Middle East mega thread (WARNING CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES.)

iraniam · Sep 23, 2013

Egypt bans Muslim Brotherhood, confiscates assets

An Egyptian court on Monday banned the Muslim Brotherhood from carrying out any activities in the country and ordered the seizure of the group’s funds, widening a campaign to debilitate the Islamist movement of deposed President Mohammad Mursi.

“The court bans the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood organization and its non-governmental organization and all the activities that it participates in and any organization derived from it,” said the presiding Judge Mohammed al-Sayed.

The decision marks a dramatic escalation of a crackdown by the military-backed government against the supporters of the ousted Mursi.

The court ordered the government to seize the Brotherhood’s funds and administer its frozen assets.

The army-backed government is waging the toughest crackdown in decades on the Islamist group, which says it has a million members. Security forces killed hundreds of its supporters and rounded up thousands more since Mursi was deposed by the army on July 3 after mass protests against his rule.

The Brotherhood won parliamentary and presidential elections after veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in 2011.

It was officially registered as a recognized non-governmental organization in March, after being outlawed for most of its 85 year existence.

(With The Associated Press and Reuters)

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/New...t-bans-all-Muslim-Brotherhood-activities.html

iraniam · Sep 23, 2013

Assad: Western powers are fighting an ‘imaginary enemy’

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday denounced France, Britain and the U.S. for submitting a draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council to place Syrian chemical weapons under international control.

In an interview with China's state television CCTV, Assad said that the Western powers were fighting an “imaginary enemy.”

Interviewed in Damascus, Assad said he was not concerned about the draft resolution and that China and Russia would “ensure any excuse for military action against Syria will not stand.”

The resolution came in response to a chemical weapons attack last month which killed hundreds of people. The U.S. government has said Assad’s forces were responsible for the attack, while the Syrian regime placed blame on opposition fighters.

Envoys from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China - met last Thursday to discuss a draft resolution Western powers hope will make the deal legally binding.

Under a U.S.-Russian deal, Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal must be destroyed by the middle of next year.

In the interview, Assad said gunmen could hinder the access of chemical weapons inspectors to sites where the weapons were stored and made.

“We know that these terrorists are obeying the orders of other countries and these countries do drive these terrorists to commit acts that could get the Syrian government blamed for hindering this agreement.”

Asked whether Syria had lots of chemical weapons, Assad said: "Syria has been manufacturing chemical weapons for decades so it's normal for there to be large quantities in the country.

“We are a nation at war, we've got territories that have been occupied for more than 40 years, but in any case, the Syrian army is trained to fight using conventional weapons.”

However, he emphasized that the chemical weapons were stored “under special conditions to prevent any terrorist for other destructive forces from tampering with them, that is, destructive forces that could come from other countries.”

“So there is nothing to worry about. The chemical weapons in Syria are in a safe place that is secure and under the control of the Syrian army.”

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said on Saturday Syria had handed over information about its chemical weapons arsenal, meeting the first deadline of the disarmament operation.

(With Reuters)

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/New...-powers-are-fighting-an-imaginary-enemy-.html

iraniam · Sep 23, 2013

Another massacre in the Middle East that nobody is talking about

The Hill

By Former Camp Ashraf commander Thomas Cantwell

While much of the world is preoccupied by Syria, killings have also reached new levels of evil a short distance away in Iraq.

Fifty-two people were murdered on Sept. 1 while confined to their own small desert community, called Camp Ashraf, in central Iraq. Trapped in Ashraf by an agreement with the U.S. State Department, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Iraqi government, many of them were handcuffed or bound by the wrists before being shot in the head. Among these victims was Hossein Madani, a tireless foreign relations staff and spokesman for the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran who had studied in the U.S. and was a friend of mine.

Madani was first shot in the abdomen. After being helped back into his living quarters, he waited in agony for medical assistance that never came. What came instead was his executioner. As he sat against a wall, wounded and defenseless, he was shot through the top of the head in a despicable act of cowardice and evil. There were 51 others who suffered a similar fate; seven were kidnapped and are still missing today.

What does this have to do with us? Very simply, we disarmed these people and rendered them defenseless. We assured them that the U.S. would protect them in exchange for their disarming. We granted them refugee status under the Geneva Conventions. Later, once they were disarmed, the State Department would unilaterally revoke protected persons status and turn responsibility for their security over to the Iraqi Government.

This brings us back to the killers. Who were these persons? As one of the first U.S. Army commanders there, I reconnoitered the entire facility and its surroundings. I know the ground. I find it unbelievable that the Iraqi security was completely unaware of the attackers. We have evidence that the killings occurred over a period of hours. Yet, the Iraqi government tells us that they didn’t hear the gunfire. And why didn’t the security forces have an arrangement for emergency response inside the camp? The implausibility of their denials makes it is clear that someone in the Iraqi security forces or the government is colluding with the killers. An even more chilling possibility is that the killers were members of the Iraqi security forces.

We, the American military personnel operating there, knew Hossein Madani and many of his fellow expatriates. During my time at Ashraf, one of them saved an American soldier from drowning after he fell in to one of the canals. We returned home to the United States with a profound sense of the values of Camp Ashraf, and the virtues of its people. As those responsible for implementing U.S. policy there, we also returned with a sense of the United States’s duties and obligations to the people of Camp Ashraf. Many had been there when the Ashrafis signed an agreement with the U.S., accepting total disarmament in exchange for security under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention. A close friend of mine and fellow Army officer personally handed Hossein his “protected persons” identity card.

It is therefore with dismay and astonishment that we watch today as our government abrogates its own word and accepts the Government of Iraq’s trampling of our agreements. When the State Department revoked “protected persons” status and turned security responsibilities over to the Iraqi government, the agreement included guarantees for the safety and security of the Asrafis. When the State Department negotiated along with UNAMI the transfer of many Asrafis to a separate camp at the former U.S. Camp Liberty, it insisted on specific measures for the safety and security of these people.

Now, 52 men and women have been murdered in the third terrorist attack on the very people that my colleagues and I disarmed and protected. Seven more have disappeared in the custody of the attackers. We have been betrayed, the guarantees that the State Department required are being trampled and the U.S. Embassy is granting concession after concession in abrogation of the agreement. It is shameful for every American to see our apparent powerlessness in Iraq and tragic for those we once protected, who now have been rendered helpless and unprotected — or lie in a cold morgue.

