigations into religious leaders, mosques, businesses and private Islamic schools in the region. "Our whole community is under siege," said Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, a spokesman for the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, where Mr. Abu Ali and his family worshiped. "They don't see this as a case of criminality. They see it as a civil rights case. As a frontal attack on their community."
"The feeling I get here on a daily basis must be what it was like to be a member of Martin Luther King Jr.'s church following the case of Rosa Parks," said Imam Abdul-Malik. "People always ask, 'What is the latest from the courthouse?' "
This article starring:
AHMED OMAR ABU ALI
al-Qaeda
Dar Al-Hijrah mosque
Imam Johari Abdul-Malik
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 8:25:03 PM ||
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#1
"They don't see this as a case of criminality. They see it as a civil rights case. As a frontal attack on their community."
So, they want criminals who are like them to be set free because they are special?
#3
When did Rosa train in Afghanistan with the declared enemies of our country? I missed that in her bio? These Islamodirtbags and their media enablers need to feel the wrath of real Americans
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 21:04 Comments ||
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PARIS - International police chiefs gather this week at the Interpol headquarters in Lyon to grapple with the threat of bio-terrorism. More than 400 delegates from at least 120 countries "will discuss the risk of bio-terror attacks, case studies, prevention of attacks, preparation and training of law enforcement personnel, and the related legal and political framework," Interpol said in a statement.
Interpol's role is to raise awareness and link the world's police and medical services in light of a lack of information and a tendency to underestimate the threat, said Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble. "After 9/11 and the investigations on Al Qaeda, we know now that the terrorists have investigated the possibility using nuclear materials to make weapons, how to use bio-agents and also the chemicals," Noble told AFP. "Now we have to let our imagination run wild and prepare for anything," he added.
"From the anthrax attacks (in the United States in 2001) we know that a small amount of a bio-agent can have an extraordinary global impact, beyond the target area. That's why Interpol believes it has a central role to play."
After opening speeches by French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin who is still regarded as a man and Noble, the delegates will take part in two days of debates, round tables and conferences. Topics include the threat of bio-agents and toxins; forensic challenges and the US anthrax attacks.
Police will discuss in particular the Malaysian approach to prevent, detect and combat bio-terrorism, the release of biological agents in three British mail centres, and the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, which killed 12 people and injured more than 5,000. Interpol's aim is to give police the information and contact with the global medical community to help them understand the complex menace.
The conference will be followed by training workshops, the first in South Africa at the end of 2005, the second in Chile in 2006 and the third in China the same year.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005 12:04:57 AM ||
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#1
Amazing. The U.S. has been working on this since, what, 9/12/01? I do realize that Interpol has been busy, but surely three and a half years is a bit excessive!
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is sending Armed Forces Chief of Staff Efren Abu to Mindanao on Tuesday to determine if she should declare a ceasefire with Moro rebels fighting government troops in Sulu. The President's decision came after persistent calls for a ceasefire between government troops and followers of jailed Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) leader Nur Misuari and the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG).
Arroyo, in a media interaction in Iloilo, said she will give the orders to Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz Jr. on Thursday based on Lieutenant General Abu's report. "I am sending General Abu to the area on Tuesday, and (on) Wednesday or Thursday, he will probably give a report to me. So, on Thursday, I will probably be ready to give an instruction to the Secretary of National Defense," she said.
The leaders of the mainstream Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and some officials of Sulu have offered to negotiate in behalf of the rebels. It has been more than two weeks since government launched offensives in Sulu, following the attacks against military outposts by renegades who are demanding the return of former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm) governor Nur Misuari to Sulu for his trial. Press secretary and presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said "the earlier we are able to bring peace to Mindanao, the better for the development of the area." Bunye said there are foreign institutions that are willing to pour development funds into Mindanao but the insurgency situation must be solved first.
The MILF leadership calls for a ceasefire in the ongoing clash between the government forces and the MNLF-breakaway group in Sulu. MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said ceasefire should be declared first and talk out their concerns but apparently the government is unwilling. Close to a hundred government forces and rebel groups died in the ongoing clashes while thousands of civilians have also been displaced because of the skirmishes. Kabalu said it has been a long while since government has investigated Misuari's case. If he is guilty then a hearing should have been conducted by now and due process be served, he added. Kabalu said old guards and supporters of the MNLF recently held several secret meetings that could lead to more clashes in Mindanao. Kabalu said they have monitored how several MNLF old leaders have been conducting secret meetings in Lanao, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and General Santos areas these last weeks of February. Though these combatants were out of commission for several years since the peace accord with the government, Kabalu warned that these MNLF cells still possess high-powered firearms and ammunitions. He said the government should not underestimate these groups who might just be regrouping and might sympathize the breakaway group in Sulu.
Soldiers fighting in Sulu scored anew as they captured a major camp of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group Friday. The mountain stronghold of the Muslim extremist group outside Indanan town on southern Jolo island was overrun Thursday by about 400 soldiers from the Army's 53rd Infantry Battalion, said Jolo military chief Brigadier General Agustin Dema-ala. About 100 Abu Sayyaf defenders broke up into small groups as troops, backed by helicopter gun ships firing rockets, assaulted the camp on top of the Budkaha mountain, about 940 kilometers south of Manila, Dema-ala said. He said there were no government casualties. Civilians fleeing the fighting reported seeing some wounded gunmen. The camp "is the symbol of power of the Abu Sayyaf group, which provided sanctuary to lawless elements on Jolo," Dema-ala said. The capture of the base "shows the will of the government to assert itself in imposing the laws of the law and the determination of the government to go after violators of the law," he said. The camp is also a sanctuary for local Abu Sayyaf commander Albader Parad, whose gunmen killed three soldiers on security patrol in Indanan on February 19.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 12:33:11 AM ||
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Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005 00:00:00 ||
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#1
Well, considering the fact that Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono graduuated from US Army Airborne, Ranger, Infantry Officer Advanced Course, and Command and General Staff College - on at lesat three separate postings to USA - and he also spent some time with the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, and obtained a Masters degree at Webster University in St. Louis - this does sound reasonable.
BUSHEHR, Iran — Iran and Russia signed a nuclear fuel agreement Sunday, paving the way for Iran to get its first reactor up and running.
Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh (search) and Alexander Rumyantsev, the head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (search), signed the agreement at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The signing, which was delayed by a day, came after the two senior officials toured the $800 million complex.
Russia, which helped build the plant, has agreed to provide the fuel needed to run it — but only if Iran returns the spent fuel to prevent any possibility Tehran would extract plutonium from it to make an atomic bomb. Tehran (search) has agreed, but the two sides had disagreed on who should pay for its return.
It is certain that the Russians will get the fuel back . . . but will it be in the rods, or in a terminally ballistic arc?
The signing came a few days after a summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovakia, which touched on American concerns over Russian support for Iran's nuclear program.
Washington accuses Tehran of covertly trying to build a nuclear bomb, which Iran denies. Putin has said he is sure Iran's intentions are merely to generate energy, not create weapons, and that Russian cooperation with Tehran would continue.
It wasn't immediately clear whether Thursday's Bush-Putin summit had delayed the signing, which had been expected Saturday, but Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said "the Bush-Putin talks did not have an effect on the agreement. Our talks (with the Russians) have been successful."
Just ahead of the signing, Aghazadeh showed Rumyantsev Bushehr's nuclear fuel storage house and the reactor core, expected to be operational by late 2005 or early 2006.
"What I saw was much better and more than I had expected. Assembling operations in the past three to four months have been expedited," Rumyantsev said. Referring to the process to complete the plant, he added: "I can't say the situation is excellent, but it's very good."
Aghazadeh said the fuel storage area was built to international standards. "This storage house is ready to receive nuclear fuel," he said.
Iranian efforts to produce its own fuel rather than importing it have been a bigger concern in the international community than the deal with Russia. That's because the enrichment process can be carried further to produce material for nuclear weapons.
France, Britain and Germany are trying to secure an Iranian commitment to scrap enrichment plans in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for Tehran's efforts to join mainstream international organizations. Iran has suspended enrichment-related activities during the talks with the Europeans, which both sides have said were difficult, but insists the freeze will be brief.
Bush has expressed support for the European efforts. But documents being circulated among International Atomic Energy Agency board members in Vienna ahead of a board meeting Monday, and seen by The Associated Press there, indicated Washington would try to increase pressure on Tehran by the next agency board meeting in June should the European talks fail.
Maybe, just maybe, the talks will work and we can all breathe easy. But we felt the same way about NKor, who gave Billy almost as good a head job as Monica did, while they were busy fumbling around build nukes in the dark. In Islam, lying to a Kufir is not a sin . . . just one more way to get the job of killing him done. It is much more likely we will end up turning the Persian sands a nice shde of BLAAAAM!!!! before too long.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/27/2005 7:43:42 AM ||
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The Euros proposing giving economic aid to a major oil exporting nation in this age of record oil prices is insane. Of course if they want to bankrupt their taxpayers (remember them?) that is their thing.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 23:32 Comments ||
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BUSHEHR, Iran — Iran and Russia signed a nuclear fuel agreement Sunday, paving the way for Iran to get its first reactor up and running. Let's hope it doesn't run very long.
Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh (search) and Alexander Rumyantsev, the head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (search), signed the agreement at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The signing, which was delayed by a day, came after the two senior officials toured the $800 million complex.
Russia, which helped build the plant, has agreed to provide the fuel needed to run it — but only if Iran returns the spent fuel to prevent any possibility Tehran would extract plutonium from it to make an atomic bomb. Tehran (search) has agreed, but the two sides had disagreed on who should pay for its return.
The signing came a few days after a summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovakia, which touched on American concerns over Russian support for Iran's nuclear program.
Washington accuses Tehran of covertly trying to build a nuclear bomb, which Iran denies. Putin has said he is sure Iran's intentions are merely to generate energy, not create weapons, and that Russian cooperation with Tehran would continue.
It wasn't immediately clear whether Thursday's Bush-Putin summit had delayed the signing, which had been expected Saturday, but Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said "the Bush-Putin talks did not have an effect on the agreement. Our talks (with the Russians) have been successful."
Just ahead of the signing, Aghazadeh showed Rumyantsev Bushehr's nuclear fuel storage house and the reactor core, expected to be operational by late 2005 or early 2006.
"What I saw was much better and more than I had expected. Assembling operations in the past three to four months have been expedited," Rumyantsev said. Referring to the process to complete the plant, he added: "I can't say the situation is excellent, but it's very good."
Aghazadeh said the fuel storage area was built to international standards. "This storage house is ready to receive nuclear fuel," he said.
Iranian efforts to produce its own fuel rather than importing it have been a bigger concern in the international community than the deal with Russia. That's because the enrichment process can be carried further to produce material for nuclear weapons.
France, Britain and Germany are trying to secure an Iranian commitment to scrap enrichment plans in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for Tehran's efforts to join mainstream international organizations. Iran has suspended enrichment-related activities during the talks with the Europeans, which both sides have said were difficult, but insists the freeze will be brief.
Bush has expressed support for the European efforts. But documents being circulated among International Atomic Energy Agency board members in Vienna ahead of a board meeting Monday, and seen by The Associated Press there, indicated Washington would try to increase pressure on Tehran by the next agency board meeting in June should the European talks fail.
Everyone knew Putty would do this, so now there is absolutely no point in even going through the motions with that abortion on Turtle Bay.
Interesting times indeed.
Posted by: JerseyMike ||
02/27/2005 8:01:17 AM ||
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A blogger's scrapbook of Hafez and Bashar Assad photos looming over the people. I liked this one the best. On preview, I'd like to recommend this blog for updates on the Syria situation.
Posted by: Seafarious ||
02/27/2005 2:02:03 AM ||
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Iran, through the black market network, had accumulated all the knowledge it needed by the late 1980s to set up technology that can be used to make atomic weapons, diplomats familiar with the work of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Saturday.
The diplomats, who are familiar with the work of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, spoke to The Associated Press two days before the IAEA board meets on Iran and other potential world nuclear concerns.
An agency investigation during the past two years previously established that Iran ran a clandestine nuclear program for nearly two decades, including working on uranium enrichment - which can be used to make weapons.
The diplomats, who requested anonymity, suggested that the new revelations were significant because they indicated Iran had full possession of enrichment know-how from the black market network run by Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan earlier than previously believed.
The revelations came as last-minute disputes forced Iran and Russia to postpone the signing of an agreement to supply Iran with fuel for its first nuclear reactor, a deal strongly opposed by the United States.
Under the agreement, Russia will provide Iran with fuel and take back the spent fuel, a safeguard meant to banish fears Iran would misuse it to build nuclear weapons. U.N. nuclear experts also would monitor the facility.
Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, attributed the sudden delay to differences over the delivery time of the first shipment of fuel and the launch of the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Saeedi said the deal may be signed Sunday in Bushehr, the southern town where Iran's first reactor was built, using Russian help.
Nuclear concerns about Iran focus on its enrichment program because it can be used to process uranium for two purposes - as fuel for power generation or as the core of warheads. Iran insists its nuclear aims are peaceful, while the United States and its key allies say Tehran is interested in making weapons.
Britain, France and Germany are trying to secure an Iranian commitment to scrap enrichment plans in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for Tehran's efforts to join mainstream international organizations. Iran has suspended enrichment-related activities during talks with the Europeans but insists the freeze will be brief.
Both sides have described the talks as difficult - most recently, Hassan Rowhani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, accused the Europeans in a French newspaper interview published Friday of being "incapable of keeping their promises."
President Bush has expressed support for the European efforts. Also, nonproliferation officials with the U.S. State Department have grudgingly accepted a decision by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei not to publish a written report on the investigation of Iran's nuclear activities for the first time in two years of board meetings because of lack of major new findings.
Still, there was evidence ahead of Monday's IAEA board meeting of an American effort to ratchet up pressure on Tehran should the European talks fail.
A confidential position paper being circulated by the Americans to the other board members and shared in part with the AP called for a new written report on Iran by the board's June meeting. Furthermore, it urged that meeting to "take further action if needed" against Iran - in effect a demand that Tehran be hauled before the U.N. Security Council if there is any indication it was defying the agency board on nuclear matters.
A separate U.S. document outlined the need for a "Special Committee" to deal with nations violating the Nonproliferation Treaty - which Washington says Iran has done. That committee could "make recommendations to the board" to report suspect nations to the Security Council, said the document seen by the AP.
European diplomats representing IAEA board members said U.S. efforts were hurting the three-nation negotiations with Iran.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 1:28:35 AM ||
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That committee could "make recommendations to the board" to report suspect nations to the Security Council, said the document seen by the AP.
Reported to the SC, yeah, that'd be one helluva threat all right.
#2
...Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, accused the Europeans in a French newspaper interview published Friday of being "incapable of keeping their promises."
Well, that about covers both sides. LOL!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/28/2005 0:20 Comments ||
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A senior Hezbollah operative told two top Palestinian militants in the West Bank that he recruited the suicide bomber who blew himself up outside a Tel Aviv nightclub in an attack that killed four Israelis, the militants said Saturday.
The militants, local leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, said the operative, Kais Obeid, called them after the bombing and asked them to claim responsibility for the attack.
The two militants, one speaking from Ramallah and the other from the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, said they turned down the request because they feared they would be targeted by Israeli or Palestinian security forces.
Obeid told the Al Aqsa leaders he had recruited Palestinians from the West Bank town of Tulkarem to carry out the bombing, the two militant leaders said on condition of anonymity. Obeid said he paid money to the Tulkarem cell but would not say how much. Obeid was vague about whether the bomber and his local handlers had ties to Palestinian militant groups, the two Al Aqsa leaders said.
In Tulkarem, Palestinian security forces on Saturday arrested two men in connection with the suicide bombing. Security forces said the two had ties to the militant Islamic Jihad group.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to derail a Feb. 8 truce declared by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Hezbollah has hundreds of West Bank gunmen on its payroll, most from Al Aqsa, a violent group with ties to Abbas' ruling Fatah Party.
This article starring:
KAIS OBEID
Hezbollah
Hezbollah
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 1:27:08 AM ||
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Hokay, we can blame them too. Hezbollah, Syria, Fatah, al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades, you're all on the hook.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005 18:16 Comments ||
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Higher Shiite Council Vice President Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan stressed during his Friday sermon the necessity of holding dialogue, and highlighted Syria's positive role in Lebanon. Qabalan said: "Syria gave so much to Lebanon; it maintained the stability during the country's ordeal and was a thorn in the eye of the Zionists."
"And that's the important thing. The fact that we're a colony is just a side issue. Ignore it..."
Qabalan added that the Lebanese people should thank Syria for its contribution to the development of the country, and should also not throw random accusations at its leaders. Qabalan refused calls for the disarmament of Hizbullah.
"Certainly not! It's not like we have a government, or our own army or anything. Who's gonna keep the wolf from our door if not Hezbollah?"
Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani urged the Lebanese to wait for the results of investigations into the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri. In a statement issued Friday, Qabbani said only serious investigations will unveil the identity of Hariri's killers, adding that the people should not hold any party responsible before the investigations yield results.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt slammed Prime Minister Omar Karami Friday for his comments the previous day regarding Lebanon's dependence on a Syrian presence in the country. Following Cabinet's weekly session on Thursday, the premier had bluntly said that the Lebanese Army was not yet ready to fill the "vacuum" if Syria withdrew its army and might collapse along the same sectarian lines that triggered off the Lebanese civil war.
It would seem the government should have to answer for the poor state of the Lebanese army. My guess is that too many resources have been going into maintaining Hezbollah.
During a radio talk show on Friday, Jumblatt said: "Karami should be brought to justice and tried for his statement." Following his meeting with the Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, Beirut MP Nabil de Freij also had harsh criticism for Karami, and said that the premier's remarks were an "insult" to the Lebanese Army. De Friej said: "What Karami said was first of all an insult to President Emile Lahoud, because he built the army following the end of the war."
