A disclosure by British weekly The Sunday Times of millions of documents allegedly revealing massive Qatari vote buying in the Gulf state’s successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup could rejigger the Gulf’s fragile balance of power, reverse hopes that Qatar would initiate significant social change in the region, and return the worst corruption crisis in global soccer governance to the top of the agenda.

The documents appear to show how disgraced former FIFA vice president and Asian Football Confederation president Mohammed Bin Hammam, a Qatari national, used a secret $5 million slush fund to make dozens of payments, primarily to African soccer executives, to create the basis for a vote in favour of Qatar in FIFA’s executive committee. The committee awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar in a controversial vote in December 2010.

The disclosure comes as Michael Garcia, FIFA’s independent investigator into the corruption allegations, was scheduled to meet members of Qatar’s bid committee. FIFA officials suggested prior to the disclosure that Mr. Garcia’s two-year long investigation was unlikely to produce a smoking gun.

Qatar has long denied any wrongdoing and sought to distance itself from Mr. Bin Hammam who was at the centre of the corruption scandal. Mr. Bin Hammam was two years ago banned by FIFA for life from involvement in professional soccer on charges of “conflict of interest” related to an internal audit about his financial and commercial management of the Asian soccer body. Like Qatar, Mr. Bin Hammam has consistently denied the allegations.

The documents counter Qatari assertions that they opposed Mr. Bin Hammam’s 2011 bid for the FIFA presidency that sparked his downfall because a Qatari win of the World Cup and simultaneous control of the world soccer body would have been too much at the same time. They also counter Qatari suggestions that the Gulf state and Mr. Bin Hammam had parted ways to the degree that the former FIFA executive had supported Australia’s bid against Qatar.

The potential fall-out of The Sunday Times revelations could be massive:

• A possible retraction of Qatar’s right to host the 2022 World Cup, which would likely be quietly embraced by the Gulf state’s detractors led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which oppose its idiosyncratic foreign policy, including Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood. At the same time, a retraction could fuel perceptions in significant parts of the Muslim world of discrimination on the grounds of religion and ethnicity;

• Increased pressure on global soccer governance to radically reform, including pressure on the AFC to act on the recommendations of an internal 2012 audit that accused Mr. Bin Hammam of using an AFC sundry account as his personal account and suggested that his management of AFC affairs may have involved cases of money laundering, tax invasion, bribery and busting of US sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Mr. Bin Hammam’s successor as AFC president, Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, has so far been able to bury the report that recommended possible legal action as well as a review of a $1 billion master rights agreement negotiated by the Qatari national on behalf of the AFC with a Singapore-based company;

• Thwarting of Qatari hopes to use the World Cup as one of its key tools to build the soft and subtle power capable of compensating for its inability to build the kind of hard power military strength necessary to defend itself. Qatari defence and security policy sees sports in general and soccer in particular alongside hyper diplomacy with a focus on mediation in multiple conflicts and projection of the state through its world class airline, the Aljazeera television network, high profile investments and art acquisitions as ways of compensating for its military weakness. That soft power strategy depends on garnering global public empathy;

• Set back Qatari moves to improve the living and working conditions as well as enhance the rights of foreign workers, who constitute a majority of the population in Qatar and other Gulf states in what could amount to significant social change. The moves, which were having a ripple effect throughout the Gulf, were being driven by the World Cup that empowered human rights and labour activists;

• Substantially weaken Qatar’s ability to stand up to Saudi Arabia, which alongside the UAE and Bahrain earlier this year withdrew its ambassador to Doha in a bid to force Qatar to end its strategic relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, expel resident Islamist leaders including prominent Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi, temper Al Jazeera reporting and close down critical Doha-based think tanks.

Qatar has yet to respond to The Sunday Times report but has systematically refused to give a full accounting of its bid to win its World Cup hosting rights, including the budget of the bid and how it was spent as well as its relationship with Mr. Bin Hammam. A simple denial of The Sunday Times report is unlikely to put to bed the allegations that have persisted for more than three years.

The post Qatar Corruption Allegations: Potential Massive Governance, Geopolitical And Social Fall-Out – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(RFE/RL) — U.S. President Barack Obama says U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl – a soldier held for five years by militants in Afghanistan — has been freed as part of a deal that transfers high level Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the custody of Qatar’s government.

A senior official in Obama’s administration revealed on May 31 that the transfer of the Afghan detainees is part of “a broader reconciliation framework” for Afghanistan that involves Qatar.

RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan reports that Taliban negotiators in 2013 had asked for key Taliban figures held at Guantanamo to be transferred to Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl’s release so that the detainees could take part in Afghan peace talks through a Taliban political office in Qatar.

But that deal broke down last year, and the Taliban’s diplomatic office in Qatar was closed, after Afghan President Hamid Karzai opposed the move.

The five Afghans transferred to Qatar on May 31 include four key figures from the Taliban regime and one Afghan who is thought to have ties to the militant Haqqani network.

Obama said after Bergdahl’s release on May 31: “The Qatari government has given us assurances that it will put in place measures to protect our national security.”

Obama also said: “Going forward, the United States will continue to support an Afghan-led process of reconciliation – which could help secure a hard-earned peace within a sovereign and unified Afghanistan.”

In Afghanistan, the Taliban issued a statement saying that it welcomes the transfer of the five Afghan detainees to Qatar with “great happiness.”

A senior White House official told reporters in Washington all five Afghan detainees were “under the control of Qatar” and “will be subject to restrictions on their movement and activities.”

That official insisted that Washington “will not transfer any detainee from Guantanamo unless the threat the detainee may pose to the United States can be sufficiently mitigated and only when consistent with our humane treatment policy.”

He also said the negotiations on Bergdahl’s release have long been a priority — and that an opportunity arose several weeks ago to resume talks on his release, which involved “the personal commitment of the Emir of Qatar.”

He said: “By conducting successful indirect talks with the Taliban’s political commission, this transfer was part of a broader reconciliation framework.”

Four of the Afghan detainees were important Taliban cadres who were captured by U.S. forces in late 2001 or early 2002 after the collapse of the Taliban regime.

They include Khairullah Khairkhwa, the Taliban regime’s interior minister who is considered to be a relative moderate.

They also include Mohammad Fazl, the deputy defense minister of the Taliban regime; Mullah Norullah Noori, who ran the northern province of Balkh for the Taliban regime; and Abdul Haq Wasiq, who was the deputy head of the Taliban intelligence service and a founding member of the movement.

The fifth Afghan detainee, Mohammad Nabi, is seen as having a minor role in the Taliban but may have ties to the militant Haqqani network.

Bergdahl had been held by Islamic militants since he was captured in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province on June 30, 2009 – possibly by Haqqani network fighters with ties to the Taliban.

After undergoing a medical examination at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul on May 31, a Pentagon official said Bergdahl was being flown to a U.S. military base in Germany for further medical treatment early on June 1.

His father, Bob Bergdahl, told reporters in Washington on May 31 that he was a prisoner for so long that he is now having trouble remembering how to speak in English.

Obama has expressed his gratitude to the governments of Qatar and Afghan for support to secure Bergdahl’s release.

The post Deal To Free US Soldier Tied To Afghan ‘Reconciliation’ Process In Qatar appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Authorities in the Chinese capital on Friday released from police detention two elderly petitioners who staged a naked protest on Tiananmen Square, although relatives said they were on their way back home under escort by local officials, known as interceptors.

Xing Jiaying and He Zeying from Xinyang city in the central province of Henan were detained on May 25 on a seven-day administrative jail term for “disturbing public order” after they staged the protest along with one other petitioner from their hometown.

“We took off all our clothes and protested on Tiananmen Square about injustices we have suffered,” He said.

“We were surrounded by a large number of police officers and taken to the Tiananmen branch police station,” she said, adding that she and Xing had been roughly treated during their days in detention.

“I don’t know yet whether we can go straight home,” she said. But she gave no details of the third protester, who is believed to have escaped detention at the time.

The two women and their male relative—He’s son-in-law and Xing’s son—were met by interceptors from their hometown on Friday and escorted home, He told RFA.

“I have been in detention for the past few days,” she said by phone on her way back to Henan under the escort of four police officers. “They said I was disturbing public order on the Square.”

“Now we are out. We were released by police officers from Xi county [under the administration of Xinyang city],” she said.

Traffic accident

He’s son-in-law Xing Wangli, known online by his nickname Wu Quanli, a pun on “powerless,” said the women were protesting at a lack of compensation or redress after Xing’s grandson was involved in a traffic accident.

“The family has been petitioning for a long time, but they have been subjected to revenge attacks by the government,” he said.

He said the authorities had organized a student protest against him in Xi county on Thursday, for allowing his mother to shed her clothes on Tiananmen Square.

Sichuan-based rights activist Huang Qi, whose Tianwang website first reported the incident, said he had been contacted by officials and told to delete the original news story from his site.

“A guy calling himself the head of the Xi county chamber of commerce called up and … said Tianwang should delete the report,” Huang said.

“They said they would give Wu Quanli 500,000 yuan (U.S. $80,000) and three mu (one-half acre) of land near his home at [a discounted price],” he said.

Huang said he had refused the takedown request, however.

“Tianwang hasn’t deleted a post in 16 years, even when there is a risk of going to jail,” he said.

Petitions

Faced with thousands of complaints about its officials every day, China recently moved to ban its citizens from taking petitions directly to the central government without first going through local authorities.

From May 1, departments at higher levels of the central government have refused to accept petitions that bypass the local government and its immediate superiors, and have rejected petitions deemed to be the preserve of the judiciary or legislative bodies.

Beijing has repeatedly tried to stem the flood of thousands of petitioners who descend on the capital with complaints, often ahead of key political events, when petitioners hope their cases will get a more sympathetic hearing.

Next week, activists will mark the 25th anniversary of the military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen Square.

Petitioners say corrupt networks of power and influence at local levels ensure that a fair hearing is all but impossible, and that they are repeatedly stonewalled, detained in “black jails,” beaten, and harassed by local authorities if they try to take complaints to the top.

Reported by Hai Nan for RFA’s Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

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The Cambodian government should quash the convictions of 25 human rights activists, factory workers, and others for lack of evidence, Human Rights Watch said today. On May 30, 2014, the Phnom Penh municipal court convicted the defendants in three cases of committing violence during recent demonstrations and imposed suspended sentences of up to four-and-a-half years. While none received prison time, their convictions incur penalties such as a prohibition on serving as union leaders.

“The release of 25 people jailed for political reasons is welcome, but their convictions should be quashed along with their criminal records,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “These politically motivated convictions should not be allowed to stand and provide a false legal pretext for restricting their basic rights.”

Cambodia’s donors should publicly denounce the convictions and call for the defendants to be exonerated. Donors should together demand an end to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party control of the police and courts.

The authorities had charged the accused with instigating, inciting, or directly committing violent acts resulting in injuries to security forces and damage to property during strikes, demonstrations, and riots in Phnom Penh in November 2013 and January 2014.

However, the trials appeared to be part of a systematic effort by the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen to cover up the security forces’ use of excessive force that resulted in the deaths of seven people and injuries to many more. The government used the courts to unfairly convict activists and people randomly apprehended during the unrest, falsely blaming them for all violence – while taking no legal action against any member of the security forces for the illegal use of force.

The three trials involved: a young man and a boy arrested after police blocked a march by striking workers in Phnom Penh’s Steung Meanchey neighborhood on November 12, 2013; 10 people, including four labor and land activists, arrested by Brigade 911 during its suppression of worker protests at the Yakjin garment factory on January 2, 2014; and 13 workers and others arrested by police and gendarmes deployed to break up demonstrations on industrial Veng Sreng Street on January 2 and 3.