In the president’s recent address on Syria, he said: “My fellow Americans, for nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements — it has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world is a better place because we have borne them.” I agree, and call upon the president to show the same determination and commitment to those we promised to protect and have now left abandoned and helpless.

Mr. President, secure the safety of the survivors of the recent massacre; support an impartial, international investigation of this massacre and take charge of the relocation of those displaced Ashrafis who are waiting in Camp Liberty for their fates to be decided. They too are still in danger from an autocratic Iraqi government that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is either criminally incompetent to protect the Asrafis or — worse — in active collusion with those who would harm these people.

There is blood on the hands of the Iraqi government. Our failure to protect these people and quickly resolve their status leaves blood on our hands also. The time to act and redeem this situation is now. The president said, “For sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough.” I would add sometimes agreements are not enough either, Mr. President.

Cantwell, as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, commanded U.S. forces at Camp Ashraf in 2003. His views are his own and in no way reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Defense.

http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.p...ut&catid=33:iran-in-the-world-press&Itemid=32

iraniam · Sep 26, 2013

Malala Honored At Clinton Global Citizen Awards

View attachment 75694DA4-E0CB-4EB1-8314-F86B88224F4E_w640_r1_s_cx0
Malala Yousafzai speaks after receiving the Leadership in Civil Society award at the annual Clinton Global Initiative ceremony in New York on September 25.

Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old education activist from Pakistan, was one of seven people honored at the Clinton Global Citizen Awards ceremony in New York on September 26.

Malala, who was shot in the head last year by the Taliban for speaking out about the need for education for girls, delivered a speech asking governments to work for peace.

"I hope that governments and all responsible people will realize that we cannot end war with a war," she said. "We can fight war. We can fight war through dialogue, peace, and education."

Malala -- who was recognized for "leadership in civil society" -- called for exchanging the exports that breed war with materials that promote enlightenment.

"We ask the governments and the responsible people: If you want to see peace in Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, if you want to end the war, if you want to fight against the war, then instead of sending guns, send books," she said. "Instead of sending tanks, send pens. Instead of sending soldiers, send teachers."

She also spoke out for women's rights in countries where they are marginalized.

"Women are not even accepted as human beings, they are treated with injustice and inequality," she said. "Women are denied, they are neglected even in the developed countries, where they are not given the opportunities to move forward and be what they want. Even in America, even in America, people are waiting for a woman president."

The last comment drew smiles from the audience, since former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was present.

Clinton has been widely mentioned as a possible candidate from the Democratic Party in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The Clinton Global Citizen Awards, launched in 2007 by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, honor outstanding individuals for visionary leadership, demonstrated impact, and sustainable work in solving global issues.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

http://www.rferl.org/content/pakistan-malala-clinton-award/25118481.html

iraniam · Sep 27, 2013

Leaked video: Iran guiding thousands of Shiite fighters to Syria

Thousands of Iran-supported Shiite fighters are playing a crucial support role for the embattled Syrian regime, helping claw back rebel-held territory, defend regime strongholds, and ease the burden on the exhausted Syrian Army.

A video, apparently shot last month, offers an unprecedented insight into the activities of Iranian military advisers in Syria. It appears to have been intended for internal Iranian use rather than public dissemination and includes an interview with an alleged Iranian military adviser.
Although there is no clarity on the combined total strength of the Shiite fighters from organizations such as Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran-backed Iraqi groups, as well as unaffiliated volunteers, they have proven to be motivated and well-trained combatants who can be quickly deployed to various battlefronts.

“The impact of the Shiite militias is multifold,” says Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland who writes on Shiite militia activity in Syria for jihadology.net. “On the battlefield, they are often tip-of-the-spear, well-trained, very well-equipped and ideologically motivated. In terms of extending Iranian influence in Syria… they have had quite an impact. In some reported cases, [the Iraqi Shiite militias] do not take orders from Syrian commanders, only from Lebanese Hezbollah and the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps].”

In the video, which was seized by Syrian rebels from the Daoud Brigade, operating near the northern town of Idlib, a man who allegedly appears to be an Iranian military adviser explains his view of the war:
“The current war in Syria is that of Islam versus the non-believers, good versus evil,” the adviser says speaking in Farsi. A subtitled version of the film was subsequently broadcast on Dutch television.

“This front is supported by Hezbollah,” the adviser continues. “The fighters are Iranians, Hezbollah, the Iraqi and Afghan Mujahideen and others. The opponents are Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. Plus America, England, France and Europe.”
The Shiite 'task force'

Iran and Syria have been allies since 1980, but relations between the two have grown considerably closer since Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, as president in 2000. Assad’s Syria binds Hezbollah to Iran, allowing for the transfer by land of weapons from Iran to Lebanon.
If Assad is replaced by a moderate Sunni regime, Iranian influence will likely diminish and Hezbollah could become isolated on the Mediterranean coast, potentially threatened by a Sunni resurgence in the Levant.

The video footage shows the adviser and colleagues in military fatigues interacting with Syrian civilians and soldiers in their headquarters, a school thought to be near the northern city of Aleppo. Rebel fighters say they uncovered the camera containing the film following an attack in which the military adviser apparently was killed. Iranian media later covered his funeral in Iran and identified him as Ismaeil Haidari, a senior Revolutionary Guard officer.

Hezbollah fighters have been operating in Syria since at least early 2012, but their presence was confirmed only in May by the party’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. This is the first time that the group has conducted a large-scale engagement with a foe other than Israel.
Hezbollah spearheaded a 17-day assault in May and June to recapture the rebel-held town of Qusayr in the Homs province, five miles north of the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah’s fighters are presently serving on numerous battlefronts, including Deraa in the south, Damascus and the Eastern Ghouta region to the east of the capital, Homs in central Syria and the Idlib Province in the north, according to multiple sources.

“Hezbollah is a task force that can be deployed at will. It’s a new, capable force backed by air power and artillery,” says a European ambassador in Beirut. “Although Hezbollah is a small force, it allows the regime to concentrate forces in one area which it can’t do with regular forces. The way they are supporting the regime is strategic even though it is a small force.”

The group’s military commanders work closely with Syrian Army officers and advisers from Iran's Revolutionary Guard and occasionally have tactical control over localized operations. In Homs, for example, veteran Hezbollah fighters sometimes command small units of Syrian soldiers in street fighting, according to a Hezbollah combatant.
Shiite groups in Iraq also have supplied fighters to Syria, including Kataeb Hezbollah, the Badr Organization and Asaib Ahl al-Haq, all of which were part of the Iran-supported Shiite insurgency against coalition forces in Iraq in the 2006-2008 period.

