Islamist Wave 2013 - Overview & Updates

Angocachi Thursday 14 Feb 2013

First, Israel's fears that King Abdullah II of Jordan will fall.
Second, an argument that Saud is not vulnerable, which only suggests the opposite. Invulnerable regimes are self-evident (nobody argues if Obama, Park or Abe will be forced to abdicate or face a coup), if people begin to debate whether a regime is vulnerable, then it is.

I post these two articles to demonstrate the growing talk of uprising in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. There is a clear domino effect of Ikhwanis & Salafis sweeping the Arab world. Whether Assad falls or not, Syria has gestated a great ball of Islamist-Jihadist energy and it's expected to pour over onto the neighbors.

I'll probably sign for a job in the GCC by fall-winter, and might spend 1-3 years there. I'm a little giddy and concerned I might have the honor and misfortune of being there when the protests start massing in the squares, the opposition withdraws from the government, officers and generals defect, and Jihadis start pouring in from Yemen, Iraq, and Syria.

The kingdom of Jordan — the last strategic buttress that Israel still has in the Middle East — has so far managed to maintain its stability amid the wave of revolutions sweeping the region. Yet, successful as King Abdullah II of Jordan may have been in forestalling unrest that could threaten his reign, Jihad elements currently fighting in Syria have already marked him as their next target — following Syrian President Bashar Assad. The collapse of King Abdullah II’s regime would in all probability pose the most significant threat to the security of Israel. However, the Israeli public seems to be in effect oblivious of and indifferent to the goings-on in the country neighboring Israel on the east. At the same time, official Israel is keeping mum about its contacts with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The day after the citizens of Israel had cast their ballots in parliamentary election, their Jordanian neighbors on the east cast their votes in an election Jan. 23 constituting a small step forward in the reform plan of King Abdullah II, which is designed to turn Jordan, gradually and carefully, into a parliamentary democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood movement in Jordan called for a boycott of the election. And although the results reflected the continued hegemony of the tribes loyal to the regime, Islamist candidates that are not associated with the Muslim Brotherhood managed to garner 25% of the seats in parliament.
It appears that even the opposition elements in Jordan , watching the violence raging in the surrounding Middle Eastern countries, have opted for a peaceful change of regime rather than its dissolution by revolution. All the same, while the king is trying to cope with the opposition that has evolved among the tribes traditionally loyal to him, fears are growing that the instability on the outside will seep into Jordan and shake it from within. It is estimated that thus far, more than 300,000 refugees from Syria have fled to Jordan and that the flow of asylum seekers will increase still further: 36,000 of them found refuge in Jordan in January alone. The growing influx of refugees from Syria is liable to change the demographic balance in the kingdom (whose population currently numbers 6.2 million) and to facilitate the entry of Jihadist elements that would threaten the stability of the regime.

Over the last decade, Jordan scored quite a few successes in its endeavor to block the entry of Jihadist terrorists from Iraq and Syria. In most cases, Jordan also managed to foil the plans of those terrorists who had penetrated the country. Thus, for instance, it thwarted the plans by an al-Qaeda cell to launch a chemical terror attack back in 2005, and more recently, it detained 11 Jordanians who entered the country last October from Syria carrying explosives intended for use against Western targets in the kingdom. Be that as it may, the ever growing number of Jihad activists who poured into Syria in the past two years and their free access to the wealth of weapons left behind by the retreating Syrian army present Jordan with a new threat, on a totally different order of magnitude.

As far back as the civil war in Iraq, the Jihadists put the Hashemite Kingdom in the crosshairs as a preferred target for attack. In 2005, terrorists who infiltrated into Jordan from Iraq killed 60 people in a terror attack on hotels in Amman. However, at the time, Jordan was but one of a range of targets of the organizations associated with al-Qaeda, while recently it has been marked by the Jihad organizations as their next target for attack. It clearly emerges from Jihadist discourse on social networks that the terrorist cells currently engaged in battle against Assad plan to turn south to Jordan once they overthrow the Syrian president. And after toppling the Hashemite regime, they would be free to open war against the Jews in Israel.

It should be noted that it isn’t only the Sunni Jihadists who threaten the Jordanian kingdom. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah militants deployed in Syria in vast numbers are also liable to flow into Jordan. Not to mention the approximately half a million Palestinian refugees living in Syria who could fundamentally change the demographic balance between the tribes of Trans-Jordan and the Palestinians in the kingdom. If this sizzling dish is spiced up by chemical seasoning derived from the non-conventional arsenal of Assad, the result is bound to be a highly volatile recipe.

In the last few months, the Jordanian king reinforced his forces along the Syrian border in an attempt to prevent the infiltration of undesirable elements — apparently with considerable success. For years, the Hashemite kingdom served as the eastern security border of Israel and as a buffer between Israel and the Sunni and Shiite terror elements in Iraq. However, under the present circumstances, it's hard to tell whether the stability of past years will be maintained. Indeed, Israel has already started to plan a security barrier the length of its long border with Jordan.

Once construction of the security fence along Israel’s border with Egypt is completed and the 60-kilometer [37-mile] high barrier in the Golan Heights is set up, Israel intends to begin building a security fence along its 238-kilometer [148-mile] border with Jordan.

As always, Israel hopes to see King of Jordan Abdullah II reigning over his country for many years to come. At the same time, it is realized that in the wake of Mubarak and Ben-Ali, Gadhafi and Assad, no Arab leader is impervious to the regional upheavals, even though he may be considered a descendant of Prophet Muhammad himself.

Alon Ben David is an Israeli television and print journalist, currently senior defense correspondent for Israel's Channel 10. He has been covering Israeli military affairs for more than 25 years for Israeli and international media outlets. He is currently senior defense correspondent for Israel Channel 10 and Middle East correspondent for Aviation Week . Ben David holds a BA in political science from Tel Aviv University and a master’s in public administration from Harvard University. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for International Communication at Bar-Ilan University. He frequently lectures throughout the world on topics relating to the Middle East.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/02/the-most-serious-threat-facing-israel-the-downfall-of-king.html#ixzz2KsUMOgbD

Despite the longstanding expectations of some that the Saudi regime’s days are numbered , it has survived the tumult of the “ Arab Spring ” relatively unscathed and is likely to endure for the foreseeable future. The unwillingness of the majority of Saudi citizens to replicate what exasperated Arabs have done elsewhere in the region stems in large measure from a combination of what some call Saudi “exceptionalism” and what I characterize as a Saudi Code. It is not fear of government reprisal, as many assume.

