Doha, 27 March (AKI) - Under Islam, apostasy - or renunciation of former religious beliefs - is not punishable by execution but "only in the afterlife," radical TV cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi has told the IsamOnline website. He was reacting to the case of the Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, whom an Afghan court earlier this month charged with rejecting Islam and has been facing possible execution unless he re-converts to Islam.
"Islam doesn't allow punishment for apostasy if the convert does not publicise their conversion and does not seek to proselytise. Punishment will be meted out on the day of judgement, should the convert die repudiating his orignal faith," said al-Qaradawi. Mohammed Salim al-Awwa, secretary general of the Union of Islamic Ulemas shared al-Qaradawi's view. As the imam of the Omara mosque in the Qatari capital, Doha, head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) and European Council for Fatwa and Research, al-Qaradawi is best-known for his appearances on the Al Jazeera satellite channel.
So he's the Pat Roberts of the turban set?
Rahman refuses to re-convert to the Muslim faith, and has said he is prepared to die for his religious beliefs. However, following intense international pressure on the Afghan government from many of its allies, including the United States and Germany, on Sunday, Afghanistan's Supreme Court announced it was dropping the case due to "gaps in the evidence" against Rahman.
The convert is expected to be freed while his case is being reviewed by the attorney-general, although details of his release are being kept secret as feelings amongst religious hardliners in the country are running high. More than a thousand protesters took to the streets on Monday in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, demanding Rahman's execution.
Observers say executing a converted Christian would be a significant precedent as a conservative interpretation of Sharia law in Afghanistan. Rahman's case is thought to be Afghanistan's first such trial, reflecting tensions between conservative clerics - who four years after the Taliban were overthrown still dominate the judiciary - and reformists.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/27/2006 07:59 ||
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Islam doesn't allow punishment for apostasy if the convert does not publicise their conversion...
In other words -- shut up, keep acting like a Muslim, and we won't kill you.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/27/2006 9:05 Comments ||
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RC
Yes. That is an important point.
In the Rahman case, the judge asked him if he was an apostate and Rahman said, "no". Then Rahman went on to say he believed in Jesus.
Depending on how much he said about Jesus, he could be simply affirming the fact that Jesus (Isa) is a prophet of Islam or he might have said that Jesus is the son of God which would move to the publicizing side of the line.
#4
mhw: According to this piece by Wretchard, quoting a Wikipedia entry:
Though facing a possible death sentence, Rahman holds firm to his convictions: "They want to sentence me to death and I accept it I am a Christian, which means I believe in the Trinity I believe in Jesus Christ."
Sounds like straight Christianity to me, the Trinity reference being the clincher.
#5
"We might not kill him if he keeps quiet, but he will of course have to have his children taken from him, be forcibly divorced from his wife and lose his job. We may also jail him from time to time if he does not stay out of our way, but we probably won't execute him. We are very civilized here."
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
03/27/2006 14:30 Comments ||
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Babu Tata, the man is apparently long since wifeless, and his parents have had custody of his children these sixteen years. That was the original issue, that he came back to Afghanistan to reclaim the children, and his parents used his apostasy to fight his claim. So he may yet live out his natural lifespan, but it won't be with his children. (And truth to tell, after having left them until so near adulthood, how much could he really add to their development?)
#7
The Maliki School of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) imposes capital punishment (Had) for apostasy, as does the hanafi madhab. Check out 37:19 from this 9th century malaki manual.
Rape is legal for Muslim males unless another male - or 2-4 women - witnesses the attack. Unprovable accusations of rape are punishable under Had extermination. Muslim women usually find it better to withold rape accusations. However, often males brag about the crime and the woman is slaughtered to preserve family "honor."
Maliki states: most of North Africa and the Persian Gulf states
Hanafi states: from the Saud to the Paki terrorist entities.
The Norwegian Defence Central Command has for the first time confirmed that Norwegian special forces have several times been directly engeged in heavy fighting against the Taliban and Al Qaida in Afghanistan. The Norwegian unit recently ended its mission in Afghanistan.
The Norwegian special forces unit consists of only a few hundred soldiers.
The special force is used in dangerous, controversial and secret missions outside Norway, and it was engaged in Afghanistan only a few weeks ago.
Only a few persons are informed about the identity of the soldiers, and what they do.
Chief of Joint Operations, Jan Reksten, says the Norwegians have been engaged in very difficult situations, but will not comment on the question of whether or not lives may have been lost.
He admits that the special force has needed air support in order to get out of tight situations, including the dropping of bombs.
The Norwegian special force has over the past few years carried out several secret missions abroad, acording to public broadcaster NRK.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 03:14 ||
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Beautifully written... just enough tease to give them that whiff of elan, but not so much detail to lower them to level of the evil Americans.
I'm glad they've given their best to the fight, but the rest of Norway is still a tumor in the war on Islamic cancer.
Afghanistan's prosecution of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity shows how a fledgling democracy struggles to recognize individual rights, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.
... and how the resident holy men do their best to ignore them.
Afghanistan is "going through one of the most difficult debates that any society goes through, and that is the proper role of religion in the politics of the state," she said.
I don't think they're having a debate about it. I think they've said that anybody who converts from Islam to anything else has to be killed but that their sources of aid and support are bound up with people who have those funny ideas about individual liberty.
Officials in Afghanistan said Abdul Rahman, who faced a possible death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity, was to be freed after a court on Sunday dismissed the case against him, citing a lack of evidence.
... and not citing his freedom to believe what he damned well pleases.
Rice said she had no independent confirmation, but said that development "would be a very good step forward" if true. "This is an evolutionary process," Rice said on Fox News. "It's a young democracy."
They've made it up to about 714 A.D., but they've still got a long way to go. The question is whether they really want to make the trip...
Afghanistan's U.S.-backed president, Hamid Karzai, has faced mounting foreign pressure to free Rahman. Muslim clerics have called for Rahman to be killed.
That's because they're holy men. It's holy to want to have people killed when they deviate from your straight-and-narrow. They have a blood fetish.
"We, as Americans, know that in democracy, as it evolves, there are difficult issues about state and church, or in this case, state and mosque. But there are difficult issues about the rights of the individual," Rice told CNN's "Late Edition."
... or, in Islamic countries, the lack thereof...
"We're going to stand firm for the principle that religious freedom and freedom of religious conscience need to be upheld, and we are hoping for a favorable resolution in this case," Rice said. Very good. But, Muslim clerics will always rail against democracy - except where they control a majority vote - because it implies popular sovereignty, while they recognize only their concocted deity ("allah") as sovereign. There was a brief period of Secularism in post colonial Arab speaking entities, but that has washed away.
Rahman was being prosecuted under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for converting 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Rahman's case represents a "crossroads for their judicial system," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. "Let's hope they make the right decision," he told CNN's "Late Edition." "If they don't, I think there are going to be a great many problems."
I don't think the holy men intend taking any of the roads available to them. They intend to stay precisely where they are. That's because none of the roads available present the option of holy men running the country.
Rice was asked if Christian missionaries from the United States should be encouraged to go to Afghanistan. "I think that Afghans are pleased to get the help that they can get," she told NBC's "Meet the Press."
And I'd guess the holy men would be whipping up the rubes to kill them within hours of their arrival.
Stephen Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that Afghanistan is "trying to reconcile a religious background of their country with a commitment they made in their own constitution to the universal declaration of human rights." A National Security adviser who is unaware that Islam is a total integration of church and state, is in the wrong line of work. Forget Hadley, it's like this Condi: Muslim = abd-allah = slave-of-allah. Toss away your Karen Armstrong/John Esposito ink-abusers and read Robert Spencer.
I think they both know the issues here. Hadley has it right IMO: the Afghans generally aspire to democracy, which is a new thing for them. Now they have to think through what that means in practice and whether it's really compatible with Islamacism. The death penalty for apostates arguably isn't in the Q'uran, by the way - it's in the interpretations that have been added. A lot of Islamic countries don't have it in their legal code. There are Islamic precedents the Afghans could follow other than the Taliban's.
Posted by: Listen to Dogs ||
03/27/2006 00:00 ||
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Condi's getting Polly Annish
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/27/2006 0:32 Comments ||
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My take, as long as the Afghanistan constitution is based on Sharia, the mad clerics run the store. The K government is limited in geography and the tribal leaders must be forced to comply or go bye-bye.
Much unfinished work in Afghanistan, as in Iraq.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/27/2006 0:37 Comments ||
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Dr Dogs - I think Dr Rice is aware of far more than you credit her with, and in far greater detail. She has the most thankless job in the Federal Government - especially within the Bush Administration.
The job entails making nice with evil, insane, lying, back-stabbing thieves - conveniently shortened to "diplomats." Nicely telling them, in an escalating sequence:
"How do you see the situation?"
"That's not how we see it."
"This is how we see it."
"No, that isn't an acceptable outcome."
"Do you have any relatives left in-country?"
"That's a shame."
She's doing her job. I saw her interview today, and I think she's doing it very well.
#4
Unless the man in the Afghan street interviews that I saw were non-representative, the fact that 100% vehemently supported execution of the convert - pre-trial - suggests sharia has a total hold over Afghanis.
Mohammad's extermination edict is in the Hadith, which is second to the Koran in authority. Bukhari's version reads, "If anyone (Muslim) abandons Islam, then kill them." In the absence of growing and subversive Muslim immigrant communities in the West, and aid from the productive States, Muslims would enforce the extermination edict. The cartoon-jihad is evidence of their intent to enforce extra-territorial application of sharia blasphemy laws.
Western leaders should be doing everything in their power to rollback aggressive Islam. The SUV incident, after which the perpetrator used Koran sanction to attempt justification, reveals our vulnerability. During Taliban/al-Qaeda rule, at least 50,000 Muslims - many on jihad vacations from the West - took training in the production and use of poisons, to inflict mass casualties against their enemy.
Islam cannot reform. A Muslim who is fully aware of his Koranic ("jihad is prescribed to you") obligations, will wage jihad terror when they have the means and opportunity to do same. The motive is in the death warrant for billions of disbelievers: the Koran.
#8
But there are difficult issues about the rights of the individual...
No, there are not!
There's nothing "difficult" here. They want to kill Rahman for something that's none of their goddamned business.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/27/2006 7:19 Comments ||
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Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom (1786)
"Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;"
A document so important that Thomas Jefferson's gravestone notes that he is author of this measure and NOT that he was president.
We are so stuck on the fetish of "voting" that we have forgotten what is truly required for a free, tolerant society. As long as we allow these so-called "fledgling" democracies to use sharia as the basis of their legal system, we will not make one inch of progress.
#12
Well, I, for one, am not real. I'm just a flickering impression of something that never really was. I'm 100% b*llshit, but I'm kinda at peace with it.
#14
"As long as we allow these so-called "fledgling" democracies to use sharia as the basis of their legal system, we will not make one inch of progress."
These ideas that you cannot let these Muslim democracies use sharia, or if they use sharia then no progress has been made, or the talk about over emphasis on voters all come up short. Progress has to begin somewhere. You cannot go in and tell these folks their whole way of life and their religion sucks - adopt ours now. Since that would not be calculated to work, then you have to be satisifed with a little slower progress. We accepted a little evil (slavery) while establishing a goverment that protected minority rights and insured basic freedoms. The evil was eliminated later. Had the drafters of the Declaration of Independence insisted on taking on the slavery issue at that time, then we'd still be sippin tea in the afternoon.
Liberia wants former President Charles Taylor to be sent directly to Sierra Leone for trial for war crimes, rather than to Liberian territory, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said on Monday. Nigeria, where Taylor has lived in exile since 2003, said on Saturday Liberian authorities were free to take custody of Taylor, but Johnson-Sirleaf's statement, made to church representatives, indicated Liberia did not want to do this. "Taylor was indicted by a Sierra Leone Court. Taylor should rather go to Sierra Leone than come to Liberia because he was not indicted by a Liberian court," the Liberian president said in response to questions.
Her comments added to growing confusion over which government or authority would take responsibility for Taylor's expected transfer to a U.N.-backed special court in Sierra Leone, where he is charged on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges relate to his alleged involvement in Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war. He is accused of having supported rebels notorious for their brutality in exchange for diamonds.
The whereabouts of Taylor, seen as the mastermind behind once intertwined civil wars in both Liberia and Sierra Leone, were unclear on Monday. Nigerian authorities and a spokesman for Taylor declined to say anything about the location of the former warlord.