So he's saying the army is up to the task of defending the country without having to salute the Syrian hegemons?
The Tripoli Gathering also issued a statement Friday criticizing Karami's statement, saying: "The government has crossed all the red lines, to the limits that Karami is threatening to divide the army and create instability in case Syria withdrew its forces from Beirut." Meanwhile, Metn MP Ghassan Mokheiber said he wished that Karami could be more responsible in his statements. Mokheiber said: "I wonder how he sees a possible civil war at a time that is witnessing such high levels of national unity."
Perhaps because that's what was supposed to come of it?
However, Lahoud said that the government would not allow any security breaches to take place. Lahoud said: "The passing away of Hariri was a great loss to Lebanon, and his assassination aimed at getting the country into a serious crisis." He added that whatever the result of Monday's Parliamentary session, all political parties in Lebanon would have to discuss the situation. Lahoud said: "Following the extension, I called for a dialogue to take place between all political parties in Lebanon, but unfortunately the opposition did not respond to this gesture."
Maybe they're afraid somebody's going to try and bump them off?
He added: "But our differences should not lead to the destruction of Lebanon." The president also asserted that investigations into Hariri's murder would continue until those behind it were known.
And what're you gonna do if it's pinned on the Syrians?
He said: "The government will cooperate with the investigators, because it is in Lebanon's best interest that the truth is revealed." Lahoud's remarks come amid a high state of tension in the country, with a public strike called for by the opposition expected to take place Monday when Parliament will discuss Hariri's killing and consider withdrawing confidence in the Cabinet.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Lebanon's Muslim clerics stressed the importance of national unity in facing the challenges ahead on Friday, and the necessity for dialogue as a way to avoid conflicts. Senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah urged the Lebanese to ignore the statements of foreign countries regarding the situation in Lebanon, and asked them to hold discussions between parties, despite all the conflicts. Fadlallah said: "We are afraid that the international game aims at reintroducing the country to the vicious circle of war, which we could overcome in the past thanks to communication and dialogue."
Interesting bit of reasoning there. Hariri gets boomed, and the most likely suspects are the Syrians and/or the Lebanese, followed by al-Qaeda. The attempt to blame it on the Mossad hasn't stuck, not even in Nutland. So Mullah Fudlullah's idea now is to just ignore what the neighbors are saying and move on...
The remarks came during his Friday sermon, delivered at Al-Imamayn al-Hassanay Mosque in Haret Hreik. According to Fadlallah, the United States is not concerned about Lebanon's sovereignty and independence, but only cares about Israel's security.
I can remember when we were about equally concerned with Lebanon, but that was a long time ago, before people like Mullah Fudlullah achieved prominence.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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The Islamic Group in Lebanon, the nation's largest Sunni group, has said it will not attend a gathering at Ain al-Tina of political forces that support the Syrian-backed Lebanese government. The group on Friday demanded at a news conference in Beirut the resignation of President Emile Lahoud and the dismissal of all security officials in Lebanon, in the wake of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The Islamic Group added that it wanted Lahud to resign only after parliamentary elections and the restoration of stability. For his part, Lahoud cautioned that the country's political crisis could affect economic institutions. At a meeting with top executives of major Lebanese economic institutions, Lahud reiterated his call for dialogue with the opposition, which he accused of exploiting foreign pressure.
I still can't tell who dunnit. If Karami steps down, that leaves Lahoud much more exposed. I think he'll try and tough it out, but at this point it's looking like he's not going to be able to. That could turn around, I suppose, but Wally Jumblatt seems like he's on a roll.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005 00:00:00 ||
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A controversial deal between Russia and Iran on supplying the Islamic republic with nuclear fuel and launching its first atomic power plant hit an unexpected last-minute snag on Saturday. Russia's top atomic energy official Alexander Rumyantsev and his Iranian counterpart Gholamreza Aghazadeh had been due to sign the contract in the morning and then hold a joint conference.
But the spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Yaghoub Jabarian, was forced to send reporters home, telling them "the negotiations are dragging on. We do not know when they will conclude," he said, adding a press conference will "maybe" take place on Sunday but giving no further explanation. It was the latest and most spectacular hitch to a contract that the United States -- which accuses Iran of using an atomic energy drive as a cover for weapons development -- has been trying to convince Russia not to sign. The deal would cap an 800 million dollar (606-million-euro) contract to build and bring on line the Bushehr reactor in southern Iran, and Russia has so far refused to back down to US demands. But Moscow had refused to go ahead with the fuel supply contract unless Iran agreed to return spent fuel, which potentially could be reprocessed and upgraded to weapons use. The signing of the fuel deal was declared to be imminent after Tehran evetually agreed to the condition.
The Russian-built plant at Bushehr -- whose construction had been launched by Germany in the 1970s -- was initially due to go on line last year, but had been held up by the fuel issue. Bushehr was raised during a summit between US President Goerge W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Bratislava on Thursday, where both publicly agreed agreed that Iran should not develop nuclear weapons. According to Russian diplomats, the United States has been lobbying against Moscow's involvement in Iran's nuclear programme "on a daily basis" -- and right up until the Bratislava meeting. The delay to the signing also threw into doubt the remainder of Rumyantsev's itinerary. He was due to visit Bushehr on Sunday and hold further talks with his Iranian counterpart on future contracts.
Posted by: Seafarious ||
02/27/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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"the negotiations are dragging on. We do not know when they will conclude,"
Nothing to see here, just the Iranians moving the goalposts yet again. The EU could've told you that, Vlad. Word up.
The camouflage-clad militiamen marched down from the mountains in four columns of hundreds each, stomping their boots in unison.
"Keep looking forward!" an officer yelled.
"Kurdistan or death!" the soldiers shouted at once, their words thundering over the sound of heels striking the ground.
Here at a training camp in the eastern hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, there is little doubt about to whom these soldiers owe their allegiance.
Many say their first loyalty lies with a major Kurdish political party. Then they offer it to Kurdistan, the rugged autonomous region in northern Iraq the size of Switzerland. There is little mention of the nation of Iraq or the Iraqi Army.
"All of the pesh merga of Kurdistan, we're fighting for Kurdistan," one of the soldiers, Fermen Ibrahim, 25, told a visitor, calling the militia by its Kurdish name, which means "those who face death."
As political jockeying rages in Baghdad to determine the shape of the new government - how Islamic it will be, whether it has strong or weak central powers - one of the most troublesome issues emerging is whether political parties, especially those of the Kurds and Shiites, can keep their private armies. Kurdish leaders say they intend to write into the new constitution a system granting considerable powers to individual regions, one that will legitimize their use of the pesh merga.
If the Kurds succeed, they will achieve the right of regional powers to set up their own armies, possibly leading to warlord-style fiefs across Iraq. Until their strong showing in the recent national elections, Kurdish leaders appeared to agree, at least in public, with the American goal of dismantling militias. Now they stand in open defiance of it.
The pesh merga, with recruits from two Kurdish parties, total about 100,000 soldiers. A source of ethnic pride, they fought tenaciously against Saddam Hussein and are now relied upon by American commanders to battle the Arab-led insurgency in the north. Perhaps most important in the current power vacuum, they provide Kurdish leaders with armed backing in their demands for broad autonomy.
"We want to keep our pesh merga because they are a symbol of resistance," said Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the son of Mustafa Barzani, a revered Kurdish leader who founded the pesh merga in the 1960's. "It's not a matter to be discussed or negotiated."
If the Kurds get the constitution they want, the pesh merga would nominally fall under the oversight of the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad, Kurdish officials say, but in reality would be controlled by regional commanders. The two Kurdish parties each have a ministry of pesh merga, which they say they intend to keep.
The Kurds also say the pesh merga will maintain all the trappings of a conventional army, with an officers' college, training camps and armor and artillery units all operating independently of the rest of the Iraqi security forces.
The major Shiite parties, who have the largest share of seats in the constitutional assembly, may try to block the Kurds on the militia issue to limit the autonomy of the Kurds. But those parties have significant militias that they may seek to keep, or to at least incorporate into the Iraqi security forces as intact units. Their armies generally stay hidden on the streets of Baghdad but have been active in the Shiite heartland of the south, operating checkpoints and patrols and, in some cases, enforcing strict Islamic law, like cracking down on alcohol vendors.
The leaders of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party, have repeatedly said that the party's Iranian-trained armed wing, the Badr Organization, at least 15,000 strong, can help provide security in the new Iraq.
The former governing Sunni Arabs, a minority now feeling threatened by the other groups, will probably oppose any move by the Kurds and Shiites to legitimize their militias.
American commanders publicly say that all armed groups in Iraq must be state sponsored and that militarized units should not be organized by ethnicity or sect. But they privately acknowledge the extreme difficulties of breaking up the militias. Lt. Col. Eric Durr, the head of civil affairs for the 42nd Infantry Division, charged with overseeing eastern Kurdistan, said it was now up to the new Iraqi government to figure out what to do with the militias.
