Islamska drzava

[urkozamanje]

 

 

“We respectfully request the world to respect our systems and our judicial processes, and our laws and regulations, and not to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”

 

Sirija, Libija..

[Meazza]

Mordor.

[Lord Protector]

 

 

Камерон тражи милост од Саудијске Арабије

 

Док Париз склапа уговоре вредне десет милијарди евра, Лондон тражи да Ријад ослободи казне бичевања старог и болесног Британца

ргот Валстром (Фото Ројтерс/Claudio Bresciani), Дејвид Камерон (Фото Ројтерс/Justin Tallis/Pool)

Више од годину дана седамдесетчетворогодишњи Британац, некадашњи директор у нафтној индустрији, Карл Андре морао је да робија у Саудијској Арабији зато што су у његовим колима пронађене боце са вином направљеним у кућној радиности, али то није довољна казна за овакав преступ. Уколико Саудијци не услише личну молбу британског премијера Дејвида Камерона да се над Британцем смилостиве, тешко болестан времешни преступник биће изложен бичевању. Његова породица страхује да неће моћи да преживи 350 шиба, колико му је одрезало саудијско правосуђе.

Претходно је у понедељак обустављен процес око склапања уговора по коме су британски инструктори требали да обучавају саудијске затворске стражаре, чиме је Лондон изгубио приход од 5,9 милиона фунти, али је истовремено француски премијер Мануел Валс у званичној посети овом краљевству договорио послове у енергетском, инфраструктурном, здравственом и пољопривредном сектору у вредности од десет милијарди евра, што је тријумфално објавио на свом „твитер” налогу. Валс је Саудијце позвао да дођу у Француску и рекао да је тренутак да се у његову земљу инвестира „бољи него икад”.

Новоизабрани лидер опозиционе Лабуристичке партије Џереми Корбин тражио је од британске владе да Лондон поништи уговор о обуци стражара „јер не бисмо смели да помажемо држави у чијем правосудном систему фигурирају казнене мере попут бичевања, ликвидације и одрубљивања глава”. Левичар, кога конзервативци оптужују да ће, дође ли на власт, Британију срозати на просјачки штап, тражи од Лондона да интервенише да се из саудијских тамница пусте и остали дисиденти, а да се помилује Али Мухамед ел Нимр, коме следи смртна казна одрубљивањем главе. На ову драконску казну Али Мухамед је осуђен зато што је као шеснаестогодишњак учествовао на антивладиним протестима 2012. године.

По саудијским законима, трговина дрогом или оружјем, убиства или други тешки злочини кажњавају се смртном казном, и то гиљотином на јавном тргу. Бичевање следује онима који су починили мање злочине: ако си се састао са супротним полом а да ти тај није у блиском сродству, ако си преварио или преварила свог брачног друга, ако жена седне за волан, или ако показујеш наклоност према истом полу – сачуваћеш главу али се нећеш спасти од бичевања, како поводом случаја несрећног британског држављанина пише „Њујорк тајмс“.

У августу је Амнести интернешенел изнео податак да су за претходну годину дана у Саудијској Арабији извршене смртне казне над 175 осуђеника.

Ретко се деси да суд одустане од својих законских регулатива, обично када се процени да ће јавно кажњавање изазвати сувише велику међународну осуду. Тако је саудијски блогер Раиф Бадави, који је ухапшен 2012, осуђен на десет година затвора и хиљаду удараца бичем и ишибан у јавности почетком ове године, што је изазвало међународно згражавање и протесте. Од тада није поново извођен на јавно шибање, али је и даље у затвору.

А какве одмазде следе према земљи чији се функционери усуде да критикују саудијски правосудни систем? Те државе ће бити ишибане по џепу, поготово ако су мале. То је најбоље осетила Шведска, када је њихова министарка спољних послова Маргот Валстром јавно осудила саудијску праксу да женама забрањује да путују, воде неки посао или да се удају без претходне дозволе свог мушког старатеља. Валстромова је иначе обећала да ће водити спољну политику Шведске залажући се за женска права и равноправност полова, али је у складу са политиком и правилима своје земље, за бичевање Раифа Бадавија јавно рекла да се он кажњава по „средњовековним методама”.

Саудијска Арабија је одмах повукла свог амбасадора из Стокхолма, престала је да издаје визе шведским бизнисменима, а Маргот Валстром није могла да се обрати учесницима скупа Организације за исламску сарадњу која окупља представнике 56 земаља. Савет заливских земаља осудио је Шведску због недопустивог мешања у унутрашње ствари Саудијске Арабије. Речено је да Шведска не поштује „богатство и различитост етичких стандарда”.

Ипак, ретко ко је од западних медија нашао за сходно да „афери са шведском шефицом дипломатије” посвети већу пажњу, како запажа конзервативни британски недељник „Спектејтор”. Лист подсећа да се много већа бука дигла у Европи против Данске када је њихов сатирични лист објавио за муслимане увредљиве карикатуре пророка Мухамеда. Ланац француских самопослуга „Карфур” тада је повукао данске прехрамбене производе са својих рафова, како не би иритирали своје муштерије исламске вероисповести.

Шведска као 12. извозник оружја на свету извози у Саудијску Арабију наоружање у вредности од 1,3 милијарде долара. Више од 30 бизнисмена упозорило је у отвореном писму да би и остале земље могле да откажу уговоре и да би Шведска могла да изгуби своју високу репутацију на светском тржишту оружја. Ствар се после неколико месеци заташкала. Министарка није одустала од одбране људских права, али ни Шведска није изгубила берићетно блискоисточно тржиште.