Taylor's 2003 exile was part of a peace deal to end 14 years of war in Liberia which killed 250,000 people, spawned a generation of young gunmen and spread violence to nearby states. Johnson-Sirleaf's government has said it was not party to the 2003 deal but is willing to cooperate to bring Taylor's case to a conclusion for the good of Liberia.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/27/2006 08:33 ||
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I'd have first asked the US to submit an extradition request (he's wanted for escaping prison, unless there's a statute of limitations on that--might be a complication), then had us pick him up as soon as he touched down at Roberts Field. Then Sierra Leone could petition us to allow his trial to be held here (and ask for aid to pay for it, as transportation gets a bit pricey). I don't think he'd break prison this time, and his militia would be far away.
Posted by: James ||
03/27/2006 14:00 Comments ||
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I'm available. Are they taking resumes? Would it be okay if he dies of natural causes before we get a verdict in, say, 7 or 8 years?
Three foreign oil workers, two Americans and a Briton, were freed on Monday after being held hostage by militants in Nigeria for five weeks, a U.S. diplomatic source said. The three, employees of U.S. oil services company Willbros, were seized from a barge in the southern Niger Delta on February 18 during a wave of attacks in the world's eighth largest oil exporting country that has cut shipments by a quarter.
"They are all in good health," the source told Reuters, asking not to be named.
The rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta had demanded a greater share of the delta's oil wealth, the release of two jailed leaders from the region and compensation for oil pollution as conditions for freeing the hostages.
It was not immediately clear what produced the breakthrough in talks with the kidnappers, but President Olusegun Obasanjo is due to fly to Washington on Tuesday and pressure had been building up for an end to the standoff over the hostages.
It took one phone call to demonstrate the limits of British power in Basra.
Men from Zulu Company of the First Fusiliers were visiting a police station as part of their ambition to foster a professional police force to provide security once they have gone.
They wanted to discuss equipment levels as well as the success of efforts to cleanse the force of barbaric militias.
Instead, a captain told them politely, but firmly, that they had to leave.
The reason: a phone call from his superiors making clear that he risked losing his job if he allowed the British soldiers to step inside.
This is the reality in Basra after the governing council severed ties with the British five weeks ago. The boycott covers almost all government work.
Reform of the police has been paramount since the full extent of the assassinations and torture being conducted by elements in it emerged last September, when a police station had to be raided after two SAS officers investigating police death squads were held captive inside.
The British estimate that some 10 per cent of the police are actively working against them and the first loyalty of the majority is to a Shia Muslim militia or to their tribe.
The close personal relationships the British had developed with some officers meant that in around a third of police stations clandestine meetings still go ahead.
But when the boycott's enforcers learn of the visit through their network of spies, that is when the phone rings and whatever the local commander's personal preference he has to tell them to go.
To refuse the order means not only risking losing their job but also, the military says, the possibility that they or their family may be subject to harassment or worse.
The official reasons for the boycott are outrage over a British operation in January to arrest more "bad apples" in the force, the release by the News of the World last month of a video showing troops beating Iraqis and the publication of Danish cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammad.
But few in the British military believe that is the whole story. Instead they suspect that people close to the governing council are linked to criminal gangs whose activities the police crack-down impinged on, while the governor, Mohammed al-Wa'eli, is concerned primarily with preserving his power base.
"I am not fighting terrorists, but I am fighting criminals who want to keep their patches," said Major Jon Stott, commander of Zulu Company. "There are many good men in the police but they are scared."
The question now taxing them is how to respond. Action cannot be taking against the criminally-linked politicians believed to be behind it as they remain the people's democratically elected representatives. Moving against them would only fuel the populist rhetoric against the "imperialist invaders".
For Lt Col James Hopkinson, the British military commander in Basra city, the solution has been to demonstrate his troops are not willing to "fiddle while Rome burns".
With units largely freed from their civic rebuilding obligations and no longer having to walk a political tightrope, patrols and operations have been stepped up.
But any long term answer relies on the governor relenting and accepting full co-operation.
That would most likely require pressure from the national government - an impossibility while politicians continue to argue about its composition - or his defeat in the next provincial elections. But these are not expected to be held until the autumn.
Meanwhile, Iraqis say crime has risen by 15 per cent and in February alone Basra saw 60 murders. Attacks on British troops are also increasing. Zulu Company has been targeted 37 times since the start of December.
The number of roadside bombs tripled in January from the previous two months.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 03:33 ||
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"Lt Col James Hopkinson, the British military commander in Basra city"
Is this the arrogant big mouth clown who trashed the US military recently for being cowboyish?
How's that "soft-power" idiotic bullshit working out for you, eh?
Everyone, right across the board, knows Sadr's at the core... Of most Shiite death squads, of the corruption and thuggery, of using the pilgrim game to infiltrate everything from phoney ballots to cash to Iranian agents to shaped charges and everything else needed, of undermining the entire south plus Baghdad and Najaf. The works.
Sudans brutal Islamist President Omar al-Bashir and Chinese President Hu Jintao have become fast friends as of late, forging a Sino-Sudanese alliance that has serious implications for the Sudanese people and the future stability of the African continent. China has burst on the African scene with a presence that has been frightening to many people who hadnt realized how wide its reach is, U.S. Representative Randy Forbes (R-VA), chairman of the new House China Caucus, noted in January...
#2
Article: China has burst on the African scene with a presence that has been frightening to many people who hadnt realized how wide its reach is, U.S. Representative Randy Forbes (R-VA), chairman of the new House China Caucus, noted in January.
China just wants to buy oil from Sudan. In return, Sudan wants shipments of cheap Chinese weapons of the kind needed to put down internal revolts. Why is China protecting the existing government from UN sanctions? Because its state-owned oil companies got a sweet deal from the existing Sudanese government that may not be honored if it is overthrown. China is in the Sudan for the same reason that South Korea was in Libya when Europe and the US had trade embargoes on for Libya's terrorist activities. It's nice to have a captive market.
BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair used a speech to Federal Parliament today to urge global unity in the fight against terrorism and warn against the "madness" of growing anti-Americanism worldwide.
Mr Blair said war against terror was as much a battle about values as it was about arms, and that those values were the universal property of humanity.
"(It is also) a struggle about values and about modernity, whether to be at ease with it or enraged at it," said Mr Blair, the fifth world leader to address Federal Parliament.
And to win this struggle we have to win the battle of values as much as arms.
MPs and senators crowded into the House of Representatives to hear Mr Blair say that the struggle facing the world today was not just about security.
He delivered a candid assessment of his country's alliance with the US, but warned against leaving America out of the fight against terrorism.
"I do not always agree with the United States. Sometimes they can be difficult friends to have," Mr Blair said.
"But the strain of frankly anti-American feeling in parts of European and world politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in.
"The danger with America is not that they are too much involved. The danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage," Mr Blair said.
"The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them."
Britain, along with the US and Australia, has been one of the prime forces in the war against terrorism.
Mr Blair said the key to winning the battle against extremist elements was to show it was not a fight of the West against Islam, but about the ownership of common values.
We have to show that these are not Western ... American or Anglo-Saxon values, but values in the common ownership of humanity, universal values that should be the right of the global citizen, he said.
This is the challenge I believe we face and ranged against us are of course the people who hate us, but beyond them are many more who don't hate us but question our motives, our good faith, our even-handedness, who could support our values but believe we support them selectively.
These were people that countries such as Britain had to persuade, Mr Blair said.
They have to know this struggle is about justice and tolerance as well as security and prosperity, he said.
And in truth today there is no prosperity without security and no security without justice.
Mr Blair said nations such as Britain and Australia had to construct a global alliance to secure their way of life in the face of a continuing terrorist threat.
The roots of terrorism ran deep, he said, and exploited a sense of alienation in the Arab and Muslim world which had to be overcome.
"We will not defeat this terrorism until we face up to the fact that its roots are deep, that it is not a passing spasm of anger, but a global ideology at war with us and our way of life," Mr Blair said.
"Their case is that democracy is a western concept we are forcing on an unwilling culture of Islam.
"The problem we have is that a part of opinion in our own countries agrees with them.
"We are in danger of completely misunderstanding the importance of what is happening as we speak in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Each of those nations was engaged in a "titanic struggle" to be free of oppression and servitude, and Iraqis and Afghans had seized democracy.
Mr Blair acknowledged that the Iraq war had "split this nation as it did mine", but said it was not the time to walk away from the fight against terrorism.
"This is a time for the courage to see it through," he said.
#4
Hmmm. The reference to "Anti-amerianism is madness" was deleted from the linked article. I think it was too much for somebody, but tipper got to the full quote before it was edited.
#6
--"The danger with America is not that they are too much involved. The danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage," Mr Blair said.--
Jim Hoagland of the WaPo? wrote the same after 9/11 - they'll help US not because they like US, but because it's over if we isolate ourselves.
Not so long ago, when a bomb went off in London, you could be sure it was the Irish Republican Army. If the target was Madrid, that meant the Basque separatist group ETA.
But al Qaeda has shattered the old certainties -- and accelerated the decline of European paramilitary groups that peg their survival to a bedrock of public support. The continent's two most entrenched bands of outlaws, the IRA and ETA, have taken their biggest peacemaking steps in the shadow of al Qaeda carnage.
"The old terrorist groups, at leadership level, would not want to be linked in the public mind with this new type of terror. They wouldn't want to be seen to be competing for attention with it," said Christopher Langton, an analyst at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
"With the IRA and ETA and others, they call cease-fires and want to be negotiated with," said Langton, a retired British army colonel. But with al Qaeda, he said, "there's nobody to negotiate with."
He and Jonathan Stevenson, an anti-terrorism specialist at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, agree that the al Qaeda threat has greatly increased Western governments' willingness to share intelligence, toughen anti-terrorism laws, and tolerate repressive measures. Previously, Britain and Spain faced international criticism when they cracked down on the IRA and ETA, whose members were easier to identify and arrest.
"September 11 and the rise of the new terrorism hardened governments against dealing with groups that commit terrorist violence," said Stevenson, an expert on conflicts from Northern Ireland to Somalia.
He said al Qaeda's "mass-casualty agenda" meant that the violence committed by the IRA and ETA no longer had "stun value."
In its peace declaration this week, ETA -- which killed about 800 people from 1968 to 2003 in hope of pressuring Spain into granting independence to the Basque region -- pledged its cease-fire would be permanent and demanded only admission to negotiations in return, a remarkable climbdown. The group hadn't killed anybody since March 11, 2004, when Moroccan radicals killed 191 people with blasts on Madrid commuter trains, an atrocity that the Spanish government of the day tried to pin on ETA.
The IRA, which killed 1,775 people during a failed 27-year campaign to wrest Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, began disarming just six weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. And just a few weeks after suicide bombers killed 56 people in London, the IRA formally instructed its members to renounce violence for political purposes and to dump their weapons for collection by disarmament officials.
The IRA had ruled out both moves for a decade. Analysts and IRA members alike say that growing international impatience, particularly in the United States after September 11, helped make the unthinkable inevitable.
"Al Qaeda did change things for us," said an IRA veteran, speaking on condition of anonymity because IRA membership remains an imprisonable crime in both Britain and Ireland.
He told The Associated Press that the September 11 attacks made it politically impossible for the IRA to break its 1997 cease-fire. He contrasted that with the fate of the IRA's previous 1994 truce, which ended with a two-ton truck bomb on the City of London, Britain's financial district, that caused vast economic damage and killed two men. The low death toll reflected the IRA policy of phoned warnings and followed two similarly massive strikes on the City of London in 1992 and 1993.
"Up to then, we could expect a certain level of sympathy internationally when we bombed the City of London. Those operations used to be, far and away, the most effective thing we did, the thing that really hit the Brits in their wallets," he said. "I wouldn't expect too many Irish-Americans in New York to cheer us if we did that today -- not after what happened to the twin towers."
Most of Europe's terror-practicing groups rose amid the radical chic and student protests of the late 1960s, when the continent was divided by the Cold War. Germany's Red Army Faction, Italy's Red Brigades and Greece's November 17 kidnapped, assassinated and bombed as they dreamed of Marxist revolution and the collapse of NATO.
Because they lacked any popular base, these small groups proved vulnerable to leaders' arrests. Once the Warsaw Pact collapsed, they disintegrated or lost their direction.