Human Rights Watch previously analyzed the Steung Meanchey trial, concluding that a young man charged with committing aggravated intentional violence and damage on November 12, 2013, was wrongly identified by the police as being responsible for violence, and that the other defendant, a child with an intellectual disability who admitted throwing some stones, should not be sentenced to prison.

In the Yakjin case, while protesters and security forces threw stones at each other near the factory, there was no investigation into whether Brigade 911 troops, armed with assault rifles, steel bars, truncheons, knives, and slingshots, instigated the violence. The court made no serious inquiry into whether any of the 10 accused were involved in violence and resulting injuries or property damage, or whether the four activists attempted to calm the situation by urging nonviolence or were merely monitoring the situation, as they asserted. All 10 accused were originally charged with aggravated violence and damage, but the charge against the four activists was later changed to inciting the worker disorder.

In the Veng Sreng case, some workers blocked roads with barricades and bonfires and attacked police and gendarmes with stones, sticks, and gasoline bottle bombs while the security forces fired teargas, smoke grenades, pistols, and assault rifles. However, almost no evidence was presented at the trial about whether any of the 13 defendants had participated in the violence and other crimes with which they were charged. The accused asserted that they were non-participants in the violence and were simply present as bystanders or local residents.

The judges in all three cases demonstrated clear bias and failed to meet their obligations under international fair trial standards set out in Cambodia’s criminal procedural code (article 325) to impartially evaluate both inculpatory and exculpatory evidence. Their favoritism toward the prosecution was displayed, for example, in their openly hostile demeanor toward the accused and the defense lawyers. Judges abandoned the neutral language of the indictments, which described the accused as “demonstrators,” “protesters,” or “workers,” instead repeating the prosecution’s constant characterization of them as “anarchists” intent on creating political and social disorder. The judges’ demeanor towards the accused and their defense lawyers was also frequently hostile and disrespectful, in contrast to their polite and even deferential attitude toward the prosecution and security force officers.

Evidence presented in the Yakjin and Veng Sreng cases pointed to arbitrary arrests, rather than the detention of specific individuals whom security forces positively identified at the time or later as committing criminal acts. This appears to apply to all or almost all of the 19 people detained near the Yakjin factory and on Veng Sreng Street. Other recent Cambodian court convictions were of people apparently arrested simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Prominent social and political figure Vorn Peou and three other activists arrested at the Yakjin factory on January 2 appear to have been targeted due to their nonviolent political or social activities. According to members of the security forces sources who spoke to Human Rights Watch in confidence, Vorn Peou is on a blacklist of social activists, journalists, and human rights defenders the security forces have been compiling as possible targets for prosecution and imprisonment since the second half of 2013. These sources told Human Rights Watch that police and gendarmes are under instructions to build criminal cases against these people, even if they have committed no criminal offense.

In both trials the judges abused archaic provisions within Cambodia’s legal system according to which evidence does not need to be introduced in hearings in order to be considered in a judgment. As a result, many members of the security forces, who had made key statements to the police and investigating judges prior to the hearings as civil parties or victims alleging they suffered harm from violence instigated or perpetrated by the accused, were not present at trial. Over defense objections that this did not allow their allegations to be challenged, the trial judges allowed their statements simply to be read out by the court clerk.

The verdicts in these trials come a week after the Cambodian government pushed through the National Assembly new laws on the organization of the courts and its oversight body, the Supreme Council of Magistracy. The laws provide the government formal control over the courts, in violation of international law and contrary to Cambodia’s constitution, which calls for separation of powers and an independent judiciary.

“These trials show the extent to which Prime Minister Hun Sen’s intensely partisan security forces and government-controlled courts are cynically flaunting their power and misusing the law,” Adams said. “Cambodia’s donors should publicly denounce these convictions and work together to demand amendment of recent laws that strengthen government control over the courts.”

The post HRW Calls For Cambodia To Quash Convictions Of 25 Activists, Workers appeared first on Eurasia Review.

ranian President Hassan Rohani responded to the attacks against him by the Tehran and Mashhad Friday Mass Imams, saying “Some are constantly concerned with people’s religion and the judgement day without expert knowledge of either.”

ISNA reports that Rohani, who was addressing a gathering on Saturday May 31 at the Department of the Environment, stressed that “a religious government” is something to be commended but not a “religion dictated by the government.”

“Religion must be left to its experts; to the senior clergy members, seminaries, and scholars; they must promote religion and the government must assist and support them.”

Yesterday, the Friday Mass Imams of Tehran and Mashhad used their sermons to attack President Rohani for saying that people should not be badgered by the morality police since “the people cannot be forced into heaven with lashes.”

The Tehran and Mashhad Friday Mass Imams rejected this view, saying the government is responsible for setting people on the “right” path even if it has to resort to force.

Ahmad Khatami said yesterday in Tehran that the government is responsible for “clearing the path to heaven.” It’s a reference to the activities of the morality police in supervising adequate hijab and outfits in public and preventing the mingling of men and women at parties and concerts or on the streets.

Rohani’s more moderate administration is bent on providing greater social liberties for the public, but those efforts leave Islamic Republic hardliners up in arms.

The post Iran: Rohani Responds To Critical Imams appeared first on Eurasia Review.

During his short visit to Israel, Pope Francis laid a wreath on the grave of Theodor Herzl.

That was not a usual gesture. Foreign heads of state are obliged to visit Yad Vashem, as did the pope, but not the grave of Herzl. It is not like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris.

So why Herzl’s grave? Obviously, this gesture was intended to emphasize the Zionist character of the state.

Herzl was the founder of modern political Zionism. He is officially called “the Visionary of the State”. His is the only picture decorating the Knesset plenum hall. If we had saints, he would be St. Theodor.

Probably, Francis did not give another thought to this gesture. If so, it’s a pity. The Argentine Pope could have found a lot of interest in this colorful Viennese journalist and playwright.

Because if Herzl had had his way, Francis would have been greeted by President Peres and Prime Minister Netanyahu in Spanish. He would have honored Herzl’s grave in the Jewish State somewhere south of Buenos Aires.

If Francis had never heard of this episode, he is not the only one. The vast mass of Israelis has not either. It is not taught in Israeli schools. It is hidden rather shamefully.

Israelis know about “Uganda”. Shortly before his early death, Herzl was invited by the British government to implement his ideas in part of British East Africa (actually, it was the Kenyan highlands, a plateau with a mild climate, which later became a part of Kenya.)

By that time, Herzl had despaired of getting Palestine from the Turkish Sultan. The Kenyan project, which could be implemented at once, attracted him and his main supporter, Max Nordau, who advised him to take it at least temporarily, as a “night asylum”.

But the Russian Zionists, the bulwark of the movement, rebelled. Palestine or nothing. Herzl was overruled by his admirers and died soon after of a broken heart, it was said.

This episode is well known. Much has been written about it. Some would say that if during the 1930s a Jewish Commonwealth had existed in Africa, many European Jews could have been saved from the Nazis.

But the Argentine chapter has been erased. It did not fit the image of the Visionary of the State on the walls.

Herzl’s long trek to Zionism started when, as a Hungarian-born Jewish student in Vienna, he encountered anti-Semitism. His logical mind found the answer. Being a playwright, he described the scene: all Austrian Jews, except himself, would march in an orderly fashion to the Cathedral and convert en masse to Catholicism. The pope would have been enthusiastic.

However, Herzl soon learned that neither would the Jews accept baptism (“the Jews are afraid of water,” Heinrich Heine once joked), but the nationalist Goyim did not dream of accepting them into their ranks. How could they? Jews were everywhere, in many different countries, so how could they sincerely join any national movement?

That’s when Herzl had his historic insight: if the Jews could not join any of the national movements that were mushrooming in Europe, why shouldn’t they constitute themselves as a separate, new-old nation?

For Herzl, that was a sober, rational idea. No God involved, no Holy Scriptures, no romantic nonsense. Palestine did not enter his mind. Nor had he any interest in the religious fantasies of Christian Zionists in Britain and the US, like Alfred Balfour.

Herzl’s project was fully completed, up to the smallest detail, and written down in the brochure that became the Zionist Bible “Der Judenstaat”, before he even started to think seriously about the place where it should be realized.

The pamphlet started as a speech he made to the “family council” of the Rothschilds, the richest Jews on earth. He expected them to finance the project.

The text is immortalized in his Diaries, a very well-written document covering several books. On page 149 of the first book of the original German print, after explaining his plans, he remarks that “I can tell you everything about the ‘promised Land’ except its location.” This will be left to a conference of outstanding Jewish geographers, who will decide where to set up the Jewish state, after examining all the geological, climatic, “in short, the natural circumstances, taking into account the most modern investigations”. It is a “purely scientific” decision to make.

In the end, when the pamphlet came out under the title “Der Judenstaat”, the location was almost ignored. Less than a page was devoted to it, under the expressive title: “Palestine or Argentina?”

Herzl clearly preferred Argentina. The reason for this has also been forgotten.

A generation before Herzl, Argentina consisted mainly of the north of the country, around Buenos Aires. The vast south, called Patagonia, was almost empty.

At the time, Argentina started a campaign of conquest, that many today consider genocidal. The indigenous pre-Columbian population, including a tribe of “giants” (two meters tall) was annihilated or pushed out. That was called, almost in Zionist fashion, “the desert campaign”.

Such genocidal campaigns were at the time quite usual. The US ran one against the “red Indians”. The Germans committed genocide in today’s Namibia, and the mass-murderer was feted in the Kaiser’s Germany as a national hero. The King of the Belgians did something similar in the Congo.

What Herzl saw with his mind’s eye was a huge new country more or less empty, just waiting to be turned into a Jewish state. He thought that the Argentine government would give it up for money. The remaining local population could be pushed out or enticed to move somewhere else, but “only after they had exterminated all wild animals.”

(Anti-Israeli propagandists use this sentence as if it was aimed at the Palestinians. That is quite untrue. Herzl could not possible have written such a thing about Palestine as long as the Muslim Caliph was the sovereign of the country.)

Patagonia is a very picturesque country, with many different landscapes, from the seashores of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to the incredibly beautiful ice-covered mountains of the Andes. The climate is generally cool, even cold. The most southerly town in the world is located on its southern tip.

The rational approach of Herzl was soon swamped by the irrational character of his movement – a mixture of religious fantasies and East European romanticism. The plan to resettle the Jews in a safe environment turned into a Messianic movement. This has happened to the Jews before, and always ended in disaster.

Herzl detested Palestine. Most of all he detested Jerusalem.

Curiously enough for the prophet of Zionism, he long refused to visit Palestine. He crisscrossed Europe from London to St Petersburg, from Istanbul to Rome, in order to meet the Great of the World, but did not set foot in Jaffa until he was practically compelled by the German Kaiser.

Wilhelm II, a romantic and rather unstable type, insisted on meeting the Leader of the Jews in a tent near the gates of Jerusalem. It was in November, the mildest month in this country, but Herzl suffered terribly from the heat, especially as he would not take off his heavy European suit.

The Kaiser, a born anti-Semite, listened politely, and later remarked: “A good idea, but impossible to do with Jews.”

Herzl fled the town and the country as quickly as he could. The Holy City, for which his successors are today ready to shed much blood, looked to him ugly and dirty. He escaped to Jaffa, and there climbed in the middle of the night onto the first available ship going to Alexandria. He claimed to have heard rumors about a plot to kill him.

All this could have been food for the pope’s reflections, if he had been focused on the past. But Francis lives in the present and held out his arms to the living, especially the Palestinians.

Instead of entering the land through Israel, like everybody else, he loaned a helicopter from King Abdallah II and flew directly from Amman to Bethlehem. This was a kind of recognition of Palestinian statehood. On his way back from Bethlehem to the helicopter, he suddenly asked to stop, went up to the occupation Wall and laid his hands on its ugly concrete, as his predecessors had done at the Western Wall. His prayer there could only be heard by God.