As a Saudi who began his career working for the government, then became loosely affiliated with two U.S.-based, Saudi-led organizations that are critical of the Saudi government, I am intimately familiar with the broad spectrum of views on the kingdom. On one end is the official narrative, which speaks of a new nation that is in the early stages of development and which has undergone many changes to meet the changing needs of its people. On the other extreme is the view which paints the Saudi regime as among the most oppressive on earth, which not only routinely violates the rights of its own citizens — especially women — but is also exporting a militant brand of Islam across the Muslim world that has led to the proliferation of extremist groups. While the former underestimates serious challenges, the latter is a distorted caricature that fails to explain why Saudis have not joined the fray of the Arab Spring.

Saudis have paid attention to the suffering of Syrians and the travails of Egyptians, Libyans and Tunisians. While they are not satisfied with the status quo, they've also gained greater appreciation for the relative stability, prosperity and, as they see it, civility of their state.
Saudis believe that they are unlike their counterparts in the Middle East; not better, just different. That also means that they do things differently. Part of the reason behind this exceptionalism stems from the kingdom’s preeminence in the Muslim world and its global importance as the world’s top oil producer. The former has made Saudis ultra-cautious when advocating for reform. The latter has led some to develop a sense of entitlement that made them reliant on government largess. For others, this healthy sense of self-worth has made them demand a bigger role in the political decision making process.

This privileged existence, however, is tempered by an arcane Saudi code that sets the parameters of how Saudis interact with each other, as well as with the state. Much like the rules that govern relations between members of a large family, it is understood through experiential learning.
Saudis do not see the regime as their enemy, nor do they consider their monarch to be a tyrant. They also do not view their state as inherently unjust. Recent polls conducted in the region show that Saudis are optimistic about their economic well-being and are generally “happy.”
The Saudi monarch bolsters this symbiotic narrative by characterizing himself as a “custodian” performing a divinely ordained mission. For their part, some Saudis view King Abdullah as a patriarch who has earned their trust and respect. For many, breaking this code constitutes a serious breach and borders on the sacrilegious.

The Saudi code puts a high premium on camaraderie and explains why some Saudis spare the lives of those found guilty of killing their loved ones, even though it is within their right to seek retribution. Likewise, the reprehensible lack of regard for the lives of the Syrian people that Assad’s henchmen display on a daily basis is largely absent in Saudi Arabia. The Internet is not inundated with footage depicting security personnel humiliating citizens. There are clips, however, showing royals interacting with regular Saudis, none more telling perhaps than one where a woman forcefully expresses her dismay about the damage her neighborhood sustained following floods in Jeddah to a very deferential governor of Mecca who was in the area assessing the damage.

In the same vein, Saudi royals do not express disdain for citizens who cross red lines, the way Assad does or Gadhafi did. Their preference is always to co-opt and placate, rarely to punish.
Although minority Shiites who are concentrated in the Eastern province continue to organize intermittent protests to express their anger over what they perceive as systemic discrimination, less than 20 people have died in clashes with authorities over the past year and a half. Conservative estimates have the number of dead in Syria in the same time span at 50,000.

This is not to say that Saudi Arabia does not face the specter of the combustible combination of factors which led to the toppling of other regimes. However, the deep cynicism and despair that became a signature of life in other Arab countries is not as palpable in Saudi Arabia and that is due to how the regime has chosen to address the country's challenges.

For now, Saudis seem content to do things their way and at their own pace. Those expecting reenactments of the massive protests in Cairo’s Tahrir square in downtown Riyadh are bound to be disappointed.

Fahad Nazer is a former political analyst at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, D.C. His writing has appeared in the International Herald Tribune, Yaleglobal Online, The Daily Star (Lebanon), The Khaleej Times, The Pakistan Observer, and Outlook India , among others. His writing was also included in The Kingdom: Saudi Arabia and the Challenge of the 21st Century , Mark Huband and Joshua Craze, eds.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/02/saudi-arabia-arab-spring-king-abdullah-saudi-code.html#ixzz2KsV4ZbdG

niccolo and donkey Roland President Camacho O'Zebedee rust

CLAMOR Friday 15 Feb 2013

Not to worry. 21st century sensitive nation-building American smart power is on the case, utilizing all the strategies of modern results-based management and foreign policy to locally build up native institutions, incentivizing Afghans to engage with their own win-win sociopolitical transformation along principles of equality and liberal democracy. The Islamists don't stand a chance.

Behold the Afghan National Army:

Angocachi Friday 15 Feb 2013

Here is an article detailing a purported AQ communication from Mali.
It's likely that they have obtained genuine communications, but peppered it with details that they'd hope would have some effect to their advantage; to sow divisions within AQ ranks and with it's allies, to paint it in a poor light to those who would support, fund, or join it. It reminds me of when the US published what it claimed to be intercepted communications between Zarqawi and Zawahiri, or it's account of killing OBL (that he had a stash of porn and used his wife as a human shield, and so on), or the constant claims that they're holding secret negotiations with the Taliban that the Taliban then has to publicly deny, or that AQ was working with Saddam Hussein, or Iran, etc.
Anyhow, it presents an Al Qaeda in Mali intent on covering its intentions and hiding its identity, anticipating foreign intervention, with an eye for spreading across the region.