“Normally, only the well-trained and ideologically motivated are sent [to Syria] for the complicated, tactically relevant missions,” says Smyth, the researcher, adding that the favored fighters follow the edicts of Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Iraqi Shiites' involvement was initially justified as a protection force defending Shiite holy sites,such as the tomb of Sayyida Zeinab, the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed, in southern Damascus. Since March, the Iraqi groups have become more open about their role in Syria. In July, Asaib Ahl al-Haq publicly declared that it had established a sub-unit called Liwa Kafeel Zeinab, or the Supporters of Zeinab Brigade, whose fighters serve in Syria.
“The Iranians are making a resistance right now in Syria just like they made in Lebanon,” says Ali, a Hezbollah fighter who has served at least three tours in Syria since April.
Outside forces multiply

Determining the scale of the Shiite deployment is almost impossible. In June, France estimated that some 4,000 Hezbollah fighters were in Syria. The rebel Free Syrian Army estimates there are more than 10,000. Hezbollah refuses to discuss military details. Smyth says a “rough guesstimate” for the number of Iraqi Shiites in Syria is 2,000 to 3,000, although he says totaling the numbers published by the main Iraqi factions reaches 3,500 to 4,000.

The number of Iranian personnel is equally unclear. In August 2012, then US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that Iran's Revolutionary Guard was on the ground in Syria building a pro-regime Shiite militia. In June, a British newspaper reported that 4,000 IRGC soldiers were preparing to deploy to Syria, although the Iranian role so far appears to have been limited to training, logistics and advice rather than combat.
There have been reports of a handful of Afghan and Pakistani Shiites serving in Syria, although their numbers appear to be negligible.

Crucially, the presence of Shiite militias – especially Hezbollah with its proven combat record against Israel – has served as a morale boost to Syria's weary regular forces. According to diplomatic sources in Beirut and Damascus, some units within the 4th Armored Division, an elite unit in the Syrian Army, have come close to mutiny due to the high casualty rate among their ranks. The deployment of Hezbollah’s battle-hardened fighters has eased some of the pressure on regular forces.

“In the first nine months of the revolution, the Syrian army was losing dozens every week,” says Ali, the Hezbollah fighter. “After that, the special forces, our people, stepped in and trained them and that has reduced the casualties.”
Hezbollah’s commitment is illustrated by the growing duration of each fighter’s tour. Initially, fighters served seven days at a time, later extended to 20 days during the battle for Qusayr. Today, each fighter is required to spend 30 days on the Syrian frontlines, according to sources close to the party. There probably is not one Shiite-populated village or town in Lebanon stretching from the southern border with Israel to the northern border with Syria that has not seen Hezbollah cadres rotating in and out of Syria.

Hezbollah has justified its presence in Syria to its Shiite constituency in Lebanon by warning of the threat posed by the radical Sunni jihadists, known as Takfiris, who make up part of the armed Syrian opposition and treat as apostates all those that do not follow their austere interpretation of Islam.

An analysis by the UK-based IHS-Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center last week estimated that 35 percent of the approximately 100,000 rebel fighters in Syria were drawn from Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups or allied hard-line Sunni Islamist factions.
Hezbollah’s case has been aided by the often draconian restrictions Sunni Islamists impose in areas under their control and the video-taped executions of Assad loyalists. Any lingering sympathies felt by Hezbollah fighters and their Shiite supporters for the Syria revolutionaries have wilted before such behavior.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Secu...guiding-thousands-of-Shiite-fighters-to-Syria

compromise orkediar · Sep 27, 2013

MODS / Admin.
1.) Why were my posts and others removed from this thread?
2.) Why is no discussion allowed in this part of the forum, but freedom of speech is vigorously defended in all other areas of the forum?
3.) Is this part of the subforum where you may receive the most substantial donation contributions monthly? I've noticed that the tally is met early, quite often, and nobody is allowed to talk to Iraniam or challenge your mod, Disambiguation, who is a harassing bully.
4.) What is the decision making process behind determining who it is that sets the tone for the story to be read and discussed on a daily or weekly basis?

compromise orkediar · Sep 27, 2013

Also, as someone who has lurked in this forum for some time...
Not one person, or a mod said anything to this poster or this comment.

iamiran

MOpeebeeughhuh said: ↑

Hello. I believe you forgot your costume. MORON.
Everything you said is utter bullshit.
Hello, Jewfag/Mossad tool/Godwinner
Since you enjoyed my post so much the first time, here it is again. Consider it as a personal message to you from me.

"Hello OP, you worthless Western dog.

September 11th has NOT A THING to do with Iran, nor with Syria.
If the US government has PTSD over it, let them get therapy, and stop their projection of their infirmity onto the rest of us. We grow tired of their (your) ridiculous adventurism on Israel's behalf. "

There was nothing "anti-Semitic" in my post, as your Godwin-fail would seem to imply.
You have a problem with anti-Zionists? Get ready to take on the world.

We don't care what you do in your useless empire run from Tel Aviv.
Hopefully, you'll die painfully in a fire soon.

So, now you tell me something pleased.

What is the purpose of this subforum?
Why is it here?
What is the goal of inviting this into the forum.

I have been called a Western Dog?
Pardon me?

MOds / Admin ----This is bullshit, and this ramshakle, amateur forum is not properly equipped to deal with these types of forces. Thus, it is my suggestion that you either get together a team of seriously educated moderators to monitor this section of the forum, or much easier and simpler,
Just shut it down
and shut it out.

iraniam · Sep 27, 2013

U.N. Security Council set to adopt Syria resolution

The U.N. Security Council is set to pass a resolution on Friday to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons after Russia and the United States agreed a deal to avert U.S. military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he hopes a date will also be agreed on Friday for so-called Geneva 2 peace talks on Syria, according to Reuters.

“I hope we will be able to set a date so that Geneva 2 can finally take place because the only solution is political. We moved forward on the chemical side but people are continuing to kill each other on the ground,” Fabius told reporters.

U.S. President Barack Obama lauded the deal as “potentially a huge victory for the international community,” Associated Press reported.

The draft resolution's demands that Syria abandon its chemical stockpile and allow unfettered access to chemical weapons experts are legally binding. But if Syria fails to comply, the council will need to adopt a second resolution to impose consequences.

