Posted on 08/25/2007 2:26:58 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
Dissident Watch: Kamal al-Labwani
by Adam Pechter
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2007
http://www.meforum.org/article/1805
On November 8, 2005, Syrian police arrested Syrian physician and political activist Kamal al-Labwani as he arrived at Damascus International Airport upon his return from a trip to France and the United States. In Washington, he had met with officials at the White House.[1] A Syrian court charged him with “communicating with a foreign country and inciting it to initiate aggression against Syria.”[2] While imprisoned, his fate remained uncertain pending sentencing. On December 13, 2006, President George W. Bush called for Bashar al-Assad’s regime to “immediately free all political prisoners” and named six imprisoned dissidents, including Labwani.[3]
Labwani has long been a thorn in the Syrian regime’s side. He angered officials with his advocacy for human rights and fundamental freedoms and has been a consistent advocate for reform. On August 28, 2002, a Syrian court sentenced him to three years in prison for his activities promoting reform during the “Damascus Spring,” the short period in 2000-01 in which the Syrian regime appeared to tolerate more open political criticism. Rather than cow Labwani, his previous imprisonment emboldened him. Following his September 2004 release from prison,[4] he founded the Democratic Liberal Gathering which calls for political and free-market reforms and equality for women.
On May 10, 2007, one week after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Syria’s foreign minister Walid al-Moallem for the highest-level bilateral talks between the two governments in more than two years,[5] a Syrian court sentenced Kamal al-Labwani to twelve years imprisonment and hard labor. That the harsh sentence coincides with Washington’s decision to reengage Damascus suggests that Assad believes the White House no longer holds it accountable for its persecution of nonviolent dissidents. “We have no desire to have bad relations with Syria. Of course, we want to have better relations with Syria,” Rice told CNN after her meeting with Moallem.[6]
After Labwani’s sentence, his children issued a statement that the Syrian regime was not able to “imprison his ideas and his hunger for freedom. They cannot detain his right to dream of a better country where all people are equal before the law. Our dad still dreams in prison—and thousands of people share the dream.”[7]
While the White House condemned Labwani’s sentence,[8] it has yet to translate its displeasure into policy. After her meeting with Moallem, Rice also said that the Syrian government’s “actions will speak louder than words.”[9] Perhaps, the same standard should apply to the White House’s response to the imprisonment of pro-reform activists whose major crimes consist of visiting Washington. While the White House is strong on rhetoric, perhaps it is time for the U.S. reaction to speak louder than words.
[1] “Statement by the Press Secretary on a Call for the Release of Dr. Kamal Labwani and Others,” Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, Dec. 10, 2005.
[2] “Syria: Peaceful Activist Gets 12 Years with Hard Labor,” Human Rights Watch, May 11, 2007.
[3] “President’s Statement on the Government of Syria,” Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, Dec. 13, 2006.
[4] Reporters Sans Frontières press release, Paris, Dec. 8, 2004.
[5] “Rice Meets with Syrian Foreign Minister at Iraq Conference,” U.S. Department of State, May 3, 2007.
[6] CNN, May 3, 2007.
[7] “Anyone Remembering Kamal?,” FreeSyriaWordPress.com, June 2, 2007.
[8] “Statement Condemning Sentencing of Political Prisoners in Syria and Vietnam,” Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, May 11, 2007.
[9] “Rice Meets with Syrian Foreign Minister,” May 3, 2007.
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* Other items from the Fall 2007 Middle East Quarterly
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Destroying Sharia With Islamic Tools
New developments in case of kidnapped Japanese in Iran : minister
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/145039.html
New developments in case of kidnapped Japanese in Iran : minister
Posted : Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:17:00 GMT
Author : DPA
Category : Middle East (World)
Tehran - There have been new developments in the case of Satoshi
Nakamura, the Japanese student who was kidnapped last month in
south-eastern Iran, the Iranian justice minister said Tuesday. “We
have received good information regarding the Japanese hostage but it
might currently not be wise to talk about it,” Mehr news agency quoted
Gholam-Hossein Elham as saying in his weekly press briefing.
Nakamura was reportedly kidnapped in early October in Bam, Kerman
province, by a notorious criminal gang led by Ismael Shahbakhsh, who
has demanded the release of his son from jail in return for the
Japanese student.
So far, Tehran has however ruled out making any deals with the
kidnappers, including paying a ransom or making any exchange.
While referring to the hostage takers, Elham said the “terrorists”
were unpredictable and therefore any information would harm the
release process.
The minister added that the intelligence service was constantly
following up the case and would eventually solve the problem as
effectively as possible.
Japan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Itsunori Onodera was twice in Tehran
but could produce neither a breakthrough nor clarification of the
exact location of the 23-year-old.
All Tehran has said is to stress several times that the kidnapped man
was well and would be held in a region named Bahramchah located
between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Bahramchah is said to be a stronghold of drug-trafficker gangs and
even the terrorist network Al-Qaeda.
Onodera had voiced deep concern over Nakamura’s health after a month’s
detention and said with the cold season coming the situation might
become even more critical.
[From: Jamestown.org]
Al-Qaeda Urges Iraq’s Insurgents to Consolidate Victory Over America
By Michael Scheuer
Nearly a month since Osama bin Laden published his message to “our people in Iraq,” it is worth taking a look at what bin Laden really said versus what the media, Western leaders and some prematurely mirthful pundits claim he said (IntelCenter, October 23). In the most obvious sense, bin Laden’s October 23 statement is a post-Iraq war statement and a further development of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s 2005 message to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (www.dni.gov, July 9, 2005). From al-Qaeda’s perspective the war is over and Islam has won; Washington’s announcement last week that it intends to begin the withdrawal of 3,000 troops, as well as Congress’s recess without renewing war funding, will bolster this perception. Bin Laden’s message is, however, a warning to all Iraqi mujahideen—Sunni and Shiite—that the hardest task is yet to come: namely, the creation of an Islamist state in Iraq.
Bin Laden’s October 23 message builds on the July 2005 letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi. At that time, al-Zawahiri told al-Zarqawi that the mujahideen had beaten the U.S.-led coalition and urged him to prepare for U.S. withdrawal, which might, he added, be “precipitous.” Bin Laden’s October message mirrors al-Zawahiri’s in concluding that the U.S. coalition has been beaten, and in stating that the only unknown is the precise moment of its withdrawal. There is nothing in bin Laden’s statement that criticizes the mujahideen for not fighting well—indeed, he refers to “magnificent victories” that make Americans “prisoners of their bases and the Green Zone”—much less anything that suggests they are losing. “The world has stood stunned, amazed, delighted and wonder struck” over the Iraqi mujahideen’s effectiveness and perseverance, the al-Qaeda chief said.
[W]atching America the tyrannical: watching its legions breaking apart under your strikes, its brigades being wiped out in front of your raids and its battalions being obliterated by the pounding of your squadrons… O people of Iraq … O eminent ones of the Turks, Kurds and Arabs: the affair of unbelief [the U.S. occupation] has been shaken and confused, and the time of his fleeing is nigh, so increase his confusion and disarray, and strike some more at his neck and hit it with a bone-cutting sword. The bearer of the banner of the Cross has increased his soldiers and claimed that he will defeat the soldiers of faith, so be resolute—may Allah be merciful to you—and remember Him much, for he is watching you… You have done well by carrying out one of the greatest of duties which few carry out: repelling the attacking enemy.
Bin Laden’s words are a bit more hyperbolic than usual, but they match the presiding sense of what he described as the “amazement” that exists among both the mujahideen and Muslims generally over the fact that U.S.-led forces have been beaten so easily in Iraq, and that they are withdrawing with what Islamists surely view as minor losses for a superpower with a population of more than 300 million. And we may already be seeing the insurgents spreading the “confusion” bin Laden called for among U.S.-led forces, whose leaders are perhaps too eager to see victory in statistics that show a slowing of insurgent attacks. Always students of Sun-Tzu, Mao and the great Afghan commander Ahmed Shah Masood, the Iraqi insurgents and their al-Qaeda and other foreign allies are simply not taking on U.S. “surge” forces toe-to-toe—knowing they would be crushed—and are making fewer but more targeted attacks, moving to other areas of Iraq or simply lying low to fight another day [1]. As important—and this was the Masood-model during the Red Army’s retreat—the Iraqi mujahideen have heard U.S. politicians promise withdrawal, and they know U.S. voters favor withdrawal. In this case, they see little sense in aggressively attacking a retreating foe, risk humiliating him, and thereby causing him to reconsider his decision to leave in favor of staying to fight.
After praising the insurgents’ victory, bin Laden delivers the crux of his message and puts it frankly: “But some of you have been tardy in performing another duty which is also among the greatest of duties: combining your ranks to make them one rank as loved by Allah, who said, ‘Truly Allah loves those who fight in His cause in ranks, as if they were a solid cemented structure’.” Bin Laden here is reaffirming al-Qaeda’s consistent post-2003 position on Iraq: (a) the U.S.-led coalition will be evicted because the Iraqi mujahideen will prolong the war and kill unacceptable numbers of U.S. military personnel—thereby causing political discord in America—and (b), in al-Zawahiri’s words to al-Zarqawi, it will be a harder struggle for the insurgents “to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans, immediately upon their exit and before un-Islamic forces attempt to fill the void...” Bin Laden, like al-Zawahiri before him, warns the Iraqi mujahideen that the Islamist movement has a wretched record in consolidating victory over infidel forces, and warns them that they must be fully alert to “the full magnitude of the [infidel] conspiracies being hatched against you.”
Even before U.S. forces withdraw, bin Laden explains, “infidelity on all its levels—international, regional and local—is combining to prevent the establishment of the state of Islam” as they effectively did after the Red Army left Afghanistan, once the Taliban took power there and after Hasan Turabi stated his intention to make Sudan an Islamic state. As always, however, bin Laden does not blame these Islamist failures on the infidels; rather, he damns the Islamists for not recognizing that only mujahideen unity can prevent the wasting of military victory. Bin Laden reminds the Iraqi insurgents:
And the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “Observe the group and avoid factionalism, for Satan is with the loner and farther away from the pair. Whoever wants the comfort of the Garden must stay with the group… Sticks refuse to break when banded together. But if they come apart they break one by one.”
My brothers, the amirs of the Mujahid groups [in Iraq]: The Muslims are waiting for you to gather under one banner to enforce truth. And when you carry out this act of obedience [to God], the Ummah will enjoy the birth year of the group. And how it longs for this year, and perhaps it will come soon at your hands. So seek—may Allah have mercy on you—to carry out this great lost obligation.