The lengthy letter from Droukdel , who is also known as Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, was found by The Associated Press at a compound in Timbuktu that had been occupied by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Large portions of the letter are missing, but the existing pages provide valuable insight into Droukdel's view of the situation in Mali. More importantly, they show how al Qaeda seeks to use local Islamist insurgencies to further its international goals of establishing a global caliphate and waging jihad against the West.
The letter is not dated, but was written sometime after AQIM and its allies, the Movement for the Oneness and Jihai in West Africa (MUJAO) and Ansar Dine turned on an erstwhile ally, the Movement for the Liberation of Northern Azawad (MNLA), after the groups seized control of northern Mali in March 2012.
Droukdel begins his letter with a prediction that the West is likely to intervene in Mali.
"[T]he great powers with hegemony over the international situation, despite their weakness and their retreat caused by military exhaustion and the financial crisis, still have many cards to play that enable them to prevent the creation of an Islamic state in Azawad ruled by the jihadis and Islamists," he says.
"And so, It is very probable, perhaps certain, that a military intervention will occur, whether directly or indirectly, or that a complete economic, political and military blockade will be imposed along with multiple pressures, which in the end will either force us to retreat to our rear bases or will provoke the people against us ..." he continues.
France ultimately intervened in Mali last month after the al Qaeda-led jihadist alliance launched an offensive to take central and southern Mali. The jihadists likely would have succeeded had France not intervened, as the Malian military was in retreat.
Later in the document, Droukdel urges his followers in Mali not to draw attention to al Qaeda's international intentions lest it invite Western intervention.
"As for foreign policies, you must adopt mature and moderate rhetoric that reassures and calms," he writes. "To do so, you must avoid any statements that are provocative to neighboring countries and avoid repeated threats. Better for you to be silent and pretend to be a 'domestic' movement that has its own causes and concerns. There is no call for you to show that we have an expansionary, jihadi, Qaeda or any other sort of project."
Droukdel then notes the importance of keeping Mali under al Qaeda's sphere of influence in order to keep it as a "refuge" and a base for operations.
"Gaining a region under our control and a people fighting for us and a refuge for our members that allows us to move forward with our program at this stage is no small thing and nothing to be underestimated," he notes. "The enemy's constant, persistent effort now is to not leave any safe havens for the Mujahedeen. So take that into account."
Droukdel then outlines a plan to mask AQIM's use of Mali as a base for global jihadist operations. He tells his followers to cooperate with Ansar Dine, the local jihadist group in northern Mali. And he orders AQIM in Mali to split into two groups: one that would fall under operational control of Ansar Dine in order to administer northern Mali, and the other which would handle "external activity." This, Droukdel says, will shield Ansar Dine from foreign scrutiny and allow it to retain control of northern Mali.
"In external activity, connected to our global jihad, we would be independent of them (Ansar Dine)," Droukdel says. "We would ensure that none of that activity or its repercussions is attributed to them, as care must be taken over negative impacts on the project of the state."
"A portion of the Mujahedeen of al-Qaida would be set aside and put under the complete control of the emir of Ansar Dine to participate in bearing the burden of running the affairs of the liberated cities," he continues. "The other portion would remain completely independent of Ansar Dine and its activity would be limited to jihadi action outside the region."
Droukdel's plan to cooperate with local jihadist groups to further al Qaeda's ends, and mask that cooperation, is a common tactic. Osama bin Laden, the former emir of al Qaeda, instructed Mukhtar Abu al Zubayr, the leader of Shabaab, to hide Shabaab's ties to al Qaeda so as not to draw foreign attention. Bin Laden's order was first reported by The Long War Journal in August 2010 ; the report was confirmed when the US government declassified just 17 of the thousands of letters and documents seized from bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan after the May 2011 raid.
Al Qaeda has also sought to mask its operations behind the aegis of local jihadist groups in Yemen and the Middle East as well as elsewhere in North Africa. Ansar al Sharia in Yemen was formed to serve as a political front for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, while Ansar al Sharia groups have sprung up in Libya, Tunisia, Mauritania, and Egypt over the past few years. Similarly, the Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant was formed in January 2012 as a front group for al Qaeda in Iraq. Longtime al Qaeda operatives serve in leadership roles in all of these groups.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2013/02/al_qaeda_in_mali_sou.php#ixzz2L38Lz0ad

niccolo and donkey Broseph Whenever I post an article the formatting is fucked. I try to edit it into spaced paragraphs, but the damn enter button does nothing. This is not worthy your noble Dalmatian heritage.

Angocachi Friday 15 Feb 2013

Watch it before I do.

Angocachi Monday 18 Feb 2013

A very predictable article from the New York Times, quoting a few Azawadis regarding what their time under Ansar Al Dine was like. It's the same story told anytime Shariah courts are opened, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, or wherever.
First the Islamists restore order, subduing militias, drug lords, warlords, mafia, looting, rioting, etc and the new Shariah regime earns gratitude from the people. That is until the courts start imposing 'strict' rules with 'harsh' punishments, maiming and executing criminals, beating and threatening people for breaches. All manner of badness and misbehavior is ascribed to the Islamic government, in the same vein as Jewish lampshades and Kuwaiti babies dumped from their incubators. They destroy priceless cultural artifacts nobody cared about before, oppress the women folk instead of encouraging them to slutwalk, and knock ice cream out of the hands of school children. The ordinary people silently disapprove in fear of reprisal until some foreign military coalition saves the day out of the goodness of its heart and totally not to secure contracts for powerful home side firms with a profiteer's interest in the country.