Obama said during an Oval Office meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he is “very hopeful for the prospects of what can be accomplished.”

Obama argued his threat of military strikes was crucial to reaching the agreement, but he always preferred a diplomatic solution.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday accused Western nations of blaming Syria's President Bashar al-Assad of staging chemical weapons attacks without proof.

“The use of chemical weapons is inadmissible. This does not mean, however, that one can usurp the right to accuse and pass verdicts,” Lavrov told the U.N. General Assembly.

The United States, Britain and France have accused Assad's forces of carrying out an Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack near Damascus. Russia has sided with Assad in blaming opposition rebels.

International experts have said a U.N. report on the Aug. 21 attack, which did not attribute blame, gave clear signs that government forces carried out the attack.

However, Lavrov told the assembly: “All the incidents associated with the use of chemical weapons by whoever that might be in Syria must be investigated in a professional and unbiased manner.”

He added that the accusations should “then be examined by the U.N. Security Council exclusively on the basis of facts rather than allegations and assumptions.”

Lavrov said it was “alarming” to hear world leaders talk about “the right to use military force to ensure one's own interests in the Middle East region.”

The Russian minister did not mention the United States, but President Obama on Tuesday said he was ready to order military force in the Middle to defend U.S. “core interests.”

(With Reuters and AP)

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/New...ty-Council-set-to-adopt-Syria-resolution.html

Anonymous · Sep 27, 2013

Keep your posts on the topic of the thread and they will not be moved. Off topic posts will be moved.

Sincerly.
ramshakle amateur Mod

iraniam · Sep 27, 2013

The hell of a Syrian hospital: 'We are waiting for your help'

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...an-hospital-we-are-waiting-for-your-help?lite

compromise orkediar · Sep 27, 2013

Anonymous said: ↑

Keep your posts on the topic of the thread and they will not be moved. Off topic posts will be moved.

Sincerly.
ramshakle amateur Mod

Well then, dude... We need to discuss this, because I am still at a complete loss as to how it is that it is decided what is "On Topic" and what is not.

Also, have you answered my question yet about who your biggest donor might be to the forum and its potential relation to this Iranian sub forum which apparently is strictly for propaganda purposes only , by a theocratic regime which has the audacity to come in here and criticise anything western?

TELL ME THIS, PLEASE.

compromise orkediar · Sep 27, 2013

iraniam said: ↑

The hell of a Syrian hospital: 'We are waiting for your help'

Fuck off. Can't help you.
Work it out, yourselves.
Here is a suggestion : Ask this lady for help.
She is a billionaire. She may be busy shopping at Harrods this weekend, though.
I think there might be a special invite only at the Chanel boutique portion of the store.

iraniam · Oct 3, 2013

The Army of Islam Is Winning in Syria

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/01/the_army_of_islam_is_winning_in_syria

iraniam · Oct 7, 2013

Iranians launch #jeans protest on Twitter, taking jab at Netanyahu

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Midd...ns-protest-on-Twitter-taking-jab-at-Netanyahu

iraniam · Oct 7, 2013

Taliban pledges to kill Nobel Peace Prize favourite Malala Yousafzai

Use ← → keys to

View attachment 815x10001.jpg?w=650&h=797&crop=1#038;h=100 Malala Yousafzai has been an inspiration to young girls around the world for her campaign on education (Picture: PA)
Impassioned education and women’s rights campaigner Malala Yousafzai has been threatened again by Taliban militants who have vowed to take her life.
The 16-year-old was shot in the head at blank range by gunmen last year as she caught a bus home from her school in Pakistan.
Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said: ‘Malala Yousafzai targeted and criticised Islam.
‘She was against Islam and we tried to kill her, and if we get a chance again we will definitely try to kill her, and we will feel proud killing her.’
The death threat comes at a time when Malala’s profile is increasingly in the spotlight.
The teenager has been hotly tipped to take home the Nobel Peace Prize after she was chosen as a favoured choice of Kristian Berg Harpviken, a director of peach research institute PRIO.
The winner of the prestigious award will be announced on Friday.
Malala told BBC’s Panorama programme: ‘If I win Nobel Peace Prize, it would be a great opportunity for me, but if I don’t get it, it’s not important because my goal is not to get Nobel Peace Prize, my goal is to get peace and my goal is to see education of every child.’
The teenage activist risked her life last year after she defied a Taliban ban which prevented girls in her Pakistani town from attending school.
View attachment 1000x860.jpg?w=650&h=559&crop=1#038;h=860. David Beckham presents a Mirror Pride of Britain Teenager of Courage Award to Malala last night (Picture: AP)
An assassination attempt was made on her life in October 2012 leaving the schoolgirl in a critical condition in hospital. She was treated in Britain and now lives in Birmingham with her family.
She received a Pride of Britain Award last night for her work in campaigning for education for girls and has also been invited to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen in an event on October 18.
The Panorama programme Malala: Shot for Going to School will air tonight on BBC One at 8.30pm, in which she urges British schoolchildren to realise how ‘precious’ their opportunity is to study.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/10/07/talib...ace-prize-favourite-malala-yousafzai-4136804/

iraniam · Oct 10, 2013

Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai wins EU human rights prize

http://preview.reuters.com/2013/10/10/pakistans-malala-yousafzai-wins-eu-human-rights

Bushusuru · Oct 10, 2013

this Iranian sub forum which apparently is strictly for propaganda purposes only

I've noticed this also.

Very little actual discussion is permitted ITT, and the 'news' sources are mostly MSM and Zionist-leaning blogs (both basically the same thing).

iraniam · Oct 11, 2013

On U.S. TV, Malala Wows With Compassion

http://www.rferl.org/content/malala-stewart-daily-show-clip/25133026.html

iraniam · Oct 14, 2013

Nobel prize ‘should have been mine,’ jokes Assad

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has jokingly said that he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a pro-Damascus Lebanese newspaper reported on Monday.

The prize, which was given to the global chemical weapons watchdog on Friday, “should have been mine”, Assad said, according to Al-Akhbar newspaper.

Assad made the remark “jokingly”, the daily said, as he commented on the award on Friday of Nobel Peace Prize to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is working in Syria to destroy the Assad regime’s massive chemical arsenal by mid-2014.

Al-Akhbar also reported that Assad had proposed in 2003 that all countries in the region should hand over all weapons of mass destruction.