From there the pope flew to Ben-Gurion airport, as if he had just arrived from Rome. He marched on the red carpet between Peres and Netanyahu (since neither of the two would cede the honor to the other).

I don’t know what the pope found to talk about with this shallow duo, but I would surely have enjoyed listening in to a conversation between the two intelligent Argentinians, Francis and Herzl.

The post Patagonian Dreams: Pope Francis At Herzl’s Grave – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The husband of Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese Christian woman sentenced to death for allegedly abandoning Islam, says his wife is standing by her faith despite possible execution.

“I know my wife. She’s committed,” Daniel Wani told CNN May 30. “Even last week, they brought in Sheikhs and she told them: ‘I’m pretty sure I’m not going to change my mind’.”

Ibrahim, 27, gave birth to a baby girl in prison May 27 with heavy chains on her legs, Wani told BBC News. She and the baby are reportedly doing well.

She and her husband continue to hope for a successful legal appeal.

Ibrahim was imprisoned after a May 15 court ruling convicted her of apostasy from Islam and of adultery.

She is recognized as Muslim under Sudanese law because her father was Muslim. However, she was raised as a Christian by her Ethiopian Orthodox mother after her father abandoned the family.

Ibrahim and Wani married in 2011 in a Christian church. However, she was convicted of adultery because the law does not recognize marriages between Muslim women and Christian men.

The two were first arrested for adultery in September 2013, but released on bail.

Ibrahim faces 100 lashes for the adultery sentence, which will be carried out when she has recovered from the birth. Islamic law allows her up to two years to nurse the baby before the death sentence is carried out, the BBC reports.

The couple’s 20-month-old son is also living with his mother in the prison. His personality has changed “a lot,” said Wani, a U.S. citizen originally from what is now South Sudan.

“He used to be a happy boy. When I went there, he just looked at me. No smile,” he added. “Every time when I went there, he just wants to come home with me.”

Wani told CNN that his wife is “in a bad mood” and “frustrated.”

The case has caused international outcry, drawing condemnation from Members of Congress. The U.S. State Department said May 15 it is “deeply disturbed” by the death sentence and urged Sudan’s government to “respect the right to religious freedom.”

Wani, who uses a wheelchair, said the U.S. consul had a “very negative position” towards his wife’s situation. The consul was “very high handed” and “very, very rude,” he said, according to CNN.

He said the consul told him she didn’t have time for the case. He also voiced concern that Sudan’s law doesn’t recognize his children as his own, because he is Christian.

The situation has drawn strong criticism from those who say the U.S. should do more to put pressure on Sudan and offer a safe haven to Ibrahim and the two children.

U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), a co-chair of the U.S. Congress’ International Religious Freedom Caucus, called on the State Department to express to the Sudanese government that such a human rights violation “will be taken extremely seriously” and that Sudan must follow its obligations under international treaties.

Princeton professor Robert P. George, who heads the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, has said that “(i)nternational attention to this case is critical to holding the Sudanese government accountable for its constitutional provisions and international commitments.”

Almost 300,000 people have signed a petition hosted by the Be Heard Project demanding Ibrahim’s release.

Despite the dire circumstances, Wani stressed his support for his wife.

“I’m standing by her to (the) end. Whatever she wants, I’ll stand by her,” he told CNN.

The post Husband Of Condemned Sudanese Woman Reiterates Commitment appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Nastassia Astrasheuskaya

While much of Ukraine’s population and most western governments tie high hopes with the newly elected president Petro Poroshenko, a former diplomat and now a successful entrepreneur, foreign critics say his millions are likely to stand in the way of bringing democracy to the country that finds itself in deep political crisis.

“Huge fortunes don’t make their holders supermen or even wise men. We get wisdom, democratic traditions hold, when people together can freely discuss and debate the problems they face. All nations — Ukraine included — need that sort of democratic interaction,” Sam Pizzigati, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, told RIA Novosti.

Pizzigati, editor of Too Much weekly magazine, writing on excess and inequality, and author of a 2012 book The Rich Don’t Always Win, has advocated the cause against oligarchy for years. He has adopted the motto of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

“Heavy accumulations of wealth throw the political scales off balance. It doesn’t really matter whether the super-rich hold office themselves or remain in the political shadows. Their wealth will distort democracy either way,” he said.

Poroshenko, 48, won the state presidential vote on Sunday with 54.7 percent of the votes. Owner of Kiev-based Roshen confectionary, which brought him a revenue of $1.3 billion and production facilities in Russia, he keeps the distance in the relations with official Moscow, which had on several accounts banned imports of Roshen products.

Poroshenko will now need his money-making skills to bring his country out of the near-bankruptcy state: Ukraine owes Moscow $3.5 billion for gas deliveries.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin is not planning to visit Poroshenko’s inauguration ceremony, Moscow said it respected the choice of the Ukrainian people and would maintain diplomatic relations with their country.

The US leader Barack Obama, whose administration met with Kiev authorities throughout the months of protests in Kiev and then in the eastern regions, was among the first to congratulate Poroshenko on his victory.

Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, secured 12.81 percent of votes at the vote, which took place weeks after she was released from jail, where she had served three years on charges of exceeding powers in Russian gas deals. Founder of Ukraine’s once largest gas importer United Energy Systems of Ukraine, which existed between 1991 and 2009, she was one of Ukraine’s richest women at the time.

“It looks like the chocolate king beat the gas queen. You don’t have legitimate authentic leaders over here, what can I say – oligarchs in the pocket of United States and the NATO states,” Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, College of Law, told RIA Novosti.

He said the country’s wealthiest people were put in charge for a reason – that is to serve the interests of the US, willing to place NATO’s troops as close to Russia as possible. Ukraine may give them this opportunity, he said.

“As we know, Kiev put all the oligarchs allegedly in control of the Russian speaking portions of Ukraine. Well, is that really democracy, putting these rotten corrupt oligarchs in charge? That had nothing to do with democracy,” he said.

Ukraine underwent a Western-backed regime change resembling a military coup in February. The country’s parliament ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, changed the constitution and scheduled an early presidential election for May 25.

The vote came amid a large-scale military operation launched by the new Kiev authorities to crack down on protesters refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the government. Since the beginning of the protests, Ukraine has lost the Crimean peninsula to Russia after a referendum in March, and the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions declared themselves sovereign republics earlier this month.

On the day of election Poroshenko said the special operation in eastern Ukraine should continue and become more effective.

The post Poroshenko’s Millions Interfere With Ukraine’s Fight For Democracy – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By N Sathiya Moorthy

At their first meeting after the inauguration of the new government in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa discussed the “fishermen’s issue”. Official statements from both sides confirmed that the two leaders had agreed that the meeting between their fishermen’s representatives and the joint committee of officials should continue, so as to find a permanent solution to the issue.

Both the fishermen’s issue and the Heads of Government discussions in Delhi assume immediate, if not greater, significance in the light of the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa at Delhi on June 3. Indications are that the discussions between the two leaders now, like with the Sri Lankan visitor, will touch upon the fishers’ issue, as it involves fishermen from Tamil Nadu. More than the Sri Lankan ‘ethnic issue’, about which the divided TN polity is agitated even more, it’s the livelihood issue of the State’s fishers that is of greater consequence to the local population and for bilateral relations with Sri Lanka.

In her talks at Delhi, with PM Modi and his ministerial colleagues, Jayalalithaa is likely to refer to the killing and harassment of Tamil Nadu fishers in the seas, allegedly by Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) and fellow-Tamil fishers from the Tamil-majority Northern Province in the island-nation. It should however be pointed out that ahead of visiting Delhi for PM Modi’s swearing-in, President Rajapaksa had ordered the release of all Indian fishers in Sri Lankan prisons. While the gesture might have been to the new Indian PM, fishers from Tamil Nadu are the beneficiaries.

If however there were no Indian fishers in Sri Lankan prisons, other than those charged with ‘smuggling activities’, it is because of earlier releases of the kind by the Sri Lankan Government, ahead of the two rounds of talks between fishers representatives, at Chennai and Colombo earlier this year, and periodic intervention by the Government of India, otherwise.

This time however, the 45-day ‘fishing ban’ period along the nation’s eastern coast since 15 April to facilitate breeding at sea meant that no TN fisher was in the Sri Lankan waters, to be arrested for IMBL violation. The ban, imposed by the Centre and enforced by the State Governments, ended on May 31. TN fishers, as also officials from the State and the Centre, are keeping their fingers crossed, as Indian trawlers venture out into the seas from June, adhering to the 4-3 weekly pattern set for traditional and trawlers fishers.

Dead-locked talks

Modi’s meeting with President Rajapaksa and the scheduled one with CM Jayalalithaa have come at a time when talks between fishers from the two countries was dead-locked, and no joint statement could be issued after the second round at Colombo on May 12. It was unlike the first round at Chennai on January 27, when the fishers’ representatives issued a joint statement, on the limited progress made and promising to continue with their meetings.

The second round at Colombo flowed from that commitment. In this background, the commitment by President Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Modi to continue with the fishers’ meetings assumes greater significance and immediate relevance. Media reports had indicated that the Colombo talks floundered (after making limited progress) when a Sri Lankan official (there only as an ‘observer’) wanted the Indian fishers not to cross the international maritime border (IMBL).

Such a proposition was behind the scope of the fishers’ talks, and could have been taken up only at the official-level. The high-level political commitment thus by the leaders of the two countries at Delhi has thus put the fishers’ talks back on the track. Independent of the Sri Lankan “official’s” concern – or, the ‘official’ Sri Lankan concern, if any – the two leaders also referred to the joint committee of officials too having to meet.

Limited progress

Taking off from the non-official 2010 bilateral fishers’ agreement, as much as from the January talks in Chennai, Tamil Nadu fishers at Colombo reportedly promised to discontinue destructive pair-trawling and purseine nets at the earliest, and reduce their ‘Palk Strait’ fishing from three days a week to two, and also voluntarily slash their earlier time-line for ending bottom-trawling – also banned — from five years to three.

For their part, and yet without a written commitment from their side on other discussed issues, representatives of Sri Lanka’s northern Tamil fishers wanted bottom-trawling ended here and now. Surely, they would have known that ‘transition arrangements’ to end bottom-trawling would take time, and both sides may still have to be persuaded to take forward the ‘deadlocked’ negotiations.

Reports have indicated that fisher representatives from the two countries have desired to meet again at the earliest, to take forward the ‘deadlocked’ process. Flowing from an earlier decision between the Fisheries Ministers of the two countries at New Delhi in December last, Sri Lankan officials, both on the eve of the Colombo talks and afterward, said that the official-level, joint-committee talks would be held at Colombo in June.

Any discussion/decision at the official-level meeting will have to be taken up at the Joint Working Group (JWG) on the fisheries issue at the bilateral-level, in which officials from Tamil Nadu have recently been invited to participate, to understand the legalities and formalities involved. In turn, such participation would have also helped the Centre’s officials in India – and their Sri Lankan counterparts — to appreciate first-hand, where (all) the shoe pinched the TN fishers, a competitive polity and the considerate government.

Fine-tuning the mechanisms

Under the partially-successful current format, talks between the fishers’ representatives can gain/regain momentum only if the governments get involved. With the Colombo talks clarifying the specific concerns – and more so, the specific commitments — at the fisher-level, governments would have to engage internally before engaging each other at the bilateral-level, if they have to produce results. It is in this context that the bilateral commitment at the highest political-level in Delhi since has rejuvenated the consultation process at the fishers’ level, to begin with.

Thanks to the government-facilitated fishers’ talks and a fuller acknowledgement of the issues involved, there is now a greater acceptance of the need for the TN fishers (and also their Puducherry counterparts), to move away from the Sri Lankan waters, in the long-term livelihood interests of the community. Addressing these concerns should involve greater and more focussed consultations and cooperation between the Centre on the one hand, the Tamil Nadu and Puducheery Governments on the other, to help diversify the trade practices of the Indian fishers’, which anyway are not among the best in the world.