Bin Laden goes on to urge “sincere people of knowledge and virtue”—Islamist scholars not in the Arab rulers’ pay and control—to help the mujahideen to rectify their “faults and lapses,” and to “engender reconciliation between every two parties in dispute, and they must judge between them according to the law of Allah.” Bin Laden also instructs the Iraqi insurgents to seek the masses’ support and active assistance, implicitly reminding the mujahideen of al-Zawahiri’s 2005 warning to al-Zarqawi that “in the absence of this popular support, the Islamic mujahid movement would be crushed in the shadows … our planning must strive to involve the Muslim masses in the battle, and to bring the mujahid movement to the masses and not to conduct the struggle far from them.” Finally, bin Laden warns the Iraqi fighters to “beware of your enemies, especially the hypocrites who infiltrate your ranks to stir up trouble among mujahid groups.” Bin Laden is here referring to Saudi officials or agents who deliver advice, money and weapons to the Iraqi mujahideen in a way that favors the groups that are most Wahhabist in their orientation and therefore most disruptive of efforts to promote insurgent unity. Bin Laden has long believed this kind of Saudi activity prevented the formation of an Afghan mujahideen regime after the Soviets’ defeat (Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, pp. 53-54).
The tone of bin Laden’s appeal to the Iraqi mujahideen is beseeching and fretful; there is little in it to suggest he believes unity is forthcoming. As noted, bin Laden believes the support of Saudi Arabia, other Arab regimes and Iran for their Iraqi favorites works against unity. He also believes that those he calls the “rulers’ clerics” will deceive the mujahideen as to their religious obligations and thereby obstruct unity. He may also believe that there has been too little preparatory work in laying the groundwork for a post-U.S. Islamic state. My Jamestown colleague Lydia Khalil recently and cogently argued that al-Qaeda’s pivotal part in forming a wartime Islamic government in Iraq was a “blunder,” and she may well be right. Al-Qaeda’s decision to do so, however, was a calculated gamble based, as al-Zawahiri explained to al-Zarqawi, on the fear that without political “fieldwork starting now [2005], alongside the combat and war” there would be no chance of quickly installing a post-occupation Shura council … elected by the people of the country to represent them and overlook the work of the authorities in accordance with the rules of the glorious Sharia.” The wartime government may now seem a blunder, but it was not a capricious act. It was an effort to avoid the disastrous Afghan experiences of 1989 and 1996.
Bin Laden’s near-pessimism regarding the post-U.S. unity of the Iraqi mujahideen also derives from his realization that some substantial portion of their disunity is the result of the actions and attitudes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is now a thankfully—from al-Qaeda’s perspective—dead hero. Al-Zarqawi’s attempt to force himself into the leadership of the Iraqi insurgency, his zeal in taking credit for most resistance activities, his decision to televise the beheading of captives and his indiscriminate slaughter of Shiites, whether or not they were working for the U.S.-backed regime, all undercut what must be regarded as the always limited potential for Shiite-Sunni cooperation after the occupation ends. Al-Zarqawi’s actions also alienated many neutral and anti-American Sunnis and led to the transitory success of the so-called “Awakening” programs in Anbar Province and elsewhere; at day’s end, Iraqi Sunnis will reconcile with al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters because they will need non-Iraqi Sunni assistance to avoid annihilation by the Shiites.
Thus, the negative aftershocks of al-Zarqawi’s tenure as al-Qaeda’s chief in Iraq have begun to be tempered, but still pose tall hurdles in the path of both intra-Sunni and Sunni-Shiite unity; indeed, had al-Zarqawi lived longer his impact may have been more harmful to al-Qaeda than that of the Pakistani army, which al-Zawahiri claims has done the most damage to al-Qaeda since 2001. While al-Qaeda appears to be playing its more traditional role in supporting but not dominating the Iraqi insurgency since al-Zarqawi’s death, the wounds he opened in the mujahideen ranks continue to bleed. Bin Laden seems to recognize this and the best he can do in response is exhort his fighters to avoid al-Zarqawi-like behavior that widens rifts in insurgent ranks. “And before concluding,” bin Laden said in a rather dispirited tone, “I advise myself and the Muslims in general, and the brothers in [the] al-Qaeda organization everywhere in particular, to beware of fanatical partiality to men, groups and homelands. The truth is what Allah (the Most High) said and what the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, and everyone’s statement is to be accepted or rejected except the Messenger’s (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him): his order is to be accepted with pleasure.” Although left unsaid, bin Laden clearly is worried that once again the mujahideen and Muslims generally will, in al-Zawahiri’s words, allow themselves to be “robbed of the spoils” because of disunity, and be unable to prevent others from moving in to “reap the fruits of their labor.”
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Dr. Scheuer is a Senior Fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.
Notes
1. Several U.S. officials have forthrightly said that the declining number of attacks should not yet be considered indicative of permanent success. For example, Major General Mark P. Hertling, commander of the coalition’s multi-national division in northern Iraq, told the media on November 19 that northern Iraq was now experiencing the highest level of violence in Iraq and that “the enemy is shifting there” because of the surge forces present in Anbar province and the Baghdad area. Hertling added that “there are certainly [insurgent] cells remaining in all the key cities” in the north. In addition, retired General Montgomery Meigs, director of the U.S. counter-IED program, said that IED attacks were falling faster than U.S. casualties from such attacks because the insurgents have grown proficient in the use of IEDs against U.S. forces (AFP, November 19; USA Today, November 20).
[From: Jamestown.org]
BRIEFS
DANISH INTELLIGENCE OFFERS HASHISH BUSINESS TO TERROR SUSPECT
The Danish Security Intelligence Service (DSIS) has come under fire for its questionable approach to intelligence work. A 22-year old Muslim man of Turkish descent was offered the opportunity to purchase and resell several pounds of hashish without police interference in exchange for providing information on suspect Islamists in Denmark. When the man was arrested two days later on charges of promoting the abduction of Danes abroad, he released recordings of the DSIS offer from his cell phone to two Danish news agencies (Politiken, November 15). DSIS claims that the suspect was closely tied to two of eight men arrested in September for preparing explosive charges for use in Denmark and abroad. Danes kidnapped by al-Qaeda were to be exchanged for the two detainees (Copenhagen Post, November 19). Both DSIS and Denmark’s Prosecutor-General have refused comment, but the Foreign Ministry has issued a warning to Danes traveling in Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.
DID AL-QAEDA PLAN TO POISON HEZBOLLAH LEADER IN LEBANON?
A Lebanese daily has reported that an al-Qaeda cell in Lebanon planned to assassinate Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah last summer. Authorities recovered 70 pounds of cyanide at the home of a Libyan national in the Sunni-dominated Iqlim al-Kharrub district. Reportedly 30 pounds of cyanide had already been sent to Iraq for use against U.S. forces (Al-Safir, November 15). Two other cells were reported to be active; one in Sidon and another in Qassimieh, near Tyre. One cell was reported to be preparing “false-flag” attacks against UNIFIL peacekeepers in Lebanon. The attacks were designed to be blamed on Hezbollah. Security sources cast doubt on some of the revelations, claiming that the terrorist suspects are “all trained to lie and mislead investigators.” Some security sources claimed the groups were actually “sleeper cells” left behind by Syria and closely tied to the Syrian-supported Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (Daily Star, November 16). The U.S. Embassy has asked to be kept informed of the investigation.
Revolt in Pakistan’s NWFP: A Profile of Maulana Fazlullah of Swat
Maulana Fazlullah, who is now leading an extremist Islam-oriented insurgency in the valley of Swat in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Mohammad, founder of the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws), which he established in 1989 (see Terrorism Monitor, November 30, 2005). In early 2002, TNSM was banned by the Pakistani government and Maulana Sufi Mohammad was sentenced to a prison term of seven years following a crackdown on jihadi organizations in the aftermath of 9/11 and President Musharraf’s collaboration with the U.S. global war on terrorism.
Fazlullah, born in 1975, was raised in a simple farmer’s family in Mam Dheray, a village near Kanju town on the banks of the river Swat. The village changed its name to Imam Dheray following Fazlullah’s campaign to give Islamic-sounding names to villages in his area.
Fazlullah would have remained just a farmer’s son but for his marriage with the daughter of Maulana Sufi Mohammad, whose TNSM gained notoriety for its violent campaign to introduce Sharia laws in the Malakand region of the NWFP between 1994 and 1996. Fazlullah completed his education at the government school in his village and passed his intermediate examination from the Government Degree College in the Swat capital of Saidu Sharif. Following this, Fazlullah became a student in Sufi Mohammad’s madrasah (religious school), the Jamia Mazahir-ul-Uloom, located in the village of Maidan in Lower Dir district. Despite his studies, Fazlullah failed to obtain any certificate of religious education that was recognized by the Pakistani madrasah authority, the Wafaqul Madaris. Fazlullah nevertheless began teaching Islam in a mosque-cum-madrasah in his village, leading prayers and giving sermons.
After the United States invaded Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in November 2001, Fazlullah accompanied his father-in-law and several thousand TNSM members to fight against the Americans and their Northern Alliance allies. But the largely untrained TNSM volunteers and other Pakistani jihadi groups were routed. Fazlullah and his father-in-law narrowly escaped, returning to Pakistan only to be arrested. Fazlullah was bailed out after spending 18 months in the Dera Ismail Khan jail, but Maulana Sufi Mohammad remained behind bars after refusing to apply for bail from Pakistan’s British-style courts, which the TNSM leader regarded as un-Islamic.
Back in his village, Fazlullah began delivering vehement anti-United States and anti-Musharraf speeches that earned him local fame. In 2004, he set up a clandestine FM radio channel to preach directly to villagers. He then came to be known as “Radio Mullah.” Fazlullah’s broadcasts promoted fundamental Wahabbi/Taliban values such as the prohibition of music, dancing and television shows. He also preached for women to strictly observe the purdah (concealment of the female body from men) and discouraged them from seeking education. Fazlullah obstructed a polio vaccination campaign in the region, claiming that it was a Western conspiracy to make Muslims infertile so that their numbers could not grow.
Strangely, many women are avid listeners of his radio sermons that are aimed to reform a society Fazlullah describes as plagued by television sets, VCRs and CDs, which are sources of obscenity and vulgarity. Women gave their jewelry willingly in an appeal for donations to construct an elaborate madrasah in Fazlullah’s village, which is still unfinished after being bombed by the Pakistani military (Newsline [Karachi], August).