But the newspaper did not say when Assad made the comments about the Nobel.

The OPCW and the U.N. have had a team of 60 experts and support staff in Syria since Oct. 1, while the civil war rages on.

The team started its work after a breakthrough U.N. Security Council resolution last month ordering Syria’s chemical stockpile destroyed.

The resolution came after a chemical attack in Damascus province on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds of people.

It also followed US threats to strike Assad’s regime.

Syria’s war broke out after the army and security forces unleashed a brutal crackdown against anti-Assad protests that erupted in March 2011.

More than 115,000 people have been killed in the conflict so far, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/var...ould-have-been-mine-jokes-Syria-s-Assad-.html

iraniam · Oct 15, 2013

Syrian Refugees' Messages To The World

http://www.rferl.org/media/photogallery/25134396.html

The Wrong Guy · Oct 18, 2013

Saudi Muslim Preacher Receives Lenient 8-Year Prison Sentence for Allegedly Raping, Brutally Beating, Killing 5-Year-Old Daughter

By Katherine Weber, Christian Post Reporter, October 10, 2013

A Saudi preacher has received the sentence of eight years imprisonment and 800 lashes for the murder of his 5-year-old daughter, who he allegedly raped and severely beat to the point of death two years ago. The sentence has been blasted as lenient by activists in the country, who had campaigned for an appropriate sentence to be handed down in the run up to the case.

On Monday a judge found Fayhan al-Ghamdi, a preacher who often appears on television in Saudi Arabia, guilty of beating and torturing his 5-year-old daughter, Lama, to death back in 2011. Along with the sentence of eight years and 800 lashings, the judge also ruled that Ghamdi pay $270,000 in "blood money" to his ex-wife and the girl's mother, Syeda Mohammed Ali. The girl's mother had previously requested a payment of $2.7 million.

"The girl's mother ceded her original request to sentence the father to death," Mohammed Almadi of Saudi Arabia's Human Rights Commission told CNN recently. "She has since asked for the father to pay her blood money instead, which is her right in the Saudi legal system." Under Saudi law, because the mother accepted the "blood money" offer, she could no longer pursue a life sentence charge for her former husband.

Five-year-old Lama al-Ghamdi was admitted to a hospital in the town of Riyadh in December 2011 after being severely beaten while in her father's care. The girl suffered broken ribs, a fractured skull, a broken arm, severe burns and extensive bruising. A social worker from the hospital also indicated the girl had been raped in multiple places, although her mother later denied claims that the rape was done by the father. The child had allegedly been beaten with electric cables and a cane, and some reports indicated her father was attempting to punish her after hearing her virginity had been compromised. She died 10 months later in October 2012.

Continued at
http://www.christianpost.com/news/s...y-beating-killing-5-year-old-daughter-106325/

iraniam · Oct 30, 2013

No Syria peace without end to foreign support for rebels, says Bashar Assad

Syrian President Bashar Assad told the Arab League-UN envoy on Wednesday that foreign support for the armed opposition must end if any political solution to the country's conflict is to succeed, state-run media said.
Assad's comments to Lakhdar Brahimi during their meeting in Damascus cast further doubt on already sputtering efforts to convene an international peace conference to try to end the country's civil war.

The United States, Russia and the United Nations have been trying for months to bring Syria's government and the opposition together in Geneva to attempt to negotiate a political resolution to the conflict. After repeated delays, efforts renewed in earnest last month to organise the conference, but the Syrian opposition remains deeply divided over whether to attend, while the government refuses to sit down with the armed opposition.

Mr Brahimi's trip to Damascus was the latest stop on a regional tour in recent days as he tries to lay the groundwork for the proposed peace talks in Geneva that are tentatively planned for next month. But Assad, whose government has regained the momentum in recent months in the conflict, showed little sign of inching toward compromise.

"For any political solution to be successful, it is crucial to halt support for terrorist groups and the countries that sponsor them, facilitate the entry of terrorist mercenaries and offer them money, weapons and logistical support," Assad was quoted by Al-Ikhbariya television as telling Mr Brahimi. "The Syrian people alone are entitled to draw the future of Syria. Any solution must be approved by them and reflect their wishes away from any foreign intervention."

"This is paramount to prepare the circumstances for dialogue and put clear mechanisms that achieve this goal," Assad said.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the Syrian opposition's most active supporters, providing financial and logistical support to the rebels. The United States and some of its European allies have provided non-lethal aid, although Washington has promised for months to send light arms to Western-backed opposition fighters.

The meeting on Wednesday between Mr Brahimi and Assad was the first direct contact between the men in 10 months. After his last trip to Syria in December 2012, Mr Brahimi angered Syrian authorities when he said that 40 years of rule by Assad's family was "too long." Syrian officials then accused him of being biased.

The diplomatic push aims to end a conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people and forced some 2 million more to flee the country. Now in its third year, the civil war pits a primarily Sunni Muslim rebel movement against a government whose security forces are stacked with members of Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group said rebels killed at least 17 people in an attack on a predominantly Alawite village in the central province of Homs early Wednesday.
Observatory directory Rami Abdurrahman said the opposition fighters killed six government troops at a checkpoint in Shallouh before sweeping into the village itself, where they killed 11 residents.

The SANA state news agency blamed the attack on a "terrorist group," and said 13 locals were killed. The report did not mention any slain soldiers. The government refers to those trying to topple Assad as "terrorists".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ign-support-for-rebels-says-Bashar-Assad.html

iraniam · Oct 31, 2013

Israeli jets 'launch Syria strike to destroy missiles'

Israeli jets have launched an attack inside Syria to prevent missiles being transferred to the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, according to new reports on Thursday.
An explosion at a missile base to the south of the regime-held port city of Latakia on Syria's north-west coast was first reported by Syrian activist groups.

But the Lebanese government was also reporting that Israeli Air Force jets flew over its territory on Wednesday afternoon. Both CNN and the Saudi-backed news channel Al-Arabiya reported anonymous sources saying that the two events were connected.

The Israelis have launched several raids over Syria, including since the uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad started.
In May this year, a major attack north of Damascus sent up fireballs that were seen all over the capital. Again, the targets were said to be surface-to-air missiles intended to be delivered to Hizbollah, a Shia militia backed by Iran and Syria based in Lebanon.
In Wednesday's raids, the targets were said by Washington officials to be SA-125 missiles.