Even while protesting loudly on the livelihood rights and protection for the lives and limbs of TN fishers in the mid-sea, CM Jayalalithaa began well after returning to power in 2011. The State Government budget that year extended a 25 percent subsidy for conversion of the banned bottom-trwalers into deep-sea fishing vessels, and allocated Rs 50 crore for the purpose in the first year. After re-evaluation over two years, this year’s budget has increased the conversion-subsidy to 50 percent.

Likewise, the 2011 budget also promised the TN fishers a network of 20 storage plants across the State’s coast, so that small-time fishers could store their catch, and negotiate a favourable price with traders, both overseas and nearer home. The Government at the time was also reportedly considering marketing education for the fishers. To this end and going beyond the same, Budget-2011 promised a Government-run fisheries university in the southern coastal town of Nagapattinam.

In the realm of possibility

All these are doable — if the local administrations as ‘enforcers’ in India take an active and purposeful interest, going beyond the politics that it may continue to entail. The advent of a post-poll government in Delhi may have set the right political tone to the Centre-State discussions on the subject, for them to give a collective and purposeful direction to the fishers’ talks and facilitate the kind of funding that the fishers would require to move away from improper trade practices, which Sri Lanka says are also illegal.

Neither the Sri Lankan Tamil fishers, nor their silent elected administration in the Northern Province have thus far taken any extraordinary interest in the fishers’ issue, either way. Within the country, the northern Sri Lankan fishers having heard the climb-down proposals from their ‘umbilical cord’ brethren from across the Palk Strait at the Colombo talks, their Government at the Centre should use its persuasive skills to arrive at concessions and time-lines that are acceptable to all stake-holders. Everything within the framework of the Colombo talks is very much in the realm of possibility – and probability. They alone can be possible, if an enforceable solution acceptable to all stake-holders is to be found, signed and endorsed. Conversely, any back-dated reference to the IMBL can only send out wrong — and not just confusing signals — to India and the Indian fishers, as the latter had reportedly pointed out at the Colombo talks.

Security concerns and Kachchativu issue

Livelihood issues apart, there are security concerns to the person and the nation that the Indian fishers cannot be unaware of. Independent of the human angle, if any, the recent arrival of 10 Sri Lankan Tamils in two boats from that country, to the Indian shores near the temple-island of Rameswaram, has flagged the security-related perils of the sea to the Tamil Nadu fishers, and security agencies, both of the Centre and the State.

Interrogation showed that the adults among them have had LTTE connections, and one of them was even purported to have been killed by the Sri Lankan security forces long ago. Recent reports have also indicated that the sea-lane is being used again for large-scale smuggling of gold and drugs between the two countries, and their fishers would be among the natural suspects.

It’s another matter that ‘traditional fishing rights’, whether politically acknowledged by host-governments or not, are acceptable to international law. In the reverse, the IMBL-linked ‘Kachchativu ownership’, with the enabling bilateral maritime border accords of 1974 and ’76, are legal under the binding UN International Convention of the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).

As may be recalled, Jayalalithaa in her capacity as the General Secretary of the AIADMK, now ruling the State, has challenged the Katchchativu accords in the Supreme Court. So has rival DMK, since. The State Government under Jayalalithaa’s care has also enjoined the SC proceedings. This is not unlikely to continue unnerving the Sri Lankan State, even as their Government agencies are seized of the fishers’ livelihood issues for them to accept a negotiated solution between the tradesmen at sea. Minus the livelihood issue pertaining to TN fishers, there is nothing that links the Sri Lankan State and Government to the ‘Katchchativu case’ in the Indian Supreme Court.

It may sound ironical and flippant at the same time, but the Tamil Nadu Government and Legislature cannot call for a UN-sanctioned investigation into accountability issues on Sri Lanka’s ethnic issue on the one hand, and not want to respect a bilateral accord, signed under the prevailing laws and practices of another arm of the UN. Likewise, Sri Lanka, while not wanting to accept an UNHRC probe into ‘accountability’ issues pertaining to alleged human rights violations, cannot seek to quote UNCLOS on Kachchativu alone. That way, the purported position of the Sri Lankan official’s intervention (directly or otherwise) at the Colombo may have owed to legitimate concerns that link Katchchativu issue to the IMBL accords of 1974 and 1976.

Neither side can have the cake – and eat it, too. What they can instead attempt is to take forward the fishers’ talks, promised to be continued / revived by their respective Heads of Government at their Delhi meeting, and then have their officials create the structures and super-structures aimed at implementing and/or enforcing those decisions. To the end that the two leaders want their fishers to continue their talks, PM Modi and CM Jayalalithaa at their 3 June meeting can also decide on setting a date for the third round of talks between the fishers, this time round again in India/Tamil Nadu, and invite the Sri Lankan fishers for the same, early on.

(The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)

The post Modi, Rajapaksa Revive Hopes On Dead-Locked Fishers’ Talks – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The National Security Agency is collecting millions of images of people through its international surveillance network to be implemented in a number of other facial recognition programs, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

Thanks to rapid advances being made in the field of facial recognition technology, the NSA is much better equipped to “exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, video conferences and other communications,” according to an article in the New York Times, co-written by Laura Poitras, who, together with Glen Greenwald, are the only two journalists to have received the leaked NSA documents.

The NSA has the capacity to intercept “millions of images per day,” as well as some 55,000 “facial recognition quality images.” This latest milestone in US intelligence gathering, which goes a long way to putting the final touches on the much-feared Orwellian nightmare, gives the US spy agency “tremendous untapped potential,” according to the 2011 documents.

“It’s not just the traditional communications we’re after: It’s taking a full-arsenal approach that digitally exploits the clues a target leaves behind in their regular activities on the net to compile biographic and biometric information” that can help “implement precision targeting,” noted a document dated 2010.

Such comments are bound to spark fears that the harvesting of facial images, much like the collection of oral and written communications, will snag innocent Americans in the vast intelligence net.

The latest revelations to be gleaned from Snowden’s stash of top-secret documents prove the NSA is not just interested in collecting the meta-data from global communications, but also the images that put a face on potential terrorists and other would-be adversaries of the American government.

The NSA is unique in its ability to match images with huge troves of private communications.

“We would not be doing our job if we didn’t seek ways to continuously improve the precision of signals intelligence activities — aiming to counteract the efforts of valid foreign intelligence targets to disguise themselves or conceal plans to harm the United States and its allies,” said Vanee M. Vines, the agency spokeswoman.
ID databases out of the game?

Since most people have a number of photographs taken of themselves for identification purposes, the question arises as to how much reach the NSA has in acquiring peoples’ facial images.

According to Vines, the NSA does not access driver’s licenses or passport photos of Americans, but refused to say whether the agency had access to the State Department’s photo archive of foreign visa applicants. She also declined to say whether the spy agency collected photographs of Americans from social media sources, like Facebook and Instagram, which would not be a difficult task considering that millions of people willingly post ‘selfies’ to the web.

Moreover, the report claimed that one of the agency’s most intense efforts to acquire facial images is through a program dubbed Wellspring, which “strips out images from emails and other communications, and displays those that might contain passport images.”

Because images are considered a form of communicational content, the NSA is required to get court approval for collecting facial images of Americans, just as it is required to read emails or listen in on phone conversations, an NSA spokeswoman was quoted in the Times article as saying.

However, exceptions may be made in the event “an American might be emailing or texting an image to someone targeted by the agency overseas,” it said.

Human rights and civil liberty groups are expressing concern that the power of the technology, in the hands of government and corporate officials, could have a disastrous impact on privacy.

“Facial recognition can be very invasive,” Alessandro Acquisti, a researcher on facial recognition technology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told the paper. “There are still technical limitations on it, but the computational power keeps growing, and the databases keep growing, and the algorithms keep improving.”
Harvesting on video conferences

The NSA facial recognition program made tremendous headway in 2010 when it successfully matched images from two separate databases, one in the NSA database code-named Pinwale, and another in the government’s primary terrorist watch database, known as Tide, the NSA files revealed.

That technical breakthrough led to an “explosion of analytical uses” for the agency.

The NSA has since brought on board “identity intelligence” analysts whose job it is to match the facial images with other records about individuals to build broad portfolios of intelligence targets.

The full depth of the image-collection program is daunting in that it has developed sophisticated methods of integrating facial recognition programs with numerous other databases.

It intercepts video teleconferences to obtain facial imagery, gathers airline passenger data and collects photographs from national identity card databases created by foreign countries, the documents show,” the files revealed.

They also show that the NSA was attempting to infiltrate such databases in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Aside from its own programs, the NSA partially relies on commercially available facial recognition technology, including from PittPatt, a company owned by Google, the leaked files show.

Geo-positioning does matter

But the power of facial recognition technology apparently goes beyond the collection of faces, and includes geographic points photographed from satellites.

One leaked file shows photographs of several men standing near a waterfront dock in 2011. Through the use of the recognition technology, the NSA was able to match their surroundings to a satellite image of the same dock taken about the same time.

The document said the photograph showed a militant training facility in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, US law remains surprisingly flimsy in terms of the protections it offers Americans when it comes to their images.

“Unfortunately, our privacy laws provide no express protections for facial recognition data,” said Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, in a letter in December to the head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

News of the NSA’s ‘facial-mining’ techniques echo earlier leaked information, reported in February, that Britain’s spy agency GCHQ, in direct cooperation with the NSA, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of terrorism or other criminal behavior.

GCHQ records between 2008 and 2010 reveal a surveillance program, codenamed Optic Nerve, harvested still images of Yahoo webcam chats and stored them on databases, the Guardian reported.

“In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally,” the paper reported.

The post NSA Storing Facial Web Images, Millions Intercepted Daily appeared first on Eurasia Review.

It’s always encouraging when one comes upon inspiring human phenomena here in Syria or elsewhere that refute the familiar and worn shibboleths and cliches about how this or that group or religion hates others and won’t cease targeting them until they are all destroyed and burning in Hell.

In Syria today there is much evidence to refute the often politically motivated claims that Jewish artifacts are being singled out for destruction during the current crisis by rabid anti-Semites.

One example being offered this week as evidence of an anti-Jewish campaign is the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue in the neighborhood of Jobar on the outskirts of Damascus. For centuries Jobar has been inhabited by a peaceful mixed Muslim, Christian, Jewish community that sometimes attended events at the approximately 17 meters long and 15.7 meters wide Synagogue.

Reports this week in Zionist media about the destruction of the 400 year old (not the 2000 years old as claimed by Tel Aviv) Synagogue and the loss of all its contents are similar to reports over the past three years about the same Jobar Synagogue which turned out to be patently false. This observer has been waiting clearance to visit the site to learn exactly what happened there this week and to access its current condition and inventory of religious artifacts, which comprise part of Syria’s and the global cultural heritage of all of us.

One of the more virulent charges being heard this week, particularly from the colonial Zionist regime occupying Palestine, is the mantra about ‘see what the hatred of those Arabs for the Jewish people has done’. Admittedly it’s an effective fund-raising and intimidation tool for the Zionist lobby as it continues to labor to retain control of the US government as the American public is increasingly vexed by its actions and are pulling back from rubber stamping crimes of the apartheid regime.

It is undeniable that the location of the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue, at a key crossroads in Jabor, a suburb of Damascus, which rebel forces have occupied since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, means that it was sure to be damaged. Each time there was shelling in the area over the past three years claims were made that the Synagogue had been destroyed by government forces. A couple of examples include false media reports, one on April fool’s day 2013, published by the Times of Israel and widely circulated by Zionist media outlets. The story claimed that “The 2,000-year-old Jobar Synagogue in the Syrian capital of Damascus — the country’s holiest Jewish site — was looted and burned to the ground by government forces.” This patently false report spread widely despite the fact that there have been no government forces in Jobar since the conflict began. Two copy-cat reports followed in 2013 but they were equally false. Nearly one year later, in March of 2014 media reports conceded that the Synagogue was still standing with only minor damage and its contents appeared to be in good condition or removed to protective vaults.