"It's really a political issue for the Iraqi government to work out," he said.
The Americans are relying on the pesh merga to fight insurgents. Across the north, particularly in the besieged city of Mosul, American commanders have supported Iraqi officials in deploying large units of armed Kurds into the streets.
But the pesh merga also exemplify the pitfalls of private armies - in the mid-1990's, the militias of the two Kurdish parties turned their guns on each other in a civil war that left at least 3,000 dead.
"What I see happening now in Iraq is the potential drift toward warlordism," said Larry Diamond, a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which tried but failed to disband militias before handing sovereignty to the Iraqis last June.
"If things go bad," he added, "if the center does not hold, if ethnic and regional divisions are not well and carefully managed by the country's political leaders, particularly at the center, then the existence of all these militias - both those preceding the handover of power and those that have arisen in recent months - could facilitate the descent of the country into some kind of Lebanon-style civil war."
The presence of the pesh merga "is bound to strengthen the resolve of Kurdish political leaders not to yield on their demands for far-reaching autonomy," said Mr. Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
The pesh merga are everywhere in Iraqi Kurdistan - along the highways, atop government buildings, riding in convoys. They wear a hodgepodge of uniforms, from traditional baggy outfits to desert camouflage hand-me-downs from the United States Army. There is one thing that appears to be consistent, though: they think of themselves as Kurds first and Iraqis second.
"If I work hard to protect my people and my cities, indirectly I'll serve Iraq," Col. Mehdi Dosky, 44, the commander of the training camp here, said as he sat behind his desk in a dark green Iraqi Army uniform. Two officers on a couch pored over evaluation forms of the trainees. A map on one wall showed the theoretical pan-Kurdish nation that Kurds in the Middle East hope to carve out one day - a huge territory stretching from the Mediterranean to western Iran and taking in large parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
"We don't think it's a good idea to disband our army," said Colonel Dosky, whose father served as a pesh merga from the militia's first days. "We want to keep our forces and have them protect our region. The Kurds will protect their area, and other people will use their forces to protect their own areas. There are too many ethnic and religious problems right now in Iraq."
The American dependence on such proxy armies is clearest in Mosul, where Kurds make up nearly a quarter of the population. In November, Sunni Arab rebels overran police stations and forced thousands of officers to quit, and the Arab governor requested the aid of two Kurdish battalions of the Iraqi National Guard.
Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the head of Task Force Olympia, the American force which until last week was charged with controlling Mosul, used Kurds to guard his headquarters.
But the presence of an ethnic or sect-based militia in a diverse city can quickly inflame tensions.
Such is the case in Kirkuk, the oil-rich city where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen uneasily live side by side. At the request of Arabs and Turkmen, the American military asked pesh merga to leave the city after Mr. Hussein fell. Last summer, Kurdish officials said, the Americans allowed 300 pesh merga to return temporarily to fight insurgents.
"Always, it's a sensitive issue," said Suphi Sabir, a senior official in the Iraqi Turkmen Front, the most prominent Turkmen party in Kirkuk. "But we won't start a fight over it because the result would be very bad."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 1:24:15 AM ||
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They get it. They will fight. If the PC fools / State wankers would get out of the equation, their mere presence would deter terr activity. They must stay. They should be allowed to actively patrol - until the Police measure up. Everyone who does not like their presence is free to get the fuck out of Kurdistan, er, Northern Iraq, heh.
Palestinians expressed anger Saturday at an overnight suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed four Israelis and threatened a fragile truce, a departure from former times when they welcomed attacks on their Israeli foes.
Official condemnations and denials were followed by public anger toward the perpetrators as Israeli blamed Syria and the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the attack. The Palestinians pointed fingers at the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. Syria denied the allegations.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas convened his top security chiefs directly after the bombing and issued a strong statement pledging to track down and punish the culprits. The three main Palestinian militant groups — including Islamic Jihad — initially denied involvement. A branch of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in the West Bank city of Nablus, even condemned the attack.
"We will not allow anyone to sabotage our national goals, aspirations and ambitions," Abbas said Saturday in the West Bank town of Ramallah. "All Palestinian factions, including the prisoners, were outraged by this operation. I emphasize that there is another party that wants to sabotage the peace process."
Palestinians, weary after four years of violence, welcomed an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire declaration at a Mideast summit in Egypt on Feb. 8, and many accused Hezbollah of intentionally trying to destroy the truce.
"If Hezbollah was behind this attack, I as a Palestinian tell them, 'Deal with your own problems and stay out of ours,'" said Akram Abu Sbaa, 38, of Jenin.
Another Jenin resident, Bashar Jalloudi, 40, said Hezbollah's alleged involvement in the Tel Aviv bombing would only hurt Palestinian interests at a time of relative calm.
"Where was Hezbollah when we were being killed and our homes were being demolished? They were standing on the sidelines watching with their hands tied," Jalloudi said.
Friday night's bombing, carried out by an attacker from the West Bank town of Tulkarem, killed four people and wounded about 50 others.
If a Palestinian group is found responsible, it could derail the cease-fire and put tremendous pressure on Abbas to crack down, as Israel has demanded. If an outside group was involved, Israel is likely to give him more leeway.
Israel blamed Syria and Islamic Jihad. Palestinian security officials said Hezbollah was to blame. Both Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah receive backing from Damascus.
In contrast to the dozens of previous suicide bombings, no celebrations were held in the West Bank on Saturday and militant groups didn't hang the customary posters of congratulations at the bomber's home.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 1:00:00 AM ||
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Ball is in the Paleos' court. If they start ratting out the terrorists and get them out of circulation or killed and the Paleos will have a good life, gahrrr-ohhnn-teeeeeed.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 1:05 Comments ||
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Abu Mazin is speaking well, but only his actions against the terrorists, along with the rest of the Palestinians, will tell if he is serious about peace or has simply formed a deeper cover than Arafat.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/27/2005 7:54 Comments ||
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They just don't have the same budget for celebrations, now that Saddam is out of the picture.
There are CIA paramilitary officers and other US personnel in Pakistan dedicated to look for Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, says a congressional report. The Congressional Research Service, which advises Congress and writes policy briefs for US lawmakers, says in a recent report that some of these agents are based in Pakistan as "civilian contractors." The report points out that both Osama bin Laden and Al Zawahiri escaped the December 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan and, "according to most assessments, fled into Pakistan, where they have continued to elude capture by Pakistani forces and agents."
The report notes that a March 2004 Pakistan forces' offensive against suspected terrorist hideouts in the South Waziristan region, failed to find these two or other major Al Qaeda figures. In December 2004, the report says, President Pervez Musharraf also acknowledged that the "trail has gone cold," a characterization generally backed by US observers. Although Osama and Zawahiri remain at large, US officials say that much progress has been made against Al Qaeda, but that more remains to be done.
The CRS report quotes former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet as telling a congressional hearing last year that "the Al Qaeda leadership structure we charted after Sept 11 is seriously damaged, but the group remains as committed as ever to attacking the US homeland... But do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting Al Qaeda is defeated. It is not."
Of the top 37 top Al Qaeda operatives identified by US agencies after Sept. 11, 2001, 15 have been killed or captured.
The CRS says that the Bush administration points to the capture or killing of senior Al Qaeda leaders as evidence of progress against Al Qaeda, adding that some key Al Qaeda operatives were arrested in Pakistan by Pakistani law-enforcement agencies. Of the top 37 top Al Qaeda operatives identified by US agencies after Sept. 11, 2001, 15 have been killed or captured. The most notable among them include: number three leader Mohammad Atef (killed in Afghanistan by US Predator); Sept 11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (arrested by Pakistan); key recruiter and planner Abu Zubaydah (arrested by Pakistan); Southeast Asian affiliate operational leader Hanbali (Riduan Isammudin), a key operative of Jemaah Islamiyah (arrested in Thailand); Sept 11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh (arrested by Pakistan); and Abdul Ali al-Harithi, key plotter in Yemen (killed by US Predator in Yemen).
In the aggregate, since the Sept 11th attacks, about 3,000 suspected Al Qaeda members have been detained or arrested by about 90 countries, of which 650 are under US control. According to the CRS, US officials have repeatedly denied that during the Afghan war the United States directly supported those volunteers who came to Afghanistan for fighting the Soviets but the report notes that the United States did covertly finance these Mujahideen factions.
The Mujahideen factions we supported were Afghan parties.
From 1981 to 1991, the United States provided about $3 billion to them to facilitate their jihad in Afghanistan. During this period, neither Osama nor his associates were known to have openly advocated, undertaken, or planned any direct attacks against the United States, although they all were critical of US support for Israel in the Middle East.
The report quotes US officials as saying that Al Qaeda cells and associates have been located in over 70 countries. Among the groups identified as members of the Al Qaeda coalition after the 9/11, virtually all are still active today.
Interpol says the threat from Al Qaida has not eased since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Interpol director Ronald Noble said Al Qaida continues to plan major attacks on the West. Noble said that despite its losses Al Qaida has been planning strikes with chemical and biological weapons.