Fred Halliday, a human rights professor at the London School of Economics, said the end of the Cold War undermined virtually all of Europe's paramilitary movements; the IRA, for instance, received Warsaw Pact weaponry through Libya and claimed to be fighting to create a socialist republic.
Halliday cited several factors that drove the IRA, then ETA, toward peace long before al Qaeda appeared. He said the IRA's Sinn Fein party was deeply influenced by the African National Congress' renunciation of "armed struggle" in the early 1990s. Then Sinn Fein jumped at the chance, in 1994, to enter mainstream politics with crucial encouragement from former U.S. President Bill Clinton. ETA, in turn, sought to emulate Sinn Fein's truce-for-talks strategy.
But he said the IRA's and ETA's long road to peace illustrated how long it would take to come to terms with al Qaeda as well as Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement. He said it was inevitable that, someday, the West would end up negotiating with the political descendants of both forces.
"The IRA and ETA must have realized 10, 20 years before their cease-fires that their war wasn't going anywhere. It took their leaders that long to shift their movement towards reality," Halliday said. "How long will it take al Qaeda and Hamas to travel the same journey? It's depressing."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 02:49 ||
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"How long will it take al Qaeda and Hamas to travel the same journey?"
#2
Article: Fred Halliday, a human rights professor at the London School of Economics, said the end of the Cold War undermined virtually all of Europe's paramilitary movements; the IRA, for instance, received Warsaw Pact weaponry through Libya and claimed to be fighting to create a socialist republic. ... He said it was inevitable that, someday, the West would end up negotiating with the political descendants of both forces.
This is the kind of thing I would expect to hear from a professor at the London School of Marxist Economics. Doesn't seem to have occurred to him that al Qaeda's mass murder of more people in one day than the IRA killed in 27 years might be a barrier to negotiation. This is the kind of thing you would expect from a Communist; paraphrasing Stalin, a single death is a tragedy, but 3,000 deaths merely a statistic.
VATICAN CITY: In its search for better relations with the Islamic world, the Roman Catholic Church is turning a spotlight on the role that culture can play in fostering understanding between peoples of different faiths.
Ummm... Yeah. Civilization versus Arabian death cult...
Pope Benedict, launching a streamlining of the Vatican bureaucracy earlier this month, has given his culture minister, Cardinal Paul Poupard, the additional responsibility of heading the department for dialogue with non-Christian religions. The move is more than a simple reshuffling of portfolios. A leading theologian before becoming Pope last April, Benedict has long thought contact with non-Christians should not focus only on religion, where agreement can be difficult if not impossible. Culture - not just art but the sum of a society's values, thoughts and behaviours - provides a rich field for people of different backgrounds to learn to understand each other. "Culture plays a fundamental role for relations between Christians and Muslims," said Poupard, 75, who now heads the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue in addition to the Pontifical Council for Culture, which he has led since 1988.
Culture forms the way you look at life. Those of us who've grown to adultery in Judaeo-Christian civilization have imbibed the ideas of chivalry the strong protecting the weak and romantic love with mother's milk. Islam's roots are in Arabian civilization, where princes and holy men have oppressed the common folk for the past 5000 years and where women are breeding stock. We have more in common with the Japanese, who've explored various forms of oppression since Amaterasu, but still managed to retain a fondness for a pretty face and a comely bosom. We have more in common with the Chinese, who've evolved a 5000-year-old civilization of their own with various levels of oppression of the common folk, but with a likewise an appreciation of a lady's pretty face and graceful figure. That suggests to me that the absolute root of the Clash of Civilizations isn't so much the princes and holy men, who're after all susceptible to being hung by their own turbans, but that elemental fear and loathing of women in a monosexual society. If we paid attention to them, we'd probably have more in common with the Hottentots or Jivaro headhunters, neither of whom is scared of women. I'm just not positive the Catholic church is the mechanism for bridging that particular gap, though they're welcome to try, in their own monosexual way.
"When he put me in charge of both departments, Benedict XVI clearly told me we had to develop the dialogue of men of culture with representatives of non-Christian religions," the French cardinal said in written response to questions from Reuters. He recalled that the Pope told Muslim leaders in Germany last August that Christian-Muslim dialogue was "a vital necessity on which in large measure our future depends".
I think I'd concentrate on getting them used to the sight of titties. And derrieres. And comely thighs. And pretty faces, fergawdsake.
Senior Catholic officials have spoken in recent years with growing frankness of their concern about Islam, which immigrants have made the second-largest faith in many European states and radicals invoke to justify suicide bombings and other violence. Cardinals at the Vatican for last Friday's consistory to elevate 15 more men to their exclusive group discussed the issue at a closed-door session on Thursday. Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard of France, home to Europe's largest Muslim minority, said they talked about values they shared with Muslims but also "human rights, the situation for Christians in those countries and the worrying sides of Islam". Dialogue with Muslims can be complicated because Islam has no central authority and feels it has superseded Christianity.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2006 00:00 ||
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I think I'd concentrate on getting them used to the sight of titties. And derrieres. And comely thighs. And pretty faces, fergawdsake.
Christian Science,
so many heavenly bodies to visit study so little time...
#2
Fred, your commentary is so spot on. We have never had any common interests with these camel f**king desert nomads. And we never will. It is not generational as so many idiots keep spouting. It is a cult brainwashing that begins with the teaching of language to the new born. Once this is instilled in childhood, it is rare that any recover. The few who do, like this Rahman, Rushdie, et al. are murdered quickly so that this is not repeated. The only real way to deal with a cult like this is very determined extreme measures. Most in Western culture find this hard to accept. Unfortunately, it is true.
Rhetorical question: Do you think CBC readers are getting enough information to have an informed opinion? What is Shariah?
The word Shariah means "the path to a watering hole." It denotes an Islamic way of life not just a system of criminal justice. It is a code of living that most Muslims adopt as part of their faith. Some countries formally institute it as the law of the land, enforced by the courts. However, the way Shariah law is applied from country to country can vary widely.
How did it originate?
According to Muslim scholars, the Prophet Muhammad laid down the laws. Some of the laws are said to be direct commands stated in the Qur'an. Other laws were based on rulings Muhammad is said to have given to cases that occurred during his lifetime. These secondary laws are based on what's called the Sunnah the Prophet's words, example and way of life. One of the major concerns of people critical of Shariah law is that it is subject to interpretation and evolution. There is virtually no formal certification process to designate someone as being qualified to interpret Islamic law.
As it stands today, almost anyone can make rulings as long as they have the appearance of piety and a group of followers.
Why have Shariah law in Canada?
Many Muslims believe that because Canada is a secular country, its secular legal system makes it difficult for them to govern themselves by the personal laws of their own religion. For instance, Canada's marriage and divorce laws differ from Muslim law. It can be important for a Muslim to be granted a divorce under Muslim law, especially if he or she intends to move to a Muslim country in the future and remarry. Another concern for some is that if a Muslim dies without a will in Ontario, the estate would be divided according to Ontario law as opposed to Muslim law.
How did Shariah come to be considered in Canadian jurisdictions?
In 1991, Ontario was looking for ways to ease the burdens of a backlogged court system. So the province changed its Arbitration Act to allow "faith-based arbitration" a system where Muslims, Jews, Catholics and members of other faiths could use the guiding principles of their religions to settle family disputes such as divorce, custody and inheritances outside the court system. It's voluntary both parties (a husband and wife) have to agree to go through the process. But once they do, the decisions rendered by the tribunal are binding.
The Ontario government has been reviewing its Arbitration Act and on Dec. 20, 2004, it released a report conducted by former attorney general Marion Boyd. Among her 46 recommendations was that:
The Arbitration Act should continue to allow disputes to be arbitrated using religious law, if the safeguards currently prescribed and recommended by this review are observed.
Earlier in the year, the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice said it wanted to set up its own faith-based arbitration panels under the Arbitration Act, based on Shariah law.
The proposal ran into opposition from women's groups, legal organizations and the Muslim Canadian Congress, which all warned that the 1,400-year-old Shariah law does not view women as equal to men.
In her report, Boyd noted that some "participants in the Review fear that the use of arbitration is the beginning of a process whose end goal is a separate political identity for Muslims in Canada, that has not been the experience of other groups who use arbitration."
In May 2005, the Quebec National Assembly unanimously supported a motion to block the use of Shariah law in Quebec courts.
What are the concerns about establishing Shariah law in a Canadian jurisdiction?
The National Association of Women and the Law, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, and the National Organization of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of Canada argued that under Shariah law, men and women are not treated equally.
They argued that women fare far worse in divorce, child custody and inheritance matters under Shariah law. For instance, a woman can only inherit half as much as a man can. If a divorced woman remarries, custody of the children from her previous marriage may revert to the children's father.
How would Shariah law apply in Ontario?
First, it's not clear the term "Shariah law" would even be used. Several groups that appeared before Boyd's process of reviewing the Arbitration Act say it's not Shariah law they want to set up but a Muslim Personal/Family Law process which has its roots in Shariah.
The arbitration process as set out in the Arbitration Act is voluntary. Most of the concerns about the creation of "Shariah" tribunals have focused on the fear that Muslim women may feel they are being forced into taking part in a process of binding arbitration according to Muslim family law instead of resolving their disputes through the court system.
In her report, former Ontario attorney general Marion Boyd stressed that any faith-based system would have to conform to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
#2
Hello, I moved to your town recently. I find many of your laws inconvenient. I like driving fast, so the speed limits should not apply to me. Too much of my money goes to local and state taxes. I'd like to be exempted. Also, it's inconvenient parking far away from stores. I think I should be able to park in those handicapped spots. Preferably two of them so I can park my car sideways or diagonally. Please change the laws for me. And be quick about it, I'm not very patient. Thank you.
#3
of course DMFD! I wouldn't wanna be intolerant!
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/27/2006 20:53 Comments ||
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The Muslims are not interested in Euro-style autonomous or Federalist CANTONS, but a sovereign Nation within a larger sovereign Nation where the larger financially/economically supports the lessor, aka $$$, until such time the lessor replaces the larger, freely or forcibly. No different than what the US DemoLefties want for America andor any future "Empire" - we $$$ the Lefties and Commies while they work wid the Radical Muslims to destabilize and kill America.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called for "regime change" in the United States on Monday and denounced "wicked" U.S. policies for turning the world against America.
"We need a new government, we need regime change in America," he said at the end of a visit to Communist Cuba.
Farrakhan, who led the Million Man March on the Washington Mall in 1995 to promote black self-reliance, said the Bush administration's domestic policies were "sucking the blood of the poor and the weak."
The controversial African American leader defended Iran's right to develop a nuclear energy program to reduce dependence on oil and said Washington's opposition was a pretext for a war.
"The Muslim world should unite against America's desire for a preemptive strike against Iran and Syria," he said at a news conference.
Farrakhan said a similar pretext was used by Washington to invade Iraq "to rape the treasuries of the United States of hundreds of billions of dollars to be doled out to the friends of President Bush, Halliburton and Bechtel and associates."
Farrakhan visited Cuba for a week to learn about disaster management in the wake of the U.S. government's failure to cope with Hurricane Katrina last year in New Orleans, he said.
He thanked President Fidel Castro and blasted the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba as a "wicked blockade." The U.S. government has no moral grounds to criticize Cuba, where education and health care are free, he added.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/27/2006 18:21 ||
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That's a rap, flush the Louie crap.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/27/2006 18:25 Comments ||
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His dream will come true in 2008. That may be sooner than cuba.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/27/2006 18:38 Comments ||
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Cuba's a great place for this dildo-brain. We don't really have to let him back into the country, do we? We do??????? Shit...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/27/2006 20:29 Comments ||
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further defines his followers as enemies of America, the west, and freedom
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/27/2006 20:30 Comments ||
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Isn't he breaking the law just by being in Cuba?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/27/2006 21:19 Comments ||
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A P. T. Barnum pic is too kind for this race-baiter, antisemite, racist cult leader. He is not a sideshow freak, he is a traitor and an ennemy, and I'm not even US.
In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.
But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.
"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.
"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."
The timetable came at an important diplomatic moment. Five days after the Bush-Blair meeting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was scheduled to appear before the United Nations to present the American evidence that Iraq posed a threat to world security by hiding unconventional weapons.