This observer has received credible reports about certain stolen artifacts including gold chandeliers from Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue being offered for sale. It is well known in Syria that certain militia and others finance themselves by selling this country’s cultural heritage whenever they get the opportunity. Security agencies in Syria and INTERPOL have been alerted to the thefts of Jewish property, just as with other antiquities and they periodically issue “watch for and confiscate” lists of stolen antiquities to eventually be returned to the synagogue.

In Syria, from this observers many personal experience, it’s not true that Arabs hate Jews although they would have plenty of reasons to were it not for the fact that, increasingly in the Middle East and globally, people are increasingly distinguishing between Jews as people of the book and basically like the rest of us and fascist Zionism which is being exposed as the greatest enemy and threat to Jews everywhere.

The latest, but so far unverified, information received by this observer from rebels sources claiming to have “contacts inside” the Jobar Synagogue indicate that some early 20th century artifacts and gold chandeliers and icons were stolen early in the conflict and the area surrounding the Synagogue has been shelled sporadically over the past nearly two years with modest damage to the exterior walls. This situation obtained as of last month. The condition of the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue may well have changed this week. Other Syrian sources indicate that there has been interior damage with some scattered rubble in the nave and prayer rooms of the temple. But there has been no confirmation of claims of thousands of manuscripts; including Bibles were stolen from Jobar. On the contrary, many documents, including Bibles and other artifacts were transferred by the local Jobar Council with the full cooperation of the Syrian government to an Ottoman era Synagogue in the Old City of Damascus for safe keeping. The location where many Jobar Synagogue artifacts are today in storage, and which this observer visited, is one of the cultural heritage areas listed on the World Heritage List of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The site currently has around the clock government security that continues to guard the Old City of Damascus. It is also one of the 11 Synagogues that President Assad promised in 2011 to repair and restore and which the rebellion has put on hold.

With respect to all the unverified claims about the Jabor Synagogue, one is reminded yet again of the decade long US/UK War against Iraq with respect to false reporting about what happened to certain archeological sites and particular antiquities. Specifically one is reminded of the Iraqi Jewish artifacts that Ahmad Chalabi claims he was able to ‘rescue’ for the Coalition Provisional Authority back in 2004. Chalabi, of the ill-fated Iraqi National Congress, and the Bush administrations Coalition Provisional Authority, sought to gain some much needed good press for himself and pals Richard Perle, Nathan Sharansky, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld after mid-April 2003, reports of thousands of priceless ancient artifacts had been looted from the Iraqi museums, and these war planners were being castigated for their failure to protect Iraq’s cultural treasures from damage. It soon became clear that many of his pronouncements about the fate of Jewish artifacts were false and self-serving politically as were many of his other claims. Discredited, Chalabi’s party did not win any seats in the December 2005 election.

Some suspect similar political grandstanding motives in current reports about Jobar and it may be awhile until credible eyewitness accounts from the scene are gathered and then we will we know the truth about the fate of the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue and the whole area of Jobar. A delegation that included a Jewish representative from Damascus, as well as this observer, has been trying to visit Jobar but armed conflict in the area and the continuation of the occupation of the Synagogue by rebels has prevented entering the area so far.

The people of Syria and their government have made herculean efforts to avoid what happened in Iraq and assure that their global cultural heritage, of which Jewish antiquities is an important pillar, is preserved.

One example of this protective instinct is the fascinating case of the Dura-Europus Synagogue which was discovered and excavated in 1932. It had survived in such good condition because its location in Dura-Europus was near a small Roman garrison on the Euphrates River. Parts of the Synagogue which abutted the main city wall were requisitioned by the Roman army and filled with sand as a defensive measure against northern and eastern marauders. The city was abandoned after its fall and never resettled, and the lower walls of the rooms remained buried and largely intact until excavated. The excavations discovered many Jewish wall-paintings and also from places of worship of Christianity Christian texts written in Hebrew. An interesting reference to Syria’s cultural heritage was the discovery of paintings in the Synagogue depicting limited aspects of Mithraism which was widely viewed as a mystery religion practiced in the Roman Empire between the first and 4th century. Named for the Persian god Mithra, from nearby modern day Iran, many Syrians followed the cult as did some Roman Senators and Generals who preferred paganism and resisted the ‘new’ Christianity.

Among the specific Jewish-Syrian-Global antiquities including paintings with themes from the Old Testament which this observer has verified are being preserved and protected by the people and government of Syria include, but are not limited to the following examples, a few from many thousands I was advised, which appear to be in excellent condition as of late May, 2014.

*The Torah niche from the ancient Synagogue of Dura Europus on which there are the drawings of the Prophet Abraham including the scene of his offering his son. Also beside them a drawing of the candle stick and the temple facade.

*A drawing of the Prophet Ezra reading a papyrus, Prophet Moses in the flames of boxthorn, the Ark of the Covenant in the hands of Philistines, and David anointed as a king by Samuel.

*Many Jewish-Syrian-Global antiquities including paintings with themes from the Old Testament

*Also a drawing of the pharaoh and Moses as a child and a beautiful painting of Abraham between the two symbols of the sun and the moon. A drawing representing the story of Mordecai and Ester and Elijah bringing life back to a baby.

Despite the current and legitimate focus on Jabor, the record of the Syrian people on preserving their entire cultural heritage, especially during the current crisis is admirable. Two weeks ago this observer visited the old city of Homs and spent a fair bit of time at the Um AL-ZENAR Church of Saint Mary Church of the Holy Belt which dates from 52 AD. Tradition has it that this seat of the Syriac Orthodox archbishopric contains a venerated relic which the Bishop told me about as he shoveled rubble from around the altar. The relic is claimed to be a section of the belt of St. Mary, mother of Jesus. These days it is said to be hidden near the underground spring which one arrives at by walking down a pitch black cold and damp long and very narrow set of roughhewn stone steps. The Holy Water is a small pond, now filled will fragments of stone and wood chunks from the fighting, according to tradition, has curing powers. I scooped up a couple of hands full and it was very refreshing but did nothing, so far, to cure my leg problem.

This observer was inspired by the number of parishioners and other volunteers from the neighborhood, mostly Muslims, one church official told me, as I watched many from the community work, covered in dust and soot from cleaning out the rubble.

In the courtyard in front of Al-Zenar’s this observer stoked a still smoldering heap of burned bibles and other church documents and icons which I was told rebels had torched as they prepared to vacate the compound earlier this month. Two days after I departed the old city of Homs, Um Al-Zenar Church, which these days is a partially burned out shell devoid of pews and religious artifacts, held its first Holy Communion since the conflict began.

Syrians, without exception from my experience are deeply connected with their cultural heritage and do not distinguish all that much among its origins. If fact it appears that all Syrians are proud to help others protect and rebuild their damaged religious and cultural sites and it’s a unifying factor among this besieged population. People this observer speaks with as he travels around Syria to visit archeological sites seem to blame both sides for the damage but focus more on the task of restoration of their heritage and archeological sites.
There are countless examples which limited space does not allow discussion. But mentioning again the subject of supposed Arab hostility to Jewish artifacts in Syria, my notes strongly refute this claim.

According to members of the Old City of Damascus Jewish community, and this observers friend, Saul, who claims to be the last Jewish tailor in Syria, as well as the lovely elderly ladies known as ‘the Jewish sisters’ whose apartment is near where St Paul, according to tradition converted to Christianity, this observer was served tea, Jewish cultural heritage in Syria in being respected, protected and preserved with the same care as Muslim, Christian and pagan antiquities. I believe them.

The post Syrians Working To Preserve Jewish Cultural Heritage – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(RFE/RL) — Kyiv’s Mayor-elect Vitali Klitschko has told demonstrators gathered on the city’s Independence Square that he will not use force to disperse their protest camp when he takes office.

Media reports say Klitschko addressed a crowd of a few thousand people gathered on Independence Square on June 1.

Three months of Maidan protests drove pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych to flee Ukraine in February.

Much of the protest encampment remained even after a pro-Western government took office, with holdout demonstrators calling for the Maidan to continue until the new government implements important reforms.

Klitschko had earlier called on demonstrators to fold their tents and go home.

Ukrainian media reports said the crowd on June 1 booed Klitschko, cheering only when he said early parliamentary elections were needed.

The post Ukraine: Klitschko Says Won’t Disperse Maidan appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The United Nations says the death toll in Iraq during the month of May is a staggering 799 people, the Associated Press reports. It is the highest monthly death toll so far this year.

Of the 799 killed, 603 were civilians while 196 were security forces. Roughly 1,400 Iraqis have been injured in the violence that continues to plague the country, according to AP.

The worst hit city is Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, with 315 people killed. The figures exclude deaths in the restive Anbar province, an area where militants are battling the military for control. Fighting in Anbar has killed and displaced thousands of Iraqis.

Iraq faces many challenges as al Qaeda militants continually carry out attacks and sectarian tensions threaten to rip the country apart.

Original article

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Nicholas Kristof is a very well-known news reporter and columnist for the New York Times where over the years he has posted many articles that are based on his firsthand account of the subject matter. In his latest article “Myanmar’s Appalling Apartheid” (NYT, May 28, 2014), Kristof wrote about Myanmar and the appalling apartheid nature of the murderous regime and its Buddhist populace that have long refused to accept the presence of the non-Mongoloid, Indian-Bangladeshi looking and racial group of people that are mostly Muslims and are known as the Rohingya people of Arakan (now called the Rakhine state), Burma’s western frontier state bordering Bangladesh.

Unlike many news reporters, Mr. Kristof is a very well read person and criticizes the racist attitude of the Buddhist people in Myanmar and its rogue regime.

He writes, “There are more than one million Rohingya in Rakhine State in the northwest of Myanmar. They are distinct from the local Buddhists both by darker skin and by their Islamic faith. For decades, Myanmar’s military rulers have tried systematically to erase the Rohingya’s existence with oppression, periodic mass expulsions and denials of their identity.

“There are no people called Rohingya in Myanmar,” U Win Myaing, a spokesman for Rakhine State, told me. He said that most are simply illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

This narrative is absurd, as well as racist. A document as far back as 1799 refers to the Rohingya population here, and an 1826 report estimates that 30 percent of the population of this region was Muslim.”

Mr. Kristof is 100 percent right. Dr. Francis Buchanan’s work testifies to the existence of the Rohingya people in Burma in the late 18th century, a quarter century before Arakan was colonized by the East India Company (EIC). He (1762-1829) was a surgeon working for the EIC. He was also a surveyor and botanist who lived in India and Burma for decades. His work is one of the most detailed sources for the social and cultural history of Arakan, Burma and India in the late 18th and early 19th century.

As noted in the JSTOR, Buchanan was born at Branziet near Bardowie, Stirlingshire. After qualifying in medicine in 1783 at the University of Edinburgh, he became a medical officer with the East India Company, spending time in Asia in 1785, 1788-1789 and 1791.

He was finally employed as assistant surgeon in Bengal (1794-1815), giving him the opportunity to explore large parts of the Indian subcontinent, where he hoped to collect plants. His first major collections were made in Burma (Myanmar) in 1795, where he accompanied Captain Michael Symes on a political mission to Ava. In 1800 he was commissioned to survey South India following the British victory in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, and later made a further, wide-ranging survey of all the areas under the jurisdiction of the British East India Company. This task took him some seven years from 1807 and covered not only topography and natural resources but also aspects of local culture, religion and history and archaeology.