Ironically, TNSM has recently expelled Fazlullah, and Sufi Mohammad has sent messages criticizing his virulent campaign. In the latest military operation aimed at foiling Fazlullah’s sway over Swat, the Pakistani army claimed to have killed a key commander named Matiullah on November 15 (The News [Karachi], November 17). There are also reports that the Pakistani army will launch an imminent large-scale operation to clear out some 500 well-armed militants—whose numbers include Uzbek fighters—who have infiltrated the region from strongholds in Waziristan and Afghanistan (Dawn, November 17).
In the meantime, it has been reported that the imprisoned TNSM leader has been transferred from his prison in Dera Ismail Khan to a hospital in Peshawar for treatment of diabetes and high blood pressure. There is speculation now that Sufi Mohammad may be set free to help the government to negotiate with his errant son-in-law (Daily Times [Lahore], November 17).
Afzal Khan is a political and terrorism analyst of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. After many years as a writer-editor with the former U.S. Information Agency and as a terrorism editor for London-based Jane’s Information Group, he is now a contractual writer for the U.S. State Department specializing in the Middle East and South Asia region.
Manila Bombing Highlights Possible Shift in ASG Strategy
On the evening of November 13, a remote control bomb attached to a motorcycle was detonated at one of the entrances of the Philippine Congress in Manila, killing Congressman Wahab Akbar and three other staffers. A Philippine National Police spokesman said: “It looks like Congressman Akbar was the target.” Secretary of the Interior Ronaldo Puno reiterated that the investigation points away from a terrorist attack and is “more of a directed assault on a certain individual” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, November 14). No group has issued a definitive claim of responsibility, but motorcycle bombs are commonly used in the southern Philippines archipelago of Mindanao. A militant named Abdul Mushaf claimed responsibility on behalf of the Islamist Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), but a leading Abu Sayyaf commander denied Abdul Mushaf was a member of the group—a fact confirmed by police—while refuting all responsibility for the attack (ABS-CBN TV, November 14).
Raids in Manila on the night of November 15 led to the killing of three suspects and the capture of three others. Those arrested, suspected members of Abu Sayyaf, were charged with murder. Congressman Akbar, 47, was a two-time governor of Basilan Province, an island in the troubled Muslim south of the country. While he was often critical of the administration of President Gloria Arroyo, Akbar was supportive of the government’s efforts to eradicate the ASG. The congressman was previously a guerrilla leader in the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a Muslim insurgent group that signed a peace agreement with the government in 1996. In the early 1990s, Akbar was also known to have ties to ASG founder Abdurrajak Janjalani, though he denied ever being a member (Mindanews, November 15).
Akbar cut ties with the militants following the 1996 peace agreement, his foray into electoral politics and the ASG’s degeneration into a criminal gang. The congressman was outspoken in his condemnation of the terrorist tactics of the ASG. In 2002, U.S. Special Forces assisted their Philippine counterparts in driving Abu Sayyaf off Basilan. Akbar was supportive of the counter-terrorism efforts of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. military’s operations in neighboring Sulu Island, which led to a sharp reduction in the number of terrorist incidents. In the past two years, however, the ASG have been trying to return to Basilan. Akbar’s backing for the combined offensive clearly earned the ire of Abu Sayyaf.
If the ASG were in fact responsible for the Manila bombing, it would be the first time it has engaged in the targeted assassination of a high-profile political leader in Manila. On the run in the south, the ASG were in need of a successful operation to restore their prestige. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have been on the offensive for over a year now on Jolo Island, where a number of Abu Sayyaf leaders were slain in 2006. The number of troops on Basilan has been increased since a clash last July with Abu Sayyaf and units of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). That incident led to the death of 14 AFP soldiers, including 10 who were beheaded. The ASG has been able to perpetrate small bombings in central Mindanao in the last two years, such as the double bombing in a market in Kidapawan that killed two and wounded 26, but they have not executed a headline-grabbing attack in several years. It is a time of considerable flux in the region, with the government in the midst of finalizing an agreement for a Muslim autonomous region on Mindanao Island with the MILF, possibly paving the way for a full peace agreement in 2008 (Manila Standard Today, November 19).
The police cleared Akbar’s political rival, Gerry Salapuddin, of any involvement in the bombing, though one of the detained suspects, Ikram Indama, was Salapuddin’s former driver. Salapuddin, also a former MNLF commander, had lost the gubernatorial election in Basilan to one of Akbar’s three wives (Philippine Daily Inquirer, November 18).
Zachary Abuza is one of the leading scholars on terrorism in Southeast Asia. He is currently Associate Professor for Political Science and International Relations at Simmons College.
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Hatred, Egyptian Style
Politicians failing Indian state
By Naxal Watch(Naxal Watch)
... and in Bihar elections some political leaders were campaigning with
look-alikes of Osama bin Laden. In many countries they would have been
put behind bars for the transgression. The nation sadly did not take
the message seriously. ...
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2007/11/politicians-failing-indian-state.html
IntelliBriefs
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/
Mexicans Stroll Unchecked Through Border Ports
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200711/NAT20071120c.html
Mexicans Stroll Unchecked Through Border Ports
By Randy Hall and Josiah Ryan
CNSNews.com Staff Writers
November 20, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - A video made during an investigation by the U.S.
Government
Accountability Office shows a stream of Mexicans strolling through the
border into the U.S. as federal Custom and Border Patrol agents sit
staring
at “information on computer screens.”
On another of the videos recorded at eight entry points across the
country,
an agent was reportedly waving aliens through the lane without “looking
at
them, making verbal contact or inspecting travel documents.”
According to testimony from Richard Stana, director of homeland
security and
justice issues at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), these
incidents were not isolated.
“While Custom and Border Patrol Officers have had some success in
apprehending inadmissible aliens and other violators, the analyses
indicate
that several thousand inadmissible aliens and other violators entered
the
country at air and land ports in 2006,” Stana said during a hearing of
the
Senate federal workforce subcommittee last week.
The danger of such a lax policy is clear to Stana. “It is increasingly
the
responsibility of the Customs and Border Patrol to counter the threats
posed
by terrorists and others attempting to enter the country with
fraudulent or
altered travel documents,” he said.
The report http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08192t.pdf
states that
managers
at 19 of 21 field offices told the GAO that staff shortages had
prevented
them from carrying out anti-terrorism activities or hampered their use
of
radiation monitors and other technologies to inspect cargo and
travelers.
Although Customs and Border Patrol employs about 17,600 officers at
U.S.
entry points, it has relied on overtime to keep shifts staffed at a
number
of its airports, seaports, and border stations, including some that
operate
around the clock. During the 2006 fiscal year, staffing shortages
forced
officers to work 4.2 million hours of overtime.
The agency withheld data on staffing from the document, because it
deemed
the information too sensitive for public release.
Greg Letiecq, president of the anti-illegal immigrant organization Help
Save
Manassas in northern Virginia, said he believes the inability to secure
even
entry ports poses grave dangers for national security.
“If it’s so patently easy for just a common illegal alien looking for
day
labor to walk in without any kind of inspection or investigation, it
has to
be easy for an al Qaeda terrorist to do the same,” Letiecq said.
Though the danger is easily recognized, officials find it difficult to
agree
on how to improve security at these points. During Stana’s testimony
before
the subcommittee, he cited a general “lack of focus and failure to
engage”
as important reasons why thousands of illegal aliens slip under agents’
noses each year.
Paul Morris, executive director for admissibility and passenger
programs at
the patrol’s Office of Field Operations, said the primary problem was
the
state of the agency’s facilities.
“We are challenged by the continually expanding demand for our
services,” he
said. “We have developed and implemented a comprehensive training
curriculum. Expanded responsibilities and enhanced technologies have
stretched our physical resources well beyond our capacity. Right now,
our
facilities are stretched to the limit.”
But Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), a member of the chamber’s Homeland
Security Committee, described insufficient funding as the heart of the
problem.
“Insufficient staffing and training seem to be the central reasons for
these
inadequate inspections,” Akaka said in a statement following Stana’s
testimony.
“Approximately $4 billion in capital improvements in the facilities at
land
border crossings is needed, but there is only approximately $250
million in
the president’s fiscal year 2008 budget for infrastructure
improvements,” he
said.
Though a significant portion of Stana’s testimony dealt with
insufficient
funding and facilities, he cited as his first difficulty a lack of
vision
among the leadership of Customs and Border Patrol.
“Emphasis is not being placed on all missions, and there is a failure
by
some of its officers to recognize the threat associated with dangerous
people and goods entering the country,” he said.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), whose district is heavily affected by its
proximity to the border with Mexico, told Cybercast News Service he
agrees
that the problem is deeper than just a lack of funding.
“I am deeply concerned by recent reports of Customs and Border
Protection
officers allowing individuals to cross the border without checking
their
citizenship status or admissibility,” Smith stated. “Putting
convenience
ahead of national security will ultimately bear a cost in American
lives.”
Letiecq said he believes a culture that ignores the rule of law is
partly
responsible for the misconduct of agents at the border.
Referring to what he calls “the zero enforcement law” in Virginia,
Letiecq
said border agents may feel discouraged by the debate over immigration
waged
daily in America. “The prosecution of border patrol agents who are
doing
their jobs to the best of their ability must kill morale,” he said.
As policymakers continue to wrangle over how to improve efficiency at
points
of entry, the problem is apparently getting worse.
According to Stana’s testimony, both aliens and alien-smuggling
organizations have become aware of the holes at national ports of
entry. He
said they have already “trained operatives to take advantage of these
weaknesses.”
U.S aims to arm Pakistani paramilitaries
http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/301609/cs/1/
U.S aims to arm Pakistani paramilitaries
Malaysia Sun
Tuesday 20th November, 2007
The New York Times has reported that U.S. military officials want to
enlist Pakistani paramilitaries along the border with Afghanistan.
At a military strategy meeting of the United States Special Operations
Command, the strategy was formulated as a means of expanding the
ongoing battle against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The strengthening and expansion of Pakistani soldiers on the border
would require higher approval and would involve a paramilitary force
of approximately 85,000 tribal soldiers.
The build up would also dramatically increase U.S. presence and
influence in the region, and cost of over US$350 million.
Critics are concerned weapons given to Pakistani soldiers could
eventually find their way to Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, who have
similar ethnic ties to some of the soldiers.
The United States now has only about 50 troops in Pakistan.