Although the United States and Britain aggressively sought a second United Nations resolution against Iraq which they failed to obtain the president said repeatedly that he did not believe he needed it for an invasion.
Stamped "extremely sensitive," the five-page memorandum, which was circulated among a handful of Mr. Blair's most senior aides, had not been made public. Several highlights were first published in January in the book "Lawless World," which was written by a British lawyer and international law professor, Philippe Sands. In early February, Channel 4 in London first broadcast several excerpts from the memo.
Since then, The New York Times has reviewed the five-page memo in its entirety. While the president's sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.
The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.
The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.
Those proposals were first reported last month in the British press, but the memo does not make clear whether they reflected Mr. Bush's extemporaneous suggestions, or were elements of the government's plan.
Two senior British officials confirmed the authenticity of the memo, but declined to talk further about it, citing Britain's Official Secrets Act, which made it illegal to divulge classified information. But one of them said, "In all of this discussion during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is obvious that viewing a snapshot at a certain point in time gives only a partial view of the decision-making process."
On Sunday, Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said the president's public comments were consistent with his private remarks made to Mr. Blair. "While the use of force was a last option, we recognized that it might be necessary and were planning accordingly," Mr. Jones said.
"The public record at the time, including numerous statements by the President, makes clear that the administration was continuing to pursue a diplomatic solution into 2003," he said. "Saddam Hussein was given every opportunity to comply, but he chose continued defiance, even after being given one final opportunity to comply or face serious consequences. Our public and private comments are fully consistent."
The January 2003 memo is the latest in a series of secret memos produced by top aides to Mr. Blair that summarize private discussions between the president and the prime minister. Another group of British memos, including the so-called Downing Street memo written in July 2002, showed that some senior British officials had been concerned that the United States was determined to invade Iraq, and that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush administration to fit its desire to go to war.
The latest memo is striking in its characterization of frank, almost casual, conversation by Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair about the most serious subjects. At one point, the leaders swapped ideas for a postwar Iraqi government. "As for the future government of Iraq, people would find it very odd if we handed it over to another dictator," the prime minister is quoted as saying.
"Bush agreed," Mr. Manning wrote. This exchange, like most of the quotations in this article, have not been previously reported.
Mr. Bush was accompanied at the meeting by Condoleezza Rice, who was then the national security adviser; Dan Fried, a senior aide to Ms. Rice; and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff. Along with Mr. Manning, Mr. Blair was joined by two other senior aides: Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide and the author of the Downing Street memo.
By late January 2003, United Nations inspectors had spent six weeks in Iraq hunting for weapons under the auspices of Security Council Resolution 1441, which authorized "serious consequences" if Iraq voluntarily failed to disarm. Led by Hans Blix, the inspectors had reported little cooperation from Mr. Hussein, and no success finding any unconventional weapons.
At their meeting, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair candidly expressed their doubts that chemical, biological or nuclear weapons would be found in Iraq in the coming weeks, the memo said. The president spoke as if an invasion was unavoidable. The two leaders discussed a timetable for the war, details of the military campaign and plans for the aftermath of the war.
Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation. Since they were first reported last month, neither the White House nor the British government has discussed them.
"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."
It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.
A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo does not indicate how Mr. Blair responded to the idea.
Mr. Sands first reported the proposals in his book, although he did not use any direct quotations from the memo. He is a professor of international law at University College of London and the founding member of the Matrix law office in London, where the prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, is a partner.
Mr. Jones, the National Security Council spokesman, declined to discuss the proposals, saying, "We are not going to get into discussing private discussions of the two leaders."
At several points during the meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, there was palpable tension over finding a legitimate legal trigger for going to war that would be acceptable to other nations, the memo said. The prime minister was quoted as saying it was essential for both countries to lobby for a second United Nations resolution against Iraq, because it would serve as "an insurance policy against the unexpected."
The memo said Mr. Blair told Mr. Bush, "If anything went wrong with the military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning the oil wells, killing children or fomenting internal divisions within Iraq, a second resolution would give us international cover, especially with the Arabs."
Mr. Bush agreed that the two countries should attempt to get a second resolution, but he added that time was running out. "The U.S. would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would twist arms and even threaten," Mr. Bush was paraphrased in the memo as saying.
The document added, "But he had to say that if we ultimately failed, military action would follow anyway."
The leaders agreed that three weeks remained to obtain a second United Nations Security Council resolution before military commanders would need to begin preparing for an invasion.
Summarizing statements by the president, the memo says: "The air campaign would probably last four days, during which some 1,500 targets would be hit. Great care would be taken to avoid hitting innocent civilians. Bush thought the impact of the air onslaught would ensure the early collapse of Saddam's regime. Given this military timetable, we needed to go for a second resolution as soon as possible. This probably meant after Blix's next report to the Security Council in mid-February."
Mr. Blair was described as responding that both countries would make clear that a second resolution amounted to "Saddam's final opportunity." The memo described Mr. Blair as saying: "We had been very patient. Now we should be saying that the crisis must be resolved in weeks, not months."
It reported: "Bush agreed. He commented that he was not itching to go to war, but we could not allow Saddam to go on playing with us. At some point, probably when we had passed the second resolutions assuming we did we should warn Saddam that he had a week to leave. We should notify the media too. We would then have a clear field if Saddam refused to go."
Mr. Bush devoted much of the meeting to outlining the military strategy. The president, the memo says, said the planned air campaign "would destroy Saddam's command and control quickly." It also said that he expected Iraq's army to "fold very quickly." He also is reported as telling the prime minister that the Republican Guard would be "decimated by the bombing."
Despite his optimism, Mr. Bush said he was aware that "there were uncertainties and risks," the memo says, and it goes on, "As far as destroying the oil wells were concerned, the U.S. was well equipped to repair them quickly, although this would be easier in the south of Iraq than in the north."
The two men briefly discussed plans for a post-Hussein Iraqi government. "The prime minister asked about aftermath planning," the memo says. "Condi Rice said that a great deal of work was now in hand.
Referring to the Defense Department, it said: "A planning cell in D.O.D. was looking at all aspects and would deploy to Iraq to direct operations as soon as the military action was over. Bush said that a great deal of detailed planning had been done on supplying the Iraqi people with food and medicine."
The leaders then looked beyond the war, imagining the transition from Mr. Hussein's rule to a new government. Immediately after the war, a military occupation would be put in place for an unknown period of time, the president was described as saying. He spoke of the "dilemma of managing the transition to the civil administration," the memo says.
The document concludes with Mr. Manning still holding out a last-minute hope of inspectors finding weapons in Iraq, or even Mr. Hussein voluntarily leaving Iraq. But Mr. Manning wrote that he was concerned this could not be accomplished by Mr. Bush's timeline for war.
"This makes the timing very tight," he wrote. "We therefore need to stay closely alongside Blix, do all we can to help the inspectors make a significant find, and work hard on the other members of the Security Council to accept the noncooperation case so that we can secure the minimum nine votes when we need them, probably the end of February."
At a White House news conference following the closed-door session, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair said "the crisis" had to be resolved in a timely manner. "Saddam Hussein is not disarming," the president told reporters. "He is a danger to the world. He must disarm. And that's why I have constantly said and the prime minister has constantly said this issue will come to a head in a matter of weeks, not months."
Despite intense lobbying by the United States and Britain, a second United Nations resolution was not obtained. The American-led military coalition invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, nine days after the target date set by the president on that late January day at the White House.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 03:05 ||
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This is the same MSM meme recycled every six months or so.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/27/2006 9:48 Comments ||
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This is a counter-offensive to the release of the Saddam tapes.
PESHAWAR: Mutthida Majlis-e-Amal President Qazi Hussain Ahmed, said on Sunday that the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) would start a final round in Islamabad to overthrow the Musharrafs government. Addressing the last day of the three-day Ijtema-e-Aam, Ahmed said that this time, the ARD and the masses would render their full support to remove Musharraf. He said that this time their campaign would continue till they rid the country of all undemocratic elements.
The Masses™ are always waiting for a man on horseback to lead them to the promised land, especially one with a Chia Hat...
All political and religious parties have agreed on a four points agenda that include resignation of General Musharraf, formation of an interim government, restoration of the constitution to what it was before October 12, 1999 and appointment of an independent and acceptable to all parties election commissioner, he said. He accused General Musharraf of playing the role of an American agent whose policies had all proved fruitless. 64 percent of the countrys budget is being spent on the army but instead of defending the country, they are killing their own people, said Ahmed. He condemned the armys operation in the tribal areas and said that the operation in Waziristan was being conducted on the directives of America.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2006 00:00 ||
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A permanent solution to the longstanding Kashmir conflict can only be achieved if the people of the disputed valley are equally engaged in the peace process as the leadership of Pakistan and India, senior Kashmiri leaders said on Sunday.
Yasin Malik, chief of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), gave his idea of how to determine the true leadership of Kashmir. I suggest holding a referendum of both parts of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan and India and the party or group which gets a mandate from the people should be given representation in the tripartite dialogue to resolve this dispute once and for all, Malik said at a high-profile conference held on the third day of the World Social Forum in Karachi. A full scale and fair referendum would finally bring the true leadership of the Kashmiris who will be accepted by the rest to represent our people in the dialogue, he said. If the Indians are engaged in talks with a single party of Nagaland then why it this not the case for Kashmir? He declared that 85 percent of the people of the valley wanted total freedom while only 15 percent of them wanted to be part of Pakistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2006 00:00 ||
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Referendum in the Pakistani side of Kashmir?
Yasin better prepare his burial shroud, ISI will deal with him promptly...
Posted by: john ||
03/27/2006 15:39 Comments ||
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PESHAWAR: Three members of the NWFP Assembly who were expelled from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) for violating party discipline during the Senate elections have claimed that the resignations that the speaker approved were faked by the party. Addressing a press conference on Sunday, Maulana Dildar, Rukhsana Naz and Gor Saran Lal said that they were still members of the NWFP Assembly and that they will move court today (Monday) against their expulsion from the party. They said their votes were in line with the party directives and that they did not violate the party discipline, adding that there was no truth in the accusation that they had sold their votes.
They said the committee which recommended action against them and presented the fake resignations to the speaker did this only to please Akram Khan Durrani, the NWFP chief minister. They said that they had recorded their statements before the committee honestly and the committee had been satisfied with their statements but it was strange that such an extreme step was taken against them.
Talking to Daily Times, Rukhsana Raz said that her resignation was bogus since she had not resigned. I do not even know whether the resignation letter was in Urdu, Pushto, or Arabic, she said. Raz denied that she voted for the opposition member, saying that she was expelled from the party because she was vocal in criticising the party. My fault is that I have been vocal and criticised the governments flawed policies. The NWFP chief minister has taken revenge, she said. The MPA, who was elected to a seat reserved for women from Shabqadar Matta, criticised Akram Khan Durrani, the NWFP chief minister, for his policies. He (Durrani) and his party call President Musharraf a dictator but he is himself a dictator running all the affairs of the government single-handedly. He has held the entire party (JUI-F) hostage, said Raz.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2006 00:00 ||
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The threat of bioterrorism is real and there is enough evidence to show that terrorists are interested in acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including bioweapons, Interpol Secretary General Ronald K Noble said.
"Some people still question whether the threat of bioterrorism is real, they question whether it is truly necessary to prepare for it. I have no doubt that the threat is real," he told senior Asian police officers at the Interpol Asian Bioterrorism Workshop on Preventing Bioterrorism here Monday.
He later told reporters that while there was no information available of an immediate bioattack plan, it was important that countries put in place sufficient measures to counter such threats.
"All too often history has shown us that the impossible can and does happen. If we have the chance to take measures to protect the citizens of our nations, to help reduce the chances of our countries becoming a target, then we have a duty to do so," said Noble. Among such measures was to put in place legislations to improve a nation's ability to deal with the threat. Other measures include the availability of training for police personnel and the sharing of information between the forces.
"The response we have already received to our ongoing bioterrorism programmes makes it clear that police around the world are now also beginning to recognise and respond to this threat," he said.
One of the peculiar things about bioterror attacks was its crime scene.
Unlike in an ordinary crime scene, the police would "run to it" to conduct investigation but in the event of a bioterror attack, "you might not want to run" to the crime scenes because of the danger it poses, he said.