TIMBUKTU, Mali — When the Islamist militants came to town, Dr. Ibrahim Maiga made a reluctant deal. He would do whatever they asked — treat their wounded, heal their fevers, bandage up without complaint the women they thrashed in the street for failing to cover their heads and faces. In return, they would allow him to keep the hospital running as he wished.
Then, one day in October, the militants called him with some unusual instructions. Put together a team, they said, bring an ambulance and come to a sun-baked public square by sand dunes.
There, before a stunned crowd, the Islamist fighters carried out what they claimed was the only just sentence for theft: cutting off the thief’s hand. As one of the fighters hacked away at the wrist of a terrified, screaming young man strapped to a chair, Dr. Maiga, a veteran of grisly emergency room scenes, looked away.
“I was shocked,” he said, holding his head in his hands. “But I was powerless. My job is to heal people. What could I do?”
After nearly 10 months of occupation by Islamists fighters, many of them linked with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb , the people of this ancient mud-walled city recounted how they survived the upending of their tranquil lives in a place so remote that its name has become a synonym for the middle of nowhere.
“Our lives were turned upside down,” Dr. Maiga said. “They had guns, so whatever they asked, we did. It was useless to resist.”
It has been only a few days since French and Malian troops marched into Timbuktu after heavy airstrikes chased the militants away, part of a surprisingly rapid campaign to retake northern Mali from the militants who held it captive for months. On Thursday, France’s defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, told French radio that the intervention had “succeeded” and reached “a point of change.”
But while the Islamist militants have retreated to the desert, there are no illusions that they have ceased to be a threat. As American officials praised the speed of the French-led operation to recapture northern cities, they also cautioned that a lengthy campaign would be needed to root out the militants from their desert redoubts — and that it was not immediately clear who would carry out the daunting task.
“This is all being done very much on the fly,” one American official said of the intervention. “The challenge will be to keep up the pressure when the sense is to declare victory and go home.”
Here in Timbuktu, life is certainly a long way from returning to normal. Shops owned by Arab tradesmen have been looted. Some residents have fled, a foretaste of ethnic strife that many fear will roil Mali for years to come. Electricity and running water are available only a few hours a day. The cellphone network remains down.
Many of the residents who left — first to escape the occupation, then to escape the French airstrikes — have no way to return. Always remote, the city remains dangerously isolated: the dusty tracks and rivers leading here wind through forbidding scrubland territory that could still provide refuge for the Islamist fighters who melted away from the cities.
Those who remained told stories of how they survived the long occupation: by hiding away treasured manuscripts and amulets forbidden by the Islamists, burying crates of beer in the desert, standing by as the tombs of saints they venerated were reduced to rubble, silencing their radios to the city’s famous but now forbidden music.
“They tried to take away everything that made Timbuktu Timbuktu,” said Mahalmoudou Tandina, a marabout, or Islamic preacher, whose ancestors first settled in Timbuktu from Morocco in the 13th century. “They almost succeeded.”
The occupation of Timbuktu, a center of learning for centuries, was the latest in a long historical list of conquests — by Arab nations, by the Songhai and Maasina empires, by France. Once again, powerful global forces were in play in this fabled city: a network of Islamic extremists, the armies of France and West Africa, and to a lesser extent the United States, which has flown in French forces and refueled French warplanes during the campaign.
Through it all, the city’s residents, whose ancestors endured such ravages for the better part of a millennium, have adapted as best they could.
On April 1, the day rebels arrived in this city, Mr. Tandina had just returned from the first, predawn prayer of the day. He made bittersweet tea to the murmur of a French radio broadcast. The news was bad: Gao, the largest city in northern Mali, had fallen to Tuareg rebels, the nomadic fighters who had been battling the Malian state for decades.
His hometown was almost certainly their next target. When shots rang out in Independence Square, just behind Mr. Tandina’s house, he knew that Timbuktu’s latest conquerors had arrived.
“The barbarians were at our gate,” he said with a sigh. “And not for the first time.”
The Tuareg fighters took control of the city, and for two days they looted its sprawling markets, raped women, stole cars and killed anyone who stood in their way.
“Then the man with the big beard came,” Mr. Tandina said.
Barrel-chested and dressed in a blue tunic, the leader of Ansar Dine, an Islamist group with links to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, arrived with several truckloads of fighters. The new rebels called the city’s people to a public square and made an announcement.
“They said, ‘We are Muslims. We came here to impose Shariah ,’ ” Mr. Tandina said.
At first, Timbuktu’s people were relieved, he said. Beginning a hearts-and-minds campaign, the group garrisoned the fearsome Tuareg nationalists outside of town, which stopped the raping and pillaging.
They did not charge for electricity or collect taxes. Commerce went on more or less as usual, he said.
Then a mysterious group of visitors came from Gao, heavily armed men riding in pickup trucks, trailing desert dust.
“They told us they were here to establish an Islamic republic,” Mr. Tandina said.
It started with the women. If they showed their faces in the market they would be whipped. The local men grew angry at attacks on their wives, so they organized a march to the headquarters of the Islamic police, who had installed themselves in a bank branch.
The Islamists greeted the protesters by shooting in the air. Many fled, but a small group, including Mr. Tandina, insisted that they be heard.
A young, bearded man came out to meet them. Much to Mr. Tandina’s surprise, he recognized the Islamic police official. His name was Hassan Ag, and before the fighting began he had been a lab technician at the local hospital.
“When I knew him he was cleanshaven, and he wore ordinary clothes of a bureaucrat,” Mr. Tandina said.
Now he was dressed in the uniform of the Islamist rebellion: a tunic, loose trousers cut well above the ankle, in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad, and a machine gun slung across his shoulder.
“I told him our women were being harmed,” he said.
Mr. Ag was unmoved.
“This is Islamic law,” he said, according to Mr. Tandina. “There is nothing I can do. And the worst is yet to come.”
Soon it came. They began destroying tombs of the saints venerated by Timbuktu’s Muslims. Armed with pickaxes and sledgehammers, they reduced to
rubble the tomb of Sidi Mahmoud , a saint who, according to legend, protected the city from invaders.
Venerating saints, an ancient practice here, was considered un-Islamic in the austere version of the faith proclaimed by the occupiers.
Mr. Tandina said he tried to use his decades of Koranic education to argue with the Islamists, citing verses about respecting the burial places. They would not listen.
Before long, he said, amputations started. Then came the executions. Again he said he tried to intervene, going to the Islamic court with stacks of Islamic law books under his arm.
“Islam was whatever they said it was,” he said. “They did not respect the holy book. They respected nothing but their own desires.”
For hundreds of years, Timbuktu was one of the world’s most important centers of Islamic learning. The city has dozens of mosques, and it is famous for the ancient, handwritten manuscripts that city residents have collected for generations, preserving them against waves of invaders and creating a priceless trove of knowledge about the Islamic world and beyond. Many families have long traditions of Islamic learning, passed from father to son.
So many here bristled when the Islamists called the population to lecture them about the proper practice of the religion in which they had been raised.
“What they call Islam is not what we know is Islam,” said Dramane Cissé, the 78-year-old imam at one of the city’s biggest and oldest mosques. “They are arrogant bullies who use religion as a veil for their true desires.”
But like many Muslims here, he hid away his amulets, prayer beads and other banned religious items. In his mind his faith remained the same.
“I was born in my religion and I will die in my religion,” Mr. Cissé said. “I know what I believe and nothing can change that.”
The compromises Dr. Maiga made to keep his hospital going continue to haunt him.
After the young man’s hand was cut off, the Islamists held it aloft and shouted “God is great” over and over, he said.
Dr. Maiga and his team hustled the young man into the ambulance and rushed him into the operating room to cauterize the wound, giving him powerful painkillers.
“I did what I had to do,” he said. “God help us.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Scott Sayare from Paris.

nytimes.com

An English Q&A with a Taliban spokesman a few months before 9/11. It's the kind of thing I rarely see, an Islamic government (one that operates Shariah courts) addressing Western criticisms.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/avo4p97KGfU

And another,
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/hBhhI7m47ZE

Asterion Monday 18 Feb 2013

Keying the Enter button apparently has no effect on a block of text; however, the spaces are being applied esoterically. You need to click "More Options" and then "Preview" until you get it right.

Angocachi Tuesday 19 Feb 2013

Maybe the biggest story in Pakistan, other than the bombings of Shia, the Shia protests, and the government response... is the Malala Yousafzai story.
Malala is, supposedly, the Pakistani girl behind a BBC blog detailing life in the NWFP. The New York Times did a documentary on her when the Pakistani military was fighting with the Taliban in Swat. She promotes girl's education, has won and been nominated for a bunch of peace prizes, has done many interviews and so forth.
In October 2012 it's said she was shot in the head and neck by the Taliban, and then flown to the UK for surgery. The UN has named a Malala Day, the Pakistani, British, and American governments have showered the incident with all kinds of attention, petitions, and bills. There's a girl's education charity set up in her name.
With all of this she has become the cute face of the anti-Taliban sentiment in Pakistan, and secular anti-Islamists globally. Simultaneously she is the object of frustration by those who oppose the Pakistani government and it's Anglo-American masters. There is massive skepticism that the Malala story is true, given that she began as an object of Western media like the BBC, New York Times, is a darling of the UN, London, and DC, and has met Richard Holbrooke. After it was revealed that the CIA uses vaccination ruses to hunt targets, such as it did in Pakistan to find OBL, there is little reason for Pakistanis to doubt that Malala could be a psychological operation. After all, if Jihadists could kill Benazhir Bhutto, but they couldn't kill a little girl when they had captured her in her school bus (as the story goes), what kind of story is this?

This is a good English example of the kind of skepticism growing in Pakistan,

"
Why Malala Yousafzai was attacked?