Alpha male principals and teachers—the solution to school chaos?
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/009256.html
[Interesting read]
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/277680
Freed Taliban hostage hunted all over again
TheStar.com - World November 19, 2007
Mitch Potter
TORONTO STAR
KABUL-Held captive by the Taliban for 18 days, only to win back his
freedom
in exchange for much of his family’s wealth, one might imagine the
worst is
behind Mustafa Barakzai.
The 20-year-old Afghan computer college student is immeasurably more
fortunate, after all, than one of his dearest childhood friends, whose
beheading Barakzai was forced to witness during their September kidnap
ordeal. At the time, he was certain he would be next.
And Barakzai’s family can claim a victory of sorts, if only because the
initial demands of his captors - that his mother resign her seat as the
only
female member of parliament for Kandahar and denounce the government -
were
never met.
Instead, they hawked the family Lexus, the gold and whatever else could
be
found to scrounge together a ransom of about $100,000.
But this nightmare is most decidedly not over, because having enriched
themselves once at the family’s expense, the militants who held
Barakzai
just keep calling. They are hunting their man all over again.
“I started getting threatening calls on my mobile phone a few weeks
ago. The
Taliban said, `We can easily kill you, but instead we want you to join
us.
Work with us, and we will let your mother live,’” Barakzai said
yesterday,
breaking silence for the first time since the saga began Sept. 3, with
the
abduction on the road between Kabul and Kandahar.
“I said, `You made me watch as you cut the head off my friend.’ What
could
possibly make you think I would go with you willingly?’ And they said,
`Worse things can happen.’”
Five days ago, worse nearly did happen when two of Barakzai’s younger
siblings narrowly escaped the clutches of four Taliban kidnappers in an
SUV
waiting outside their Kabul school. Alert to the threat, the children
screamed for their lives as they saw the men approaching. Parents and
teachers immediately rushed in, surrounding them in a protective
buffer. The
kidnappers fled.
Then, more calls to Barakzai’s phone, one telling him he must kill his
mother. “Now I don’t even answer it, unless it is my mother herself.
She
checks on me 20, 25 times a day,” he said.
Recurrence is not something foreign kidnap survivors need worry about.
The
19 Korean missionaries freed in August in a frenzy of headlines, for
example, will never again darken Afghanistan’s door. But Afghans like
Barakzai, whose saga passed beneath the public radar, have no choice
but to
remain in the country, where they dangle like prizes in a twisted
lottery,
waiting to be claimed a second time.
And a prize Barakzai is. Fluent in Pashtu, Dari and English, competent
in
Arabic and Turkish, an honours student in information technology at
Kabul’s
Kardan Institute, he made an impression on his captors in September.
They were four at first - Barakzai, an uncle, and two childhood
friends, one
an electrician, the other a member of the Kandahar police - when gunmen
on
motorbikes waved them down in the area of Leewani Bazaar.
They were returning from a family wedding in Kandahar - a fact already
known
to the Taliban, much to Barakzai’s distress. Seven bumpy hours later,
they
arrived blindfolded and bound at the wrists at a safe house in Paktia
province, near the border with Pakistan. That’s where the grilling
began.
“They had a frightening amount of information. They told me what I ate
at
the wedding, right down to how many cans of Pepsi I had. They told me
the
name of the place where we had gone on a family picnic in Kandahar,”
said
Barakzai.
“They told me what school I went to, what I was studying and what
languages
I speak. They even knew where I filled up my car with gas. I was in
shock.
It was like they were inside me head.”
When Barakzai confirmed his identity, his captors erupted with joy,
firing
Kalashnikovs in the air, thanking God for their bounty.
Nearly every night for the next 17 days, the captives were marched
overland,
a few kilometres each time, to a different house, a process intended to
evade U.S. forces, who were waging almost nightly operations in the
area.
“They were paranoid. The first night we walked with ankle chains but
after
that they removed them. They thought the Americans were watching from
the
sky, looking for me the whole time,” he said. “But I wasn’t important
to the
Americans. The battles that were happening were for other Taliban, not
the
group that had us.”
In a separate interview at the Wolesi Jirga, or parliament,
headquarters in
Kabul, Barakzai’s mother, Malalai Ishaqzai, spoke of the frantic
efforts on
her end. A mother of seven whose family seat is in the Panjwaii
district
that has proven exceptionally hostile terrain for Canadian soldiers,
Ishaqzai explained the agony of deciding whether to quit the government
or
further risk her eldest child.
The decision came down to this: if she acquiesced to the demand, all it
would take for total Taliban victory is a series of further kidnappings
of
the children of legislators.
The Taliban’s fallback demand - the release of seven senior Taliban
commanders - was also declined by the Karzai government. And when
Ishaqzai
learned through intermediaries that money might grease the wheels of
release, she went to President Hamid Karzai.
“The president refused. He understood the predicament. But the
government is
not willing to feed the Taliban with its own funds,” said Ishaqzai. “We
were
alone.”
Midway through their captivity, on the first day of the holy month of
Ramadan, another band of Taliban fighters arrived in a rage. Five of
their
own had been lost that day in a clash with U.S. soldiers. They wanted
revenge - and it was to be taken out on Parlawan - Barakzai’s childhood
friend, the Kandahar cop.
“They brought me from an isolation room, removed my blindfold and held
me at
gunpoint. I saw Parlawan on his knees, with his hands bound behind his
back,
pleading with them, saying, `I will not be a police officer any more.
Forgive me.’ One very big Talib I had not seen before told him to shut
up
and then he sliced Parlawan’s neck and stomach wide open. They bled
him.
After he died they cut his head off and put it inside his stomach.
“They said, `Now you will go to hell and our martyrs will go to
heaven.’
“And then they handed me my own mobile phone and said, `Call your
mother.
Tell her.’ I reached her and cried, `Give them what they want.’ And
they
pulled the phone away. This was the only time I spoke to her.”
The body of his beheaded friend was dumped on a road with his identity
papers and a note saying, “This is what happens to Afghan policemen.”
Authorities returned the body to the family for burial.
Barakzai now estimated his chances of survival at little more than
zero. As
the days unfolded, he began to verbally challenge his captors, most
memorably the night another Taliban crew arrived.
“This night there were five foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia, Sudan,
Syria, Turkey and Pakistan. Because I speak some Arabic and Turkish I
was
brought out to help translate,” he said.
“The Saudi man boasted to me, `I have assets back home. I am worth $1.6
million in Saudi Arabia. But I am here because it means nothing
compared to
jihad.’
“I said to him, `You may believe in jihad, but these other Afghans
don’t.
They are hungry, they have no jobs and they do crime, like mafia, just
for
money. If they had your money you would be standing here alone.’ The
Saudi
man got angry and walked away.”
In the final days, an internal Taliban struggle took place over control
of
the last three captives, with one camp advocating execution and another
preferring cash. The more moderate group prevailed - a group led by
what
Barakzai’s mother calls “a good Talib.” Instead of killing her son, he
was
set free, along with his uncle, Haj Ahmed, and their electrician
friend,
Kaleem. Barakzai prefers the full names of the other hostages be
withheld,
lest they also be targeted.
Neither Barakzai nor his mother knows which branch of Taliban has
revived
its interest in the family - the ideologues or the cash-seekers.
“The way they spoke to me on the phone, it seems the interest is
political.
If my mother is with the government, maybe they think I can become the
propaganda prize against it,” he says. “But in one of the calls, they
said
they will pay me $4,000 if I can tell them when important people will
be
driving the road to Kandahar. So maybe it is politics or maybe it is
just
money.”
Barakzai’s mother has been making the rounds of the embassies in Kabul
to
see whether there is any hope of getting her son refugee status
overseas.
She hasn’t yet knocked on Canada’s door.
“As a government official I am protected - as much as any government
official can be with the situation the way it is,” she said. “But
Mustafa
has to look over his shoulder every minute of the day ... We just want
to
get him to a safe place. And pray they will leave the rest of the
family
alone.”
MEMRI Economic Blog Editorial: OPEC Summit Rebuffs Iran and Venezuela
VIEW THE NEW MEMRI TV WEBSITE AT: www.memritv.org
Inquiry & Analysis-Economic Studies/Iran
November 21, 2007
No. 405
MEMRI Economic Blog Editorial: OPEC Summit Rebuffs Iran and Venezuela
To view this Inquiry and Analysis in HTML, visit:
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA40507
The following is an editorial by Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli, editor of the
MEMRI
Economic Blog (www.memrieconomicblog.org), on the recent OPEC meeting.
Readers
may subscribe to a free weekly newsletter, which contains highlights
from the
material published by the Economic blog each week, either by clicking
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This past weekend, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC)
held a summit meeting – the third in the history of the cartel that was
established in 1960. Of the 13 heads of the member states, 11 were
present at
the two day-meeting in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Conspicuous
in his
absence was the Libyan leader, Muammar al-Qadhafi, whose large
entourage,
including his smartly-attired female body guards who always accompany
him in
his foreign travels, would have created quite a problem in the
conservative
kingdom.
Any gap created by the absence of Qadhafi was more than adequately
filled by
the presence of the two global demagogues and soul mates, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad
of Iran and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, whose devotion to roguish
behavior is
exceeded only by their hatred of America. Warming up for the summit,
Ahmadinejad penned a personal letter to French President Nicholas
Sarkozy,
calling him “a little boy with no experience.” The respectable daily Le
Monde
called the letter “crude.”
Technical Mishap Brings out Saudi-Iran Disagreement on Agenda
Preceding the official opening of the summit scheduled for Saturday was
the
meeting of the foreign, finance, and oil ministers of the member
states. That
meeting, which convened the night before the summit, was supposed to be
closed
to the media. However, because of a technical mishap, a microphone was
left
open and the “off-the-record” meeting was seen live on the large TV
screens
installed in the hall where journalists were congregated. What become
quickly
evident is the sharp disagreement between Saudi Arabia’s foreign
minister
Prince Saud al-Faisal, who was chairing the meeting, and Iran’s foreign
minister Menouchehr Mottaki.
In a written statement, Mottaki expressed his country’s demand that the
final
communiqué of the summit express the member states’ concerns about the
“persistent decline in the exchange rate of the dollar” (in which
currency oil
price is denominated). The Venezuelan minister of oil took the floor to
support the Iranian position. The chairman, Prince Saud, rejected the
position
taken by the two speakers, and, supported by Ecuador’s leftist regime,
asserted that the subject was “sensitive” and could lead to “the
collapse of
the dollar” and would “aggravate the difficulties [the members] are
in.”