As part of continued support for its 184 member countries in developing national bioterrorism prevention programmes, Interpol is also preparing a Biological Incident Response Guide -- a comprehensive, step by step manual for law enforcement in preparing for, and dealing with, a bio incident.
March 27, 2006: The battle of Fallujah, in late 2004, is still being studied by U.S. Army and Marine historians and doctrine ("how to fight") experts. The Fallujah fighting was quite intense, even by historical standards, something that the media missed. What was noticed was how quickly the army and marine troops blitzed through the city, clearing out the 4,000 very determined defenders. The speed and efficiency of the American attack was the result of some unique, in the history of warfare, factors. But the principal reason for the success in Fallujah was the high degree of training the troops had. Many also had months of combat experience in Iraq. These factors (training and combat experience) have long been key factors in combat success. But the American troops in Fallujah had some relatively new advantages, that were used aggressively. These included massive amounts of information on the enemy, and robotic weapons. The standard gear of the 5,000 attacking troops was also exceptionally good by historical standards. Especially notable was the improved body armor and communications gear.
The end result of all this was a two week campaign that resulted in some 500 American and Iraqi casualties, but the obliteration of the defending force (1,200, 1,500 captured, the rest either got out, or were buried in bombed buildings). While the enemy were not, compared to the U.S. troops, well trained, they were motivated, and often refused to surrender. But the speed and violence of the American assault prevented any coordinated defense. The U.S. troops quickly cut the city into sectors, that were then methodically cleared out.
The terrorists that got out, later all repeated the same story. Once the Americans were on to you, it was like being stalked by a machine. The often petrified defender could only remember the footsteps of the approaching American troops inside a building, the gunfire and grenade blasts as rooms were cleared, and the shouted commands that accompanied it. If a building was so well defended that the American infantry could not get in, they would just obliterate it with a smart bomb. They used smaller weapons, like AT-4 rocket launchers, many of which fuel-air explosive (thermobaric) warheads. These would use an explosive mist to create a lethal blast, capable of clearing several rooms at once. The defenders could occasionally kill or wound the advancing Americans, but could not stop them. Nothing the defenders did worked, and the American tactics developers want to keep it that way.
The speed with which intelligence information (from troops, electronic intercepts, and constant live video via UAVs and gunships overhead) was processed enabled commanders to keep the battle going 24/7. The defenders were not ready to deal with this, and many of them died while groggy from lack of sleep. When in that condition, you are more prone to make mistakes, and the attackers were ready to take advantage. Compared to earlier wars, there has never been anything quite like Fallujah. The Pentagon is still sorting out what it all means for the future of warfare. What they do know is that future battles are likely to continue being different that anything in the past.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/27/2006 09:05 ||
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No mention of one of our best tricks, how we first created killzones away from the residence areas, in the industrial district, then lured the more aggressive fighters into the KZ. This excised almost all of the "offense" fighters, leaving only "defense" fighters to systematically root out.
This meant that from that point on, we didn't have to keep our "gloves up" as much, spending much of our resources on defense, and to totally commit to offense.
#6
US Commanders treated Fallujah somewhat like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prior to the spectacular VJ termination: militarized to the extent that they were not civil entities. That consideration enabled use of short range artillery/mortar cover for blitz movement by the infantry. In most cases, once an enemy perceives overwhelming force, they either surrender or retreat. Having secured both sniper positions and with ground controlled air support, retreating elements were cut down.
A factor in quick defeat is: captives blame leadership and turn against their commanders. Hence, there is ripe picking for intelligence. Information gathered led to quick attacks on command structures, which would have caused jihadis to believe that resistance was futile. The elements who chose to fight to the death did so in easily renderible pockets. The least publicized aspect of the Fallujah Operation was the fact that most arms caches were found in mosques.
Prior to the capture of Fallujah, jihadi websites spoke of the city's nominal invinciability. They wrote freely about the place of Medina, the last Muslim defensive battle (Batle of the Trench) led by Mohammad. The fact that it was crushed so quickly under conditions where morale collapsed,
would discredit the clerical class that is perpetuating terrorism. Perhaps, US Defense doesn't want to tempt further terror by treating the Fallujah Operation with triumphalism, but I think the value of exploding cleric bravado overweighs the decision not to tell the story. Heroes win wars because they inspire other heroes. What was achieved at Fallujah was more than a footnote in a history book.
#9
of course, the fiery clerics slinked off - too valuable to die for Allan. To incite fight another day
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/27/2006 19:30 Comments ||
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#10
Listen to Dogs; where does your name originate? I'll tell you mine if you choose to tell us from whence you come. Not much of a trade, but something I can offer.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
03/27/2006 20:32 Comments ||
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I'm a little ticked / non-plussed by this article since we are developing assault armor. I'd have killed for this stuff in RVN. Weight is one thing, absolute (ex-.50-.51 cal.) survivability is another.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
03/27/2006 20:58 Comments ||
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Just thought of something; when tired, they make mistakes. Therefore, start probes days before the actual attack, moving from place to place with a lot of fanfare, armor, air cover, vehicles, but few troops. When the attack actually starts, the enemy is dog tired and prone to sit rather than respond to calls and shots, never being sure it's the real thing.
SADDAM'S ULTRA-LOYAL Fedayeen martyrs were ordered to carry out bombings and assassinations in London, Iran, and "self ruled areas" of Iraq in May 1999, according to a newly released Iraqi intelligence document. One such operation, codenamed "Tamooz Mubarak" or "Blessed July," was apparently intended to hunt down Iraqi dissidents and bomb other unspecified locations.
Although a copy of the original document was not released, an English translation was published on the Foreign Military Studies Office's Joint Reserve Intelligence Center website yesterday. The site cautions, "the US Government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available." But, the document appears to be the same as one discussed by a team of military and defense analysts in Foreign Affairs magazine earlier this month.
The Fedayeen Saddam was established in the mid-1990s and its ranks were filled with recruits fanatically loyal to Saddam and his sons. Uday, Saddam's eldest son, was the group's commander throughout much of its existence. And according to the Foreign Affairs piece, it was Uday who issued the order for the "Blessed July" operations.
The document divides the "Blessed July" operations into two "branches," bombings and assassinations, and lays out specific steps for selecting and training 50 Fedayeen martyrs for these duties. The martyrs were to be admitted to a "seminar at the Intelligence School to prepare them for the required duties." Then, "after passing the final test," the
martyrs were to be divided into three teams of ten (it is not clear what happens to the other 20). The first ten recruits "will work in the European field (London)," while the "second ten will be working in the Iranian field" and "the third ten will be working in the Self ruled area." Martyrs are even reminded to use "death capsules" if "captured at the European fields"--an apparent order to commit suicide if caught.
What targets did the martyrs plan on bombing? Did the Fedayeen Saddam carry out any of these operations? If so, when and where?
The document does not say. But, interestingly, the "Blessed July" operation appears to have been conceived within a broader mandate for future attacks. The translated document refers to "your Excellency's orders" (probably a reference to Uday) in May 1999 "to start planning from now on to perform special operations (assassinations/bombings) for the centers and the traitor symbols in the fields of (London/Iran/Self ruled areas)."
The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) was ordered to provide logistical support for these missions, including selecting targets to attack. After completing the regime's training program, the document reads, "the fedayeens will be sent as undercover passengers, each one according to his work site, for the purpose of preparations and to acquire from and coordinate with the Intelligence Apparatus." Fedayeen Saddam was also ordered to coordinate "with the Intelligence service to secure deliveries, accommodations, and target guidance."
While the document does not say what came of Uday's order, it does raise a number of additional questions concerning the IIS's and Fedayeen Saddam's activities.
What were Saddam's henchmen doing prior to the war, exactly?
With each additional release of the Iraqi intelligence documents we learn more.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 03:12 ||
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ACCORDING TO A NEWLY-RELEASED DOCUMENT from the former Iraqi regime, during a February 1995 meeting with members of Iraqi intelligence in Sudan, one of bin Laden's first requests was for "the broadcasting of Sheikh Salman al-Ouda [who has influence both in Saudi Arabia and outside as a religious personality] and dedicate a program for them through the station directed inside the country." While bin Laden's desire to see a radical Saudi cleric broadcast on Iraqi TV has been known since the New York Times first reported on the existence of this document in the summer of 2004, the identity of that cleric has not been revealed until now.
Salman al-Ouda, like his better-known colleague Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, has long been known as a leading figure in the world of Islamic extremism. During the Gulf War, the two men were jailed in Saudi Arabia for criticizing the government and calling for an end to the U.S. military presence in the Kingdom. They were released after five years and today, their worldviews seem largely unchanged. In the case of al-Ouda, a growing pattern of evidence seems to indicate that he has continued to support violence against the United States and its allies since his release.
While al-Ouda has long been characterized as a "friend" of Osama bin Laden, federal investigators told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in March 2003 that he and al-Hawali "have direct contact" with Osama bin Laden. In a number of al Qaeda propaganda videos, bin Laden has praised al-Ouda for "enlightening" the Muslim youth as well as for his support of jihadi causes.
In April 2003 following the invasion of Iraq, al-Ouda joined a group of 225 Islamist clerics, scholars, and businessmen--led by al-Hawali--in establishing a new organization that respected Israeli academic Dr. Reuven Paz described as nothing less than "the Supreme Council of Global Jihad."
(It is perhaps worth noting that one of the members of this Supreme Council was Ahmad Abu Laban, one of the chief architects in internationalizing the controversy over the Danish Mohammad cartoons. Other members of the Supreme Council included several Iraq Shiite clerics, defying the conventional wisdom about non-cooperation between Shiites and Sunnis. Paz also noted that two Arab Americans were members: "Dr. Ahmad Sharbinia lecturer in the American Open University in Colorado, of Egyptian origin, and Sheikh Walid Manisi, the Imam of the mosque in that university.")
There is evidence connecting al-Ouda to one of the suspected masterminds of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. In September 2004, El Mundo and Corriere della Sera reported that Rabei Osman Ahmed, a former Egyptian army explosives expert and one of the purported masterminds of the bombings, was quoted in conversations wiretapped by Italian authorities as saying that al-Ouda was "Everything, everything" to him and that "I worked for him [al-Ouda] in Spain. I did really well in that period, in which I earned 2,000 euros ($2,400) a month. There were days I earned 1,000 euros ($1,200)." While whether or not any of the money that al-Ouda sent Ahmed was used to underwrite the Madrid bombings appears unclear at this point, it would seem worthy of further investigation given his other activities.
While al-Ouda joined other Saudi Islamist clerics in condemning attacks in Saudi Arabia in June 2004 (under pressure for the Saudi authorities), such condemnations did not extend to terrorist attacks in Iraq. In November 2004, al-Ouda and 25 other Saudi Islamist scholars called on Iraqis to support the insurgency, issuing a letter which stated "Fighting the occupiers is a duty for all those who are able. It is a jihad to push back the assailants . . . A Muslim must not inflict harm on any resistance man or inform about them. Instead, they should be supported and protected."
Interestingly, in March 2005 al-Ouda's lawyer filed a defamation suit against the Saudi newspaper al-Watan, which had reported that al-Ouda's son, Muaz, had planned to travel to Iraq to fight the United States, but that his father, fearing he would be killed, contacted Assistant Interior Minister for Security Affairs Muhammad ibn Naif and arranged for him to be captured on the Saudi-Iraqi border.
This thumbnail sketch makes it clear that Sheikh Salman al-Ouda is not simply a cleric, but a key part of the Islamist brain trust. Discussions of his sermons being broadcast on Iraqi state TV should be viewed within that context.
Dan Darling is counterterrorism consultant for a Manhattan Institute Center for Policing Terrorism.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 03:11 ||
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Paz also noted that two Arab Americans were members: "Dr. Ahmad Sharbinia lecturer in the American Open University in Colorado, of Egyptian origin, and Sheikh Walid Manisi, the Imam of the mosque in that university."
Colorado has a huge immigrant problem, connected with MS-13 and other gangs as a sanctuary city. Seems like Denver may have a terrorist problem, as this Saudi grad student from the University of Colorado has drawn previous attention:
RB 2005-10-25
A Saudi indicted by the US authorities for enslaving and sexually assaulting an Indonesian maid was under investigation on Friday for possible links to terrorism. Homaidan al Turki and his wife Sarah Khonaizan were accused of abusing their maid and keeping her hostage at their Aurora , Colorado home in June 2005.