Dr Shahida Wizarat

T he timing of the attack on Malala Yousafzai on October 9 just one day after the PTI march against drone attacks is most intriguing. The attention of the world to the cruelties and barbaric bombardment

of innocent civilians in FATA as revealed by the participation of 32 Americans and several British in the PTI march, its coverage by the BBC and the denunciation of drone attacks by the visiting Russian

foreign minister, editorials against drone attacks in the Financial Times and other newspapers reveal the global attention that US crimes against the people of Pakistan were getting.It is also intriguing to

note that after the attack on Malala Yousafzai the casualties from drone attacks increased to 18 and 27 the day before and yesterday respectively. This precious loss of life and the crimes against

humanity committed by the US against these innocents is now not drawing any attention in the international media. The poor victims have been left to fend for themselves against the US might by the

armed forces of Pakistan who have a pledge to protect the people of Pakistan. Both the civilian and the military leaderships of the country by their total disregard to the killings of Pakistanis are complicit

in these heinous crimes!Pakistani society is not very organized and the people do not react quickly to happenings. Sometimes one gets the impression that people are quite callous and indifferent to the

sufferings of their fellow countrymen and women. But the attack on Malala was different. This time around the civil society, media, civilian government, the army, etc appeared very well organized against

the cowardly attack on Malala in a matter of just 24 hours. And almost immediately Barak Obama who has been ordering the murder of innocent Pakistani civilians on a daily basis and Hilary Clinton were

ready with their statements condemning the barbarity. Even Secretary General Ban Ki Moon condemned that attack. Madona, a singer learnt about it almost immediately and cried for Malala and

dedicated a song to her. BBC covered Malala's tragedy and revealed that Adam Ellick had made a documentary about her in 2009. And the Kids Rights Foundation had nominated Malala for International

Children's Peace Prize and the awarding of the National Peace Award to her by the government in 2011. But most intriguing was the fact that Christiana Amanpour, who is suspected of links to the CIA, of

the CNN did a program on Malala. The same Christiana Amanpour who became notorious for making a reservation for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in the aftermath of 9/11 in an attempt to malign

Pakistan. She was immediately ordered out of Pakistan.The immediate and well organized reaction of the media, civil society, UN Secretary General, the highest political office in Washington, the singers,

etc, convey the impression that they were ready for the situation even before the poor child was attacked. Christiana Amanpour's interest and condemnations from Barak Obama shows that the issue is of

great strategic significance to the US. It throws light on possible CIA footprints in the crime. Similar attempts have been made in the past to reveal the serious threat to the whole world as a result of very

dangerous 'terrorists' in North Waziristan. These include the flogging of a woman by the Taliban a few years ago, the accusation by the UK government against 11 Pakistanis (who were later cleared of all

charges) of a bomb plot planned in Britain a few years ago and the statement of Gordon Brown that 75 percent of all terrorist plots in Britain originate out of Pakistan's Northern Areas were some of the

earlier attempts to get army operation started in North Waziristan. The USA and UK have been using deception consistently as a policy instrument to further their strategic objectives. The allegation of

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) to justify their invasion of Iraq in 2003, are still fresh in our minds. Almost ten years on, nobody has been able to find WMDs in Iraq, but the genocide of the Iraqi

people has not invoked any compassion from Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton, UN Secretary General, Modona, Christiana Amanpour. They only cry out in support of the injured when strategic US interests

are involved! It needs to be remembered that as we draw close to 2015, the US will try to accelerate the killings of innocent Pakistanis both through drone attacks as well as orchestrating Malala type

incidents to draw every ones attention to the seriousness of the threats from the militants. These are more sophisticated versions of the 'do more' mantra. The hidden agenda behind the do more

admonitions is to accelerate the pace towards the predictions of the CIA Report Global Trends in 2015, which stated that KPK and Balochistan will not be in the control of the Government of Pakistan in

the year 2015."

http://www.thefrontierpost.com/article/186971/

What's most damning to the Malala case is that the Pakistani government now admits that the Pakistani Taliban didn't shoot her.

" Interior Minister Rehman Malik condemning the murder attempt on peace activist Malala Yusufzai said that it looks like the Tehrik-Taliban Pakistan was not involved in this attack but is the work of a splinter group of TTP.

Talking to media during visit to office of Parliamentary Reporters Association at Parliament House on Tuesday Rehman Malik said that a report has been sought of the murder attack on Malala Yousafzai and it is unlikely that the attack was carried out by TTP but it looks like the handy work of a splinter group of TTP, which is working on a separate agenda.

He said that threat of terrorism still looms large in the federal capital due to which the security has been placed in high alert. He said that it has been decided to extend the Red Zone area and the area would be covered from all four sides by barbed wires.

Malik also said that we managed to foil terrorists plot to attack the US embassy on the Youm-e-Eshq-Rasool day. He said that interrogations of 19 motorcyclists who were on bound to US embassy with petrol bombs has been started and the faces of arrested would be made public.

In response to a question he said that the country is passing through a difficult phase and external forces are bent upon destabilising the country. He said in current circumstances we need to stand united."
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-n...ot-involved-in-murder-attempt-on-malala-malik

So an unknown splinter group shot Malala, according to Islamabad.

Angocachi Tuesday 19 Feb 2013

Meanwhile Madonna is doing this;
[IMG]
"There’s no doubt that Madonna was trying to be helpful a few days ago when she performed a striptease for an audience in Los Angeles. The question is how carefully the pop entertainer considered the consequences before she shucked off her costume to reveal the name Malala emblazoned in big letters across her back, between her bra strap and her thong. The crowd at the Staples Center applauded and cheered, of course. But the response has been decidedly mixed in Pakistan, where 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai (no relation) attended school until Oct. 9, when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head for her outspoken public advocacy of women’s education.
The extremists pounced on the video as soon as it was posted. The schoolgirl’s shooting had provoked an unprecedentedly fierce backlash against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Now Madonna’s performance allowed the militants to recast Malala as a symbol of Western immodesty and immorality. Hospitalized in Britain, with a tracheotomy tube down her throat, she was in no position to protest. Kakar Khan, a former senior official in the Afghan Taliban’s Information Ministry, sent me a long email saying, “If you have any doubts about Malala’s game, you must watch Madonna strip sing.” He urges readers of his Facebook page to view the video—but not if family members are present: “Do not try to open it,” he warns. “Total strip and vulgar.”