Французи, судећи по најновијим вестима ипак имају предност. Настави ли лидер лабуриста Џереми Корбин да инсистира на поштовању женских и права затвореника да не буду излагани тортури, Британија ће изгубити трку за зарадом у Саудијској Арабији. А чему служе права ако су џепови празни.

 

Политика

Зорана Шуваковић

објављено: 15.10.2015

Edited October 15, 2015 by slow

[Lord Protector]

 

 

The US Could End Saudi War Crimes in Yemen - It Just Doesn't Want To

Thursday, 15 October 2015 By Gareth Porter

 

The aftermath of a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, September 5, 2015. The United States, Britain and France, bowing to pressure from Saudi Arabia, dropped plans for an international investigation into the war in Yemen, to the dismay of human rights groups. (Tyler Hicks / The New York Times)

 

The Saudi-led coalition is guilty of systematic war crimes in Yemen, and the US bears legal responsibility because of the use of arms purchased from the United States, an Amnesty International report charged in early October.

But although the Obama administration is not happy with the Saudi war and has tremendous leverage over the Saudis, it has demonstrated over the past several weeks that it is unwilling to use its leverage to force an end to the war. And it now appears that the administration is poised to resupply the munitions used by the Saudis in committing war crimes in Yemen.

The October 6 Amnesty report documented an openly declared Saudi policy of deliberately targeting two Yemeni cities for air attacks in violation of the laws of war. It also documented US liability for the war crimes committed in the air war against Yemen.

The report cited a public declaration by a Saudi military spokesman, Gen. Ahmad al-Asiri, on May 8 that the northern cities of Sa'da and Marram had been designated as "military targets loyal to the Huthi militias." The Saudi spokesman went on to announce that "operations will cover the whole area of those two cities and thus we reiterate our call on civilians to stay away from these groups, and leave the areas under Huthi control or where the Huthis are sheltering."

General al-Asiri's declaration and the indiscriminate bombings that the Amnesty report found were carried out over the succeeding months are clear violations of the international laws of war, which forbid the targeting of civilian structures as well as the "collective punishment" of civilian populations.

Amnesty researchers who visited the Sa'da governorate in early July 2015 found that "hundreds of airstrikes had destroyed or damaged beyond repair scores of homes, several markets, the entire main shopping street and virtually every public building, including the post office, the court, banks and civilian administration offices." They have also found that airstrikes on civilian homes in villages around Sa'da city have killed and injured hundreds of civilians not involved in the conflict, many of them children and women.

The same researchers found that Saudi-led forces used internationally banned cluster bombs, which scatter hundreds of smaller bombs over a wide area, as well as bombs as large as 2,000-pounds, which it said were also "likely to cause death and destruction indiscriminately or far beyond the strike location." Neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia has signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

According to a joint report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2,682 civilian deaths and injuries resulted from air bombardment in Yemen from late March to the end of July 2015 - more than anywhere else in the world during the first seven months of the year.

The US has a legal obligation not to provide weaponry it knows will be used in the indiscriminate bombing of Yemen.

The Saudis have also imposed a tight blockade on Yemen by air, land and water, to prevent not only weapons, but also food, fuel and medicine from reaching millions of Yemenis, creating a humanitarian disaster. Doctors Without Borders declared in July that the Saudi blockade was killing as many people in Yemen as the bombing. US Navy ships have been patrolling alongside Saudi ships to prevent arms from entering Yemen, while disclaiming any involvement in the Saudi-led blockade of food, fuel and medical supplies.

The Amnesty report points out that the United States has a legal obligation under theArms Trade Treaty not to provide weaponry it knows will be used in the indiscriminate bombing of Yemen. Article 6 of that treaty, which entered into force in October 2014, forbids the transfer of arms and munitions to a party to an armed conflict if it has knowledge that the weaponry will be used for "attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a party."

The Amnesty report notes that the United States is also providing logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition. This logistical assistance is particularly important because the Saudis and their Gulf allies need the assistance of US mechanics to keep their aircraft running. That fact gives the Obama administration a major source of leverage on Saudi policy. Furthermore, last summer the Saudis began to run low on the laser-guided bombs sold to them by the United States and requested to be resupplied. As a result, the Saudi decision to continue the war is dependent on a policy decision by Washington.

Resupplying the Saudis with the same US munitions that have been used to commit war crimes in Yemen also runs up against the Leahy Law - the domestic legislation governing US military sales and other forms of security assistance. That law prohibits military sales to forces that have engaged in gross violations of human rights, which would obviously include the blatant violations of the laws of war committed in Yemen.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration has thus far given no indication that it will deny the request.

The Obama administration knows very well that the reckless Saudi war in Yemen has serious consequences for US political and security interests in the Middle East. The war is not only disintegrating Yemeni society, but also is creating more opportunities for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - the most dangerous affiliate of the terrorist organization - to recruit, train and plan jihadist operations against the United States.

The United States thus has strong policy and legal reasons for pressuring Saudi Arabia to end the carnage in Yemen, as well as very significant leverage on the Saudis. But the Obama administration has been unwilling to do anything consequential in response to Saudi defiance toward the UN-mediated cease-fire and political negotiations.

After they defeated the Houthis in Aden in July, the Saudis began to signal their intention to achieve a complete military victory in Yemen. The Saudi client government, led by President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, rejected any negotiations with the Houthis - even after the Houthis had accepted UN Security Council resolution 2216, including the return of the Saudi-backed government to Yemen for a period of 60 days while a new government was to be formed.

The Obama administration has been unwilling to do anything consequential in response to Saudi defiance toward the UN-mediated cease-fire.