One Syrian opposition source quoted by Reuters said Israel struck a strategic missile battery near a village called Ain Shikak where Assad's forces keep long-range Russian missiles that are among their most powerful weapons.
Citing unnamed sources, Al-Arabiya said: "The bombing targeted a shipment of surface-to-air missiles (SAM) that was headed for Hizbollah in Lebanon."

Israel has repeatedly warned that it is prepared to use force to prevent advanced weapons reaching Hizbollah, which hit northern Israel with hundreds of rockets during a month-long war in 2006.
Earlier, chemical weapons inspectors confirmed that the regime had destroyed all its equipment for making chemical weapons, meeting a second major deadline agreed under the terms of a deal for Syria to declare and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal.

A statement by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said: "Syria has completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing/filling plants, rendering them inoperable." The target date for this phase of the operation was November 1.

The regime was set three phases under the deal forced on it by Russia after the chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburbs of East and West Ghouta in August which killed hundreds of people.
The first phase, a full declaration of its chemical weapons programme, it met by the last week in September. The final phase is the destruction of the chemical agents, a more complex task which is set to happen by next summer.

The main impediment is the continuing civil war. Two of the regime's 23 main chemical weapons sites could not be reached by inspectors because of the fighting, but the inspectors said their contents had already been moved elsewhere.
In addition, they said the already declared stocks of prepared chemicals, consisting of 1,000 tons of the most serious agents such as sarin and 290 of less serious "category two" agents were now under tamper-proof OPCW seals.

The organisation said its inspectors had observed the destruction of the manufacturing processes.
The deal's many critics say it leaves Mr Assad in place and ignores the many more deaths attributable to non-chemical means. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict from Britain, on Thursday said the number of dead had reached 120,000, half of them non-combatant.

They also question whether Mr Assad might be able to preserve some of his chemical weapons programme without declaring it. "Syria likely assesses there is little chance that lack of candour in their declaration will be discovered in the short-term," said David Reeths, an expert with IHS Jane's.

However, a congressional hearing in Washington was told the Obama administration was confident the deal would be a success. "I am increasingly confident that we will be able to complete this task, the elimination of the Syria's chemical weapons programme, within the target date of June 30th of next year," Thomas Countryman, assistant secretary for non-proliferation, said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-launch-Syria-strike-to-destroy-missiles.html

iraniam · Nov 3, 2013

Palestinians lose more than most in Syrian exodus

Palestinians Mahmoud and Ahmed fled Syria last month for Egypt, where they paid smugglers to bring them to Europe. Once at sea, they were robbed at knife-point and herded onto an overloaded boat that sank, pitching over 100 into the sea.

The brothers made it back to shore while others drowned, then to be deported in days from a volatile Egypt where anti-Palestinian sentiment runs high. Now at the Lebanese camp of Ain al-Helweh, they face as Palestinians restrictions on their lives far more severe than any other refugees from Syria.

A people all too familiar with refugee life, Palestinians have lost out more than most in the exodus from Syria.

“They grabbed the women and children and tossed us onto the boats like they were tossing rocks or some other worthless thing,” said Mahmoud, 23, who asked that his family name not be used. “There was no way to turn back.”

“They pulled knives on us and took our money and mobile phones and stripped the gold off the women.”

The war has forced some 50,000 Palestinians to flee Syria, a country where they had enjoyed some of the most favorable treatment in the entire Arab world.

The number is a sliver of the 700,000 registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon, but enough to strain overcrowded and volatile camps and stir memories of Lebanon’s own civil war; a conflict some see rooted in the arrival of armed Palestinian factions in the decades after Israel’s foundation in 1948.

Banned from professions

Noufa Sallem, a 55-year-old Palestinian from Syria, fled to Ain al-Helweh, Lebanon’s largest camp, about a year ago after shelling gutted her family’s four-storey home in Damascus.

She and two of her sons settled in a dirt lot in a tent of plastic sheeting and wooden planks, around the corner from a neighborhood run by a faction of radical Islamists.

Sallem’s husband, a teacher with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, founded in 1949 to help Arabs fleeing Israel, died of a heart attack before they left Damascus.

Then in September she found out her third son, who stayed in Syria because he had not done his military service, had been killed. She had not spoken to him since fleeing and learned about his death through a news website.

“Everything is gone. Everything that could be burned was burned, everything that could be destroyed was destroyed,” Sallem said, seated at a small wooden table outside her tent.

Palestinians face a particularly hard time in Lebanon because they are barred from working in over 70 professions and are subject to major restrictions on property ownership and access to state services.

The coastal country of 4 million people also faces its own crippling political disputes and an economy hammered by the loss of tourism and business because of Syria’s civil war.

“Lebanon is a small country ... and it’s already suffering from social, economic and security problems,” said Kamel Kozbar, a city councilman in the southern city of Sidon where Ain al-Helweh is located.

“Now this, as they say, is adding fuel to the fire.”

Desperate acts

Lebanon’s Palestinian areas are still called “camps,” but they are really more like city districts - hodgepodge areas packed with old cars, nests of electrical wire, and narrow streets crowded with shoppers, schoolchildren and merchants.

A sign inside Ain al-Helweh welcomes you to “the Capital of the Diaspora” as soldiers at the entrance check IDs and search cars. Jumbles of murals, images and slogans from some of the 16 or so political factions that run the camp cover the walls.

Poverty is rife and water-borne diseases are common because of shoddy infrastructure. Healthcare and education are provided largely by UNRWA.

Arrival can be especially hard for refugees from Syria, where they had had access to schools, healthcare and government jobs. The hopelessness occasionally inspires spectacular acts of desperation.

Kozbar, the Sidon city councilor, has an office decorated with brightly colored motivational posters, but his outlook is thoroughly bleak.

There is not enough food, shelter or clean water for the refugees pouring into the country, he said. Lebanon’s government, beset by chronic economic and political malaise, was doing little to help. The desperation was ripe for exploitation by drug dealers, pimps and religious radicals.

“If the situation remains like this, we will be on the verge of a population explosion, and maybe a security explosion, both inside and outside Ain al-Helweh,” said Kozbar, who is also a secondary school principal in Sidon.

That apocalyptic forecast is becoming common wisdom for many in Lebanon, only about a third as big as Belgium, its delicate social fabric especially vulnerable to the sectarian conflicts simmering across the Middle East.

Lebanon’s Civil War

Some fear the desperation could fire radicalization and violence - an especially potent concern since many links Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war to the arrival of Palestinian fighters after the foundation of Israel.