"The terrorist threat is as real today as in 2001 when Sept. 11 occurred," Noble said. "The number of terrorist attacks that have occurred around the world and the evidence that has been seized revealing the kind of planning that Al Qaida has done in the area of biological weapons or chemical weapons is enough evidence for me to be concerned about it."
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. on Feb. 22, Noble said Interpol has urged its members to plan a defense for an Al Qaida biological attack. In March, the agency has scheduled a conference of police and health officials in Lyons, France.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005 12:23:29 AM ||
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The "Threat" never drops, but quality and quantity of execution does.
Cleric cripples 11-year old
According to Khabrain, a cleric named Qari Rauf in an Okara-Dipalpur seminary beat an 11-year-old boy so badly that his bones were broken. The boy was sent to the seminary to learn the Quran but on a small mistake Qari Rauf beat him so savagely that his arm and leg bones were broken. After that Qari Rauf threw him in a room and filled him full of sleeping pills and painkillers. After that the boy became unconscious. The Qari put him on a motorbike and threw him in front of his home.
Hajj is stay at Arafat
Writing in Jang Allama Tahirul Qadiri stated that only one act during Hajj was compulsory (farz) and that was stay (wuquf) at the plain of Arafat. Hajj was complete even if one did not even say one's prayers (nafal) at Arafat. He said there was mystery in the act of going around (tawaf) Kaaba with uncut nails and long hair and wild steps. Arafat meant getting to know and this plain was where Adam and Eve got to know each other again after being sent down from Heaven. The pilgrim, among other non-compulsory rituals, has to kill the ram at Mina to commemorate the tradition of Abraham. Abdul Qadir Sheikh wrote in Nawa-e-Waqt that even if a man just once ran across Arafat his Hajj was complete.
Killing the goat on Eid
According to Khabrain, the killing of a sacrificial animal was wajib (obligatory) and not farz (compulsory) during Hajj because the Prophet PBUH did so in light of the verses of the Quran. Allah would give sawab equal to the hair of the sacrificed animal who would be raised on the Day of Judgement. Daily Insaf reported that in France 1000 Muslims were fined for killing their goats in areas not allowed by the government. About 600 dead animals too were confiscated. France allows slaughter only in designated places. Insaf also reported that in Lahore one cow escaped the knife and climbed the roof of a house and from there jumped from one roof to another as if it knew it was about to be killed. Daily Nawa-e-Waqt reported that in Karachi hundreds of khalain (skins) were robbed under gun by two parties contending for them: Jamaat Islami and MQM.
Dr Israr goes soft on India
Writing in daily Insaf, Abdullah Muntazir stated that during his long visit in India, Dr Israr Ahmad of Tanzim-e-Islami had said that the Muslims of India were doing much better than the Muslims of Pakistan and that even the IG Police of Andhra Pradesh was a Muslim. Dr Israr said that in Pakistan the maximum number of people at his lecture were 1500 but in India they were 15000, including 5000 ladies. He then compared himself to the Holy Prophet PBUH and said that he was not valued in Mecca but was greatly prized in Madina where he migrated. (The writer asked him to migrate to India.) Dr Israr also said that the jihad in Kashmir was not fi-sabeel Allah (in the way of Allah) as allowed by the Quran because such a jihad had to be ordained by an Islamic state. He thought only the war of the Taliban against the Muslim Northern Alliance was jihad. Dr Israr's negation of Kashmir jihad must have offended the families of 10,000 Pakistanis martyred in Held Kashmir.
If innocent, walk on fire
Daily Khabrain reported that Captain Hammad who was accused of raping a lady doctor at Sui in Balochistan had offered to submit himself to a DNA test, but the people of Sui were not convinced. They said the only way he could be exonerated was if he walked on fire without screaming and without getting blisters on his feet. Many people proved their innocence in this manner among the Baloch.
How 'bakra' became 'bakri'
According to daily Insaf, a man of Muridke fainted when his sacrificial goat turned from bakra (male goat) to bakri (female goat). He had bought two goats for Rs 40,000 but was sure he had bought he-goats. But when he reached home and saw underneath the goats, he discovered them to be female goats. The seller had taped the udders in such a way that they looked like male genitals. When he removed the tape the two animals were bakri. He fainted from the insult.
Stoning the Satan at Mina
Daily Nawa-e-Waqt wrote that at Mina the hajis gather stones to throw at the jamaraat or the three devils, seven times each. Abraham was going to sacrifice his son when he was distracted by Satan. Allah asked the prophet to throw seven pebbles at him. The Satan appeared three times and was struck by seven stones each time. Now there are three pillars where the pilgrims throw stones as non-compulsory but obligatory sunnat. Jang reported that at least three hajis were killed and dozens injured while stoning the satans after Africans pilgrims brought in an ailing haji on their shoulders, which blocked the stream of hajis and caused them to stampede.
About intellectual pigmies
Writing in Nawa-e-Waqt, Irfan Siddiqi was offended with the fikri balishtiya (intellectual Lilliputians) who said that instead of trying to fight a war with the United States the Muslims should first prepare the muscles for war. Irfan Siddiqi stated that these blind men did not realise that while the Muslims prepared themselves, the United States would not sit still but will advance even further, thus negating the progress of the Muslims. Hence it was not preparation that the Muslims needed but ghairat (sense of honour) which can enable one for immediate war with rusted rifles and lathi (sticks).
Hameed Gul's daughter speaks out!
Writing in daily Pakistan magazine Tanvir Qaiser Shahid revealed that the buses run by ex-ISI chief General Hameed Gul's daughter Uzma Gul had killed 17 people in the past four years. The bus service called Varan was run on loans taken from Askari Bank. This year in January when a Varan bus killed a student, boys got out of hand and torched 10 Varan buses. Uzma Gul said after that that students should be disallowed motorbikes. According to daily Pakistan, Varan buses owned by the daughter of ex-ISI chief General Hameed Gul have caused a lot of unrest in Rawalpindi and Islamabad where they ply in great strength. After the students burnt ten buses in the wake of an accident, owner Uzma Gul got her service to strike, which led to great discomfort among the commuting citizens. SSP Rawalpindi said that he could not allow Varan to kill ten people in a year, especially as a sub-inspector Ismat Niazi that he had fired for drunkenness was now employed by Uzma as her adviser. Varan tours had 12 legal complaints (parcha) against it in Rawalpindi while Varan had 26 complaints against students.
Uzma Gul the transporter
Daily Pakistan wrote that ex-ISI chief General Hameed Gul's daughter was a brave transporter owning a fleet of buses that plied from Rawalpindi to Taxila. But she faced a lot of resistance from the administration and other vested interests in the business. Once she was also arrested and put behind bars by military police but her powerful father got her out. She began by running one bus in Sargodha in 1994. Then she became an exporter of medicines to Central Asia. Now she had a fleet in Rawalpindi but her facilities for passengers were minimal and sections set aside for women were too small. According to daily Pakistan, owner of Varan Tours, Uzma Gul got into trouble with corps commander Rawalpindi over the adda of her buses as the area belonged to the army which had acquired it. Not only was the corps commander against her and once shouted at her but DC Rawalpindi Major Ziaul Haq too began harassing her. According to the paper the area she used to park her buses was worth crores of rupees.
Hameed Gul's acquired land
According to daily Pakistan, although the daughter of the ex-ISI chief Hameed Gul claimed that he had only two squares of land, the paper referred to an investigative report which gave proof that he had acquired 15 squares of land along the Indian border at a time when he was serving as a major. He ousted a number of farmers from their land who then moved the High Court. When the court decided the matter in his favour by the year 1986 he had become corps commander and was well on his way to becoming the ISI chief and many plaintiffs had begun to stand down. The title of the investigative report was: General Hameed Gul nay sainkron aikar arazi kaisay banayi (How did General Hameed Gul acquire hundreds of acres of land). The land was in Shakargarh in three villages called Adha, Auliya and Bhopa.
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02/27/2005 12:09:05 AM ||
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Many people proved their innocence in this manner (walking on hot coals - Ed.) among the Baloch.
As the harsh Afghan winter nears an end, attacks by Taliban guerrillas are expected to rise, a U.S. military official said on Saturday, two days after more than 22 rebels and Afghan troops died in a fresh surge of violence. But the military said it had no plan to increase the number of the 18,000 U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. "We can look at history and see that historically, attacks have increased as winter subsides," Major Steve Wollman, a spokesman for the U.S. military, told a press briefing. "I think we can expect more attacks... coalition forces remain vigilant and prepared to deal with these threats."
But rebel activity has eased over the winter, and U.S.-led forces operating in the south and southeast have kept up the pressure on Afghanistan's vanquished rulers following their failure to disrupt an historic presidential election in October. Taliban officials early this week said winter had limited their activity and said once the cold weather ended and snow in their mountains hideouts melted, they would step up their attacks. Taliban guerrillas on Thursday staged a series of attacks on government forces in several areas near the border with Pakistan, killing 10 Afghan troops, wounding eight others and also one U.S. soldier. Afghan and U.S. forces say they killed 13 Taliban members in those attacks, the bloodiest in months.