These newly released documents are all very interesting....thanks for all the great postings, Dan.
SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE on Sunday contradicted claims from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that documents captured in postwar Iraq and now being posted on the Internet will not contain anything new or significant.
"We're going to find some important and surprising things in these documents," Rice said in an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press.
Rice also addressed revelations, important but not surprising, that former Russian ambassador to Iraq, Vladimir Teterenko, passed the U.S. war plan to Iraq shortly before the war began. The charges, based largely on two Iraqi documents captured in postwar Iraq, came in a report issued by the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, and released by the Pentagon late last week. Rice said she is not in a position to confirm or deny the claims but vowed to take "a hard look at the reports" of Russian betrayal.
The revelations about the Russians will be the subject of discussions this week between Bush administration officials and their Russian counterparts. "We will certainly raise it with the Russians," Rice said.
The Russian government has already denied the charges. "Similar, baseless accusations concerning Russia's intelligence have been made more than once," Russian Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov said. "We don't consider it necessary to comment on such fabrications."
But Labusov has not always found such allegations baseless. In 2003 Labusov confirmed reports, based on captured Iraqi documents, that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service was training Iraqi Intelligence operatives as late as September 2002. This is how the San Francisco Chronicle, which broke the story on April 13, 2003, reported the findings:
A Moscow-based organization was training Iraqi intelligence agents as recently as last September--at the same time Russia was resisting the Bush administration's push for a tough stand against Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi documents discovered by The Chronicle show.
The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents graduated Sept. 15 from a two-week course in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the "Special Training Center" in Moscow.
The "Moscow-based organization," it turns out, was the SVR, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service:
Russian intelligence officials have confirmed that Iraqi spies received training in specialized counterintelligence techniques in Moscow last fall--training that appears to violate the United Nations resolution barring military and security assistance to Iraq.
A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Boris Labusov, acknowledged that Iraqi secret police agents had been trained by his agency but said the training was for nonmilitary purposes, such as fighting crime and terrorism.
Said Labusov: "The SVR does not refuse cooperation with secret services of different countries in the areas of counter-terrorism and war, fighting drug traffic and investigating the illegal trade of weapons."
The Chronicle article continues:
However, it seems likely that the Iraqi agents who were trained at the Moscow center were using their skills for other purposes. Found in the same Mukhabarat office with their personnel files and graduation certificates were a host of other documents, including orders for wiretaps and for break-ins at such sites as the Iranian Embassy, the five-star al-Mansour Hotel and private doctors' offices.
Rice on Sunday missed an opportunity to highlight two other significant revelations from captured Iraqi documents. The "Iraqi Perspectives Project" study, which ignited the public discussion of Russia and Iraq, also reveals that beginning in 1998 Saddam Hussein's intelligence services began training "non-Iraqi Arab volunteers" at camps in Iraq.
Another captured document details the plan of the Iraqi Intelligence Service to invigorate its relations with Saudi opposition groups, including one headed by Osama bin Laden. According to that document, which a Pentagon task force determined "appears authentic," bin Laden requested assistance from the Iraqi regime on its anti-Saudi propaganda efforts and with attacks on U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. The documents indicate that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast al Qaeda propaganda and left open the possibility of working with al Qaeda on attacks.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 03:09 ||
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The new Hamas cabinet is prepared to hold talks with representatives of the Quartet, which comprises the US, Russia, the EU and the UN, to discuss ways of ending the conflict with Israel, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh declared on Tuesday in a speech before the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Presenting his cabinet's political program and ministers, Haniyeh called on the EU to reassess its policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to exert pressure on Israel to end the "occupation of Palestinian territories." Haniyeh declared that his "government won't spare any effort to reach a just peace in the region. We're not warmongers and we don't call for terrorism and bloodshed."
"We saw a lot of creative wordplay, but not any sign of moderation," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "We saw an attempt to smile toward the West, but did not see any real moderation. The sad fact is that, when Hamas speaks about a 'just peace' they are unfortunately talking about a peace without Israel."
Regev said he did not see in the speech any movement toward meeting the Quartet's benchmarks for gaining international legitimacy: recognition of Israel, renouncing terrorism, and acceptance of previous agreements. "Unless this new Hamas government accepts these benchmarks... the international community will not accept them as legitimate, and the PA government will become a pariah regime," Regev said. The US rejected Hamas's proposal to hold talks with the Quartet, saying Hamas must first meet the three conditions the international community had set.
"I was hoping that our meeting would be in Jerusalem, the capital of our independent Palestinian state," Haniyeh told the PLC. "But under the current circumstances, the homeland is divided in a clear sign of the harshness and oppression of the occupation. The occupation is waging a bitter war against our people and against our democratic choice." Haniyeh claimed that Israel, through its recent measures and policies, wanted to send a message to the Palestinians that they had made a mistake by electing Hamas and that they would therefore be punished.
Outlining his cabinet's main tasks, Haniyeh promised to work toward ending financial corruption and anarchy and establishing good relations with the international community. He said the cabinet would focus its efforts on defending the Palestinians in the face of occupation and removing the settlements and the security fence. He added that the cabinet would oppose partial agreements and attempts by Israel to create new facts on the ground, including the unilateral drawing of borders. He also stressed his commitment to the right of return and compensation for all refugees. Referring to agreements with Israel, Haniyeh only said that his cabinet would deal with them in "responsible" manner and in a way that served the interests and rights of the Palestinians.
Haniyeh criticized US threats to boycott the PA financially as unjustified, calling on the international community to respect the democratic choice of the Palestinians. "My government will establish good and strong relations with the world," he pledged. "We are interested in having solid relations with the European Union."
Fatah legislator Azzam al-Ahmed, commenting on Haniyeh's speech, said, "This program is obscure in the political, economic and social fields. This is an essay, not a political program." PA negotiator and legislator Saeb Erekat also criticized the speech.
"This program contained only slogans," he said. "It did not mention practical steps, such as ways of guaranteeing financial aid and removing the separation wall." He said all the Fatah legislators were planning to vote against the cabinet. The vote, which was originally scheduled for Monday, was postponed at the request of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas because of the elections in Israel, PA and Hamas officials told The Jerusalem Post.
The Israeli army will end all coordination with local representatives of the Palestinian Authority once a Hamas-dominated government is sworn in on Wednesday, an officer told AFP on Sunday. Once the Hamas government is sworn in, we will have no one to talk to on the Palestinian side, said Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for the governments district coordination offices (DCO) in the occupied West Bank. We will not talk to Hamas. The DCO is an army body in charge of coordinating day-to-day issues with the Palestinians at municipal level. Many town councils in the West Bank are controlled by Hamas after local elections last year.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2006 00:00 ||
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The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the countrys largest Muslim separatist rebel group negotiating peace with Manila, is likely to share sovereign powers with the Arroyo government in Mindanao, the MILF spokesman has said.
Talks are under way to put up the so-called Bangsamoro government in the South, Eid Kabalu said Saturday.
Kabalu said negotiators were discussing how the Muslims will run the proposed new government, but he was quick to say that both sides are seriously studying new formulas based on model countries such as Sudan, Palestine, East Timor, Northern Ireland and Bougainville.
Talks are going on about the proposal for a shared government and shared sovereignty between the Bangsamoro people and the Philippine government.
The results of this proposal will depend entirely on the outcome of the peace negotiations. Once the new Bangsamoro government is finally set up, then the five-province Muslim autonomous region will be dissolved, Kabalu told The Manila Times by telephone from his base in Maguindanao.
He said the MILF was also proposing to government negotiators that the Muslims be given an option to choose in a referendum whether they wanted Mindanao to be an independent state or not.
Peace negotiators last week discussed in Malaysia the scope of the territories of the Muslim ancestral domain, but the talks ended without any solid agreement, although they agreed to talk again next month.
Malaysia, a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference, is brokering the peace process.
Ancestral domain refers to the MILF demand for territory that will constitute a Muslim homeland. In September government and rebel peace negotiators signed several agreements centered on ancestral domainits concept, territories and resources, and how the MILF shall govern these areas.
Kabalu said both peace panels are expecting to sign a formal agreement on ancestral domain once they finally thresh out contentious issues on territories. After the agreement is signed, Kabalu said, the MILF and government negotiators will negotiate to find a political solution to the Muslim secessionist problems in Mindanao.
The MILF is fighting the past three decades for a separate Islamic state in the troubled, but mineral-rich region, home to about 4 million Muslims and more than 9 million Christians and ethnic and indigenous tribes.
Ghazali Jaafar, MILF deputy vice-chairman for political affairs, said the Muslims in Mindanao are ready to govern their own homeland.
We are empowering our people so that they are more prepared to assume the reins of governance. This is our main thrust today in our current consultations, seminars and trainings with our regional and local officials and members, Jaafar, former MILF chief peace negotiator, said in report posted on the MILF website.
The report also quoted Silvestre C. Afable, government chief negotiator, as saying during last years MILF plenum in Maguindanao province that the Arroyo administration is ready to give the Muslims their homeland.
The MILF said both peace panels have already signed at least 30 consensus points on ancestral domain, which included the recognition of the Bangsamoro as a nationality designation for both the Islamized and non-Muslim indigenous tribes in the southern Philippines.
Peace negotiators reached an agreement in February on ancestral domain and the rebel group said it is near to signing a deal that will finally settle the Muslim secessionist problems.
The MILF said government and rebel peace negotiators have already agreed on several crucial issues, including the coverage of ancestral domain in the five Muslim autonomous provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao.
The agreement also covered other areas in Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Sarangani where there are large communities of Muslims and indigenous tribes.
Many local Muslims said they were supporting the MILF and the proposal to put up the Bangsamoro government, but majority of them wanted an independent Islamic state, similar to Iran.
Thats good if the MILF can put up this Bangsamoro government in areas where there are large Muslim communities, like Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi and Central Mindanao. But if would be much better if we have our own government, a Muslim state, like Iran and run our government according to the teachings of Islam, said Abdullah bin Rashid.
Ustadz Shariff Julabbi, a former guerrilla leader and MILF spokesman, said Filipino Muslims would welcome an Islamic government in Mindanao.
This is the clamor of the millions of Filipino Muslims not only in Mindanao but all across the Philippines, to have their own government. The aspiration and determination of the Bangsamoro people is very strong and we are all supporting this proposal to put up a Muslim government in the southern region.
This land traditionally belongs to the Muslims, and the Philippines is originally Islam, part of the vast kingdom of the Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo. This land is ours, said Julabbi, now leader of the Muslim separatist group called the Bangsamoro Mujahideen Alliance, which has a large following in the islands of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and some areas in the Zamboanga Peninsula in western Mindanao.
But the former Muslim separatist rebel group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which originally fought for an independent Islamic state in Mindanao, has distanced itself with the proposed Bangsamoro government, claiming Manila failed to honor the September 1996 peace agreement.
The MNLF under Nur Misuari signed a peace deal with then-President Fidel Ramos ending more than three decades of bloody fighting in the South, and accepted limited autonomy over four Muslim provinces that were later expanded into five provinces.
Misuari became governor or the Muslim autonomous region, but later accused the government of failing to honor the peace agreement. His forces attacked major military bases and held civilians hostage in Jolo and Zamboanga City. He fled to Malaysia, but was arrested there and sent back to Manila where he is facing rebellion charges.
Muslim Sema, the MNLF secretary-general and also the mayor of Cotabato City in Maguindanao, said the government failed to honor the September 1996 peace agreement and that his group will not interfere with the peace talks between the MILF and the Arroyo government.
In a separate interview, Sema said it was too early to anticipate the outcome of the peace talks.
He said the MNLF is consulting thousands of its members about the failure of the 1996 agreement.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 03:19 ||
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based on model countries such as Sudan, Palestine, East Timor, Northern Ireland and Bougainville.
Wow! Now that's picking winner role model countries, but wait, there's more. Let's look like Iran, now there's a winner. What Lipless Eid really did here was name the names of all the countries that have been supporting them and their terrorist actions. Good job, not!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/27/2006 7:47 Comments ||
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Don't forget the latest MILF deal: one year access for $89.95!
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/27/2006 7:57 Comments ||
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He said the MILF was also proposing to government negotiators that the Muslims be given an option to choose in a referendum whether they wanted Mindanao to be an independent state or not.
Only the (4 million according to this article) Muslims get to decide eh? I guess (the 9 million) non-muslims are Shit-outta-luck and should prepare for Dhimmitude...