Prince Saud also rejected another proposal made by the Iranian foreign
minister that the issue of the dollar should be referred to OPEC’s
ministers
of finance. He said, “The very indication that we have designated to
the
finance ministers the task of looking into this problem would mean that
a
decision on the subject was taken by OPEC.” The Saudi position was
reiterated
by OPEC’s secretary general Abdullah al-Badri, who stated
categorically:
“There will be no mention of the dollar in the final communiqué.”
In an article published in Tehran Times today, Javad Yarjani, head of
Iran’s
OPEC affairs, denied that there were “structural differences between
Tehran
and Riyadh.”
Chavez and Ahmadinejad Seek to Politicize Oil Summit
As the outgoing chairman of the previous summit, which was held in
Caracas in
2000, Hugo Chavez opened the meeting. As one would expect, he preached
socialism to his Saudi hosts and their brethren in the Gulf, who are
continuing to move their national economies into open and competitive
market
regimes just as fast as Chavez moves his country in an entirely
opposite
direction. After threatening that the price of oil would go into
“hundred of
dollars” [per barrel] if the U.S. “were crazy enough to attack Iran or
to
threaten Venezuela,” and after telling his audience how, at the age of
six in
1960, he followed with admiration the anti-colonial struggle of
Algeria’s
current president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Chavez called on the leaders of
OPEC
to place their revenues in a special bank to support their own people
as well
as poor people everywhere. According to Reuters, the octogenarian Saudi
monarch sat “stony faced through Chavez’s 35 minutes speech,” and he
was heard
joking to the Venezuelan president afterwards: “You went on a bit.” In
fact,
the Saudis have done their utmost to deny the Venezuelan leader an
opportunity
for grandstanding.
In his statement at the meeting, Iran’s Ahmadinejad called on OPEC to
discard
the dollar in favor of “a combination of hard currencies, or to create
an
entirely new hard currency as a basis for transactions. Ahmadinejad
also
called on the members to create a new stock exchange for oil to serve
‘humanitarian objectives and national interests.’ He denounced ‘some
arrogant
countries’ which, in his words, have put an end to peace and expanded
the
threats of war in some rich areas of the world.”
Final Communique
In OPEC’s final communiqué, the heads of states pledged to provide
“adequate,
timely and sufficient” oil supplies to the market. Saudi Arabia
prevailed and
the dollar was not mentioned even once. Nor was there any mention of
increasing oil production.
Warning About Iran’s Threats from Abd al-Rahman al-Rashed
The most profound comment on the oil summit was made by Abd al-Rahman
al-Rashed, the director general of Saudi al-Arabiya TV which operates
from the
United Arab Emirates. In an Op-ed in the pan-Arab daily al-Sharq
al-Awsat,
al-Rashed had this to say:
“The Riyadh summit is a political, not an oil summit… Heavy
responsibility
falls specifically on Iran far more than on Venezuela, not only because
of the
volume of Iranian oil, but because of the quarters it occupies in
respect to
the rest of the Gulf oil countries. It neighbors Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
and five
other Gulf countries. Venezuela could perhaps raise the price of oil by
fiddling with its quota of production or by its threatening statements,
but it
is not as dangerous as Iran, which threatens 18 million barrels of oil
produced within short range of its missiles. Hence we believe that Iran
will
not be permitted to control the destiny of the region, whatever defense
or
political justifications it offers [for its nuclear weapons]. And this
[Iranian threat] will be translated later, whether within a year or a
decade,
into another major war.”(1)
Endnote:
(1) Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, November 18, 2007.
*********************
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non-profit
organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East.
Copies
of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are
available on request.
MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used
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proper attribution.
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The Walrus Magazine > The Very Strange Case of Hussein Ali Sumaida
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/print/2007.07-hussein-ali-sumaida/
Friday, June 29, 2007
Online Exclusive
The Very Strange Case of Hussein Ali Sumaida
A double agent for Saddam’s notorious Mukhabarat and Israel’s Mossad
has
returned to Canada. How did he get here? Did Canada once deliver him
into
torture? And has Sumaida finally found sanctuary?
by Andrew Mitrovica and Roxana Olivera
Hussein Ali Sumaida is back.
The bald, stocky, clean-shaven, forty-two-year-old, self-confessed spy
sits in
his lawyer’s Toronto office sporting faded designer jeans, a white
T-shirt, and
a blue cotton jacket. Sumaida is relaxed, flashing an engaging smile as
he
begins to recall playing both sides of the espionage divide, having
worked as an
operative for former dictator Saddam Hussein’s ruthless intelligence
service and
for Israel’s espionage agency, the Mossad.
But the Iraqi-born double agent isn’t supposed to be in Canada.
In a split decision of sorts, this nation’s gatekeepers, the
Immigration and
Refugee Board (IRB), ruled in 1991 that while Sumaida would likely be
persecuted
if sent back to Iraq or his adopted Tunisia, the more odious aspects of
his
espionage career made him complicit in crimes against humanity and
therefore
excluded from refugee status.
The Canadian government faced a quandary: it wanted Sumaida out, but
where to
ship him? The solution arrived in 2004 when Citizenship and Immigration
Canada
(CIC) ruled that Sumaida would not be at risk of torture, death,
cruelty, or
punishment in Tunisia. With its decision, after a thirteen-year legal
wrangle,
Ottawa deported the married father of three to Tunis in September 2005.
Canada
thought itself finally rid of Hussein Ali Sumaida.
Canada was wrong.
In August 2006, just eleven months after his deportation, Sumaida
engineered his
return to Toronto. He insists he came back to Canada for a normal life,
free of
fear and the duplicitous world of spies. “This is [my] last chance,”
Sumaida
says, with a hint of an accent. “Tunisia will not take me alive.”
Unconvinced, Ottawa ordered the ex-agent back to Tunisia within days of
his
unexpected return last summer. Sumaida and his lawyer, Rocco Galati,
fought the
deportation order, and on April 30, 2007, they won a reprieve. In a
volte-face,
CIC stayed the order and ruled that Sumaida would face persecution if
sent back
to Tunisia or Iraq.
This latest twist adds another layer to Sumaida’s stranger-than-fiction
story.
The tale of his time in Tunis and how he masterminded his reappearance
in
Toronto brims with ambiguity, intrigue, deceit, and accusations that
Canadian
officials hand-delivered a man into imprisonment without charge and
then forgot
about him.
“[Canada] said: He’s not our problem. He’s not a Canadian citizen,”
says Galati.
“We don’t care where he is held.” Now Canada, he insists, must grant
his client
safe haven. “We can’t deliver non-Canadians to torture.”
Sumaida was born into privilege and wealth in Iraq. His Tunisian-born
father,
Ali Mahmoud Sumaida, a senior member of Hussein’s Baathist regime, was
rewarded
with top diplomatic postings in Europe and the US. Growing up, his son
enjoyed
the lavish by-products of his father’s nomadic lifestyle and,
occasionally, the
company of the Iraqi dictator’s sons Uday and Qusay.
Like other members of the Iraqi elite, Sumaida was sent to school
overseas. In
1983, he attended the University of Salford in England to study
computer
electronics. There, he grew disenchanted with Hussein’s authoritarian
regime and
gravitated to al-Da’wah, a Shia Muslim opposition movement. Later, he
became
convinced that al-Da’wah was determined to establish a theocratic
dictatorship
in Iraq. So, despite his disdain for Hussein, Sumaida agreed to become
a mole
for the Iraqi secret police - the notorious Mukhabarat - informing on
as many as
thirty-five al-Da’wah members active in England. He also provided the
Mukhabarat
with details of a route that al-Da’wah members used to secretly
re-enter Iraq.
(In its 1991 ruling, the IRB concluded that Sumaida was a “valuable
asset” to
the Mukhabarat.)
By 1985, Sumaida, then 20, grew disillusioned with his role in
Hussein’s
“killing machine,” and to exact some measure of revenge, he contacted
the Mossad
and began feeding information on two members of the Palestine
Liberation
Organization in London and Brussels. An Arab collaborating with
Israel’s spy
service, Sumaida has said, was “akin to a Jew working for the Gestapo.”
Nevertheless, his double-dealing satisfied an appetite for intrigue and
money.
“It was a very fast life,” Sumaida says.
But Sumaida wasn’t done flipping sides. When the Mukhabarat became
suspicious
that he was dealing with the Mossad, Sumaida “confessed” that he was
framed into
working for the Israelis. The ploy worked and his life, he says, was
spared by
Hussein himself on condition that he act as a double agent. Eventually,
he
returned to Iraq and continued working for the Mukhabarat, in one case
helping
to broker an arms deal with Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the infamous
1985
hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro.
In the meantime, Sumaida made plans to leave Iraq. He obtained a
Tunisian
passport (through his father’s citizenship) and travelled to Yemen,
where he
obtained a Canadian temporary visitor’s visa. Carrying that vital
document he
arrived in Toronto on April 26, 1990. His long legal journey to remain
in Canada
had begun.
Sumaida got busy while his quest to find sanctuary in Canada meandered
through
immigration tribunals and the courts. He married a Christian (who later
obtained
refugee status in Canada) and they had two children. He built a
lucrative
leather business in Toronto that financed a home, two cars, and a
comfortable
life. In 1991, Sumaida co-wrote a bestselling book with Canadian
journalist
Carole Jerome, recounting his years as a double agent. (Sumaida says he
now
regrets writing Circle of Fear: A Renegade’s Journey from the Mossad to
the
Iraqi Secret Service, ruefully calling it “a mistake.”)
On July 9, 1991, an immigration panel ruled that Sumaida was a
“credible
witness” who had a “credible basis” to make a refugee claim. However,
on
December 12, 1991, the IRB denied him asylum, concluding that his work
for the
Mukhabarat might have led to the deaths of Iraqi dissidents. The panel
found
that while “there is a reasonable chance that [Sumaida] would face
persecution
should he return to Iraq or Tunisia,” the former spy “personally
participated in
exposing large numbers of persons and their families to probable
torture and
execution.” Sumaida acknowledged passing on information but
emphatically denied
any role in torture or killings. (Sumaida has never been charged with
crimes
against humanity.)
For the following decade, Sumaida worked to undo the panel’s decision.