That was the situation in mid-August when the Obama administration quietly notified Congress informally of its intention to resupply thousands of "Joint Direct Attack Munitions" as the Saudis requested,according to a September 3 Bloomberg News report. That move came as the White House contemplated the visit of Saudi King Salman to meet President Obama on September 4. The White House hoped to use the king's visit to persuade him of the importance that the administration attached to an "endgame" - meaning a negotiated settlement - in Yemen, according to a former US official who had been briefed on the visit.

But Salman came and went without the slightest hint that the administration had pressed him on the issue, either through leaks to the press or through the issuing of an official statement. And in the days following the meeting, the Saudi-sponsored Hadi government reiterated its refusal to negotiate with the Houthis. UN Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed conveyed to the Hadi government that the Houthis accepted the entire Security Council resolution, except for one article on sanctions. In response, the Hadi government spokesman demanded that the Houthis accept every one of the 24 articles in the resolution.

The White House then publicly stated on September 16 that it was "disappointed" by "recent statements" suggesting that the peace process "might be delayed" and called on "all parties to participate in these peace talks without any preconditions." That was a big step forward from its previous silence, but the message was buried in the last paragraph of a statement on humanitarian assistance to Yemen, as if to convey that the administration did not want to draw too much attention to it. It is hardly surprising that not a single news outlet reported on the statement.

The Obama administration shows no sign that it intends to use the Amnesty report on Saudi war crimes to force the war issue. In response to a request from Truthout for a comment on the Amnesty report's findings and the apparent illegality of resupplying further munitions to the Saudis, a senior administration official did not respond except to acknowledge that the administration is "studying" the report.

The official then repeated word for word an anodyne statement that a State Department official had given to Sputnik News on September 17: "We have asked the Saudi government to investigate all credible reports of casualties resulting from coalition-led airstrikes and, if confirmed, to address the factors that led to them."

Unfortunately, major US news media have supported the administration's evasion of the issue by choosing not to report on Amnesty's explosive report on war crimes.

 

Gareth Porter (@GarethPorter) is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on US national security policy.  His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February 2014.

Edited October 15, 2015 by slow

[Gandalf]

...

losa je vojna intervencija kojom se pomaze legitimna vlada, kontra ekstremistickih pobunjenika podrzanih od strane imperijalno nastrojenog teokratskog rezima? vojna intervencija kojoj je cilj da zaustavi haos, i uspostavi red i mir.

 

nesto novo naucis svakoga dana.

Edited October 15, 2015 by Gandalf

[Bane5]

losa je vojna intervencija kojom se pomaze legitimna vlada, kontra ekstremistickih pobunjenika podrzanih od strane imperijalno nastrojenog teokratskog rezima? vojna intervencija kojoj je cilj da zaustavi haos, i uspostavi red i mir.

 

nesto novo naucis svakoga dana.

 

zar to u siriji nije imperativ ili se dvostruki arsini podrazumevaju?

[Gandalf]

zar to u siriji nije imperativ ili se dvostruki arsini podrazumevaju?

nema dvostrukih arsina.

 

u Siriji je ruska vojna intervencija opravdana i pozeljna, za malo pa humanitarna misija u odbrani od terorista podrzanih od strane teokratskih rezima. vojna intervencija u Jemenu nije humanitarna misija, obzirom da se radi o odbrani od pobunjenika podrzanih od strane teokratskog rezima.

 

razlika je bitna. teroristi vs. pobunjenici. podrska teokratskih rezima vs. podrska teokratskog rezima.

[Lord Protector]

Mašite poentu, autor govori o humanitarnoj krizi i ratnim zločinima u Jemenu nezavisno od rata u Siriji. Nije ni jednom rečju spomenuo Siriju, niti je pravio paralele između ta dva rata. Jemen je potonuo u medijski mrak i autor je samo bacio svetlo na ono što se tamo događa. A dešavaju se strašne stvari i to treba da se zna.

[iDemo]

[iDemo]

[borris_]

Mašite poentu, autor govori o humanitarnoj krizi i ratnim zločinima u Jemenu nezavisno od rata u Siriji. Nije ni jednom rečju spomenuo Siriju, niti je pravio paralele između ta dva rata. Jemen je potonuo u medijski mrak i autor je samo bacio svetlo na ono što se tamo događa. A dešavaju se strašne stvari i to treba da se zna.

 

+1

[Prospero]

ISIL child training camp discovered in Istanbul: Report

ISTANBUL

 

 

 

A total of 24 of around 50 suspects of Tajik and Uzbek origin, who were detained for having links to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Istanbul on Oct. 18, have been revealed to be children being trained in basement apartments in Istanbul’s Pendik and Başakşehir districts, daily Vatan has reported.

 

The suspects were reported to have trained children in basement apartments in Pendik and Başakşehir, using the apartments as militant training camps, according to physical and technical surveillance collected by Istanbul Police Department Counterterrorism Unit officers before raiding 18 separate homes in Pendik and Başakşehir’s Kayaşehir neighborhood.

 

The suspects, mostly Uzbeks, who were detained in the Oct. 18 raids were reported to have lectured children on the basics of ISIL as well as how to live in an Islamic state.

 

In August, the Uzbekistan Islamic Movement, an al-Qaeda offshoot based near the Afghan border, announced allegiance to ISIL.

 

Uzbek intelligence sources reported that more than 5,000 paid Uzbek militants were fighting in Syria alongside ISIL.

 

Turkey has stepped up anti-terror police operations against ISIL militants in the country, as the Oct. 10 twin blasts in the Turkish capital sent shockwaves through the country, with at least 102 civilians dead and hundreds of others injured.

 

Thirteen ISIL-linked suspects have reportedly been detained so far within the investigation launched into the Ankara bombing.