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02/27/2005 12:09:03 AM ||
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More than four years since the launch of the campaign to catch Osama bin Laden "dead of alive", the US has initiated a new phase in the "war on terror" to counter perceived threats from al-Qaeda generated by a new breed of operatives spawned in the post-September 11 era. Unlike the pre-September 11 al-Qaeda, the structure, central command, depth and whereabouts of the latest incarnation remain largely a mystery.
An Asia Times Online investigation based on interviews with well-placed sources in Pakistan who have been in coordination with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at a very senior level attempts to shed some light on today's threat from al-Qaeda.
What is known is that the al-Qaeda network has been battered over the past few years, with curbs on its ability to access money and coordinate. Out of this, though, new groups have sprung up worldwide, strongly politically motivated, patient and with the broader perspective of toppling pro-US governments. This development has not gone unnoticed in Langley, Virginia - CIA headquarters - which has advised Washington to develop a counter-strategy to be on a "war footing" all over the world in the shape of alliances with Europe and a powerful North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) presence in South and Central Asia and the Middle East.
Almost as a publicity stunt to announce its newfound determination, the United States has launched a massive US$57 million campaign in Pakistan's press and electronic media (and in other countries), drawing attention to the world's most wanted man and reaffirming the $25 million bounty on bin Laden's head.
Though there have been claims in the media of a good response to the advertisements, the media blitz is just the first salvo in a broader battle.
The US campaign to catch bin Laden began in earnest in the last months of 1999, when the administration of president Bill Clinton started serious dialogue with Pakistan, offering an aid package in return for Islamabad allowing US forces to use its land and air space. Bin Laden was then in Afghanistan as a "guest" of the Taliban, operating jihadi training camps, and had been linked to the 1998 bombings at US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in which more than 200 people died.
The US has subsequently spent untold millions of dollars trying to catch bin Laden. Indeed, his trail has gone completely cold since last September when a tip placed him in the Bush Mountains in Shawal, North Waziristan, in Pakistan's tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. But he could not be found, despite a comprehensive search operation. Now all operations in Waziristan to root out him and his supporters have been suspended and it is strongly believed he is no longer in Pakistan. And he left no clues as to his next destination.
Well-placed people Asia Times Online spoke to maintain that the new phase of the "war on terror" has started across the world, but unlike the present campaign in Pakistan, the aim is not to trace bin Laden, but rather his "links".
After interrogations of several people arrested in the past few months in Balochistan - prominent among them being Sharifal Misri, an Egyptian said to be an important link to bin Laden - it has emerged that thousands of youths in many countries have taken inspiration from bin Laden's calls for jihad against the US. However, that was not the end of the matter. Many of these youths have managed to organize themselves into independent anti-US groups, and through interaction in various places in Europe and the Middle East with like-minded people have ultimately made contact with al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda itself has stopped all operations pending a new phase. In the meantime it is focusing on developing these new links - the very links that the US is now after.
"Most of al-Qaeda's cells have either been caught or exposed, and they just cannot operate. The present threat is the fast-growing network inspired by Osama bin Laden. This new network is loosely connected [to al-Qaeda] among the top brass, but for sure is associated with it, and the US and Pakistan are both looking forward to catching this new network and their links to reach bin Laden. The network is not in Pakistan and Afghanistan alone, but all across the world," explained a well-placed contact who has 35 years of experience in the counter-intelligence and internal-security business. He spoke to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity.
"There is no indication that they are from a specific community or ethnic group. They can be anyone, even blonds from the West. They are predominantly Western-educated, and not so much from Islamic seminaries," he added.
A case in point is that of a US citizen by the name of Ahmed Abu Ali, 23. He was indicted in the US Federal Court near Washington on Tuesday after being held in Saudi Arabia since June 2003. He faces six charges, including plotting to assassinate President George W Bush and supporting al-Qaeda's terrorist network.
This assassination charge might appear somewhat far-fetched, but investigations into his life substantiate a strong inspiration from al-Qaeda and its program, which he aimed to follow. Abu Ali, who grew up in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, did not enter a plea during his initial appearance, but said through his lawyer that he had been tortured while in Saudi custody.
His family and friends describe him as a mild-mannered boy active in northern Virginia's Muslim community, but the 16-page indictment accuses Abu Ali of conspiring to kill Bush either by getting "close enough to the president to shoot him on the street" or by "detonating a car bomb". Abu Ali "obtained a religious blessing ... to assassinate Mr Bush", the charges read. It is also alleged that Abu Ali wanted to "become a planner of terrorist operations like Mohammed Atta and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, well-known al-Qaeda terrorists associated with the attacks on September 11, 2001".
The indictment, however, insists that Abu Ali made contact with al-Qaeda members between September 2002 and June 2003 and received training in the use of weapons, including hand grenades and other explosives, as well as in document forgery. The indictment said he discussed an assassination attempt with at least two other conspirators, one of whom gave him the religious blessing. He also allegedly tried to make his way to Afghanistan to fight against Americans, but could not get there because he was denied the visa he needed to cross through Iran, the indictment said.
The indictment refers to 11 co-conspirators who were in Saudi Arabia with Abu Ali, but neither their names nor their nationalities were disclosed. The document says at least two of the 11 were on a public Saudi government list of 19 people suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in the kingdom. The list came out days before a series of bombings in May 2003 in Riyadh killed 34 people, including nine Americans. Abu Ali was arrested by Saudi authorities on June 9, 2003, on suspicion of involvement in the bombings. He had been studying at the University of Medina.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation search of his home in Falls Church shortly after his June 2003 arrest turned up Arabic audio tapes promoting violent jihad and the killing of Jews; an undated, two-page document praising Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and the September 11 attacks; a book written by al-Qaeda chieftain Ayman al-Zawahiri that characterizes democracy as a new religion that must be destroyed by war; and a copy of Handguns magazine with a subscription label bearing the name Ahmed Ali.
Without pre-judging Abu Ali, US intelligence believes that he is a typical model of the new al-Qaeda-inspired generation and "links" in days when the traditional al-Qaeda has been curtailed.
Piecing together information obtained by Asia Times Online, there does not appear to be an al-Qaeda threat in the near future on the scale of the US embassies in Africa or small-scale bomb attacks. Instead, the focus will be pressure to topple pro-US governments in Muslim states and to kickstart the faltering resistance in Afghanistan. The aspiration is to once again make the country a hub for global mujahideen, as it was in the anti-Soviet years of the 1980s.
The US response can be expected to manifest itself in a stronger alliance with Europe, which will include intelligence sharing. Construction work has already begun on a new NATO base in Herat in west Afghanistan, and US officials have confirmed that they would like more military bases in the country, in addition to the use of bases in Pakistan. NATO bases in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East are also in the cards.
"Three years of active participation in the war on terror have got me to the realization that we only searched out and cut branches, only for them to be replaced with new ones, and this goes on and on. Now we enter a phase when we are standing in the complete dark with no mark of the enemy, yet he is around and is ready to strike at his time of choice, when, where and how nobody knows," said a senior field official involved in intelligence analysis. "After having a theoretical education in counter-intelligence at Langley and in London, and having done several joint ventures with Western agencies, the present threat has only one answer. And that is justice in the Middle East."
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02/27/2005 12:07:13 AM ||
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Khaled Mishaal, political bureau chairman of the Hamas Movement, told a press conference in Doha a couple of days ago that pressures on Syria might negatively affect his Movement. Mishaal described pressures on Syria as "worrisome" and added that the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Al-Hariri also raised concern and carried negative repercussions on Hamas. Asked whether Hamas would get out of Syria, he said that his Movement maintained presence in various countries whether announced or otherwise.
Which doesn't answer the question of whether they're going to get out of Syria...
He affirmed that Hamas' relations with the Arab countries were good and added, "Our presence was no burden on anyone but it only attracted the oppressive American pressures".
"But that's not a burden..."
Over a year ago Palestinian officials based in Damascus maintained a low key following the USA's pressures on Syria to restrict what it called the presence of "extremist" Palestinian organizations on its territory. Mishaal further said that his Movement would not give up the resistance weapons, and said that if the PA security forces used arms against the people then their weapons would be illegitimate. The Hamas leader described as a "wrong step" the return of the Jordanian and Egyptian ambassadors to Tel Aviv and criticized the visit of rabbi Mikhail Melchior to Qatar. He urged the Arab countries not to resume relations or establish new ties with the "Zionist entity".
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02/27/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Fathi Hammad, one of the Hamas Movement leaders in the Gaza Strip, Friday threatened that the Movement would kidnap Israeli soldiers in the event the occupation authorities didn't free all Palestinian inmates especially those with higher prison terms during the calming down currently observed with the Zionist regime. Speaking at a massive rally staged Friday afternoon in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners, Hammad addressed occupation soldiers saying, "We warn you that if your government didn't release all Palestinian captives during the calming down, you would be subject to abduction at any moment."