In
November 1995, the Federal Court of Canada gave Sumaida renewed hope
when it set
aside the IRB’s ruling and ordered the refugee board to review its
decision. But
after a series of duelling appeals, the Federal Court restored the
IRB’s
original ruling on January 7, 2000. Later that year, Amnesty
International took
up his case, insisting that Sumaida would face grave risks if Canada
shipped him
back to Iraq or Tunisia. The appeal had little effect. On December 6,
2004, CIC
concluded that Sumaida wasn’t at risk if he returned to Tunisia and
ordered him
out of the country immediately.
It wasn’t immediately, but on September 6, 2005, Canada finally got its
wish
when Sumaida boarded an Alitalia flight, with two immigration officers
in tow,
destined for Tunisia via Milan. At Toronto’s international airport he
bid his
new wife - Sumaida divorced his first wife in 2003 - and a newborn son,
John
Paul, an emotional farewell. The Canadians handed their charge over to
Tunisian
security officers when they arrived in the capital, Tunis, following
the
thirteen-hour journey.
With his lawyer nearby and in a calm voice, Sumaida recounts the story
of his
detention and questioning in detail. He was whisked to a compound about
a
half-hour’s drive from the airport and ordered to remove his tie,
wedding ring,
Seiko watch, and belt. He was photographed and fingerprinted. (Amnesty
International later reported in an “Urgent Action” alert that Sumaida
was
“believed to be held at the headquarters of the Ministry of the
Interior’s State
Security Department . . . and at risk of torture or ill-treatment.”)
Ushered into a larger room, Sumaida was ordered to sit on a wooden
chair while
several plainclothes officials watched. His hands were secured tightly
behind
his back with a set of metal handcuffs. A middle-aged, stocky, balding
man then
entered the room and began questioning him in English about his family
and
personal history.
The interrogation turned violent, Sumaida says, about half an hour
later when
his inquisitor began peppering him with questions about his
relationship with
the Mossad and Israeli intelligence operations in Tunisia. “That’s when
it
start[ed] to get really messy.”
He was struck on the left side of his head and neck when he was unable
to answer
the questions, paused, or stuttered. The blows, he says, were delivered
with an
open hand or clenched fist by a young, dark-haired Tunisian official
who was
sitting in front of him. “[The blows] kept coming. I started crying. At
that
moment I felt, that’s it . . . I had that feeling that [I] was going to
die.”
His inquisitors called him a liar and repeatedly taunted him as a
“jasous
Yehudi” (Jewish spy). Sumaida suffered a broken tooth and he bled from
the nose,
ear, and mouth. He recalls tasting the warmth of his blood as it
congealed
inside his cheeks.
Sumaida believes he was questioned for about twelve hours on his first
day in
detention. He was then thrown into a large street-level cell that
featured a
small hole carved out in the corner of a concrete floor that served as
his
lavatory. The cell was littered with graffiti from the Koran. His
handcuffs were
removed, but he was kicked and spat on. He did not receive a blanket,
water, or
food.
The following morning, Sumaida was doused with cold water, handcuffed,
and taken
back for questioning by the same middle-aged official. He was
repeatedly beaten
and forced to sign several blank documents. “I would have given them
anything,”
Sumaida says. After another twelve hours of questioning, he was thrown
back into
the concrete cell and given a bottle of water. On his third day in
custody,
Sumaida was offered reddish soup in a small metal bowl and a piece of
bread. He
dabbed his finger in the soup and marked the days of his incarceration
on a
wall. The questioning and beatings continued.
Alone and feeling hopeless, Sumaida says he attempted suicide on the
seventh day
of his imprisonment. He had smuggled a small vial containing a liquid
chemical
disguised as a hand cream in his luggage. (Sumaida used a ruse to get
to the
seized bags.) He downed the chemical as he sat slumped against a cell
wall, and
became faint and finally lapsed into unconsciousness as it took effect.
He woke
in what appeared to be a hospital room. “It was like a dream,” Sumaida
says. “I
was numb.” He then recalls being dragged back to his cell wearing a
white
hospital gown.
Then, unexpectedly, after more than a week of being held incommunicado
and
without charge, he was released. Sumaida is convinced that pressure on
the
Tunisians from his wife, Amnesty International, and the United Nations
brought
about his release. “You don’t question these things, you just wait,”
Sumaida
says.
He was told to walk to a nearby hotel, check in, and wait. His luggage,
other
belongings, and $3,950 (US) were returned, but he was ordered, he says,
to
report to the Ministry of the Interior weekly. He was permitted to call
his
wife. Unable to reach her, he contacted family in Detroit and told them
he was
okay.
Later, his wife called and the pair had a brief and cryptic
conversation.
Sumaida instructed his wife to travel to Tunisia with their son
immediately.
(Sumaida says he was ordered to do this.) A few weeks later, he was
provided
with valid identification and a home, owned by a senior police officer.
Asked
why the Tunisian authorities had provided him with valid ID and a home,
Sumaida
pauses, shrugs his shoulders, and suggests that the Tunisians may have
been
trying to recruit him.
In early October 2005, Sumaida’s wife and infant son arrived in
Tunisia. At the
airport, the couple shared a long, tearful embrace. They began to build
a new
life together in Tunisia. “I had no other choice,” Sumaida says.
That new life was based on an old way of life. Inexplicably, the
Tunisians
encouraged him, Sumaida says, to begin another leather business. His
wife
briefly returned to Canada to sell the family home, cars, and business
to
underwrite the new firm, Aloush Leather, which specialized in designer
leather
lingerie. The couple built the venture from the ground up, finding
factory
space, hiring employees, and making promotional catalogues. “Within
seven months
our sales were $60,000 a month,” Sumaida says proudly.
The couple’s calm was shattered in March 2006, when the pair began
mingling with
Canadian expats living in Tunis. Sumaida says he was taken from his
home,
handcuffed, and driven to the Interior Ministry’s compound, where he
was
questioned and beaten for “a couple of hours.” He was released the
following
day, after being ordered not to have contact with foreigners.
In May 2006, Sumaida was detained again after jogging with a group of
Canadian
expats. This time, he was held for “two or three days,” and, once
again,
questioned and beaten. Sumaida says he was thrown onto the street in
the morning
wearing only his blood-soaked underwear. He hailed a cab back home.
Life in Tunisia was intolerable, Sumaida says. “There was no future. I
couldn’t
see what was going to happen tomorrow.” By the summer of 2006, he and
his wife
decided to flee Tunis. The opportunity for a plausible cover arrived in
the mail
with a flyer promoting a leather show just outside Amsterdam in the
summer. On
August 14, 2006, Sumaida obtained a visa from the Dutch embassy in
Tunis and
bought business class seats for a Lufthansa flight departing for
Amsterdam at
3:00 a.m. on August 15. After checking in at Tunis’s Carthage
International
Airport, the Sumaida family moved warily to passport control, where
they
confronted a bureaucratic wall. A customs officer, Sumaida says, was
prepared to
allow his wife and son to proceed, but not him. Sumaida got through by
bribing
the officer with $700 (US). The couple dashed onto the plane juggling
their son
and baggage, and settled into their seats. Afterward, they sighed with
relief,
as they watched Tunisia fade into the distance. “You made it,”
Sumaida’s wife
told him.
In Amsterdam, Sumaida contacted Amnesty International, which gave him
the name
of an immigration lawyer. The lawyer advised him to return to Canada to
seek
protection. Sumaida told his Canadian wife and son to return to Canada
and wait.
The former spy then went to work using his tradecraft to hoodwink
Canada’s
embassy in The Hague into issuing him an emergency Canadian passport.
“I had no
choice. I couldn’t go back to Tunisia,” Sumaida says.
The first step was to go to a police station and report that his
Canadian
passport had gone missing. Sumaida says he gave the police photocopies
of a
Canadian passport, which he had previously bought in Canada for $700,
that
included his photograph but another person’s name. He took a train to
The Hague
and gave the police report about his “missing” passport to an official
at the
Canadian embassy. At first, Sumaida says, the official was unconvinced.
But he
pleaded his case and threatened that he would return with police. The
embassy
was edging toward issuing the passport but needed to contact his father
to
confirm his identity. Sumaida says he told the diplomat that he was gay
and
estranged from his father. The Canadian embassy relented and gave
Sumaida an
emergency passport that was valid for three days. He bought a one-way
fare to
Canada and landed in Toronto on August 29, 2006. “I arrived,” Sumaida
says.
“They couldn’t do anything about me.”
Sumaida was mistaken. He was detained at the airport by immigration
officials.
Sumaida insists that he was not permitted to contact a lawyer and that
he told
officials that he had been tortured in Tunisia. On August 31, 2006,
Ottawa
slapped Sumaida with another deportation order. Later, he was arrested
and
questioned by the RCMP, and subsequently pleaded guilty to possession
and use of
fraudulent documents. He was sentenced to forty days plus time served
and was
released on October 13.
Amnesty International referred Sumaida to Rocco Galati, a
broad-shouldered,
curly-haired Toronto constitutional lawyer. On January 10, 2007, Galati
petitioned the Federal Court of Canada to review the government’s
second
deportation order against Sumaida, arguing that his client had little
alternative but to use subterfuge to re-enter Canada. “He had no choice
but to
do what he did,” Galati says.
If Ottawa is convinced of its case, Galati adds, it should charge
Sumaida with
crimes against humanity but not deport him to Tunisia. “He should be
dealt with
in accordance with the law, not, ah, let’s let the Tunisians torture
him.”
Unmoved, government lawyers argue that the clock had run out before
Sumaida
asked the court to review the deportation order. In its February 9,
2007,
Memorandum of Argument filed in Federal Court, the CIC reiterates its
contention
that Sumaida was complicit in the “commission of crimes against
humanity because
of his activities in support [of the] Mukhabarat, the brutal Iraqi
police
organization that served as Saddam Hussein’s private army.”
Government lawyers are adamant that Sumaida “did not tell” immigration
officers
that he had been tortured or persecuted when he returned last August.
“One would
suppose that someone who had suffered eleven months of torture would
mention
that torture upon reaching his or her chosen country of safe haven?”
the CIC
lawyers wrote. They went further, suggesting it was reasonable for
Tunisia to be
wary of Sumaida. “As a self-confessed double or triple agent this is
not
surprising.” Galati calls the government’s case “utter nonsense,”
adding that
Sumaida’s “disappearance and torture were a matter of national and
international
public record . . . while he was in Tunisia.”
And in late April, Galati won a key legal victory when the CIC stayed
Sumaida’s
deportation order.