Don't you just love the way Arroyo sold them out?
And I hope she doesn't think that this would mean peace - my guess is that the MILF is already preparing to 'splinter' another group to continue the fight.
#4
CF, your spot on. Back in the 70's Marcos moved Chrisdtians into Mindanao to "water down" the muslim influence. Another example of failed land reform. Next step for the MILF will be to kick the Christians out and take back their land. The New Peoples Army, NPA, own and run the Christian lands through direction of the Comunist Peoples Party, CPP. Right now they, NPA and MILF, have signed a non agression pact. Once the MILF get autonamy they will begin the war with the NPA for the rest. Arroya has completely sold out her country. In ten years that country will be in full blown civil war pitting the OIC sponsored muslims against the Communist Chinese sponsored Christians.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/27/2006 9:19 Comments ||
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WASHINTON TIMES has an article inferring that China's role in the Sudan may, or may not. include assisting in Muslim-controlled genocidal efforts againt Christians and non-Muslims. The Philippines is one China's so-called "first tier" islands/"String of Pearls" to effectively confront US interests in East Asia and PACOA/OCEANIA - "first tier" is just Chicom PC-speak for future Chinese Territories. China at last report is still heavily engaged in the repression of mainland Chinese Muslims, so the MILF'setal. turn will inevitably come.
Wadeng Puteh, a 90-year-old Muslim farmer, vividly remembers trudging home from the fields, water buffalo in tow, and bumping into the king of Thailand. From that encounter many evenings ago, a friendship followed.
I worry about the king's health. I miss him every day, Wadeng says, his wizened face sparkling with smiles as he relates how he once traveled 650 miles from his village of Balot to Bangkok to visit King Bhumibol Adulyadej when he was hospitalized.
In a region where Muslim insurgents wage a bloody struggle for autonomy and even moderates are sharply critical of the government in Bangkok, such sentiments are surprisingly common.
The monarch and his family have earned the hard way and over decades the trust of many Muslims in the country's three southernmost provinces, where more than 1,300 people have been slain over the past two years.
Wadeng feels the royal effect every day in the improved crops he grows, thanks to the king's projects to reduce soil acidity and improve irrigation.
Significantly, among the almost daily shootings, bombings and arson which routinely target government institutions, the rebels have left the numerous royal projects largely untouched.
Bhumibol's conciliatory style is also welcome here. He has warned that Thailand could fall into ruin if the violence festers, and has urged Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to take a gentle approach.
Thaksin is accused of escalating the bloodshed with heavy-handed tactics. In 2004 security forces stormed a mosque, killing 107 lightly armed militants, and later that year 85 suspected rebels died, most of them of suffocation, after being stuffed into army trucks. Both incidents were condemned by Muslims worldwide.
The Crown has made the south one of its top priorities, says Zachary Abuza, who teaches at Simmons College in Boston and is an expert on the region's Islamic insurgencies. The royal family did a lot in stemming past rebellions and they see themselves as having a role now.
At 78, Bhumibol has been on the throne for 60 years, making him the world's longest-reigning monarch. He's too old to make trips to the south, but his advisers are here often. His wife, Queen Sirikit, spent 45 days here last year and has made an emotional appeal to the rebels: You don't have to shoot anyone, but show the (government) that you are dissatisfied, that there is harassment of the people who are poor...
Little is likely to change, experts say, in part because Thaksin is preoccupied with allegations of corruption and abuse of power that have provoked almost daily demonstrations in the capital demanding his ouster.
That leaves the king as the essential pillar, says Nidir Waba, deputy head of the south's Islamic Council.
Many Thai Buddhists say that we Muslims are not real Thais, but the king has been able to gather up Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus under one umbrella, he says.
The king, a Buddhist like most in Thailand, seems himself as constitutionally the protector of all religions. He has few real powers, and instead has gathered moral standing by initiating hundreds of anti-poverty projects.
Driving his own vehicle, sometimes on foot, and armed with nitty-gritty knowledge of development work, Bhumibol would travel deep into the countryside, leaving behind a fish pond here, a cow herd there, a fertile patch of farmland in a previously parched area.
On such trips, taken year after year starting in the 1970s, he forged face-to-face bonds with thousands of southerners, and an older generation still cherishes such memories.
But younger Muslims are rather indifferent to our projects no matter how poor they are, the queen's military aide, Gen. Napol Boonthap, told reporters recently.
Simmons College's Abuza says that the hard-core insurgents, imbued with radical Islamic ideology, are unlikely to lay down their arms before a Buddhist king, but that the royals can do much to alleviate grievances.
I feel that the queen is like my second mother, says Asi Phandao, a Muslim widow with five children, whose policeman husband was gunned down by rebels. The 45-year-old woman is among 150 Buddhist and Muslim families, all victims of the violence, who were compensated by the queen with free land, houses, fields and vocational training.
Here we call him 'Rajo Kito' Our King, said Je Ma Uma, 65. Bhumibol has met all nine of his children since first coming to donate a substantial sum and two palace carpets to renovate the mosque at Khao Tanjong village in the province of Narathiwat.
The royals have also started a ceramics factory, woodcarving and batik-making, provided free medical care, paid for the education of poor children and joined up with a Japanese firm to build a dam to stop seawater from encroaching on village fields.
Almost every year, one of the king's daughters, Princess Sirindhorn, comes for a feast, sitting on the meeting hall floor to pray, chat and eat with villagers.
Klom Theprom, a 55-year-old Buddhist farmer, recalls how the king came in the 1970s to tackle the problem of acidic soil, after which he could grow coconuts, lemons and rice.
I think the king can solve the problem in the south far better than the government, Klom said. He has the knowledge and wisdom to do it.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 03:17 ||
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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is cracking down on Iran's universities in an effort to crush a student pro-democracy movement and strengthen the hardliners' grip on power. Leading student activists have been jailed or expelled from their studies, and lecturers have been sacked, while the government has proposed subjecting academics to strict religious testing.
The authorities have also begun a programme of burying the bodies of unknown soldiers on campus grounds in what student leaders say is a thinly disguised attempt to bring religious extremists into the universities on the pretext of holding "martyrs' ceremonies". Students fear that such a presence will be used to violently suppress their activities. In one recent incident students at Tehran's Sharif University were attacked by plain-clothed Basij (religious volunteers) during an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the burial of three soldiers from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war inside the campus mosque. The incident was overseen by Mehrdad Bazrpash, a close aide to Mr Ahmadinejad and a former Basij leader.
The event took place against a backdrop of speeches by Mr Ahmadinejad, a former university lecturer, stressing the need for "martyrdom" in Iran's confrontation with the west over its nuclear programme.
Student leaders say the developments amount to a takeover of the universities by Mr Ahmadinejad's ultra-conservative forces. The campuses were hotbeds of pro-democratic protest during the presidency of the former, reformist leader, Mohammad Khatami. "They want to gain hegemonic control over the universities, which have always been important in influencing the social and political atmosphere and which normally support pro-democracy rather than authoritarian forces," said Abdollah Momeni, an activist appealing against a five-year sentence imposed for leading a student protest. "Through burying martyrs on campus they open the doors for the entry of armed militias and thus add the universities to their fiefdoms."
Other activists have had their studies terminated after the intervention of Iran's intelligence services. Students also say they have been denied permission for low-level political activities that were allowed during Mr Khatami's presidency. The purge has extended to academics and university administrators. One political science lecturer was dismissed for belonging to a human rights group.
The chancellor of Tehran's Science and Industry University resigned in protest at government interference. Mr Ahmadinejad has also been accused of overturning an established practice of appointing chancellors and faculty heads from academic staff in favour of trusted cronies. A radical cleric was recently appointed to head Tehran University.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/27/2006 09:15 ||
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#1
Outrage from their American accedemic colleagues:
Coming soon (____)
Developing (____)
Never happen (_X_)
#2
Of course not Besoeker,
The left must befriend any opponent of the U.S. no matter what their wicked agenda. Be they Iraqi insurgents, illegal aliens, the Gitmo assholes, communists or whatever, as long as they are anti-US, they're ok in the left's book.
Nine months after the election of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, Iranian politics has shifted so sharply to the right that some traditional conservatives are warning of the dangers of radicalism.
With reformists sidelined and Ahmadinejad setting a strident new tone on the global stage, figures from the extreme right of Iran's political spectrum are defining the terms of political debate in the country. In remarks that set off a domestic firestorm, a senior cleric close to the new president suggested in January that Iranian voters were largely irrelevant because the government requires only the approval of God.
The remarks by Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah, and similar comments by an aide, were roundly criticized, even on the editorial page of Kayhan, a traditional showcase for hard-line thinking. Iranian political insiders said the flap offered a window on intense infighting at the highest reaches of Iran's theocracy just as world attention focused on the government's determination to proceed with a nuclear program that skeptics call a cover for atomic weapons.
"Ayatollah Mesbah is an extremist," said one Iranian official close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the soft-spoken cleric who has been Iran's supreme leader since the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.
"Ayatollah Khomeini warned the people lots of times not to allow these people, the Shia Talibans, to come to power in Iran and have space," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, noting that Khamenei has judged it prudent to accommodate even extremists within the system and accord them respect. "Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei feel these people can do a lot of damage. They can damage Iran. They can damage Islam. They are like the Taliban. They are like al-Qaeda. They say they know what Allah expects from us -- that we should do what he wants from us without paying attention to the consequences.
"And it's a very dangerous belief."
The tension makes clear significant divisions within Iran's conservative camp, often viewed from outside the country as a turbaned monolith. In reality, 27 years after the 1979 revolution that brought Shiite clerics to power, Iranian politics is a nuanced landscape defined largely by the lessons taken from the previous quarter-century.
Traditional conservatives describe themselves as firm but flexible. While remaining committed to the precept that clerics should hold ultimate authority, they were chastened in the 1990s when reformists -- determined to lessen the intrusion of the state into private lives and show greater tolerance for dissent -- won landslide electoral victories.
Other conservatives, who proudly call themselves fundamentalists, argue that reformists were hollowing out the Islamic Republic from within. Equating dissent with treason, they demanded a hard-line defense of the revolution's tenets, including strident opposition to the United States and Israel.
In recent years the two camps united at election time, making common cause against reformists. But after the votes were counted, moderate conservatives were unfulfilled.
"There was a problem in our structure, our conservative political structure," said Amir Mohebian, a leader in a conservative faction that absorbed some reformist inclinations, including cautious engagement with the West. "We start very well, but the result was not under our control."
Mohebian said the outcomes of 2003 elections for local councils, the 2004 contest for parliament, "and now the presidency," were "not our result." Each succeeding contest tightened the right's grip.
One reason was the hard-line orientation of the Guardian Council, a screening panel that barred reformist candidates, producing a ballot skewed to the right.
That amplified another factor: turnout. The Basij civilian militia, and in last June's presidential contest the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, showed most reliably at the polls, doing their duty as the core constituency Khamenei set out to create after succeeding Khomeini.
"The Basij is mainly a creation of Mr. Khamenei," said one Iranian analyst, who declined to be quoted by name. "They spent a huge amount of money to reinforce these military groups. Basiji people and even the Revolutionary Guard people are really an artificial social class, like an artificial island."
Ahmadinejad spent most of his career in both groups, and he wrote huge increases for each into his first budget as president. He commanded a Revolutionary Guard engineering unit during the 1980s war with Iraq, the defining experience for many hard-liners holding fast to the slogans of a then-young revolution, and he was a leader in the Basij.
"He's a true believer in the revolutionary values, which we believe in, too," said Mohammad Ali Tai, 61, as he squatted on a curb at Tehran University, where Friday prayers are held in the capital. Usually, a few thousand people attend. Most are veterans like Tai, who returned home to lives that failed to improve materially while the governing elites grew wealthy.
"I am a barber myself. I talk to many people," Tai said. "They are only tolerating this hardship because they believe in Islam. Some people who were in charge did not believe in these values, and this inequality is because of them."
Each week, Tai attends a Basij meeting, and well as a gathering of his hayat, a community group that mounts celebrations for religious holidays. When Ahmadinejad was mayor of Tehran, he provided the groups rice at discount prices.
"Everything we do is actually a matter of keeping alive the revolutionary spirit," said Tai, who said he voted in the previous two presidential contests for Mohammad Khatami, a reformist. "But this time the Basij told us: Only vote for Ahmadinejad, and don't vote for anybody else."