 

[Lord Protector]

How the US Created Middle East Mayhem

Posted By Tom Engelhardt On October 20, 2015 

Originally posted at TomDispatch.

 

To this day, it remains difficult to take in the degree to which the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq destabilized the Greater Middle East from the Chinese border to Libya. Certainly, as the recent Republican and Democratic presidential debates suggest, Americans have some sense of what a disaster it was for the Bush administration to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to take out Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein. The gravity of the decision to occupy and garrison his country, while dismantling his party, his institutions of state, and much of the economy, not to speak of his military, can hardly be overemphasized. In the process, it’s clear that the U.S. punched a giant hole through the oil heartlands of the planet. The disintegrative effects of those moves have only compounded over the years. Despite the many other factors, demographic and economic, that lay behind the Arab Spring of 2011-2012, for instance, it’s hard to believe that it would have happened in the way it did, had the invasion of Iraq not occurred.

Though you’ll seldom find it mentioned in one place, in the ensuing years five countries in the region – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen – all disintegrated as nation states. Three of them were the focus of direct American interventions, the fourth (Yemen) was turned into a hunting ground for American drones, and the fifth (Syria) suffered indirectly from the chaos and mayhem in neighboring Iraq. All of them are now embroiled in seemingly unceasing internecine struggles, wars, and upheavals. Meanwhile, the phenomenon that the Americans were ostensibly focused on crushing, terrorism, has exploded across the same lands, resulting among other things in the first modern terrorist state (though its adherents prefer to call it a “caliphate”).

Those two invasions also loosed another deeply destabilizing phenomenon: 24/7 counterinsurgency from the air and the “manhunting” drone that was so essential to it. At first, this was an American phenomenon as U.S. Air Force planes with their “smart” weaponry and CIA and Air Force drones, all hyped for their “surgical precision,” began cruising the skies of the Greater Middle East, terrorizing parts of the backlands of the region. In effect, they acted as agents of disintegration as well as recruitment posters for expanding terror outfits. The “collateral damage” they caused was considerable, even if it has, until recently, been largely ignored in our world. Hundreds, for instance, died in three of those disintegrating countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen) when at least eight wedding parties were obliterated by American air power, and yet few noticed. This may recently have changed when an American AC-130 gunship eviscerated a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Doctors, staff, and patients were killed, some burned in their beds, because American special operations analysts believed, according to the Associated Press, that a single Pakistani intelligence agent might be on the premises. (He evidently wasn’t.) Soon after, the Intercept published a cache of secret U.S. documents from a “new Edward Snowden” on the American drone program in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen that offered a strong sense of the “apparently incalculable civilian toll” taken in the constant search for terror targets.

But here’s the truly grim reality of the Greater Middle East today: what the Americans started didn’t end with them. The skies of the region are now being cruised by French, British, Jordanian, United Arab Emirates, Kuwaiti, Qatari, Bahraini, Moroccan, Egyptian, Saudi, and Russian planes and drones, all emulating the Americans, all conducting “counterinsurgency,” all undoubtedly blasting away civilians. In Yemen, the Saudi air force, backed and supplied by Washington, recently took up the twenty-first-century American way of war in the most explicit fashion possible – by knocking off two wedding parties and killing more than 150 celebrants.

And can the Iranians, the Chinese, and others, all now building or purchasing drones, be far behind? We are, it seems, already on a Terminator Planet. In that light, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon points out today, this year’s Nobel Prize to a Tunisian foursome of civil organizations that struggled to bring peace, not war, to their land has special meaning. It offers a tiny window on what the world of the Greater Middle East might have looked like if Washington had never intervened as it did. ~ Tom

The Secret to Winning the Nobel Peace Prize

Keep the U.S. Military Out

By Rebecca Gordon

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to Tunisia’s National Dialogue Quartet “for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy… in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.” The Quartet is a group of four organizations – two national labor unions, a business group, and a lawyers’ association – whose work helped prevent Tunisia from sliding into civil war in the years following that “revolution.”

Seeing the peace prize go to an organization that actually seems to have kept the peace is cheering news in a month that witnessed the military of one former Nobel laureate destroying a hospital run by another winner. Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) certainly earned its 1999 Peace Prize by providing medical services to people in more than 80 countries, often working in some of the most dangerous places on earth. On the other hand, as far as anyone can tell, a weary Nobel committee gave Barack Obama his prize in 2009 mostly for not being George W. Bush.

Tunisia, home of this year’s winners, is the country where the Arab Spring began when a vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, burned himself to death after the police confiscated the cart from which he made his living. His lingering death catalyzed a variety of social forces demanding an end to the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. These included young people, students, and workers – all with deep economic grievances – as well as human rights supporters and some Islamists who hoped to see the country adopt a version of Sharia law. On January 14, 2011, 10 days after Bouazizi’s death and under popular pressure, Ben Ali gave up power and accepted asylum in Saudi Arabia.

In October 2011, Tunisia held parliamentary elections. A right-wing religious party, al-Nahda (“Renaissance”), took 37% of the vote and formed a coalition government with two other parties, one on the left and the other composed of secular liberals. Hamadi Jebali, a solar energy scientist and member of al-Nahda, became the first prime minister. He later stepped down when fellow party members pressured him to abandon his efforts to build a coalition government of national unity in favor of a more explicitly Islamist approach.

In the following years, while the al-Nahda party continued to rule, several prominent left-wing politicians were assassinated, for which the far right-wing Islamist militia Ansar al-Shariah claimed responsibility. Unhappy with the Islamist turn of their revolution and furious at what they saw as the government’s inaction after the assassination of leftwing Popular Front politician Mohamed Brahmi, Tunisians once again took to the streets. There, as Juan Cole wrote shortly afterwards, they staged “enormous demonstrations.” Unions, women’s organizations, and student groups all demanded that al-Nahda step down in favor of a more neutral, technocratic government.