More recent memories include the battle of Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian camp in the northern city of Tripoli where a radical Islamist group battled the army in 2007.

Lebanese are already divided over Syria’s civil war, and both Sunni and Shi’ite factions have sent fighters to join opposing sides in what has become a deeply sectarian conflict.

Still, there have been few recent examples of Palestinians getting involved in Lebanon’s political disputes. Camp leaders, sensitive to their precarious position, say they want nothing to do with Syria’s war or Lebanon’s factional quarrels.

In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees are essentially trapped between two countries bent on maintaining demographic equations that exclude them.

Lebanese officials fear assimilating the mostly Sunni Palestinians would upset the balance between Sunnis, Shi’ites and Christians that underpins Lebanon’s political hierarchy.

For many refugees who have had to flee two or three times, hope has already faded. Sallem, the woman in Ain al-Helweh, traced her family’s history of displacement back to their first expulsion from Safed - now in northern Israel - in 1948.

They resettled in Syria’s Golan Heights, but were uprooted again when Israel occupied the territory in 1967, she said. Now Syria’s war has forced them to start over again.
“There’s a lot of talk about Palestine on the satellite channels and in the newspapers. A lot of talk,” Sallem said, smoking cigarettes at a table strewn with jasmine flowers outside her tent.

“But unfortunately it seems we’re just theater to keep officials entertained, a play for the world to watch and laugh at while we drown.”

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/per...ns-lose-more-than-most-in-Syrian-exodus-.html

iraniam · Nov 12, 2013

At star-packed Glamour magazine awards, Malala steals show

The Associated Press, New York

There was a flamboyant pop star. A legendary singer. A TV star, some supermodels, and one of the world’s most powerful philanthropists. Even a former secretary of state who may soon be running for president.

But of all the prominent women who appeared onstage Monday night at the Glamour Women of the Year awards, no one received more acclaim and adoration than a teenager whom no one had heard of little more than a year ago - 16-year-old Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai.

“We love you, Malala!” shouted a group of young girls from a high balcony in Carnegie Hall, where the annual event was held. The teenager blew back a kiss, and proceeded to give an impassioned speech.

“I believe the gun has no power at all,” said Malala, who caught the world’s attention when the Taliban shot her in the head in October 2012 for criticizing the group’s interpretation of Islam, and their limiting girls’ access to education. She has since gained global prominence, has started The Malala Fund to support education for girls, and recently released a memoir, “I Am Malala.”

“I believe the gun has no power because a gun can only kill,” she said. “But a pen can give life.”

It wasn’t just the crowd that was taken with Malala; her fellow honorees referred to her often as they took the stage, and the night’s most flamboyant honoree, Lady Gaga, said she wished this month’s Glamour magazine cover, which features her, had been devoted to Malala instead.

“If I could forfeit my Glamour cover I would give it to Malala,” she said.

In a long and sometimes rambling speech, the pop singer, who sported a huge mane of frizzy white hair, a glistening white suit and her typically sky-high platform shoes, also said she thought she looked too artificially beautiful on that cover. “I do not look like that when I wake up in the morning,” she said.

Gaga added that despite her huge fame, “my true talent is not the clothes, and not the music. I really feel that what I am best at is seeing the potential in other people.” She referred to her campaign against bullying among young people, and recalled the case of a young fan who committed suicide in 2011 after being bullied, Jamey Rodemeyer.

“Do you really know how your child feels when they are home at night?” the singer challenged the crowd.

The evening’s Lifetime Achievement Award went to Barbra Streisand, who told the audience that she had been lucky enough to be born with a good singing voice. “That voice ultimately allowed me to speak out and have my opinions heard,” said Streisand, 71, who proceeded to forcefully air many of them - including her choice for the next president. “There’s never been a woman president,” Streisand said, “but I hope that will change very soon - hint, hint! And we really need her now.”

She was referring, of course, to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who surprised the crowd by appearing to present a first-time award - Couple of the Year - to former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly.

It was a poignant moment for Giffords, who had been unable to attend when she was honored with a Glamour award in 2011, because she was still recovering from wounds suffered early that year when she was shot while meeting constituents in a supermarket parking lot. “It’s been a hard, long time but I’m getting better,” she told the crowd, saying she was doing “speech therapy, physical therapy, and yoga too.”

“I’m still fighting to make the world a better place, and you can, too,” she said. The couple has founded a gun safety organization, Americans for Responsible Solutions.

Another emotional highlight was the appearance of Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis, a first-grade teacher at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, who saved her pupils from death by herding them into a small bathroom, where they hid as shots rang out last December.

“I have lived my life so as not to let that day define myself - or my students,” said Roig-DeBellis, who had much of the audience in tears. She was accompanied by a group of parents whose children she had saved.

Also honored: Melinda Gates, who with her husband, Bill Gates, founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a huge philanthropic force. Gates was described by her award presenter, “Girls” actress and writer Lena Dunham, as “the most stunning example of putting your money where your mouth is that the world has ever seen.”

After the Carnegie Hall ceremony, the honorees, presenters and guests attended a private dinner at the famed Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel. It was a scene of fascinating combinations. Lady Gaga approached Malala, for example, and the two took photos together.

“Never be afraid to speak your mind,” the pop singer told the activist - who is famous for doing just that. “I can’t wait until my fans hear your story,” she added.

Watching it all was supermodel Iman, who said she had been deeply moved by Malala’s speech.

“She is a game-changer for girls,” Iman said. “I wish young girls here knew more about Malala, and less about the Kardashians.”

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/lif...ed-U-S-Glamour-awards-Malala-steals-show.html

iraniam · Nov 12, 2013

Palestinian-American student denied entry to Israel after being told, ‘there is no such thing as Palestine’

I’ve spent my entire life hearing stories about Jerusalem and the beauty of my homeland from my mother and grandparents. I had always dreamed of one day being able to visit, and in the summer of 2012 it seemed that I would finally have that opportunity. In September of that year I started my travels with 30 peers on a student diplomatic trip through the Middle East. I knew that I would likely face some trouble at the Israeli borders due to my Palestinian background, however what I experienced turned out to be far more than just a little “trouble”.