“I am strongly of the opinion that there is sufficient credible,
objective
evidence before me to conclude that, on balance of probabilities, the
applicant
would be subjected personally to risk to his life and to a risk of
cruel and
unusual treatment or punishment if he were removed to either Iraq or
Tunisia,”
ruled J. Belyea, a CIC Pre-Removal Risk Assessment Officer. Belyea
based the
decision largely on Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and US
State
Department reports about Tunisia’s poor human rights record and Amnesty
International’s submissions concerning the circumstances surrounding
Sumaida’s
detention.
For Sumaida, Belyea’s ruling “means my kids will be able to see me for
[a] long
time to come.”
The victory may, however, be short-lived, since Belyea added: “If it is
later
determined that you are no longer at risk, the stay of your removal
order may be
cancelled and the arrangements to enforce your removal from Canada
resumed.”
Sumaida’s long battle to stay in Canada has taken a personal toll and
another
surprising twist. Sumaida has separated from his wife. And this spring,
he says
he was charged after “uttering a threat” against his estranged wife’s
boyfriend.
He pleaded guilty and after spending a few weeks in Toronto’s grimy Don
Jail,
Sumaida received a discharge (avoiding a criminal record) and twelve
months’
probation. Sumaida says he’s trying to salvage his marriage and is
working as a
handyman and window cleaner to build a “simple life.”
Whether he enjoys that simple life in Canada remains to be seen. But
Sumaida is
sure of one thing: if he is forced to return to Tunisia, “I will never
see light
again.”
- Published July 2007
C 2007 The Walrus Magazine
Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving!
November 21, 2007 Anti-Terrorism News
(Iraq) Suicide car bomb, once a fixture in Ramadi but now rare, kills at least 6 in Anbar capital
— also gunmen attack police in Muqdadiyah, Kut
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/21/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq.php
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iraq;_ylt=AjVpjcz7tuJzHy2RIZvmIUxX6GMA
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2007/November/focusoniraq_November91.xml§ion=focusoniraq
Iraqi soldier killed, three others injured in Kirkuk — in blast, 12 terrorists arrested
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1041076
(Iraq) Two British troops killed in Iraq helicopter crash
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071121/wl_nm/iraq_britain_deaths_dc_2;_ylt=Ar2ADFfv61SFhyqYiwA9HBtX6GMA
(Iraq) Zarqawi Map Aided Successes Against Iraqi Insurgency
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312343,00.html
Iraq: New security talks between Iran and US in Baghdad
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1580286829
(Afghanistan) 55 Taliban killed in clashes, Afghan police say - in a joint operation in the southern
province of Uruzgan’s Char Chino and Deh Rahod districts - see also KUNA report
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/21/asia/AS-GEN-Afghan-Violence.php
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1041183
(Afghanistan) Troops kill 14 Taliban, several people abducted - on Tuesday
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071120/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrestustaliban_071120182721;_ylt=At0RZTOHzExh42W.nafpsIzOVooA
(Afghanistan) 20 Afghan prisoners transferred to Afghan custody from US military jail
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/21/asia/AS-GEN-Afghan-War-Prisoners.php
(Afghanistan) Resurgent Taliban closing in on Kabul: report
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071121/ts_nm/afghanistan_taliban_report_dc
(Afghanistan) ‘Taliban influence is growing’
http://itn.co.uk/news/ae981f99749f151af16a281dcc6bdf4e.html
Afghanistan stalling on reconciliation: UN rights chief — no mention of Islamist abuses
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071121/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanrightsun_071121073147;_ylt=AhHVrJVM4sKfzIyb96MC0jPOVooA
Pakistan kills 40 militants, clears rebel den: army — from mountaintop in Swat valley’s Shangla
district
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/November/subcontinent_November880.xml§ion=subcontinent&col=
Pakistan: Students wear burqa after threats by pro-Taliban militants - 80 percent of female
students in Mansehra district
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1580110832
(Pakistan) JUI-F not in favour of boycotting polls, Fazl tells US envoy — US ambassador to Pakistan
Anne Patterson urges pro-Taliban Islamist leader Jamiat Ulema not to boycott elections
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\11\21\story_21-11-2007_pg7_1
http://www.dawn.com/2007/11/21/top8.htm
(Pakistan) In Pakistan, U.S. envoy courts No. 2 general - Deputy Secretary of State John
D. Negroponte met with Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, the deputy army chief
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21909129/
(Pakistan) October 18 blasts were suicide bombings: police — Bhutto’s PPP refuses to
accept investigations
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\11\21\story_21-11-2007_pg7_54
Commentary: The Pakistan Problem
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/383wutvv.asp
(India) 10 Pakistan ISI modules neutralized in India since 2004: Jaiswal
http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20071121/829000.html
(India) Four separatists killed in Manipur encounters
http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20071121/828871.html
(India) Maoist leader arrested in Jharkhand
http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20071121/828931.html
(U.S.) Holy Land Foundation Trial: CAIR seeks removal of label in terrorism case
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20071121/NATION/111210046/1002/Nation
(U.S.) Justice Dept OIG Report: Foiling terrorism in U.S. remains critical challenge
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20071121/NATION/111210044/1002
(U.S.) Miami: Liberty City Seven Trial: Defense rests in Miami terrorism trial
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071121/ap_on_re_us/terrorism_investigation_1;_ylt=Amp94yvqcEK0QJPNEftAliETv5UB
(U.S.) Virginia: Moussaoui judge questions government - raises possibility of new trial for Zacarias Moussaoui
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071120/ap_on_re_us/terror_paintball_2;_ylt=ApcLyuibUi2U9jUZvw2rCwoTv5UB
(U.S.) Government Secrecy May Lead to New Trial In Va. Terrorism Case — District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema skepticism of govt information on Ali al-Timimi
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/20/AR2007112001913.html
(U.S.) Port Protection: Nuke Protection Put Off for Another Year
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/nuke-protection.html
(U.S.) Why L.A. Police Nixed Plan To Map Muslims — The Flap Over The Anti-Terror Proposal Pushes Officers To Forge New Community Ties
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/20/terror/main3526162.shtml
(U.S.) Minneapolis: Six imams kicked off flight win a round in court
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1564287.html
(U.S.) MEMRI: The ‘Lone Wolf’ Theory and John Allen Muhammad
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD177207
US wary about election terror threat: Townsend
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jGnKIEDDDTvuLOjkaZGP7tpcFduA
(U.S.) Commentary: Cannistraro, Apologist: Then and Now — by Steven Emerson
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/11/cannistraro_apologist_then_and.php
(U.S.) Commentary: Is U.S. gov’t infested with terrorist moles?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58798
(Germany) New GIMF video threatens attacks against Germany and Austria — if they do not
pull their troops out of Afghanistan - video by Global Islamist Media Front (GIMF)
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/function/0,,12215_cid_2959098,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf
Germany taking Islamist video threat seriously
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=46171
Iran expects EU talks soon, EU says no date fixed
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071121/wl_nm/iran_nuclear_meeting_dc_2;_ylt=AuNPffq23bo6y5jDwsxx8ftSw60A
Iran doesn’t expect new sanctions
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071121/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_iran_4;_ylt=AikTMJXC2.nWek8V7svuF9lSw60A
Gaza: Bombs detonated near troops, no casualties
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546688634&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
(West Bank) Claim: U.S. training known terror leader — Author says 9 other senior jihadists
currently in American course
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58804
(West Bank) Israel approves armored vehicles for Abbas
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/21/africa/ME-GEN-Israel-Palestinians.php
(Syria) Former Muslim Chaplain of Guantanamo Prison, James Yee, Tells of the Desecration
of the Koran during Interrogation
http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1610.htm
(UAE) Dubai top cop condemns US — claims US created “war of civilizations” and responsible
for Al-Qaeda - “speech was applauded by Middle East participants” in conference
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTI0NTAzOTEzNA==
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/504522-dubai-top-cop-us-responsible-for-al-qaeda?ln=en
Jordan Islamists suffer setback at poll
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/November/middleeast_November312.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
Bahraini ‘wanted to join Iraq jihad’
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=200586&Sn=BNEW&IssueID=30246
Bahraini Terror suspects go on hunger strike
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=200596&Sn=BNEW&IssueID=30246
Eritrea accuses Ethiopia of having “declared war”
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=560b2a6a-f498-4439-9b7a-e82f6e669267&k=50634
Algeria: close Al-Qaeda ring leader followers, ready to surrender
http://www.echoroukonline.com/english/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=8284
Sudanese National Congress Party Youth Ready For Jihad Against Sudan Popular
Liberation Movement
http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/3747.htm
(France) Former imam convicted in France for Chechnya-related terrorist plot
http://www.kyivpost.com/bn/27830/
(Turkey) Report: PKK warns US, Iraq not to help Turkey
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546689536&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Dutch author Hirsi Ali says Muslims should protest terrorism
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/21/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-Islamic-Debate.php
(Netherlands) National investigation into salafism
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=46196
(UK) MI5 chief to brief MPs on terror
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7104891.stm
(UK) MI5 chief criticized on terror laws
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-7093404,00.html
(UK) Man pleads guilty to terrorism charges in Manchester, England — Abdul Rahman planned
to disseminate a letter urging a “call to arms” in Afghanistan
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/21/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-Terrorism.php
(UK) Birmingham mosque chiefs slam Ofcom ruling — says Channel 4 documentary
“Dispatches: Undercover Mosque” did nothing wrong in reporting
http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/mail/news/tm_headline=birmingham-mosque-chiefs-slam-ofcom-ruling%26method=full%26objectid=20139297%26siteid=50002-name_page.html
Convicted Terrorist Opens YouTube Account
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=27988&only&rss
(Columbia) Three dead as Colombian governor escapes bomb attack
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071120/wl_nm/colombia_attack_dc_1;_ylt=AtmR4JnsvdtcuoVihe2xkDWwv7kA
(Columbia) Chavez visits Paris for hostage talks - with FARC
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071121/ap_on_re_eu/france_chavez_1;_ylt=AjGzggVeviLXi8SQ_9i2gUiwv7kA
(Indonesia) Graft thwarts effort to win over jihadists - official efforts to seduce jailed Indonesian
terrorists with money and privileges are being undermined by corruption and rival efforts from new
Islamic gangs
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/graft-thwarts-effort-to-win-over-jihadists/2007/11/19/1195321697280.html
(Thailand) Sonthi: Separatist movements part of international terror network
http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/21Nov2007_news15.php
(Thailand) Four killed in restive South as violence grows - shootings, bombings in Yala, Pattani,
women murdered
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/read.php?newsid=30056941
(Thailand) Gunmen kill 4 in southern Thailand district where political party chief was campaigning
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/21/asia/AS-GEN-Thailand-Southern-Violence.php
(Philippines) Jamiri leads bomb experts to back-up charge — found back-up bomb in case the
explosive used in the Batasan Pambansa attack failed to kill Basilan Rep. Wahab Akbar
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=99830
(Philippines) Ex-Basilan mayor nabbed for Batasan blast — Hajaron Jamiri
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=99805
Philippines: Suspected Abu Sayyaf members confess to bombing
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1571443339
(Sri Lanka) 5 LTTE militants killed in Sri Lanka
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/5_LTTE_militants_killed_in_Sri_Lanka/articleshow/2559595.cms
(Sri Lanka) LTTE bunker destroyed, 4 terrorists killed - Vavuniya
http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20071121_05
(Sri Lanka) Gang burns down pro-opposition newspaper press in Sri Lanka
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/21/asia/AS-GEN-Sri-Lanka-Media.php
(Maldives) Three men on terror charges over Maldives bombing
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSCOL43081
(North Korea) U.S. and North Korea end talks on financial no-no’s
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071120/pl_nm/korea_north_financial_dc_1;_ylt=AkjXln0C73H_4nUHlTbw6W2CscEA
Japan stops 5 foreigners after fingerprint checks match people on immigration blacklist
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/21/asia/AS-GEN-Japan-Fingerprinting-Foreigners.php
Other News:
Iran: 50 young people condemned to death for ‘immorality’
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1580186303
U.S. asked to investigate Muslim bakery’s alleged housing scam
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/21/MNE0TFKME.DTL
(Netherlands) Amsterdam: Muslim missionizing in school
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/11/amsterdam-muslim-missionizing-in-school.html
(Belgium) Brussels: Racism complaint against tvbrussel
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/11/brussels-racism-complaint-against.html
Sweden: Lulea could be Islam’s northernmost outpost
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/11/sweden-lule-could-be-islams.html
Against Nazi News:
Nazi roundup
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/11/nazi-roundup.html
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Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones.