Travelling through Burma and the Andaman Islands (1795), Chittagong (1798), Nepal (1800-1803), North Bengal and Bihar (1807-1809), Hamilton made detailed observations and prepared extensive reports. His work “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire” was published by the Asiatic Researches in 1799. This work provided one of the first major Western surveys of the languages of Burma, and more importantly, provided important data on the ethno-cultural identities and identifications of the various population groups in the first half of Bodawpaya’s reign (1782-1819).

Dr. Buchanan wrote, “The proper natives of Arakan call themselves Yakain, which name is also commonly given to them by the Burmas [Burmese]. By the people of Pegu, they are named Takain. By the Bengal Hindus [i.e., Bengali-speaking Hindus], at least by such of them as have been settled in Arakan, the country is called Rossaum, from whence, I suppose, Mr. Rennell has been induced to make a country named Roshaum occupy part of his map, not conceiving that it would be Arakan, or the kingdom of the Mugs [Maghs], as we often call it. Whence this name of Mug, given by the Europeans to the natives of Arakan, has been derived, I know not; but, as far as I could learn, it is totally unknown to the natives and their neighbours, except such of them as, by their intercourse with us, have learned its use. The Mahommedans [Muslims] settled at Arakan, call the country Rovingaw; the Persians call it Rekan.” [Note: the parentheses [] within the quotes of Dr. Buchanan’s statement are mine. – HS]

Dr. Buchanan continued, “I shall now add three dialects, spoken in the Burma Empire, but evidently derived from the language of the Hindu nation.

The first is that spoken by the Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan.

The second dialect is that spoken by the Hindus of Arakan. I procured it from a Brahmen [Brahmin] and his attendants, who had been brought to Amarapura by the king’s eldest son, on his return from the conquest of Arakan. They call themselves Rossawn, and, for what reason I do not know, wanted to persuade me that theirs was the common language of Arakan. Both these tribes, by the real natives of Arakan, are called Kulaw Yakain, or stranger Arakan.

The last dialect of the Hindustanee [Hindustani] which I shall mention, is that of a people called, by the Burmas [Burmese], Aykobat, many of them are slaves at Amarapura [i.e., capital of Burmese kingdom]. By one of them I was informed, that they had called themselves Banga; that formerly they had kings of their own; but that, in his father’s time, their kingdom had been overturned by the king of Munnypura [Manipur in north-eastern India], who carried away a great part of the inhabitants to his residence.

When that was taken last by the Burmas, which was about fifteen years ago, this man was one of the many captives who were brought to Ava. He said also, that Banga was seven days’ journey south-west from Munnypura: it must, therefore, be on the frontiers of Bengal, and may, perhaps, be the country called in our maps Cashar [Cachar district in today’s Assam].” [Note: the parentheses [] within the quotes of Dr. Buchanan’s statement are mine. – HS]
As I have noted in some of my own well-researched articles, some two centuries before the travel of Dr. Buchanan, Bengali literature that emanated from Arakan speaks about the territory as Roshang (or Rohang in local southern dialect where the letter ‘s’ is silent) Desh [i.e., land of the Roshang people]. As per established local customs and rules, it is no accident that the people of Roshang or Rohang will be called Rohingya in the local dialect [just as the people of Chatga or Chatgaon are called Chatgaiya, and the people of Dhaka are Dhakaiya].

Only a chauvinist can deny the overwhelming historical evidences about the existence of the forefathers of today’s Rohingya people to the soil of Arakan. As many reputed historians concur the forefathers of today’s Rohingyas are the first settlers of this landmass of Arakan (that have been renamed as the Rakhine state today by the Buddhist racists). They have more rights to the territory than anyone else.

Simply because of a flawed decision – and this I say with much deliberation on the whole issue surrounding the inhuman treatment of vulnerable minorities – by the British colonial administration, the fate of the people of Arakan (separated by the Naaf River) has been tied up with those of the rest of Burma (and not with Bengal or as a separate entity) when the territories were occupied beginning with the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824. When later Burma was de-colonized in 1948, Arakan was made a part of Burma (today’s Myanmar).

Had the colonial government wished, Arakan could have had a much deserving independent status, or even be made part of East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) because of its historical ties to Chittagong and rest of Bengal for centuries before the Burmese colonization in 1784. But the colonial government decided to placate its fate with the rest of Buddhist-majority Burma. And this happened because of the promises made by the founding fathers of Burma – which included Suu Kyi’s father Aung San – that the rights of the minorities in the frontier territories would be honored and won’t be compromised an iota.

However, soon after the assassination of the founding fathers by Buddhist chauvinists who did not like the multi-racial and -religious character of the future Burma, the fate of the Rohingya Muslims took a very wrong turn. They were targeted for elimination. Being threatened they waged guerrilla war against the regime, which, by the way, was more a norm than an exception in those early days of independent Burma when all the racial and religious minorities including the communists were fighting their own wars against the central government. The Rohingya Mujahids laid down their arms when promises to integrate them on an equal footing were made by the government and military generals.

But one betrayal followed another. And soon draconian measures followed, which aimed at rendering the Rohingya people stateless in their ancestral land. In one of the greatest constitutional crimes of the last century, the Rohingyas – the first settlers to the crescent of Arakan- were declared stateless, i.e., they don’t qualify as citizens in Burma. In our world, there is no such parallel. It is the worst amongst the apartheid policies that our world has ever seen.

Shamelessly, however, many Buddhists and Burmese people have now bought and swallowed that apartheid pill from the hated regime and its racist and bigoted supporters within today’s Myanmar. This apartheid state must come to an end for not only the genuine restoration of the persecuted Rohingya people but also for regional safety and security. The recent killing of a Bangladeshi Border Guard by trigger-happy security forces of Myanmar once again underscores the importance of finding an equitable solution to the appalling apartheid state of the Rohingya people.

Denying the very existence of a slow-burning but “smart” genocide, committed by the racist Buddhist regime and its criminal supporters within the wider Myanmar society is simply unacceptable. Denied access by the doctors, the Rohingya people are in worse shape today than any time before. They are being slowly strangled to death with lack of food, medical care, and hope. Fortify Rights has lately reported that there are as few as one physician per 83,000 Rohingyas, while for the Buddhist-majority there is one physician for every 681 persons. What an apartheid state!

Mr. Kristof writes, “Obama has lately noted that his foreign policy options are limited, and that military interventions often backfire. True enough, but in Myanmar he has political capital that he has not fully used. As a university student, Obama denounced apartheid in South Africa. As president, he should stand up to an even more appalling apartheid — one in Myanmar that deprives members of one ethnic group even of health care. Myanmar seeks American investment and approval. We must make clear that it will get neither unless it treats Rohingya as human beings.”

I endorse fully the above statement. It is time for the USA to do what is needed to change the appalling inhuman condition of the Rohingya people. The sooner the better!

The post The Appalling Apartheid State Of The Rohingyas Must End – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Cheryl Pellerin

The release yesterday of former prisoner of war Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, after a years-long international effort to free him from nearly five years of captivity in Afghanistan, was an important day for U.S. troops and for the United States, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said today.

Hagel briefed reporters traveling with him aboard a military aircraft en route to the next stop, Afghanistan, on his 12-day trip to countries in Asia and Europe.

During the briefing, Hagel said Bergdahl was then on his way to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Doctors there will evaluate the sergeant’s health, which the secretary said was a critical reason for the seemingly abrupt and stealthy special operations forces helicopter pick-up and transfer of Bergdahl out of Afghanistan.

Medical center doctors will determine the length of Bergdahl’s stay in Germany, the secretary added.

In explaining the details he could about Bergdahl’s recovery, Hagel said, “We believed that the information we had, the intelligence we had, was such that Sgt. Bergdahl’s safety and health were both in jeopardy, and in particular his health deteriorating.”

The secretary added, “It was our judgment that if we could find an opening and move very quickly … that we needed to get him out of there, essentially to save his life.”

Hagel also noted that President Barack Obama felt strongly about the need to quickly extract Bergdahl and consulted with his National Security Council, whose members were unanimous in their agreement with the plan.

The U.S. government had been working for years to find a way to open up possibilities with the Taliban to try to recover Bergdahl, the secretary said, “So this didn’t just start, it has been an ongoing effort that our government has been involved in at every level.”

He added, “We found some openings that I don’t want to [publicly discuss] that made sense to us. We had the Emir of Qatar, who was willing to take the lead on this, and his representatives in Qatar. The timing was right. The pieces came together. Our consistent efforts … over the years paid off.”

Specifics of the rescue operation are classified, Hagel told reporters, but he said, “In an operation like this, where there is always uncertainty … always danger, you prepare for all eventualities.”

Praising the skill and professionalism of special operations personnel involved in the sergeant’s recovery, Hagel said they took every possible precaution through intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and by having assets positioned in the right locations to anticipate problems.

“Fortunately,” the secretary said, “no shots were fired. There was no violence. It went as well as we not only expected and planned but I think as well as it could have.”

As part of the recovery effort, and because the Emir of Qatar and his government cooperated to help secure the soldier’s release, Obama said yesterday during a White House press conference that the United States is transferring five detainees from the prison in Guantanamo Bay to Qatar.

At that press conference, Obama noted, “The Qatari government has given us assurances that it will put in place measures to protect our national security.”

The president also thanked the Afghan government, which he said had always supported U.S. efforts to secure Bergdahl’s release.

In his own briefing with the traveling press, Hagel responded to a question about whether sending five detainees to Qatar could embolden terrorists to grab more service members to exchange for detainees.

“I remind you that this was a prisoner-of-war exchange. [Bergdahl] was a prisoner,” Hagel said. “And as we know certainly from what we’re dealing with all over the world today with terrorist groups, they take hostages. They take innocent schoolgirls. They take business people. They will take any target that they can get to. So, again, our focus was on the return of Sgt. Bergdahl.”

Hagel said he has not yet spoken with Bergdahl’s family or with the sergeant himself.

“I know how happy the president of the United States was, to have the family next to him in the news conference they had [yesterday], Hagel said, adding that the focus now is on Bergdahl’s health.

“I won’t interfere with that,” he said. “When the doctors say it’s appropriate that I can speak with him, I will do that and I look forward to that.”

On the 12-day trip so far, Hagel has spoken with troops at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, and in Singapore held several bilateral meetings with Asian defense leaders and participated in the annual Shangri-La Dialogue.

The secretary’s next stops include Afghanistan, Brussels for a NATO defense ministerial, and France, with stops in Paris and then Normandy to commemorate with President Barack Obama the Allied victory in World War II and the 70th anniversary of sacrifice and courage shown on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

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The five Taliban commanders released by the United States in a prisoner swap to win the freedom of an American solider were among the most senior Afghans held at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

All five were flown to Qatar, which has pledged to hold them for a year under terms the United States negotiated to win the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by the Taliban for nearly five years.

The U.S. captured the five terrorism suspects at least a decade ago.

All five were removed from battlefields in the first years of the U.S. effort to destroy Taliban military operations in Afghanistan believed responsible for the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

They had formal government jobs when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

Some U.S. officials fear the five could eventually return to Afghanistan and renew their fight against the Afghan government and Western interests, as have other prisoners released from Guantanamo.

Ending combat operations

The United States is ending its combat operations at the end of 2014, withdrawing most of its troops and turning over more military and security operations to Afghan forces.

The five Talibanis released to Qatar included Khairullah Khairkhwa, who was known to have close ties to Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader who was the mastermind of the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and later was killed in a U.S. raid on his Pakistani compound in 2011.

Abdul Haq Wasiq was the deputy chief of intelligence for the Taliban, while Mullah Mohammad Fazl was a senior Taliban army commander believed responsible for the killing of thousands of Shiite Muslims near Kabul between 1998 and 2001.

Mohammad Nabi Omari has been described as “one of the most significant” Taliban officials held at Guantanamo, with ties to the Haqqani network that was believed to have held Bergdahl.