Many Taliban say Malala’s Western supporters only prove she was a bad person. “If Malala were a good Muslim, such terrible people would not raise their voices for her—people like Obama, [Angelina] Jolie , Madonna, [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, and [Pakistani President Asif Ali] Zardari, says Ghazi Wazir, a TTP member living in Karachi. “Whoever shot Malala would not be happy for hurting the girl, but they would be happy for any pain they could inflict on Obama, Zardari, Karzai, and the rest of the world’s top enemies of islam.” He says he has seen photos of Madonna on the night of her pro-Malala performance.
Even people from far outside the Taliban’s ranks are denouncing the singer’s performance. “I condemned the attack on Malala,” says Omar Mansoor Ansari, who worked as the media director for Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai’s campaign during Afghanistan’s 2009 presidential race. “At the same time, I also condemn Madonna’s song for Malala. Those who targeted Malala created a hugely negative message about Muslims, but Madonna has spread the anti-Islam and anti-Pashtun propaganda even wider by her song.”
Not satisfied with using Madonna in efforts to discredit Malala, some Pakistani Taliban are weaving bizarre conspiracy theories around the case. One TTP commander, currently living underground in Karachi and asking not to be named, claims that the Malala shooting was all a big hoax. “It was just play-acting,” he says. “If she was wounded in the head as it was said in the media, the doctors would have been forced to shave her head, but in photos her hair is perfect. She was never wounded .”
Zaman Taraki, a relatively moderate TTP sympathizer living in London, concedes that the shooting was genuine, but he insists that the attack was a plot by Punjabi members of Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistan government’s spy directorate, to rally worldwide support for military action in the TTP’s tribal-areas strongholds. But it’s no use, he says. U.S. support for action against the TTP “would only help the religious fanatics,” he says. “The Pakistani Army would never go after the Taliban in the tribal areas.”

The backlash against Malala actually began even before Madonna’s appearance in Los Angeles. I visited a madrassa in Mardan, a 90-minute drive from Malala’s Swat Valley hometown of Mingora. “There is no doubt that Islam never allows the killing of anyone under age,” says Maulana Ali Haqqani, 45, as his class of 15 students listened intently. “The question isn’t whether what happened to Malala was right or wrong. The question is why this incident is fueling anti-Islam feelings. The attack on Malala earned deep and rapid condemnation worldwide. So why does no one speak out against the killing of innocent kids in the tribal areas, Afghanistan, and Palestine?”

Haqqani blames practically everyone he can think of: not only the U.S. and Israeli armed forces, but Malala’s father for encouraging her to speak her mind, the late U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke for agreeing to meet with her and thus helping to make her a target of the TTP’s rage, the entire world for supposedly ignoring atrocities that are committed against Muslims. “Thousands of Muslim kids were burned alive in Burma,” he says, referring to violence that killed an undetermined number of men, women, and children last June. “Where were the people who are now at the front lines of the U.S.-led media war against Pakistan’s religious elements?” He takes off his glasses and looks proudly to his students. “I agree there is more sympathy for Malala than we thought, but it is Western media using her case and keeping it alive.”
In the end, there’s always a way to deflect the burden of responsibility to the West. “The Malala incident helped the West by successfully diverting attention from anti-Islam movies,” says Kakar Khan, evidently referring to the idiotic YouTube trailer for Innocence of Muslims, which set off furious protests across the Muslim world in September. “Malala was a poor and innocent girl, unwittingly forced to play her part in this satanic drama. Now her role is at an end, and the play will go on, costing lots of Muslim blood.” The tragedy will continue. That much seems beyond dispute."
thedailybeast.com

The Pakistani Taliban denies shooting Malala, the Pakistani government agrees that the Pakistani Taliban didn't shoot Malala, so what is happening?

Angocachi Thursday 21 Feb 2013

niccolo and donkey Roland CLAMOR O'Zebedee rust President Camacho Stubby Theo Broseph

A fantastic summary of the Iranian-Egyptian-Turkish dynamic.

"After the victory of the Egyptian revolution in 2011 , there has been increased talk in academic circles about the emergence of a new triangle in the Middle East that includes Egypt, Turkey and Iran. This is because of the historical ties among the three parties, their traditionally strong central governments, and their historical roles in the Middle East. This concept of the Greater Middle East differs from that of the neo-conservatives. In the former, the Middle East’s security and harmony rests on the cooperation among the three main countries Egypt, Iran and Turkey, for serving their interests and defending the security of this part of the world. Although some Middle Eastern intellectuals and philosophers showed enthusiasm for that triangle over the past decades, the historical experience shows that it has never actually happened in reality.

In the year 1513, the ruler of Egypt, Qansouh Ghouri, allied with Iran to counter the threat posed by Ottoman Turkey. There was later a Turkish-Iranian convergence under a Western umbrella to face the Arab liberation movement led by Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, we see an alliance emerging between Egypt and Turkey to face Iran after the Arab Spring, despite the relative improvement in relations between Cairo and Tehran. In short, in the past five centuries the Middle East has not seen an alliance among those three countries. On the one hand, such a triangle will threaten the global balance of power, not just the region. On the other hand, the bilateral relations among the three countries have seen a lot of ups and downs as dictated by national calculations, not by the value for the existence of such a triangle.

In parallel, the Middle East has been witnessing a decline in US influence for the past few years. The indicators point that the decline will continue, with US attention turning more and more toward Asia in order to confront China. The American retreat from the region is leaving behind a vacuum that rising regional powers, like Iran and Turkey, will seek to fill. As Turkey and Iran compete throughout the region — from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and even Gaza — it seems that Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood has become a tool used by the Turks and the Iranians to compete in the Middle East.

Therefore, the regional balance of power will tend toward the party (Iran or Turkey) that succeeds in weaving a network of relations with Cairo, whereby the latter is used as support to confront the other party. According to that theory, as long as Egypt does not have a national agenda, as has been the case in recent months, and as long as Egypt’s political leadership keeps lacking political imagination, Egypt will be transformed from an equal player — as is supposed to be the case according to the triangle theory — into an arena of conflict between Turkey and Iran on who will lead the region. The theory compares the models posed by both Iran and Turkey on the one side with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood model in order to clarify the differences between those models and to try to predict with whom Egypt will ally in the future, Iran or Turkey?

The Muslim Brotherhood’s experience and the Iranian experience

Despite the similarities between the Muslim Brotherhood’s experience and the Iranian experience, a comparison is not appropriate because of seven basic differences:

1. Although it is true that both the Iranian and Egyptian revolutions were not conducted by the Islamic movement alone, in Iran Imam Ruhollah Khomeini was the revolutionaries’ main reference, be they within or without the Islamic current, and that remained to be the case until the fall of the shah . Then the disagreements started and worsened in the first year after the Iranian revolution’s victory. But in the Egyptian case, no Muslim Brotherhood leader acted as an inspiration or a spiritual guide for the revolution that stayed in Tahrir Square from Jan. 25 to Feb. 11, 2011.

When the Iranian revolution triumphed, Khomeini had the moral authority to appoint a government headed by the engineer Mehdi Bazargan, the representative of the national liberal current, without an election or a referendum. Yet in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood decided to join the revolution only after the Brotherhood realized that the revolution was about to win due to the steadfastness of the demonstrators and their ability to break the will of the security apparatuses.