The Qassam Brigades, military wing of Hamas, were planning to take Israeli soldiers hostages to force the Israeli government set free all Palestinian internees, he elaborated maintaining that the question of Palestinian prisoners in occupation jails remained the Movement's topmost priority. The Hamas' leader pledged that the Movement would strenuously work toward releasing all Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails. The Palestinian masses reasserted their solidarity with the Palestinian captives, and vowed they would fully support resistance against the Israeli occupation troops in case the Zionist regime didn't free all those captives.
This article starring:
FATHI HAMAD
Hamas
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02/27/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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threatened that the Movement would kidnap Israeli soldiers
The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, today denounced the Tunisian invitation to certified war criminal Ariel Sharon to visit Tunis. A responsible source in the Hamas Movement said in a press release that the Israeli premier's visit to Tunisia would harm the Palestinian people's national interests and would contribute to breaking the Zionist regime's isolation on the world arena.
That's going to happen naturally, unless IJ and Hamas can manage to reignite the festivities...
He said that Hamas took note of the regretful news carried by the Hebrew media on Tunisian president's Zein Al-Abideen Ben Ali's invitation to Sharon to attend the international data technology conference scheduled next November in Tunis. The source said that his Movement condemned the Tunisian decision, and affirmed that such measures only harmed Palestinian national interest. He said that his Movement refused the Tunisian pretext that the conference was an international one and Tunis had nothing to do with the invitation and that it was merely a host country. The source charged that such an excuse was an attempt to cover up for the normalization process under way with the "Zionist entity" under different slogans.
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02/27/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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The frontrunner to be Iraq's next prime minister has held talks with the top Shia cleric on ways to include all parties in politics as talks on forming a new government looked set to drag on. On Friday, Ibrahim al-Jafari leader of the Shia al-Dawa party met Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, who has been reported by Aljazeera to have given his blessing to the likely new prime minister. After the meeting al-Jafari said: "There is an important issue we discussed: the participation of our brothers who could not take part in the election. The next government requires consultation and consensus."
Al-Jafari, who is the interim vice-president and leader of the Shia Dawa Party, and other politicians are jockeying for the top positions in the next government after last month's election, negotiations complicated by ethnic and sectarian issues in a country troubled by violence. Leaders of Muslim Sunni Arabs who boycotted the election are not represented in the new government, after being Iraq's traditional leaders. The election result has raised concerns disaffected Sunnis will join fighters waging a campaign of violence. ButShia leaders have said Sunnis will play a role in Iraq's new political landscape despite their election turnout.
But the guys playing a role will be the guys the Shiites allow to take part, not people who were elected by the Sunnis to represent them. Hosed that, didn't they?
Whoever becomes prime minister is likely to make the country's security crisis the top priority. Al-Jafari, a soft-spoken man who thinks dialogue can ease Iraq's problems, was nominated to be prime minister by the United Iraqi Alliance, which won the 30 January election. The alliance will have a slim majority in the 275-seat National Assembly but must cut a deal to secure the two-thirds majority it needs to form a government. A Kurdish coalition is in a strong bargaining position after coming second in the ballot and securing 75 seats. The Kurds could give their backing to al-Jafari or the secular list led by Iyad Allawi, which clinched 40 seats after coming third and is determined to keep Allawi, a secular Shia, at the country's helm as prime minister.
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02/27/2005 10:14:48 PM ||
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MULTAN: Six people were killed and 22 were injured in a clash between the Khetran and Marri tribes in the border area of Dera Ghazi Khan district on Friday evening. Abdul Rehman Khan Khetran, the chief of the Khetran tribe and former provincial minister said, "We have decided to take revenge on the Marri tribe because law enforcement agencies had failed to take any action against them after they created trouble by hitting electricity poles with rockets and missiles in Barkhan and Kohlu districts." He said that the Marri tribe retaliated when it was attacked, resulting in the death of 6 people from both sides. "The injured have been taken to a hospital in Dera Ghazi Khan," he added.
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02/27/2005 00:00:00 ||
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PESHAWAR: Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said on Saturday that religious groups banned by the government for fanning sectarianism and religious extremism would not be permitted to re-operate from new platforms, Online and APP reported. However, if they (the groups) were willing to cooperate with the government against terrorism and fanaticism, it (the government) could think of permitting them to operate.
If their purpose in life is terrorism and fanaticism, what're the chances of that happening?
Talking to reporters after attending a Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry function, the interior minister said 16 religious groups had been banned while two were on the government's watch list and leaders of the banned groups were also under surveillance.
Lashkar e-Taiba represents the ISI's undercover arm.
He said the Anti Terrorist Act was complete in all respects and an Urdu version had been provided to all police stations to stop them (banned groups) from regrouping with other organisations. He also denied that Al Qaeda was reorganising its network in Pakistan, saying the terror network had been destroyed and there was no chance of its activists regrouping in the country. He said Pakistan's anti-terrorist operations were successful and most Al Qaeda-linked terrorists had been killed, arrested or made to leave the country. The interior minister said the government's writ had been restored in South and North Waziristan Agencies and military action against terrorists and political dialogue with tribesmen had been going on simultaneously. Sherpao said bank robberies and other such incidents in Swat, Quetta, Islamabad and Karachi were meant to raise funds by terrorists for their groups. These outfits were frustrated due to a lack of funds and could not carry out any subversive activity in the country, he added. Several important criminals had also been arrested by security agencies, he added.
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LAHORE: Defence Secretary Lt Gen (r) Hamid Nawaz said on Saturday that Al Qaeda was reorganising and spreading, Geo news channel reported. Talking to reporters in Karachi, he said the US and Pakistan were continuing cooperating against terrorism and that there was no information of Osama. He said it was necessary to control Al Qaeda in Pakistan to stop it from getting access to nuclear weapons, the report said. He said Pakistan had rejected India's proposal of signing a ceasefire agreement on the Line of Control (LoC) and Siachen, the report said.
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MULTAN: President Pervez Musharraf urged Pakistanis on Saturday to combat Islamic extremists and stop them misusing mosques and religious schools. Speaking to thousands of people at a rally in Multan, Musharraf said eliminating extremism was vital to turn Pakistan into a prosperous and progressive country. "Those who are using our sacred places like mosques and madrassas to spread extremism and hatred should be stopped," he said. "Don't support them. Stand against them and speak against them. Pakistan needs enlightened moderation to be spread among the people at this time. Whoever is trying to take us to extremism, is in fact leading us to disaster," he said.
I think he should kill them, myself, but he so seldom listens to me...
The president urged people not to vote for extremist parties in the upcoming local government elections this year, or in the next general elections, and vote for moderates instead.
Assuming they can find any...
He said foreign investors were coming to Pakistan to set up new factories and create jobs, and it was essential that extremists not be allowed to disrupt this process. He said Pakistan now had a more genuine democracy. Other developing countries were copying Pakistan's local government system, which was free from the influence of powerful people. The provinces had been given more autonomy and their governments were spending billions of rupees on development.
In an interview on CNN on Saturday, Musharraf said the international community should not begrudge him his dual role as president and army chief, as it was that which had allowed him to effect Pakistan's turnaround since his takeover in 1999, NNI reported. "The constitution of Pakistan allows me to hold these two offices and the world should not grudge that," Musharraf told CNN in an interview.
"I know it does. I wrote that part myself."
"I think it is this uniform which allowed me to change the realities in Pakistan. We were almost going to be declared a failed state, a defaulted state, a terrorist state in 99. We have a totally different image now. And that is the uniform, together with my having run this government and run this country." Musharraf said he had done a lot for democracy in Pakistan and his uniform was the only issue remaining. "One should not nullify all the acts that have been done already." He said he was aware of the views of world leaders regarding his uniform and his charge of Pakistan, but he was most concerned about what is best for the country.
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02/27/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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The Saudis fund the Madarassas, and impose the Wahabbi Curriculum of Death. Free money from the Saudis is not free. There is a price to pay.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 0:54 Comments ||
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PESHAWAR: Maulana Amanullah Haqqani, provincial minister for auqaf and religious affairs, has said that the registration of seminaries in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) has begun. Haqqani told a private TV channel on Saturday that every seminary would submit a memorandum along with other necessary documents to the government. He said that the registration of new seminaries was banned in 1994 but the ban was lifted in 2004. He said that procedural problems which delayed the registration, had been removed now. He said that the NWFP Industries Department would register seminaries under the Registration Act of 1860. He said that seminary boards would also be registered. He said that 1,500 seminaries would also have to register afresh. Haqqani appealed to the seminaries not to hide any information. He clarified that no change would be made in the curriculum of seminaries.