At this point, the profound political conflict in Tunisia could easily have turned into an armed confrontation. But it didn’t. Instead the country’s organized political forces, aided by the National Dialogue Quartet, achieved something remarkable, especially in the context of the present Greater Middle East. Al-Nahda withdrew from governing and was replaced with a “technocratic” caretaker government. Under it, a new, secular constitution was written and, in October 2014, parliamentary elections were held, followed by presidential elections that November.

Today, Tunisia continues to face economic and political problems, including two separate terrorist attacks on foreigners this year, but for now it has something unique among the Arab Spring countries: an apparently stable, democratic government.

What Made Tunisia Different?

Of all the countries touched by Arab Spring uprisings, including Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, Tunisia is the only one that has neither devolved into vicious internal warfare nor reverted to authoritarian rule. What makes Tunisia different?

In Tunisia, as Juan Cole has suggested and the Nobel committee recognized, a uniquely strong, organized, and varied civil society, especially trade and student unions, was key to the country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. There were other differences as well. Unlike the Egyptian army, which had long supported the Mubarak regime, Tunisia’s relatively small military was never tightly allied with the Ben Ali government. And, as Cole says, almost uniquely in the region, its commanders chose to stay out of the ensuing turmoil.

Egypt’s military, however, thanks in part to U.S. aid, is among the 20 most powerful in the world, and has long played a central role in that country’s politics and economy. After the Arab Spring protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square brought autocrat Hosni Mubarak down, the first elections put a religious party, the Muslim Brotherhood, in power. However when (as in Tunisia) Egyptians started to grow restive under the Brotherhood’s rule and returned to the streets in protest, instead of allowing a transition to secular democracy, the military chose to reinsert itself in political life, elevating the head of the armed forces, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who now serves as president and supreme military commander.

Among other differences with the rest of the Arab Spring states, Tunisia is a country, rare in the region, with a certain religious homogeneity: more than 99% of its population is at least nominally Sunni Muslim, so it has not experienced the sort of sectarian violence that has roiled countries like Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. And as Cole also points out, when Tunisia’s secularists came to power, unlike the Sisi government in Egypt, they did not outlaw and repress the country’s religious parties.

The Biggest Difference

There is one more key difference to mention: since the revolution the United States has largely stayed out of Tunisian affairs. Admittedly, U.S. military aid did rise from $17 million before the revolution to $29.5 million in 2012 before dropping again to almost pre-revolutionary levels for the next few years. Perhaps in response to the growth of Islamic State adherents, however, the U.S. recently announced that military aid to Tunisia would triple in 2016. We know that British special forces have been sent to Tunisia and it’s certainly possible that U.S. special forces have been there as well.

 

For now, however, it appears that the U.S. has not intervened in the governance of the country. In contrast, Washington has played a significant role in the affairs of all the other Arab Spring countries. Let’s consider these situations, one by one:

Egypt: Egypt has long been one of the world’s biggest recipients of U.S. military aid, second only to Israel. When el-Sisi came to power, the Obama administration briefly withheld aid, but in March 2015 restored the full $1.3 billion a year it had slated for the Egyptian military. In fact, in 2013 when that army overthrew elected President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, President Obama took care never to describe this action as a “coup d’état,” because U.S. law would then have prohibited any military aid to Egypt. In other words, after Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring rising, Egyptians essentially traded one U.S.- and military-backed regime for another.

Yemen: Ali Abdullah Saleh had been president of Yemen for 33 years when Arab Spring demonstrators took to the streets of the capital, Sana’a, at the end of January 2011. Between 200 and 2,000 died in the crackdown that followed, but by November Saleh was out, replaced by one of his deputies, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who has since been ousted by the Houthi rebellion.

In Yemen, the United States and Saudi Arabia have taken the side of the now-deposed Hadi government in an internal struggle with Houthi rebels. The Houthi movement – like everything in Yemen – is complicated. It’s made up of rural tribespeople from the northern part of the country and is supported by the Iranians. Houthis are adherents of the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam, so Sunni-Shia tensions have played a part in Yemen’s collapse, as have north-south conflicts. (Yemen only became a single country in 1990.) In February 2015, a British academic expert writing for the BBC described Yemen’s condition this way:

“[A]nti-systemic movements – the ragtag Houthi militia astonished by the lack of resistance to their advance against the flailing ‘transitional’ regime; the separatist Southern Movement… marginalized from the National Dialogue but now taking up arms; fringe Yemeni and foreign Salafist fighters for al-Qaeda; and divisions of what used to be Mr Saleh’s security apparatus – are jockeying for power in the new order.”

What could possibly make this situation worse?

How about U.S.-supplied missiles and cluster bombs delivered by the Saudi air force? Washington, of course, long ago made Yemen part of its battlefield in the “global war on terror,” using “kill lists” to send drones to pick off al-Qaeda terrorists (who might well turn out to be Yemeni civilians shopping for supplies to celebrate the end of Ramadan or getting married). Now, the United States has rushed to support Saudi Arabia’s intervention against the Houthis in the country’s hydra-headed civil war, providing munitions, intelligence assistance, and even mid-air refueling for Saudi bombers, while a naval blockade of the port of Aden has helped shut off supplies to the country. Seven months of sustained Saudi bombing, violence, and food and fuel shortages have helped displace more than a million and a half Yemenis. In August, the U.N.’s World Food Program warned that the country faces famine.