2. The deals struck between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) organized the relationship between the two parties throughout the transition period, contrary to what the youth and revolutionary forces wanted. So SCAF wrote a new election law that opened the door for the rise of the Islamists by allowing them to win the majority of parliamentary seats in 2011, in return for guarantees concerning the military’s roles and economic gains, which remain in force until now.
What happened in Iran was different. Khomeini proceeded to liquidate Iran’s military chiefs. Until today, the Islamic regime has not forgotten that the Iranian army stood by the shah. So the new regime established the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which is an army that is similar to the Soviet Red Army but with Islamic ideology.

3. The Iranian leadership used the blood of the martyrs to establish a new system that is completely disconnected from the shah’s regime. But the case with the Muslim Brotherhood is entirely different, as all four prime ministers since former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down in 2011 until this writing in 2013 belonged to the Mubarak era (Ahmed Shafiq, minister of civil aviation and the last prime minister in the Mubarak era; Essam Sharaf, minister of transportation in the Mubarak era; Kamal Ganzouri, prime minister during the Mubarak era; and current Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, who was the office director for the minister of water resources during the Mubarak era).

4. The Muslim Brotherhood maintained Egypt’s commitments with Turkey and Qatar. That was contrary to what happened in Iran, which did not recognize any regional understanding.

5. The means by which the authority was transferred reveals the nature of the new authority. In the Iranian case, Khomeini settled the matter by a referendum that established a new Iranian constitution of Velayat-e Faqih . But Egypt’s Islamic constitution was achieved by first amending the 1971 constitution; then the Brotherhood maneuvered to establish a Constituent Assembly with an Islamist majority; then, during the second round of the presidential elections, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi promised to restructure the Constituent Assembly to include all of Egypt’s political spectrum. He, however, broke his promise. In the end, an ambiguous constitution was written. The new Egyptian constitution may lead to the establishment of a Sunni Velayat-e Faqih because it opens the door to unelected institutions vetoing legislative decisions, as stipulated in Article 4, and because Article 2 in the old constitution (about Islamic law) was replaced with a similar one at the end of the new constitution, which opened the door for future disagreements.

6. The administration of US President Jimmy Carter did its best to persuade the Iranian army to conduct a coup and end the Iranian revolution. When it failed, the US conducted a military operation that failed to free the American hostages. It is ironic that Carter himself was the US envoy overseeing the Egyptian presidential elections that brought the Muslim Brotherhood and its representative Morsi to power. Carter issued a report endorsing the election. We still remember the image of him presenting his report to Morsi as he stood next to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie, in a very telling scene.

7. The 1979 Iranian Revolution has exhausted the successive American administrations that tried to tame it. Even the intersection of interests of the last decade between Tehran and Washington, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, was not the result of prior understandings but more of Iranian taking advantage of former US President George W. Bush’s administration’s mistakes. That forced both sides to reduce their footprints on the ground. In contrast, it seems that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to the seats of power in Egypt and Tunisia in the wake of the Arab Spring was caused by a number of factors, first of which is a prior understanding between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama administration. And as the International Monetary Fund rushes to negotiate with Morsi’s administration on how to provide loans, the world’s financial institutions are getting busy engineering economic and financial sanctions on Iran to weaken its bargaining position in the upcoming negotiations with Washington over Iran’s nuclear program. This means that, contrary to Iran’s roles, those of the Muslim Brotherhood are designed to only serve American interests in the region.

The four Iranian considerations

A few days ago, 17 Iranian thinkers and Islamic jurists appealed to Morsi to adopt the “Iranian model” for Egypt. They listed the scientific and cultural achievements of revolutionary Iran. That appeal embodied how Iran thinks about Egypt and the Iranian need to open up to it. The appeal also worried Egyptian forces and regional powers that Egypt may form an alliance with Iran. But a quiet reading of the matter in light of the historical and structural differences between the Egyptian and Iranian experiments indicates that such an alliance is unrealistic. The two experiments are not comparable, as was discussed above. The Egyptian opposition knows that such an alliance is impossible but they are brandishing the Iranian-Egyptian relations as a scare tactic for domestic purposes.

In contrast, given Iran’s superior propaganda skills, Iran is probably aware of the factors that prevent an Egyptian-Iranian alliance from forming. Iran, however, is happy to see the Muslim Brotherhood ruling Egypt for other reasons. One, it allows Iran to mitigate the tense Sunni-Shiite relations with the world’s largest organized Sunni political group, the Muslim Brotherhood. Two, rapprochement with Egypt hampers an Egyptian-Turkish alliance that would help Iran’s opponents. Three, rapprochement with Egypt prevents Iran’s Gulf rivals from mobilizing Egypt in their political and media effort to encircle Iran regionally. Four, Iran believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is ideologically closer to Iran than Egypt’s military establishment or its liberal and leftist parties.

So Iran will continue to try to woo the Muslim Brotherhood by ignoring the latter’s prior understandings as long as Iran can achieve temporary benefits. Iran does not mind diplomatic talk about a joint Iranian-Egyptian-Turkish solution to the Syrian crisis , nor does Iran mind the musings about a new Middle Eastern triangle nor about Iran’s desire to share its scientific expertise with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Iran is moving forward with its rapprochement with the Muslim Brotherhood despite its awareness of the large differences between the two sides. But in the current Egyptian reality, Iran does not have a better choice. In the geopolitical sense, Iran seems to be on the losing side of the Arab Spring, which Iran called the Islamic Spring early on. But today, Iran is trying to postpone, or minimize, its losses, at least until the end of its negotiations with the West over its nuclear program and its future regional role."

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/02/egypt-turkey-iran-relations.html#ixzz2LcHYqMnJ

Iran, Egypt, and Turkey are currently the leading Democratic Islamist Republics. Ahmadinejad, Morsi, and Erdogan each lead Islamist movements that defied their Western-backed Secularist Juntas to take the reigns of government. They are all antagonistic toward Israel, the GCC, domestic leftists and ethnic/religious minorities, and are competing to represent the Islamic street. However, Turkey and Iran have locked antlers like a pair of wild bucks,

Sino-Russian backed Iran supports;
PKK Kurdish separatists in Turkey
the Shia wherever they are in Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, the GCC, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Shia Assad regime in Syria.
they are behind Armenia.
they have close relations with whoever is in the Sino-Russian orbit, including North Korea, the Bolivarian Alliance, etc
and as a part of their anti-Israeli policy, they've backed and presumably continue to back Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (the latter in case Hamas strays from Tehran's orbit)

Turkey, a NATO member, supports
the FSA in Syria,
they are behind Azerbaijan,
they support and have good relations with anybody against Russia, China, and their allies such as in Serbia. This ties them to South Korea, Japan, and Muslims (often Turkic) from East Turkistan, Ciscaucasia, Idel-Ural, the Crimea, North Cyprus, and the Balkans.