If such groups were key to Ahmadinejad's electoral success, the cocooning cycle of their meetings -- offering mutual reinforcement and fealty to a shared vision -- provides insight into the staying power of his rigid outlook. Friends say he held to it stubbornly when others adjusted their views to the post-revolution realities that spawned Iran's reform movement.
"He always thought that was a deviation from the true path of the revolution," said Nasser Hadian-Jazy, who has known Ahmadinejad since grade school. "Equality, justice, humility, being simple, supporting Muslims, opposing global arrogance -- he was never ashamed of these principles. Never."
Hadian-Jazy, himself a revolutionary who evolved into a reformist, said he marveled at seeing his old friend wearing a checkered headdress around his shoulders on a university campus in 1998, a deeply unfashionable gesture at the height of the reform movement. "His sense of overconfidence, to me, that's not a positive point. But that's the way he is," said Hadian-Jazy, now a political scientist at Tehran University. "He's naive. The black and white area of his mind is a lot bigger than the gray area."
Insiders say these are the qualities that keep Iran's hard-liners in the extremes.
"Because of their religious beliefs, these people are inflexible," said a former senior official in Khatami's government, who declined to be identified further. "Although their number might be few, the certainty of their belief lets them resist a larger population. The supporters of civil society and reformists are less hard, less ready to be damaged because of their belief."
"Whenever someone is fixed in his thinking, we call them hard-liners," said Mehdi Karrubi, a moderate cleric who lost narrowly to Ahmadinejad in the first round of last year's presidential balloting. "A group of people just come together. They talk to each other and say: This is what the society thinks!"
Mesbah, the cleric whose speech touched off the current conflict in the conservative camp, is praised even by critics for his intellect. He leads a well-funded seminary in the holy city of Qom and has forged a reputation for steeling the resolve of Iran's harshest conservatives, famously declaring: "If someone tells you he has a new interpretation of Islam, sock him in the mouth!"
A cartoonist dubbed him "Ayatollah Crocodile" for encouraging suppression of the press. One follower, now Ahmadinejad's intelligence minister, once bit a journalist on the shoulder. Another, now Ahmadinejad's interior minister, oversaw the execution of thousands of prisoners in the late 1980s.
Many of Mesbah's former students hold places in the Revolutionary Guards' ideological and political section. He encourages students to study in Canada and the United States, which critics say does little to soften their views. Most eventually return to Qom.
Mesbah's followers have now set their sights, Hadian-Jazy said, on gaining control of the panel of clerics that is empowered to name Iran's supreme leader -- an open-ended appointment that has been assumed to run a lifetime. Called the Assembly of Experts, the 86-member body will be elected in nationwide balloting set for October.
Mesbah is expected to field a slate of graduates from his seminary, and in the preelection positioning now underway, some see preparations for a kind of coup. But the boldness hard-liners have shown since Ahmadinejad's surprise win -- on a populist platform that emphasized quality of life -- has unsettled many here.
"I believe the traditional right wing is worried," said Saeed Laylaz, a respected analyst who served in the first reformist administration of Khatami. "Until now they used each other as a horse to ride from one place to the other, and each thought the other was the rider."
Ahmadinejad's triumph, he said, clarified the driving force.
"When you create radicals, they don't stop when you want them to," Laylaz said. "The leader can order when they leave the barracks, but they decide when to go back. This is the dangerous position of the supreme leader and the right wing right now."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 02:55 ||
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#1
figures from the extreme right of Iran's political spectrum
These people should be described as being on the extreme left. Not least they conciously model their system on the old Soviet Union.
#2
I tend to think that "right" and "left" break down when taken outside the context of the Western political system. Ahmadinejad's ideas on economics have more in common with Chavez's than the latter's admirers would ever like to admit, but he also exhibits a great deal of the traditional fascist regalia right down to the SS-style paramilitary squads in the Basiji.
Look for the "we need to engage the Iranian traditionalists" narrative to appear now that the reformists are gone among the regime's Western fan club.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/27/2006 3:33 Comments ||
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#3
Sorry if posting this long article breaks rules, but it reveals the self-interest of Iran's parasitic mullah class of sweetheart contractors, strike-breakers and wage-squeezers:
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Feb. 03 Iran Focus has obtained exclusive information from a reliable source in Iran throwing light on sleaze at the senior echelons of officialdom in the Islamic Republic.
The source has provided Iran Focus with a list of senior officials of the clerical regime and the personal fortune each one has amassed. Most of these officials have risen from lower middle class backgrounds to fabulous wealth gathered through corruption and embezzlement.
At eighth place is Ali Jannati, son of powerful cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati and a senior official in Irans Interior Ministry. The Jannati familys private wealth is estimated at two trillion Rials, the equivenlt of $220 million. Senior cleric Ahmad Jannati is the head of the powerful Guardians Council and a close advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
At seventh place is Ayatollah Abolghassem Khazali, former member of the Guardians Council. The powerful council whose members are handpicked by the Supreme Leader is comprised of six clerics and six senior judges and has the power to veto any Majlis legislation. Khazalis estimated wealth is 2.5 trillion Rials, the equivalent of $275 million, coming mostly from sea trading, paper imports, and book sales.
At sixth place is Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, Irans former Judiciary Chief and another member of the Guardians Council. The senior clerics estimated wealth stands at three trillion Rials, the equivalent of $330 million.
At fifth place is Iraqi-born Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Taskhiri, who for years headed the Islamic Culture and Communications Organisation (ICCO). Since 1995, the ICCO has been active in exporting fundamentalism and propaganda directed against Iranian dissidents outside of Iran. Khamenei himself is in charge of the organisations policymaking council and its meetings are held at his residence. Adding up the lands in his name and his cash flow, Taskhiris personal wealth is above three trillion Rials, the equivalent of $330 million.
Number four in Irans rich list is Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, Speaker of the Assembly of Experts, the exclusively clerical body that designates the countrys Supreme Leader. In a country where many of the theocracys ruling elite are in-laws, Meshkini is father in law to Mohammad Reyshahri, the Islamic Republics first Minister of Intelligence and Security. Meshkinis personal wealth, coming in from mostly sugar trade and the industrial-scale printers, is well above three trillion Rials, the equivalent of $330 million.
Well ahead at third place is the former Commandant of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Mohsen Rezai. Rezai, a close aide to former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has amassed a personal wealth of six trillion Rials, or $660 million. While at the top of the IRGC, Rezai was known by many titles ranging from Major General to darsadgir General (literally, the general that takes commissions).
Number two on the list of officials who have become notoriously rich is Ayatollah Vaez Tabasi, known widely as the Sultan of Khorassan. Vaez Tabasi and his children have amassed an estimated fortune of seven trillion Rials, or $770 million. Their income primarily comes from sugar trade and the sale of real estate in Irans central Qods province.
At the top slot comes, unsurprisingly to Iran observers, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose family rules over a vast financial and business empire. From the pistachio farms of his hometown Rafsanjan to huge oil trading companies, the ruling theocracys former president has used his power and influence to expand his wealth. Conservative estimates put his fortune at well beyond the 10 trillion Rial mark, the equivalent of $1.1 billion.
Most of the powerful clerics enormous wealth is vested in the hands of his sons and daughters, as well as other close relatives such as his brothers, nephews, and bother-in-laws, and son-in-laws. One of his villas was sold in 2004 for roughly 29 billion Rials. His brother, Mohammad Hashemi, the former chief of the state broadcasting corporation, owns the company Taha, which imports industrial-scale printers.
The image of rich ayatollahs driving around in bullet-proof Mercedes has become the butt of many jokes and the cause of much resentment in a country where, according to World Bank figures, the per capital income has fallen to a fifth of its 1970s value. Despite Irans huge export revenues and unexpected surpluses from the giant oil market jumps in recent months and years, the countrys budget is constantly in a state of flux showing no signs that it will sustain any time soon, inflation is at 16 percent and rising, and the economic growth rate is projected to fall throughout 2006.
#6
Listen to dogs's article pegs the currency exchange at about 10,000 rial to the dollar
that tells you they have been suffering severe inflation for a lot of years... so in order to preserve the fortune you made by stealing you have to keep stealing
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here Sunday said enemies intend to get concessions from the Islamic Iran by launching psychological warfare and misinformation.
"It is high time they would be accountable for their crimes," said the president addressing people of various walks of life on his first day of visit to this southwestern province. Enemies are against our progress and development and are unhappy with our acquiring nuclear energy. Through these acts of misinformation, they want to get concessions from us," he said.
Stressing that enemies will not be able to prevent Iran's progress, he said, "Our nation will respond the enemies and the mischievous ones resolutely.
"They should apologize to Iran for their insults. They accuse the Iranian nation of war-mongering and this is the biggest insult." The Iranian nation following the path of Prophet Mohammad (Peace Be Upon Him) is after establishing peace and tranquility in the world, said the President.
"It is high time, the world would be void of threat and that world people live in peace and calm,'' said the president. The undesirable condition the superpowers have created in the world should end, he stressed.
He added the Islamic Iran will continue with resolution and strength the path it has chosen and will not retreat from its inalienable right. Enemies should know the Iranian nation will ask for reparation for 2.5 years of delay in carrying out its peaceful nuclear activities.
Ahmadinejad stressed the Iranian nation will not retreat in defending its rights especially in acquiring peaceful nuclear energy.
Turning to the designation of the current Iranian year after the Prophet (PBUH), he said, "Today, following his path, we want peace and tranquility in the world and will not give in to force." Stressing that the Iranian nation will stand against injustice, he said the Iranian people will fight against bullying and will defend the oppressed in the world.
"Today, a number of powerful countries have filled their arsenals with various kinds of weapons, imposing an atmosphere of intimidation on the world. However, we say it is high time the world would be cleaned up of nuclear weapons and peace would prevail over the world."
#1
Guess this means the reason why ole Zark is no longer in charge of AL QAEDA IN IRAQ is becuz he went back to his old shirt-and-tie-and-shave teaching job at Penn State - sigh, so many Penn Staters, so many AL QAEDA!?
The United Nations has said it did not expect Lebanon to disarm Hizbollah fighters by force but hoped they would join the Lebanese army.
Oh, yeah. That's zachary what Leb needs...
Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN's Middle East envoy, speaking at a news conference on Sunday, said: "We don't believe that it is indeed possible to go down south or into the Bekaa Valley and take away the weapons of Hizbollah.
Roed-Larsen will present a report in April on progress in the implementation of the Security Council Resolution 1559, which demands that foreign troops should leave Lebanon and militias there disarm. His comments came at the end of a 20-day tour that took the Norwegian diplomat around Arab capitals as well as to Paris, Washington, London, Moscow and Beijing to discuss Hizbollah's weapons and the armed Palestinian factions based in Lebanon.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
PC-speak for the UNO wants Iran to get its nukes and Empire Incarnate.
#4
He can write anything he pleases in his report. It's just a pile of paper and he's just an employee. The media, in this case al Jazeerah (LOL), can characterize it any way they like. It has even less import than the pile of paper.
After Iran, Hizbollah will be looking for a new sugar-daddy.
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.
Afghanistan's prosecution of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity shows how a fledgling democracy struggles to recognize individual rights, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.
VATICAN CITY: In its search for better relations with the Islamic world, the Roman Catholic Church is turning a spotlight on the role that culture can play in fostering understanding between peoples of different faiths.
PESHAWAR: 
A permanent solution to the longstanding Kashmir conflict can only be achieved if the people of the disputed valley are equally engaged in the peace process as the leadership of Pakistan and India, senior Kashmiri leaders said on Sunday. 
PESHAWAR: Three members of the NWFP Assembly who were expelled from the 
The threat of bioterrorism is real and there is enough evidence to show that terrorists are interested in acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including bioweapons, Interpol Secretary General Ronald K Noble said.
The new Hamas cabinet is prepared to hold talks with representatives of the Quartet, which comprises the US, Russia, the EU and the UN, to discuss ways of ending the conflict with Israel, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh declared on Tuesday in a speech before the Palestinian Legislative Council. 
here Sunday said enemies intend to get concessions from the Islamic Iran by launching psychological warfare and misinformation.
The United Nations has said it did not expect Lebanon to disarm Hizbollah fighters by force but hoped they would join the Lebanese army. 