The United States has been involved in Yemen for a while. In fact, when announcing the restoration of Egyptian military aid, the Obama administration stressed the importance of el-Sisi’s cooperation in the fight against al-Qaeda-style Islamic terrorism, particularly in Yemen (and also Libya). Now the U.S. finds itself in tactical agreement with these same Sunni fundamentalists. In a case of intervention making strange bedfellows, by supporting the Saudis against the Houthis, Washington has ended up on the same side of this fight as the Islamic State, which has been using its usual terror tactics in an attempt to drive the Houthis out of Yemen’s capital.

Libya: The Arab Spring came to Libya, too, when Libyans deposed Muammar Gaddafi, who had ruled the country since a 1969 coup.

U.S. relations with Gaddafi had been tense at least since 1988 when a terrorist explosion brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In 2003, Gaddafi acknowledged Libyan responsibility for the bombing and paid compensation to victims’ families (although maintaining his own innocence in the affair). In the same year, Tripoli abandoned its nuclear weapons program and allowed international inspectors free rein in the country. Washington reached an accommodation with Gaddafi in 2006, ending all previous sanctions. Two years earlier, he had also made peace with the European Union (EU), and in 2010 accepted 50 million Euros from the EU in return for help preventing African migrants and refugees from using Libya as a transit corridor to Europe.

However, in 2011, when it became clear that Libyans were threatening to depose Gaddafi, the Obama administration abandoned him, pushing NATO into military action. NATO launched a concerted campaign of airstrikes to cripple his military. Gaddafi died after a convoy in which he was traveling was hit by a U.S. Predator drone and French jet fighters. Although accounts of his death vary, it seems clear that, when Gaddafi was left without protection, a crowd attacked and killed him.

In reporting on his death, the New York Times presciently referred to “an instability that could trouble Libya long after the euphoria fades about the demise of Colonel Gaddafi.” Indeed, chaos followed, spilling into Mali and other countries as the Colonel’s weapons arsenals were looted and dispatched across the region as far east as the Sinai Peninsula and possibly as far south as Nigeria. In Libya itself, havoc ensued, along with civil war (or wars) and the rise of a branch of the Islamic State (IS).

As in Iraq, Washington once again proved remarkably skilled at dictator-toppling, but significantly weaker on its follow-up. Today, post-Arab Spring Libya is a failed state, riven by violence, and “governed” by rival parliaments. In September 2015, the Times reported (with no apparent irony): “Libyans are struggling with a problem that typically emerges after a bloody regime change: how to reassemble a functioning country after its brittle, autocratic and repressive government has been fractured and replaced with warring factions.” This is a question the United States might have thought to ask before getting into the government-fracturing business.

Bahrain: The Kingdom of Bahrain is a small island on the western side of the Persian Gulf with a population of 1.34 million. It provides a vital base for the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf and is home to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. As the U.S. State Department puts it, “The Government of Bahrain plays a key role in the Gulf’s security architecture and is an important member of the U.S.-led anti-ISIL coalition. U.S. assistance enables Bahrain to continue to obtain the equipment and training it needs to provide for its own defense and to operate alongside U.S. air and naval forces.”

The CIA’s World Fact Book lists Bahrain’s form of government as “constitutional monarchy,” but it is hardly a democracy. Political parties are outlawed, and although one legislative house is elected, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa appoints the prime minister, the cabinet, and the members of the judiciary. He or his sons occupy most of the highest positions. More than two-thirds of Bahrain’s Muslims are Shia, while the royal family and the ruling elite are Sunni.

The Arab Spring reached Bahrain in January 2011. In the fashion of Egyptian demonstrators in Tahrir Square, Bahraini protestors occupied the Pearl Roundabout, a key intersection in the capital Manama, demanding the king’s ouster. Al-Khalifa responded by calling on his allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for help. The Saudis responded by sending 1,000 troops; the UAE sent another 500. Together they routed the demonstrators and ended the rebellion.

Dozens were killed, thousands were rounded up, and many of the prisoners were tortured. Once again, the United States took sides, throwing its support not to the Arab Spring demonstrators but to the king and his repressive state. Washington’s strategic interests and the desire to keep the Saudis happy took precedence over any pretense of supporting civil and human rights. As Middle East expert Toby Jones told NPR in early 2012, “If there is a place globally where there is not just distance but a huge gap between American interests and American values, it’s in the Persian Gulf.”

Syria: The Arab Spring in Syria began with small demonstrations in January 2011. These grew larger when people in the town of Dara’a came out to protest the torture of young men arrested for putting up political graffiti. By April, the government of Bashar al-Assad was using tanks and live fire to put down demonstrations. By July, demonstrators numbered in the hundreds of thousands. By the end of 2011, demonstrations had given way to armed conflict as a wide variety of rebel brigades with differing aims and loyalties began to fight back. Fighters on multiple sides, including the Assad regime, have been accused of war crimes – torture, summary executions, the barrel-bombing of civilians, and the use of poison gas.

The civil war in Syria is the premier humanitarian disaster of the twenty-first century, spawning the worst refugee crisis Europe has faced since the end of World War II. As of October 4, 2015, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that there are 4,185,302 registered “persons of concern” (refugees) driven from the country by war. “This figure,” says the agency, “includes 2.1 million Syrians registered by UNHCR in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, 1.9 million Syrians registered by the Government of Turkey, as well as more than 26,700 Syrian refugees registered in North Africa.”

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Organization reports at least another 7.7 million internally displaced people, forced by the conflict to leave their homes. Of a population of 22 million, almost 12 million, more than half, have been made refugees. The New York Times reports that more than 200,000 Syrians – almost one in every 100 – have been killed. In March 2015, the BBC put the figure at 220,000, and in August, the UN suggested that figure might even have reached 250,000.