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02/27/2005 00:00:00 ||
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1500 seminaries....They will crank out a lot of Jihadis. Another lost generation into the meat grinder.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 0:57 Comments ||
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ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf will chair the fourth meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) at its secretariat in Islamabad tomorrow (Monday). Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, provincial chief ministers, Senate chairman Mohammadmian Soomro, National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain, opposition leader in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rehman and the services chiefs have been invited to attend the meeting. However, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani have rejected the invitation, saying the NSC meeting should be presided over by the PM instead of the president. Official sources said the council was likely to discuss the situation in Balochistan, proposed large dams, country's energy needs, ordinance for the registration of religious seminaries, changes in syllabi, law and order and ongoing Pakistan-India talks. Sources said Javed Ashraf Qazi, Ejazul Haq and Akram Sheikh would also attend the meeting.
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DHAKA: Leading clerics at mosques across Bangladesh backed Saturday a government crackdown on suspected Muslim hardliners, saying those engaging in terrorist acts in the name of religion should be punished. "Islam does not support any act of terrorism. Those who are engaged in terrorism using Islam's name are nothing but terrorists. They should be punished for their crimes," a statement by the country's 101 head clerics, or imam, said Saturday. The statement followed the recent arrests of suspected Islamic hardliners throughout the Muslim-majority country.
Bangla hasn't historically been a fundamentalist country. It's a recent import...
Took me by surprise. The gummint coalition includes the Islamists...
In the statement, the imams expressed their concerns at the recent spate of killings and bomb attacks across the country and said, "No group has the right to take law into its own hands".
The crackdown came as the country's donors met in Washington to express concern at "deteriorating governance situation, political violence and climate of impunity" in Bangladesh. The government alleged that the two groups were involved in a wave of bombings of non-governmental groups, holy shrines and other targets. In the statement, the imams expressed their concerns at the recent spate of killings and bomb attacks across the country and said, "No group has the right to take law into its own hands".
That's why you have a government. Stable countries don't have bands of fascisti running around bumping people off or bullying them.
"The imams who know anything about Islamic Shariah (law) do not support terrorist acts. We detest all criminal activities and urge the government to take legal action against those involved in these crimes," it said.
This article starring:
ASADULLAH GHALIB
Jamaatul Mujaheedin
Jamaatul Mujaheedin
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An Associated Press report on Saturday said that "the police in northern Bangladesh have arrested 11 alleged Muslim militants after raiding homes and mosques as part of a crackdown on a recently outlawed radical Islamic group". Those arrested belonged to "Jumatul Mujahedin" and Jagrata Muslim Janata militant groups. A lot of arms and explosives were recovered from the hideouts (including mosques) of these organisations widely reported two weeks ago as practising violence in the name of Islam, enforcing hijab and namaz on pain of death. The report went on to say that "the investigators were trying to find out whether the two newly-outlawed groups were connected". Significantly, the police were "also looking for Jagrata Muslim Janata's leader, Siddiqul Islam, also known as Bangla Bhai".
He means whether they're officially connected, of course. They're both following the same path, toward the same ends.
After violence and coercion by Bangla Bhai were reported in the international press, a Bangladeshi journalist writing in a Karachi daily strongly condemned the "international conspiracy" to malign Bangladesh.
There's always an international conspiracy under way to malign whatever Islamic rathole is currently erupting. That's because it's never their fault...
He described the Bangla Bhai phenomenon like this: "What is going on in some parts of north-western Bangladesh does not bear any semblance of an Islamic revolution but looks like gang warfare for dominance and extortion, common in many unruly pockets in the Third World." One assumes that he would similarly describe the shenanigans of another violent gang run by one Jangi Bhai in south Bangladesh. The journalist did not deny violence and extortion and killing in the name of Islam but protested strongly against the labelling of this phenomenon as "Islamic revolution". In his mind there is a pristine image of 'Islamic revolution' which he wants to save against pollution of foreign comment.
That ignores reality, of course. The "Islamic revolution" is financed by bank robberies, drug dealings, and the occasional burglary to supplement the princely largesse coming from Arabia. There's no difference between the Lions of Islam™ and the thieves and footpads because they're usually the same people, especially at the cannon fodder and middle management levels. The upper levels, of course, are holy men. They have minions to take care of that sort of thing.
In his anger the Bangladeshi journalist addressed a warning to the 'secular' rulers masquerading as Islamic leaders against fascism on the lines of what happened in Europe before the World War II. It would have been appropriate to compare the "pseudo-Islamic" upheaval of Bangladesh with the one in Pakistan, especially as both Bangla Bhai and Jangi Bhai had trained in Afghanistan and lived in the seminaries of Karachi.
Oh, wotta surprise.
It is ironic that the same Bangladeshi journalist who is in denial about "Islamist" terrorism wrote a book some years ago recording the death sentences passed on women in the Bangladeshi countryside through fatwas. According to the book, the number of women subjected to cruel illegal fatwas began after 1994 and rose to over 3,000 annually. During the period from 1990 to 1995, over 10,000 victims of rape, murder, abduction, forcible marriage and arbitrary divorce, were poor rural women with no social support. In 1993 alone, 6,000 women committed suicide after being trapped in fatwa situations. The obsession with sharia law was always present in Bangladesh but received a fillip through the Islamisation processes unleashed by General Ziaur Rehman and General Ershad, reaching a new furore after the "Taslima Nasreen incident" in 1994.
Sorry I missed that one. I was washing my hair that year.
If Bangladeshis "in denial" should care to look at Pakistan more closely instead of hating it blindly, they will find that the disease of 'Islamist terrorism' was incubated in Karachi and Khost and then passed on to Dhaka.
If they'd care to glance at it casually they'd notice that.
A glace at the looking glass in Dhaka will discover Pakistani-jihadi footsteps all over the place. The Harkatul Mujahideen al-Islami (the one called HUJI in Bangladesh) is the outfit whose leader was a graduate of the Banuri Mosque seminary in Karachi and whose activists tried to kill our prime minister Shaukat Aziz recently. HUJI is the international face of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
As for the "pseudo-Islamic" nature of what is happening in Bangladesh, let us accept that that is the way of 'Islamic revolution' these days. This is what the Uzbek Islamist Tahir Yuldashev did in Osh before he came down to Afghanistan and then to Pakistan's Tribal Areas. The Hizb al-Tahrir, which Pakistan banned only after Yuldashev's discovery, worked in tandem with him in Central Asia and is now clearly working in tandem with HUJI in Bangladesh. As in Pakistan, seminaries also flourish in Bangladesh with foreign funding because of poverty and — and this few observers mention — profits to the organising clergy. Had the clergy been devoted to a higher cause they would have used the money to promote local Islam and not the hardline Wahhabi-Saudi one now associated with the Taliban. An increasing number of Bangladesh's madrassas are now following the pattern of study of the madrassas in Pakistan and have become Deobandi in their worldview. The Hindus have been targeted, aided by the widespread belief that they should be expelled from the country. The jihad in Afghanistan brought in Al Qaeda money, and the training camps in Bangladesh have since begun to turn out warriors for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The while, the government's been standing by watching and denying, and allying with the Islamists.
The phase Bangladesh is passing through can be taken in two parts. An aspect of it belongs to the early 1990s when the "Islamist" outfits in Pakistan did not offend the conservative Muslim League but were seen as a threat by a liberal PPP. These days the ruling BNP in Bangladesh is most reluctant to take action against the Islamists as they continue to attack Awami League cadres and communists; but when phase two opens up, the BNP will be equally threatened. The "purifying" dynamic of the Islamists will demand that the BNP bend to the kind of shariah the warriors favour in light of their training in Afghanistan and their "salafi" contact with Al Qaeda. Therefore, while the Bangladeshi journalist may be offended today that Bangla Bhai and Jangi Bhai are being hauled up under pressure from the United States and the European Union, a day will come soon enough when the state of Bangladesh will come under threat from the Islamic warriors it is now empowering through denial.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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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 government has been conducting negotiations with north African countries to extradite terrorist suspects held without charge at Belmarsh prison. Talks have been held between Baroness Symons, the Foreign Office minister, and the governments of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to draw up a treaty to deport terrorist suspects to their home countries, where they are also wanted. One of the men is an Algerian accused of attending a terrorist "camp" in Dorset. Another is said to be spiritual head of the group behind the Casablanca bombs in 2003.
Armed Islamist militants that operate in Europe are also helping support the armed insurgency in Iraq, one of Europe's foremost experts on such groups told Reuters. Spanish High Court Judge 
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MULTAN: President Pervez Musharraf urged Pakistanis on Saturday to combat Islamic extremists and stop them misusing mosques and religious schools. Speaking to thousands of people at a rally in Multan, Musharraf said eliminating extremism was vital to turn Pakistan into a prosperous and progressive country. "Those who are using our sacred places like mosques and madrassas to spread extremism and hatred should be stopped," he said. "Don't support them. Stand against them and speak against them. Pakistan needs enlightened moderation to be spread among the people at this time. Whoever is trying to take us to extremism, is in fact leading us to disaster," he said. 
ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf will chair the fourth meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) at its secretariat in Islamabad tomorrow (Monday). Prime Minister 
An Associated Press report on Saturday said that "the police in northern Bangladesh have arrested 11 alleged Muslim militants after raiding homes and mosques as part of a crackdown on a recently outlawed radical Islamic group". Those arrested belonged to "