Mullah Norullah Nori was a provincial governor in several Afghan areas during the Taliban rule.

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By N Sathiya Moorthy

In a none-too-unexpected move, the three-party ruling coalition, led by President Abdulla Yameen’s Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), split on the very first day of the very first session of the People’s Majlis, or Parliament, elected in a nation-wide polls only on March 22 this year. This follows Gasim Ibrahim, leader of the Jumhooree Party (JP), the second largest member in the ruling coalition with 15 MPs in a total of 58 in the 85-member House, entering the fray for the Speaker’s position, defying the PPM leader with 38 members.

In the final analysis, Gasim lost to PPM’s Abdulla Maseeh, 43-39. Interestingly, the Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) nominee and former party chairperson, ‘Reeko’ Moosa Manik, won the subsequent election to the Deputy Speaker’s post, 42-41. The Constitution prohibited pro tem Speaker from casting his vote unless there was a tie. However, there were two invalid votes in the Speaker’s election, as the members had used pens ‘not approved’ for the purpose, and one for the Deputy Speaker’s polls.

At the end of Majlis’ elections in March, the ruling coalition had won 53 seats – 33 PPM, 15 JP and five for the newly-formed Maldivian Development Alliance (MDA). The Opposition MDP bagged 26 seats. Independents won five seats, and the religion-centric Adhalaath Party (AP) got a single seat. The AP had broken the alliance with the JP and thus the PPM combine from the November presidential polls, after seat-sharing talks with the former went awry. It’s unclear whom the AP member had voted for in the two elections, or had ‘invalidated’ her vote. The alternative would be to assume that the ‘invalid’ vote came from a member of the ruling combine.

Ahead of the Speaker’s poll, four of the five Independents joined the PPM. Immediately after the parliamentary election, an MDP member had switched sides. Yet, Gasim could garner a high number of 39 votes and MDP’s Moosa Manik could win the Deputy Speaker’s post only through a possible tie-up between the MDP (25) and the JP (15). Clearly, the MDP under former President Mohammed Nasheed, was not the one to lose an opportunity to weaken the ruling coalition when one presented itself.

While one of the two ‘invalid’ votes for the Speaker’s election could explain why Gasim got one less than the total 40, there is no explanation still on how Moosa Manik, a popular parliamentarian himself, could add two more votes to his tally than the total. The fact that the PPM nominee lost two from the combined coalition tally of 43 would prima facie indicate cross-voting from the Government side.

Calculative or fidgety?

The nation’s best-known rags-to-riches man, Gasim Ibrahim, has displayed both qualities in no small measure. He has excelled in business and investments for long. In politics, he has moved from strength to strength through the past five-plus years of democratisation.

As critics, particularly political adversaries are not tired of arguing, Gasim is not a man to shy away from deploying his money power and political muscle to create electoral constituencies to call his own. Supporters say that a true philanthropist who has not forgotten his needy past, Gasim’s ready outpouring of sympathy and financial help for the needy has helped create the constituency. His sympathy and support are not confined to the election-time, unlike that of others, and is for the asking, all the time, they add.

It was thus that all political parties agreed to have him as the Speaker of the Special Majlis that drafted and passed the current, democracy pro-democracy Constitution. Deploying maturity, sagacity and his businessman’s persuasive skills, he saw the process through. At the same time, he has not hidden his political ambitions and goal – the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Maldives (even if it for a day!)

Gasim contested the 2008 presidential elections, and came fourth but with a substantial 15-percent vote-share. In the more recent 2013 presidential polls, he polled close to a fourth of the nation’s votes. The ‘full transferability’ of his first-round votes, at his behest, contributed in no way to deciding the victor in the second, run-off round – MDP’s Nasheed in 2008 and PPM’s Yameen in 2013.

In between, his grit and determination also worked overtime, to see through former President Nasheed’s early exit, and the induction of Vice-President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, to complete the residual two-plus years’ term in February 2012. More recently, he put them to work again, challenging the original first-round polling for the presidency in 2013, and getting a favourable order and re-poll from the nation’s Supreme Court.

For all the controversies attending on the processes he has employed in politics in particular, Gasim has proved to be a team-player in his own way and style. Calculative to the core, with an eye on the future – his own political future at that – he has had no hesitation in backing mutual political rivals in the second round of two successive presidential elections, five years apart. He did not have to employ great political logic to convince his already-convinced constituency, with the result he is both respected and feared as ‘king-maker’ and ‘one-man demolition squad’ at the same time.

Gasim is as suspicious of his allies as they are of him – but is also as fidgety as none else. After losing the Speaker’s election, he said that he had not been told about the JP had not been informed of the dissolution of the ruling combine. Clearly, the PPM and the MDA, the other two partners, would want the coalition to stay, but without the JP.

Critics say that Gasim is fidgety or untrustworthy, all the same. There are however those who say that like a good and possibly the nation’s most successful businessman, he is not the one to miss an opportunity when one presented itself – in politics, too. Critics concede supporters’ argument that ‘Gasim does what is good for him and good for the nation’ – but add with a sly: “The dividing line between the two is thin, if not non-existent, in his case.”

It’s a combination of such characteristics and consequent approach that has made successive political partners feel as unnerved by him, as he too seems to be unnerved by them. After he lost the Speaker’s election on Wednesday, an MDP member of the Majlis said that Gasim had left the Nasheed Government on his own, but the Yameen dispensation had ‘oppressed’ the JP founder.

The truth in both cases lies somewhere in between, but it is the fear of Gasim being able to turn the table against the incumbent, and on his terms and time of his choosing, seems to have worked against him. The apprehension just now, as in the past, may be that if elected Speaker, Gasim had the inherent capabilities and knack not only to knock out the Government’s legislative moves in Parliament.

In theory, had he been elected Gasim could also use the opportunities attaching to the parliamentary high office to have the Government continuously dis-credited, and work his way up within the existing circumstances but within the four walls of the Constitutions. Or, so has remained apprehensions by political allies and detractors, alike. It’s also in this line his camp seems to be looking at the MDP support for Gasim in the Speaker’s election, in return for his JP’s backing for the party’s Deputy Speaker candidate.

Post-poll, Gasim declared getting 39 votes was a victory for him. Apart from the additional numbers that he could attract from the MDP Opposition, he also seems to be hinting at the consequent weakening of the Yameen Government in the Majlis, and the simultaneous strengthening of the Opposition Bench. In a House of 85 members, including the Speaker, the Treasury Bench now has only a total of 43 members.

In a way, it’s a mid-way split, as the Speaker is not entitled to vote unless there is a split verdict on Bills and resolutions. No Government can survive thus for too long, walking on such a razor’s edge, eternally. The temptation for ‘poaching’ from each other side can only be natural. It can become vigorous in the days and weeks to come, without anyone having to wait for months, which is what was to have been expected in the natural course of coalition politics of the kind.

Ahead of the Speaker’s poll, the PPM general council decided to expel JP from the ruling combine if Gasim stuck to his pre-announced decision to contest. He having contested, and lost, President Yameen’s office announced that the three Ministers for Transport – Cabinet, State and Deputy – have all been advised to ‘stay at home’. Other JP-nominated ministers have not been disturbed, maybe owing to governmental expectations that their loyalty does not lie with Gasim.

That is little consolation for the Government, in real terms. Following the US model of Executive Presidency, Ministers in Maldives do not come from Parliament. Retaining or sacking one or more does not impact on the parliamentary strength of a government, one way or the other. However, alongside picturing instability in the Majlis, sacking/replacing one too many ministers when the new government was just settling down to work, after three rounds of elections in five months, could also render administrative work ineffectual, at least for some more time.

Party with a difference

It’s not only the political careers of President Yameen’s government and that of JP’s Gasim Ibrahim are at the cross-roads just now. Having painted Gasim as a great opportunist, an ally who cannot be trusted, and a money-bag who had contributed in no small measure to compromising the hard-won democracy and processes, the MDP will now have to explain the logic behind backing him in a Speaker’s election that he was anyway destined to lose – and possibly working with him in the future.

The hard-core MDP cadres, who number the single largest registered membership for any political party in the country, may be able to appreciate the tactical gain that the leadership has made since the conclusion of the triple polls to the presidency, local councils and the Majlis in quick succession. Beyond the core, there are any number of ‘non-party supporters’, who continue to see the MDP as Maldives ‘party with a difference’, and President Nasheed as the mascot and defender of value-based politics and practices.

Any possible re-thinking on the MDP’s part could thus mean that Parliament could be divided three-way, with the MDP staying neutral politically, initiating legislative measures or voting on others, on a case-by-case basis. The JP would then be left with little choice but to adapt a similar strategy, so would the ruling coalition be happy to do so for its part. Yet, manoeuvring the Government’s initiatives, if not a majority all the time, would not be easy or possible all the time. It could mean another round of political instability, from early or, horse-trading, or both – and more.

(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)

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By Seyed Hossein Mousavian with Shahir Shahidsaless

First, he wholeheartedly believes that regardless of all the ups and downs, pushes and pulls between Iran and the US, Washington’s ultimate intention is to topple Iran’s Islamic system and subordinate them within a Pax Americana, as it did during the Shah’s era after the 1953 coup. Ayatollah Khamenei maintains that the US, no matter which school of thought and party is in power or which president has taken office, intends to “wipe out the Islamic Republic”with all possible means at its disposal. The conclusion he draws from US rhetoric, policies, and behavior is that the US will not relent from its desire for regime change unless the current government surrenders its principles, religious beliefs, political structure, and independence. The United States’ tacit support for Saddam Hussein’s invasion and provision of material support, its covert operations, support for belligerent groups and the Islamic Republic’s opposition (including a budgetary provision), its denial of Iran’s right to peaceful enrichment under the NPT, and its intrusive and paralyzing economic sanctions are all viewed by Ayatollah Khamenei as indisputable attempts to bring about an end to the Islamic Republic. He maintains that the US’s primary objective is to undermine the Islamic government by fostering internal disorder and, ultimately, regime change.

The second element that shapes Ayatollah Khamenei’s disposition towards the US is his firm belief that US foreign policy in the Middle East, and specifically regarding Iran, is overwhelmingly dominated by the pro-Israel lobby. From his point of view, even the president of the United States does not have any authority over US foreign policy. He is surprised that year after year, the president or other high-level officials of the most powerful country on earth attend American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) gatherings and report what they have done to undermine the Iranian government and satisfy pro-Israel lobby demands. Although there is in general a consensus within the nezam about Israel’s influence on US Middle East policy, some argue that it is the Zionists who determine the US foreign policy, and not Americans.

The third element shaping the Supreme Leader’s perception of the US is his extreme mistrust of American politics. The documents confiscated by students after seizing the US Embassy seemed to justify such a stance by many high-echelon Iranian politicians, including Ayatollah Khamenei. According to those documents, the embassy was involved in espionage and the fostering of covert links to members of the new government and army.

Finally, Ayatollah Khamenei’s sees the American government and the system it represents as addicted to arrogance and hegemony. He feels that if a country is not seen as a “great power,” then a lord–serf relationship is the only kind of relationship that the US is prepared to accept.

Many believe that the Iranian system is solely driven by a religious impetus. That assessment is incorrect. Underneath the superficial layers of religious beliefs, Iranians are deeply nationalistic. They see themselves as a great country, accredited with being the cradle of civilization; rich with culture and history dating back thousands of years; positively contributing to the world in many fields including science, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, art, and music.

All of these attributes lend themselves to the heightened nationalism esteemed by Iranians. So, when Congress or the US administration attempt to bully using threats and intimidation, or try to humiliate the Iranian government by endless repetition of the “all options on the table” mantra and other rhetoric, Iran’s strong sense of national pride is offended. Such behavior on the part of the Americans also strengthens Ayatollah Khamenei’s view that the US is not looking for an equal and balanced relationship. Rather, it seeks, as he describes it, a lord–serf relationship.