And Washington has its fingerprints all over Syria’s civil war. As long ago as 1996, neocons Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, who would later serve as advisors to Vice President Dick Cheney, participated in a study group that produced a paper for the Israeli government. In it, they argued that “Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria.” Such a campaign would begin, they suggested, by “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right – as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.”

The ultimate goal would be a realignment of power in the Middle East, with Syria destabilized, a Hashemite king ruling Iraq, and a new regional alliance among Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. Perle & Co. brought this plan to the Bush White House, where the 9/11 attacks provided a pretext for the first step: removing Saddam Hussein. It would seem that the neocon dream of destabilizing Syria has been realized as well, even if not in the way they expected.

When the 2011 uprising became an armed fight, the United States began supporting the “moderate” Free Syrian Army, initially with “non-lethal” assistance. Since then, the U.S. has sought to identify non-extremist Sunni Islamists to equip and set loose on the growing Islamic State, with results that would be comical if they hadn’t been so deadly and disastrous. On October 9th, the White House and the Pentagon admitted that the $500 million program to vet, train, and equip moderate fighters in Turkey and Jordan to be sent back to Syria had been an abject failure. The Obama administration’s new strategy, reported the New York Times, is “a revamped program that briefly screens Arab rebel commanders of existing Syrian units before equipping them with much-needed ammunition and, potentially, small arms,” as well as, it turns out, TOW anti-tank missiles.

On October 12th, the U.S. airdropped the first 50 tons of ammunition to these rebel groups, who presumably have been distinguished from the Islamic State, the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, and other extreme outfits by those “brief” screenings. The official U.S. position on Assad himself remains that his leaving power is a prerequisite for any peace settlement, but the Obama administration prefers to frame its intervention as a battle against the Islamic State.

Confronting IS in Syria while also opposing Assad has proved problematic, to say the least. There may well be non-Salafist forces fighting the Syrian government, but much of the fight against Assad has been carried out by al-Qaeda affiliates like the al-Nusra Front, or by IS (when they are not fighting each other, that is). Just as in Yemen, the United States has, eerily enough, ended up on the same side as its supposed greatest enemies, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Meanwhile, the Syrian conflict has been made exponentially more dangerous for Syrians and the entire world by the intervention of Russia, which opposes IS, but supports the Assad regime. The last thing the country needed was to become the site of a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

Suffice it to say that U.S. intervention has in no way alleviated the suffering of the Syrian people, whether caused by Assad – to whose regime the Bush administration once sent people to be tortured – or Islamist groups like IS.

The Peace Prize: A Long Strange Trip

The history of Nobel Peace Prize recipients is an odd one. The first winner was Jean Henri Dunant, the Swiss citizen who founded the International Red Cross and inspired the first Geneva Conventions. The Red Cross itself has won three times, Doctors Without Borders once. My personal favorite laureate may be the scientist Linus Pauling, who won twice, once for his contributions to the anti-nuclear movement and the other time in chemistry.

Along with peacemakers and servants of justice like Martin Luther King, Jr., the prize has gone to some more questionable figures, including Henry Kissinger. Fresh from assisting the military coup that resulted in the death of elected president Salvador Allende and brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile, Kissinger shared the prize in 1973 with Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam for the Paris Peace Accords, which were supposed to end the Vietnam War. Tho had the good grace to decline the prize – partly on the grounds that the United States had already violated the agreement.

It seems that this year the committee has chosen well, fixing on the Quartet that helped Tunisia bring the promise of the Arab Spring to flower. It is sad indeed that the crucial role of the United States in that remarkable moment was to repeatedly intervene in ways that changed the temperature radically, helping to bring a cruel and deadly frost of repression, death, and destruction to too many countries. There ought to be a grim prize of some sort for such an achievement.

Edited October 21, 2015 by slow

[Gandalf]

Mašite poentu, autor govori o humanitarnoj krizi i ratnim zločinima u Jemenu nezavisno od rata u Siriji. Nije ni jednom rečju spomenuo Siriju, niti je pravio paralele između ta dva rata. Jemen je potonuo u medijski mrak i autor je samo bacio svetlo na ono što se tamo događa. A dešavaju se strašne stvari i to treba da se zna.

od istog autora. ocekivano.

 

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/obama-won-t-admit-real-targets-russian-airstrikes-386489294

[Lord Protector]

 

WHY SUFISM IS BEING DEMONISED BY WAHABISM?

 

http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.rs/2015/03/why-sufism-is-being-demonised-by.html

Throughout history, Sufism has periodically come under attack from proponents of a more austere, radical Islam, who maintain that Sufism is a shirk – referring to the worship of someone other than God. Shirk is strictly forbidden in Islam and is punishable by death in some Muslim-majority countries, including Pakistan.

 

But to look at Islam without seeing the Sufis is to be ignorant of a crucial clash of civilizations in today’s world: not the conflict between Islam and the West, but an epochal struggle within Islam itself.

It all the more ironic because Sufis are the power that has made Islam the world’s second-largest religion, with perhaps 1.2 billion adherents.Sufism was the way whole populations expressed their Muslim identity.

 Sufism was their introduction to Islam.Over the centuries, the territories where Sufi orders seeded Islam have evolved from the faith’s frontiers to its demographic heartlands. These regions now encompass Islam’s largest and fastest-growing populations. Of the eight nations with the world’s largest Muslim communities, only one (Egypt) is Arab. A fifth of the world’s Muslims today identify with Sufism, and for many millions more, Sufism is simply part of the air they breathe.

 BUT For the Islamists — for hard-line fundamentalists like the Saudi Wahhabis and the Taliban — the Sufis are deadly enemies, who draw on practices alien to the Quran.

