[AsiaNews] Increasingly, criminal gangs are abducting migrants colonists for ransom with impunity. Victims’ relatives are asked to pay as little as US$ 500. Iran’s crackdown against protests sparked by the Mahsa Amini affair is overshadowing the migrants colonists issue. Meanwhile, ...back at the shouting match, the spittle had reached unprecedented levels... The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire... continues its policy of repatriating refugees.
Since the Taliban ...Arabic for students... came back to power, tens of thousands of desperate people have fled Afghanistan, making their way into and across Iran ...They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... and Turkey. Here Afghan refugees have faced abuses and violence as well as kidnappings for ransom.
One of them is Sami, not his real name. Like many others, he fled Kabul when the Taliban came back, reaching Turkey, where he was deported. His story highlights a growing problem, that of migrants colonists held for ransom along the border between Turkey and Iran.
"Afghans aren’t familiar with the area, so they find themselves in tiny villages where they become easy prey for gunnies," Sami explained.
Such men have formed gangs who can consist of just a few people and demand as little as US$ 500. They take advantage of exhausted refugees who walked for weeks through rough, mountainous terrain in Iran before entering unfamiliar areas in Turkey.
"They find Afghans at their weakest points, when they are tired, hungry, and lost," Sami noted. "Even if it’s ten Afghans against only two or three of the criminals, the Afghans are too tired and weak to try and fight back."
While Turkey continues to send refugees back, hundreds in January alone, with some 5,000 set to leave coming days, videos of Afghans held for ransom have begun to appear.
In one video, a group of young Afghan men cower by a rock face, hands tied behind their backs. One of them, gagged, is threatened with a large combat knife, which then slices down his ear. In another, topless Afghan men, chained together, kneeling on sand, cry and plead as they are whipped with a belt.
Ali Hekmat, who has been aiding Afghan refugees in Turkey for more than a decade, told Middle East Eye that he has heard countless stories of criminal gangs abusing Afghans, particularly near the Iranian border.
Most Afghans try to enter Turkey without documentation, so there are no accurate statistics, but a constant flow of messages from Afghans held for ransom makes its way to families after they were captured by kidnappers.
More than a year and a half after the Taliban came back to Kabul, Afghan refugees are still a source of deep concern since so many travel a risky route through Iran and Turkey in an attempt to reach Europe, the United States or Australia.
NGOs report scores of cases involving arrests, abuses and deaths, picked up by media, like the migrant who froze to death in an attempt to cross the Ottoman Turkish border in early 2022. For Europe, this emergency is a "humanitarian bomb".
A source told AsiaNews that "many people" have died along the border in a "desperate attempt" to start a new life away from the Taliban after their introduced a sleuth of restrictions inspired by Islamic law (Shar’ia).
Prepared to meet, yes. Not prepared to sign a peace treaty, so why bother meeting?
[IsraelTimes] In meeting with Jake Sullivan, Paleostinian Authority president offered to halt efforts against Israel in international arenas if it ceases ’unilateral’ steps in West Bank
Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase.... told visiting White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan last week that he is prepared to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the hardline nature of the new Israeli government, two officials familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.
Continued on Page 49
[IsraelTimes] Though Shiite residents in border area back assertion by Green Without Borders that it’s just planting trees, Christian villagers say they’ve been confronted by gunnies
On the outskirts of this southern Lebanese village, workers in a pickup truck parked at a nature reserve named after a fallen fighter of the terrorist Hezbollah group. They took two large eucalyptus tree seedlings out of the truck and planted them.
The men are from Green Without Borders, a non-governmental organization that says it aims to protect Lebanon Hezbollahstan
Continued on Page 49
We’ll all quietly ignore how much of the Lebanese army is controlled by Hezbollah.
[IsraelTimes] Move marks first time Washington has paid salaries of Lebanese security personnel as economic crisis causes crash in pay
The United States is rerouting $72 million of America’s assistance to Lebanon Hezbollahstan ...Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. ... to help the country’s cash-strapped government boost wages of its soldiers and coppers, the US ambassador said Wednesday.
Continued on Page 49
#1
So US Taxpayers now are paying foreign Civil Servants.
I wonder, IF I started feeling like, and started claiming to Lebanese and a Security person IF I can get in on this US Tax Free $$$$.
Or is feeling and claiming like something, only good for US elected/appointed officials, Sports teams, bathrooms & locker rooms?
#2
U.S. Assistance to Lebanon Since 2006, the United States has provided more than $5.5 billion in total foreign assistance to Lebanon. Specifically, the United States has provided more than $3 billion in assistance since 2006 to address both economic support and security needs.
Money down a rat hole.
[An Nahar] Protesters on Wednesday blocked roads and burnt tires near the central bank in Beirut as the weakened local currency plummeted to a new low against the dollar.
Alaa Kharchib of the Depositors' Outcry Association that had organised the demonstration warned of an impending "social explosion".
"No one trusts our corrupt officials or the central bank governor," Kharchib told AFP.
Lebanese banks have imposed draconian restrictions on withdrawals since the country's economy collapsed three years ago, essentially cutting off people from their savings and prompting public anger.
Dozens of protesters gathered Wednesday near the central bank headquarters amid heavy deployment of security forces, AFP correspondents said.
Protesters rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud lambasting long-time central bank governor Riad Salameh ...Governor of Lebanon'scentral bank, Banque du Liban since April 1993. Salameh was appointed Governor by decree, approved by the Council of Ministers for a renewable term of six years. He was reappointed for four consecutive terms; in 1999, 2005, 2011 and 2017. Salameh chairs the Banque du Liban Central Council, the Higher Banking Commission, the AML/CFT Special Investigation Commission and the Capital Markets Authority. Salameh is a member of the board of governors at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and at the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF). Salameh is the longest-serving central bank governor in the world.... , one of several officials widely blamed for Lebanon Hezbollahstan ...Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. ... 's economic demise, and burnt images of him.
Salameh is under an international investigation in Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... on suspicions of financial misconduct including money laundering and embezzlement.
Demonstrators held up posters calling Salameh "public enemy number one" and others saying: "We won't go hungry, we'll eat you," taking a jab at the country's ruling elite, the correspondents said.
The Lebanese pound, which had already lost more than 95 percent of its value since 2019, plunged to nearly 56,000 to the U.S. dollar on the parallel market, dealers said.
The main official exchange rate still pegs the pound at 1,507 to the greenback -- its value before the crisis.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2023 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Hezbollah
A footage was circulated on Telegram of masked children, said to be in the Hawl Camp in northeastern Syria, swearing allegiance to the new leader of the Islamic State (ISIS).
The 90 second-long footage shows three children, whose age is estimated at 12, pledging allegiance to “Sheikh of Mujahideen” Abu al-Hassan al-Husseini,
...in our archives as Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurayshi, he ascended to the very shaky ISIS throne November 30th of last year, following the death of previous Number 1 al-Hassan al-Hashimi....
ISIS new leader.
The Hawl Camp, some 45 km to the east of the city of Hasakah, remains a hotbed for ISIS’ extremist ideology. Last year, 36 murders were reported in the camp.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has repeatedly called on countries to repatriate their nationals held at the camp.
Children make up nearly 65 percent of the camp’s population, estimated at more than 50.000, representing different nationalities.
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.
...They hate 
Hezbollah
...Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. ...
...Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. ...