Daniel Pipes: Lee Harvey Oswald’s Malign Legacy
What’s wrong with American liberalism? What happened to the self-assured, optimistic, and practical Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy? Why has Joe Lieberman, their closest contemporary incarnation, been run out of the party? How did anti-Americanism infect schools, the media, and Hollywood? And whence comes the liberal rage that conservatives like Ann Coulter, Jeff Jacoby, Michelle Malkin, and the Media Research Center have extensively documented?
In a tour de force, James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute offers a historical explanation both novel and convincing. His book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, traces liberalism’s slide into anti-Americanism back to the seemingly minor fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was neither a segregationist nor a cold warrior but a communist.
Here’s what Piereson argues: During the roughly 40 years preceding the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963, progressivism/liberalism was the reigning and nearly only public philosophy; Kennedy, a tough and realistic centrist, came out of an effective tradition that aimed, and succeeded, in expanding democracy and the welfare state.
In contrast, Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower lacked an intellectual alternative to liberalism and so merely slowed it down. The conservative “remnant” led by William F. Buckley, Jr. had virtually no impact on policy. The radical Right, embodied by the John Birch Society, spewed illogical and ineffectual fanaticism.
Kennedy’s assassination profoundly affected liberalism, Piereson explains, because Oswald, a New Left-style communist, murdered Kennedy to protect Fidel Castro’s rule in Cuba from the president who, during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, brandished America’s military card. Kennedy, in brief, died because he was so tough in the cold war. Liberals resisted this fact because it contradicted their belief system and, instead, presented Kennedy as a victim of the radical Right and a martyr for liberal causes.
THIS POLITICAL phantasm required two audacious steps. The first applied to Oswald:
# Ignoring his communist outlook by characterizing him as an extreme rightist. Thus, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison asserted that “Oswald would have been more at home with Mein Kampf than Das Kapital.”
# Reducing his role to insignificance by (1) theorizing about some 16 other assassins or (2) spinning a giant conspiracy in which Oswald was a dupe of the mafia, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Castro Cubans, White Russians, Texas oil millionaires, international bankers, the CIA, the FBI, the military-industrial complex, the generals, or Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson.
With Oswald nearly deleted from the narrative, or even turned into a scapegoat, the ruling establishment - Johnson, Jacqueline Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, and many others - proceeded to take a second, astonishing step. They blamed the assassination not on Oswald the communist but on the American people, and the radical Right in particular, accusing them of killing Kennedy for his being too soft in the cold war or too accommodating to civil rights for American blacks. Here are just four of the examples Piereson cites documenting that wild distortion:
# Chief Justice Earl Warren decried the supposed “hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots.”
# Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield raged against “the bigotry, the hatred, prejudice and the arrogance which converged in that moment of horror to strike him down.”
# Congressman Adam Clayton Powell advised, “Weep not for Jack Kennedy, but weep for America.”
# A New York Times editorial lamented “The shame all America must bear for the spirit of madness and hate that struck down President John F. Kennedy.”
In this “denial or disregard” of Oswald’s motives and guilt, Piereson locates the rank origins of American liberalism’s turn toward anti-American pessimism. “The reformist emphasis of American liberalism, which had been pragmatic and forward-looking, was overtaken by a spirit of national self-condemnation.”
Viewing the United States as crass, violent, racist, and militarist shifted liberalism’s focus from economics to cultural issues (racism, feminism, sexual freedom, gay rights). This change helped spawn the countercultural movement of the late 1960s; more lastingly, it fed a “residue of ambivalence” about the worth of traditional American institutions and the validity of deploying US military power that 44 years later remains liberalism’s general outlook.
Thus does Oswald’s malign legacy live on in 2007, yet harming and perverting liberalism, still polluting the national debate.
at 11/22/2007 10:47:00 AM
http://mashable.com/2007/11/19/internet-marketing-tips-from-al-qaeda/
Internet Marketing Tips from Al Qaeda
November 19, 2007 — 06:30 PM PST — by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins — Share This
ubl-emarketer.JPGGabriel Weimann is a professor of communications at the University of Haifa in Israel. He has been monitoring 5,800 militant Islamist web sites there, and has noticed a disturbing trend: the terrorists are becoming quite the savvy niche marketers.
“One of the most alarming trends we found on the Internet recently is what we call ‘narrowcasting’,” said Weimann. “Terrorists are using the Internet to focus on children, very young children to attract young people to the ideology, and then later to the way of terrorism.”
He goes on to explain that they appear to be doing all the things that for profit ventures do in their marketing, using comic books, fan fiction, graphics, video and contests. The marketing to children, though, is just one out of many niche that the pro-terrorism sites have identified and pursued. He also gives examples of women-focused site that use pink manuals explaining the whys and hows of female suicide bombing.
Weimann calls upon the West to attempt to correct the message that they have been against Islam for hundreds of years by countering these claims online: “It is important to produce counter-Web sites. If they produce one Web site, we need another Web site to counter that,” he said.
In Europe, these types of sites are actually criminal, but the United State’s free speech laws allow them continued existence, and are used by security officials to gain further understanding into these groups. The question is: What’s next? Terrorists have figured out YouTube and SEO, and they’ve mastered niche marketing. Has anyone run a search for Al Qaeda’s Facebook page?
[via Web Pro News]
http://mashable.com/2007/11/12/google-we-wont-censor-anti-semitism/
Google: We Won’t Censor Anti-Semitism
November 12, 2007 — 10:26 AM PST — by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins — Share This
Google Director for Israel Meir Brand today told the Associated Press that they would not step in and censor anti-Semitism from their search results for Israeli searchers. While allowing free speech is a good thing, there is an arbitrary manner in which Google has applied censorship as its organization grows.
“At Google, we have a bias in favor of people’s right to free expression,” Brand said. “Google is not and should not become the central arbiter of what does and does not appear on the Web. That’s for elected governments and courts to decide.”
Google in China, for instance, has censored itself to satisfy authorities in Beijing, restricting searcher access to “sensitive topics” like Taiwan and 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre. In Germany and Austria, Google removes Nazi content in order to comply with national censorship laws.
In America, censorship has often taken a more bizarre and muddled form, especially when outsiders try to define the policy that must be in place inside Google’s various ventures. In October of 2006, YouTube voluntarily censored all many videos containing depictions of Muhammed, as well as many videos that spoke negatively of Islamic-inspired terrorism. The most high profile example of those that were censored included conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, who noted after her videos were removed that many producers of Al-Qaeda propaganda videos were allowed to continue posting unabated.
Granted, these actions took place shortly before Google purchased YouTube, but analysts widely agreed the system-wide scrubbing was a quick effort to appear more palatable to the new Google overlords.
Self-censorship by international Internet mega-corporations is a very confusing and interesting issue that merits more exploration. Yahoo found that out last week, after their very public spanking given by Congress on Jerry Yang’s birthday. Talk of Internet privacy continues to reside front and center amongst bloggers and users alike. I, for one, am not sure on all the answers. To be sure, though, it is an issue threatening to spiral out of control for a number of companies, if not seriously addressed and solved soon.
[via Breitbart]
http://bamapachyderm.com/archives/2007/11/19/antarctica-time-lapse-videos/
Antarctica time-lapse videos
This is nothing less than spectacular. Antarctica in a year.
Here’s a time-lapse video of the Aurora Australis (”Southern Lights”.
More videos from “Antzarctica” here.
Stix Blog linked with Antarctica in a year and Aurora Australis (”Southern Lights”....
Chinese army engineers head to Darfur this week
A contingent of Chinese engineering troops will leave for Sudan’s troubled Darfur region later this week, China’s Foreign Ministry reported Tuesday. Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the troops would depart Friday from their base in the central province of Henan, but gave no details.
Official media previously said China would send a 315-member unit to Darfur comprising three engineer platoons, one well-digging platoon and one field hospital. The Chinese were to build roads and bridges and dig wells ahead of the arrival of a 26,000-strong African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force likely early next year.
Liu said the unit leaving this week was an advance party, but it wasn’t immediately clear what additional forces China planned to send. A press officer at the Ministry of National Defense said he had no additional information on the Darfur deployment.
The Chinese deployment follows criticism from foreign governments and international human rights groups over Beijing’s reluctance to support international intervention in Darfur. A four-year-old conflict between rebels and government-backed militias in Darfur has killed 200,000 people and left 2.5 million homeless.
at 11/22/2007 07:44:00 AM
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