 

As Wahabism spreads around the world-- Sufism has become its targets--even in such strongholds as Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Often this comes in the form of ideological struggle but open violence has broken out as well. Sudan’s Islamist government attacks the black Sufi population of Darfur; in Iraq, suicide bombers target Sufi centers. Sufis have literally everything to lose from the continued advance of the Islamist extremists.  They want to deprive us of the faith of our fathers, our sheikhs and ustadhs. They want to cut us off from 1400 years of sufi culture and they have to audacity to bomb the shrines of the saints who spread Islam in this region. They want to rob us of our customs and traditions and arabise us.

Hostility between Sufis and Wahhabis dates back to the very founding of Wahhabism itself in the 18th century when it emerged as the most famous and militant anti-Sufi movement in the Arabian peninsula. 

Wahhabi's considered Sufism a degenerate form of Islam and urged a return to the 'fundamentals' of Islam, as opposed to the 'traditions' that had accrued over the centuries.

In many countries, Saudi embassies also act as centres to promote or outsource Wahhabism, funding local Wahhabi institutions, publications and propagandists.

 

Where Islamists rise to power, Sufis are persecuted or driven underground; but where Sufis remain in the ascendant, it is the radical Islamist groups who must fight to survive. There are reasons for this enmity.

From their beginnings, too, Sufi traditions have been religiously inclusive and assimilate local traditions from music to dance, which of course makes them more attractive to local population. Wherever the orders flourish, popular Islamic religion focuses on the tombs of saints and sheikhs, who believers venerate with song and ritual dance. People organize processions, they seek healing miracles, and women are welcome among the crowds. While proudly Islamic, Sufi believers have always been in dialogue with other great religions. The Sufi way is inclusive and more appealing.

The Sufi religious outlook has little of the uncompromising intolerance that characterizes the fundamentalists. They have no fear of music, poetry, and other artistic forms — these are central to their sense of the faith’s beauty — and the brotherhoods cherish intellectual exploration. Progressive Sufi thinkers are quite open to modern knowledge and science.

 

In contrast the mullah's creed in exclusionary and rigid..he believes in flogging and killing and imposing religion through fear and now increasingly guns.

This Sufi  open-mindedness contrasts with the much harsher views of the fundamentalists, who we know by various names. Sufis also appreciate the fact of religious pluralism as the will of God, which is why they had such a powerful appeal even for many non-Muslims. This is also why it was the Sufis who were the principal from a Traditionalist standpoint, we can say that the difference between Wahhabism and Sufism is somewhat like the difference between John Calvin (Wahabi) and Meister Eckhart or Eastern Orthodoxy (Sufi).

Wahhabism at times can be hostile to the esoteric elements of Islam, preferring to focus on orthopraxy. Wahabbis believe in a more temporal form of Islam, which no doubt has been to a degree politically influenced by Saudi political affairs.

Sufism is analogous to the devoted Orthodox hesychast. There is a real spiritual element to it,All this has resulted in a growing attack on local Muslim cultures and Sufi traditions, which the Wahhabis regard as un-Islamic.

The Wahhabis prohibit other Muslims from praying the way they want to in Mecca and Medina. In these two cities, they have destroyed numerous monuments associated with the Prophet, his family and his companions, as if they are the owners of these places. They want to destroy the whole 1400 year-old Muslim tradition itself. 

The whole trajectory of Wahhabism is rooted in hatred and violence. The alliance between the mullahs of the Wahhabi Al-e Shaikh and the rulers of Saudi Arabia, the Al-e Saud, is like the oppressive nexus between the Christian Church and the monarchy in medieval Europe. It is proving to be a curse for Muslims. 

Wahabi’s say that only they are Allah's chosen ones that only they are walking along the true path. And everyone else is their enemy. The worst thing about Talibanisation, is the fact that it seeks to divide us according to our faith. 

And this happens in every place that Islamism wins over. They divide us according to faith, which subsequently leads to civil war.... There are good Muslims  and then there are bad Muslims and descendents of Jews(Shiites) Or secret Christians( sufi’s).

So, this is why the Wahhabi version of Islam appears so publicly visible today. Yet, it is crucial to note that the silent majority of Muslims are not Wahhabi at all. Most Muslims are still associated with Sufi traditions in some way or the other, which I regard as authentic Islam. As the fundamentalists have expanded, they press hard on Muslim populations who are overwhelmingly drawn from countries where the Sufi current has always dominated Islamic life, from Pakistan, Turkey, and North Africa.

Unlike the Wahhabis, Sufis are not well-organised. They don't have massive funds at their disposal, unlike the Wahhabis. In contrast to the latter, they are not combative. They don't go out and preach and demand that other Muslims accept their way of understanding Islam, which is what the Wahhabis do. They are moderates, and believe in moderation, not in aggressively converting others to their way of thinking. They don't brand other Muslims as apostates and condemn them as wrong. They just let you be the way you are. This is because they believe that it is for God to guide people if He wills. But this egalitarian attitude which won them adherents for one thousand year of Islam is totally incompatible with

Which is a trajedy because Sufis, better than anyone, can tell disaffected young Muslims that the quest for peace is not a surrender to Western oppression, still less a betrayal of Islam, but rather a return to the faith’s deepest roots. They can provide the alternative narrative to  salafi death cults and suicide wishes.

 

At the Core of Sufism lies an embrace of the world…a connection to something more than Tribe and even religion..It is the connection to humanity and a chance to belong to  to something far greater than yourself. Taliban version can never match that.

While the Puritanicals see only one right path and impose their will, the Sufis see a house on the top of a hill, and understand that there are many different paths to reach the house and HE doesn’t judge which path you have chosen.

Edited October 22, 2015 by slow