However, despite Ayatollah Khamenei’s pessimistic view of the American political system, Rafsanjani and Khatami clearly espoused reconciliation with the US. Rafsanjani fought hard to attain this objective and “emphasized that the resumption of relations with Washington ‘would not be in contradiction with Iran’s objectives’ if American policies were ‘truly corrected.”

Rafsanjani did his best to bring the Lebanese hostage crisis to an end with the hopes that President George Bush would honor his commitment that “goodwill begets goodwill.” He failed to do so. Under Khatami’s watch, Iran helped the US in Afghanistan, hoping for reciprocation, and offered a grand bargain that was rejected by the administration of President George W. Bush. Ayatollah Khamenei, although reluctant and pessimistic, did not block those efforts at rapprochement. In fact, he continues to emphasize that he has never said that relations with the US will remain severed forever.

But in practical terms, Ayatollah Khamenei argues that the US goal of having bilateral talks with Iran is not motivated by a desire to resolve problems and disputes between the two countries. He feels that the US would approach such talks prepared to twist arms, threaten, intimidate, and ultimately withdraw, if they felt that Iran was not prepared to concede the upper hand to America.

He is also concerned that America’s powerful media would make the situation even worse, humiliating the revolution and Iranians, thus damaging Iran’s stature as the leading anti-imperialist country in the Muslim world beyond repair. He therefore posits that if Iran cannot be 100 percent certain that the US position has changed, it must not risk humiliation in “bilateral” talks, the outcome of which might have been determined in advance.

Ayatollah Khamenei is also conscious of the fact that some security analysts have suggested that any restoration of relations with the US might simply provide an opportunity for American intelligence to infiltrate Iran—a thesis made more credible by the previous history of the 1953 coup and the documents seized from the American Embassy, apart from the Ayatollah’s prevailing mindset. “The US waged war against Iraq while Washington had diplomatic ties with Baghdad, secondly diplomatic ties with the US would pave the way for the infiltration of US spies into the country, so diplomatic relations with Washington would not be useful to the Iranian nation,” said the Supreme Leader.

One of the less obvious hurdles to the normalization of relations between Iran and the US, in my opinion, may be the issue of “cultural aggression” or tahajome farhangi, as Ayatollah Khamenei puts it.

A large faction of Principalists, including grassroots supporters of the institution of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist), which is symbolized and represented by the Supreme Leader, resist moral, social, and liberal political values. This is because their religious principles are fiercely in conflict with the Western culture that permits sexual freedom, consumption of alcohol, women wearing revealing clothes, and the separation of church (religion) and state.

In addition, Ayatollah Khamenei believes that the US deliberately promotes liberal values among the Iranian young, both to erode their religious beliefs and ultimately to undermine the influence of Iran’s Islamic system.

The Iranian ruling elite, including the Supreme Leader, has no doubt that numerous Farsi television stations, primarily in the United States, are directly or indirectly sponsored by the US government as a major channel of cultural aggression towards Iranian society. This notion was reinforced by the allocation of $75 million in the US’s 2007 budget to expand radio and television broadcasts in Iran, an action that stirred anger among Iran’s conservatives.

Some argue that hostile reactions to US cultural intrusion by the ruling elite in Iran are part of a “cold war” strategy, primarily relating to power rather than religious motives. The reality is that apart from the leader of Iran’s revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, and a limited circle of his followers, the vast majority of the clergy had been apolitical until the mid-1970s, neither opposing nor supporting the Shah openly. However, the majority of the clergy eventually joined the revolutionary movement since the Shah’s regime continued to promote Westernization and failed to deal with what they perceived to be moral decadence in the country.

Ayatollah Khamenei views deliberate cultural invasion to be part of the US project of regime change.

The text of this article has been selected from: “Iran and the United States; the Failed Past and the Road to Peace”, authored by Seyed Hossein Mousavian with Shahir Shahidsaless, exclusively sent to
Iran Review.Org by Seyed Hossein Mousavian.

Part (1): Four major, interrelated elements shape Ayatollah Khamenei’s perception of the US, Page: 161

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Last week Americans were shocked and saddened by another mass killing, this one near a college campus in California. We all feel deep sympathy for the families of the victims.

As usual, many people responded to this shooting by calling for new federal gun control laws, including the mental health screening of anyone attempting to purchase a firearm. There are a number of problems with this proposal. Federally-mandated mental health screenings would require storing mental health records in a government database. This obviously raises concerns about patient privacy and doctor-patient confidentiality, as well as the threat of identity theft. Anyone who doubts that these are legitimate concerns should consider the enormous privacy problems with the Obamacare website; some have even suggested that healthcare.gov be renamed indentifytheft.gov.

Giving government the power to bar some Americans from owning guns by labeling them as “mentally ill” could easily lead to serious abuses. Even authors of mental health manuals admit that mental health diagnoses are subjective and can be based on “social constructions.” Thus, anyone whose behavior deviates from some “norm” could find himself deprived of his second amendment, and possibly other, rights.

People could be even be labeled “mentally ill” because they are outspoken critics of the government. Currently, as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Vigilant Eagle” program, veterans who express dissatisfaction with government polices run the risk of being labeled mentally-unstable terrorist threats. There has also been at least one federally-funded violence prevention program that determined that holding certain political and social views indicates a propensity for violence. So there is precedent for labeling those with unpopular political beliefs as being “mentally ill.”

We have also seen how US presidents from both parties have used the IRS to target political opponents. Imagine the potential for abuse if those same politicians had access to the mental health records of their political opponents, or the power to label opponents mentally ill because those opponents were “dissatisfied” with the government?

People who say that the threat to liberty posed by mental health screenings is outweighed by the enhanced security they provide should consider that expanding background checks and mental health screening is unlikely to make us safer. Professor Richard Alan Freedman, director of the Psychopharmacology Clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College, has written that it is imposable to predict whether an individual will act in a violent manner.

One effective way to limit mass shootings may be to repeal gun control laws that, by disarming the law-abiding, turn the innocent into victims. Like most recent shootings, this one took place in a location where the attacker could be confident his intended targets could not defend themselves. It is interesting that even though the attacker used hammers and knives on some of the victims, no one is calling for background checks on those wishing to purchase hammers.

Instead of focusing on passing more laws, our focus should be replacing the entitlement culture with a culture of self-responsibility and respect for the rights of others. Government can help this process by ending its routine violation of our rights and the use of violence as a means to achieve domestic and foreign policy goals. This is not to suggest that government policies are directly responsible for the shootings, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that growing up in a time of preemptive war may feed a deranged person’s delusion that violence is a proper way to deal with personal frustrations. Fixing the culture is much more difficult than passing new laws but is the only way to guarantee our liberty and our security.

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Afghanistan is embracing a second round of elections between the two leading candidates Mr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and Abdullah Abdullah amid fears of violence and disruptions. The decisive elections   is poised to do what Afghanistan has never done before, change leaders through ballot papers rather than Guns. The April 5th Afghan elections were hailed as a major victory for a country gripped by war and terror for more than 35 years. Almost seven million voters – 36 percent of them women – came out to say a resounding “no” to the terror of the Taliban, and a clear “yes” to the ballot box.

Abdullah secured 45 percent of the first round, and Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai securing 31.6 percent, which came after weeks of deliberation along with allegation of fraud and rigging.

The second round planned for mid-June gives both Abdullah and Ghani an equal chance to win. Abdullah has the numbers card with 13 percent more votes, and Dr. Ashraf Ghani has the ethnic card with the likelihood of more Pashtuns voting for him this time round. The second round also gives them an equal chance to move the political narrative forward by making smarter alliances to garner the required 50 percent.

The choices for Afghans, Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai or Dr Abdullah Abdullah.

Born in 1949 into an influential family, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai grew up in Afghanistan before leaving the country to be educated abroad. He carved out a dignified international career during his decades abroad, gaining a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in the US before joining the World Bank.

“Widely seen as a technocrat and intellectual, Mr Ghani served as a special adviser to the UN’s envoy to Afghanistan following the US-led invasion. His foreign diplomatic credentials are impeccable – at the end of 2006 he was tipped as a possible successor to Kofi Annan as UN secretary general”.

The reason why Ashraf Ghani is a better choice according to my opinion than Abdullah is that Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai believes in peace talks with Taliban and by the very same token he has not been a part of the gory civil war in Afghanistan.

Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai has served as Finance Minister during Karzai govt and is known as a learned economist therefore I feel he can overcome the Economic problems of Afghanistan which are looming after the exit of the foreign troops. Having served as finance minister possessing in-depth knowledge of Afghanistan economy makes him the ideal candidate for the job. Dr. Ghani has the academic skills along with practical knowledge for the problems faced by Afghanistan, and being part of National Solidarity Program for Afghanistan which is widely used by International Organisations as a tool for development in  third world countries.

Ashraf Ghani is also known as a good diplomat as he was the person in charge of the transition process, therefore with his elevation to the Presidential Palace, Afghanistan will seek to have a robust diplomatic relation with all neighbours and the international community based on mutual interests. His clean past along with his corruption free stint as finance minister and better international connection which are much needed for the economic growth makes him the ideal candidate as future president of Afghanistan.

The Tajik-Pashtun politician Abdullah Abdullah was Hamid Karzai’s closest contender in Afghanistan’s last presidential election in 2009. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, 53, an ophthalmologist has served as foreign minister in the Karzai government from 2001-2005.  Later on his split with Karzai came about and he became the leading political opposition figure in the country. He was the main challenger to Karzai in the 2009 presidential ballot, getting 30 percent of the vote in the first round. He dropped out of the runoff election with Karzai, claiming the process was rigged against him. Born in September 1960 in the Kabul area, he is seen by many as a Tajik despite his mixed ethnicity. This is probably because of his past prominence in the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance and his close relationship with the anti-Taliban group’s famed slain leader, Ahmed Shah Masood.

Dr. Abdullah has been a controversial figure and is seen by many patriotic Afghans as not a   suitable candidate to lead the country. Dr Abdullah Abdullah history as prominent member of Northern Alliance which is accused of human rights abuses and he himself was a part of a civil war that killed more than 70000 thousand people in Kabul during 1990’s   along with Hezbi Islami. During his time as foreign Minister in President Karzai Cabinet, he is alleged to have hired incapable staff from his own cronies and area which led to a mass administrational corruption in the ministry.

In my analysis Dr. Abdullah lacks  the credential  of leading this war-torn  state that is facing multitude of problems ranging  from poverty, illiteracy, and  extremism  and in his debates  so far he has not shown any clear vision and strategy to overcome them . Unlike Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, D.r Abdullah has rejected any peace deal with Taliban and he believes that the only way of bringing peace in Afghanistan is to crush Taliban by force and not by reconciliation, the past strategy which only lead to more chaos and destruction of the country.

On the other hand with the arrival of Abdullah in the president office the chances of Taliban coming to the negotiating table are slim as he was one of the front line commander fighting Taliban regime.

What needs to be done?

The choices are now clear with Afghans, and that is to denounce all those involved in murder chaos and destruction of our state and start a new beginning. Afghans three lost generation has experienced only war, displacement and bloodshed. The young generation wants to have a country where peace is established, and the rights of every individual above ethnic identity are preserved, and where we the younger generation can play our positive role.

Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai is a better choice in fulfilling the dream of a peaceful and democratic Afghanistan. A lasting peace cannot be produced with people who have been engaged in conflict and Afghanistan needs a candidate who has no controversial background and is acceptable to all. Dr. Ghani has no history of conflict or corruption which   makes him a mediator, a catalyst and a right choice for Afghans to lead the country. One thing we have to keep in mind that none of the above candidate can run this country all alone, therefore if any of them wants to be successful, has to work with one another to overcome all problems of Afghanistan

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