Turkey and Iran are battling for Ikhwan's hand. The GCC monarchs are solidly anti-Ikhwan, especially Saud, so Ikhwan is open to Tehran and Ankara. Iranian media has hyped the prospect of an Iranian-Egyptian alliance because it would hail a historic pact, of enormous consequence, between the Shia Crescent and the Ikhwani Revolution against the GCC, Israel, America, Salafis... and NATO appendages like Turkey. They can even join in their support for Hamas.
But to shake hands with Ahmadinejad, Morsi's Egypt will have to turn a blind eye on the Ikhwani and broader Sunni struggle against the Shia regimes in Baghdad and Damascus. They'd have to completely reject the US, make an enemy of it, when they could use their leverage as DC's largest client to bend American policies regarding Israel and still reap the immense financial and military benefits.

A pact with Turkey, on the other hand, can keep Egypt in America, the EU and NATO's graces, aid in beating back the Shia in the Mashriq and Levant and pave the way for an Ikhwani Damascus with a converted FSA for it's military. It will put them in league with the other two Turkish backed Arab Spring regimes; it's neighbor Libya and Tunisia. Turkey and the US would be glad to help Egypt against Beijing's Omar Bashir, which is an inevitable conflict. In the coming decade or two, the Egyptian military will follow the Nile River South of the border and into Khartoum... this is an axiom in the Egyptian martial society. The last Egyptian invasion of Sudan was launched by an Ottoman Viceroy, it might be Egypt's natural place.

I expect Iran to send a lot more Pasdaran to Syria.

Angocachi Thursday 21 Feb 2013

Another great article detailing Erdogan's war on Turkey's secular military elite. The guy is kicking ass, he's purged them so hard he's effectively handicapped Turkey's ability to fight a war if the need were to arise. LOL

"IMAGINE a country with NATO’s second-largest army that counts Iraq, Iran and Syria as neighbours and is encircled by the Aegean, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean—but has nobody to command its navy. Just such a situation looms in Turkey after this week’s resignation of Admiral Nusret Guner, the number two in the navy who was expected to take over when its incumbent head steps down in August. There are no other qualified candidates, not least because more than half of Turkey’s admirals are in jail, along with hundreds of generals and other officers (both serving and retired), all on charges of plotting to oust Turkey’s mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) government.

Admiral Guner’s resignation came after prosecutors claimed that 75 naval officers being tried for allegedly running a sex-for-secrets ring had planted a spy camera in his teenaged daughter’s bedroom. In an emotional speech the admiral said he believed in his colleagues’ innocence.

The series of cases known as Ergenekon has left Turkey’s once omnipotent armed forces weak and divided. At last count one in five Turkish generals, including Ilker Basbug, a former chief of the general staff, was behind bars. This ought to be a triumph for Turkish democracy. But the trials are dogged by claims of spiced-up evidence and other discrepancies.

The families of over 250 defendants given long prison terms in September 2012 in another alleged coup plot, Sledgehammer, are taking their case to the UN Human Rights Council. They insist the evidence was doctored. Independent forensic experts back their claims. Jared Genser, a lawyer based in Washington, DC, who has worked for such luminaries as Vaclav Havel and Desmond Tutu, says he agreed to act for the Sledgehammer defendants because he “firmly believes” in their innocence and because the evidence against them “was demonstrably forged”.

Some point fingers at a powerful Muslim group led by Fethullah Gulen, a moderate Turkish cleric living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. The generals hounded the Gulenists after they ejected Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, in 1997. The Gulenists have made a comeback under AK and are said to have infiltrated the police and judiciary.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, shares some doubts, even though he has cut down the generals’ influence during his decade in power. “These operations against the army are affecting morale. There are 400 serving and retired officers in jail. At this rate we will have no officers left to appoint to command positions,” he complained in a recent interview. As clashes with the Kurdish separatist PKK continue despite new peace talks and the conflict in Syria threatens to spill over the border, Mr Erdogan is right to be worried.

Yet even as the prime minister seeks to distance himself from the Ergenekon case, some claim that he has struck a cosy alliance with the army. The chief of the general staff, Necdet Ozel, who owes his rise to the resignation in 2011 of his predecessor in protest at Ergenekon, is fiercely loyal. Mr Erdogan rushed to his defence in December 2011 after the Turkish air force had rained bombs on Kurdish civilians who were apparently mistaken for PKK rebels as they slipped into Turkey from Iraq. Some 34 Kurds, mostly teenagers, died. A parliamentary commission investigating the affair has run into claims of a cover-up. Not a single head has rolled.

It may be that the still-popular Mr Erdogan feels that the army is fully under his control. The National Security Council through which the generals used to bark orders to nominally civilian governments has been reduced to a symbolic role. After constitutional reforms were approved in a 2010 referendum, soldiers began to be tried in civilian courts. “Erdogan sees the army as his boys,” comments Henri Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Yet for all their recent setbacks the generals still retain considerable sway. The defence budget remains largely immune to civilian oversight. The chief of the general staff is not subordinate to the minister of defence. And an internal service law that allows the army to intervene in politics remains in place.

Indeed, the idea that some officers may have been conspiring to topple the AK government is not far-fetched. In 2007 the army tried unsuccessfully to stop Abdullah Gul, a former foreign minister, from becoming Turkey’s president because his wife wears the Islamic headscarf. In 2008 the generals egged on the constitutional court to ban AK on flimsily documented charges that it was seeking to impose sharia law. In the event the case was dismissed by a single vote. As for Ergenekon, “even in the absence of tampered evidence, there is sufficient proof of coup plotting to send scores of generals to jail,” argues Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a human-rights lawyer who has studied the case.

Turkey’s army has overthrown no fewer than four governments since 1960. The bloodiest coup came in 1980, when 50 people were executed, 500,000 were arrested and many hundreds died in jail. Yet millions of Turks, who have long revered the armed forces as custodians of Ataturk’s secular legacy, cheered the coup. Its leaders are now at last facing trial; opinions are belatedly shifting amid gruesome revelations of the army’s misdeeds. A recent poll suggests that, for the first time, the presidency has supplanted the army as the country’s most popular institution. And a report by the Platform for Soldiers’ Rights, an advocacy group, detailing abuse of conscripts, has dealt a further blow. Some 934 soldiers are said to have committed suicide over the past decade, surpassing the number killed while fighting the PKK. Were the conscripts killed by their superiors? Their parents want to know."
http://www.economist.com/news/europ...e-cowed-if-not-quite-impotent-erdogan-and-his

Islamist Wave 2013 - Overview & Updates

10 posts