“The Olive Tree Initiative” in Amman, Jordan with His Royal Highness Prince El-Hassan bin Talaal of Jordan.
On September 13th, 30 of my peers and myself, made our way from Amman, Jordan to the Jordan River Crossing, the international border between Israel and Jordan. We lined up single file to go through baggage check, and have our passports checked by a young soldier who couldn’t be over the age of 25. I watched as several of my peers handed their bags and passports over and were quickly moved along. There seemed to be no trouble. As I approached the soldier and handed him my own passport, he read my name and automatically asked me to step aside. I obliged, wondering and worrying why I hadn’t been let through as easily as my friends who I could now see collecting their luggage and heading back to the bus. I waited patiently as I watched my passport be handed around from soldier to soldier, each reading my name out loud then conversing among each other in Hebrew.
Eventually one of the soldiers took my passport to the back and handed it to a young lady behind a glass window. I watched her inspect the passport and vigorously type my information into the computer screen in front of her. After about 35 minutes of her “research” on me, she called me over to her window, and proceeded to question me.
“What is the purpose of your visit to Israel?”
“I am on a student diplomatic trip with the University of California school system”
“Where are your mother and father from?”
“My father is Egyptian, and my mother is Palestinian” I noticed her smirk when I said the word Palestinian.
“Where are they now?”
“In California, where they live”
“Do you have family here in Israel?”
“No, but I have family in Palestine”
“So your mother is a Palestinian and you think that you can come to Israel?”
“Yes”
“You are not allowed to enter here because you have a Palestinian I.D.”
“No, I do not, I am an American citizen. I wasn’t born in Palestine, nor have I ever lived there”
Again she laughed, and snidely replied, “Well there is no such thing as Palestine anyway, but you have an I.D. through your mother, so you are not allowed to enter here. No Palestinians are. But you can try the Allenby Border Crossing, that is for Arabs only”
In just a few simple words it seemed that she had stripped me of my entire identity, erased my history, and labeled me as less than. I had never felt such anger in my life.
Devastated that I might not be able to continue my travels with my peers, it was decided that I would take a taxi an hour away to the Allenby Border Crossing and attempt to enter Israel from there. All 30 of my peers, all American citizen, UC students, just like me, had all gotten through already, but because my mother possesses a Palestinian ID, I was being denied entry into my own homeland. I was beginning to see the blatant racism that my mother had tried to warn me about unravel in front of me. Israel’s goal is for every Palestinian to denounce their Palestinian ID, therefore giving up their right to ever return to live in Palestine. I felt a surge of pride that my mother had refused to do so, despite the fact that it was hindering not only her own, but also, my ability to see my homeland. I knew that it was one of the strongest forms of resistance she could take.
I got into a taxi with 3 members from my traveling group, and we made our way to the Allenby Border Crossing. After about an hour, we arrived, and again I waited in the passport control line. I approached the window as my turn had finally arrived and I handed my passport to the small blonde woman working behind the counter. She took my passport and scanned it, and automatically said,
“Do you have another passport?”
“No”
“You are lying to me. You have a Palestinian ID”
“No, I don’t. I am an American citizen. My mother is simply originally Palestinian”
“You are a Palestinian, you cannot come to Israel. Wait there”
I headed to the waiting area, and spent the next 3 hours sitting and watching my passport be handed back and forth between soldiers and employees. Every so often I would be called aside and questioned about the reasoning for my visit and my family. Finally another young female soldier holding my passport, called out my name, and I replied. She asked me to follow her, so I did. I assumed I would be questioned for what seemed like the 100th time that day. She led me through the building and out sliding glass doors in the back. As we kept walking, I wondered where she was taking me, but again assumed I was simply being led to another building for further questioning. Finally, she stopped in front of a bus, and simply handed the bus driver my passport and said, “Return her”. I automatically panicked.
“Return me? Return me where?”
“You are going back to Jordan. You cannot come to Israel”
“I can’t go back, I have no phone, and I didn’t even tell the people I was with that I’m leaving. Please just let me go tell them”
“No. You will get on the bus and go back”
At this point I was truly afraid, and so I raised my voice to call attention and said, “No. I need to go back to my group. I will not get on the bus”
Suddenly, another man dressed in full military uniform holding a gun approached, and said, “You need to calm down right now and get on the bus”
Again, I pleaded, “Please just let me go tell them I’m leaving”
The man then lifted his gun, pointed it at me, and cocked it and said, “Get on the bus”
I had never had a gun pointed at me, and had never been so terrified in my life. Through tears I begged them to just let me tell my group, and finally the woman gave in and snarled, “You have 30 seconds to run back”

Yara Karmalawy
I sprinted back to where I had left the 3 members from my group that were with me and that is where I ultimately broke down. Here I was a mere minutes from the cities where my mother spent her youth, the land that I have always considered home, and a series of young men and women barely older than me were in control of whether I was to be allowed entry or not. The only difference between myself and my 30 peers, who had already gained entry, was that I was born to a Palestinian mother, and because of this, Israel would continue to deny me entry to my homeland until my mother has denounced her ID.
Between sobbing, I quickly explained what had happened to the 3 members I was with, as I saw the young female soldier walk back into the building behind me. She didn’t dare say anything to me in front of my group. She knew that her intimidation attempts would stand no chance now that she didn’t have me secluded. I had now been attempting entry into Israel for ten hours, and I was exhausted. I couldn’t stand one more soldier who was practically my age telling me that I was not allowed entry into Israel. Just the idea that these youth were controlling these borders made me sick, I could see the perpetuation of this brutal occupation first hand and I was disgusted.
I watched the female take my passport and place a huge stamp on an inside page. I now had a mark on my passport that would let everyone know I was of Palestinian descent. This stamp was only made up of 9 digits, the 9 digits of my mother’s Palestinian ID. It no longer mattered that I was an American citizen, UC student on a student diplomatic trip with 30 of my peers. Instead, these 9 digits were the only thing that defined me in Israel. These 9 digits had become my only identity.
I finally had my passport handed back to me and was once again told that I would not be allowed entry into Israel. Despite all my efforts, my background was going to keep me visiting my homeland. Somehow the same young men and women who I could have been in school with had my mother stayed in Jerusalem and raised me there, were the ones to deny me entry. The saddest part to me is that I know my experience is only a very minor example of the challenges that Palestinians face on a daily basis. When their identity and culture is not being actively erased from history and denied, it’s being used against them perpetuating the inequality and injustice that the occupation brings about.

Wall graffiti along the alleys of Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem. (Photo: Yara Karmalawy)
Finally, after many more hours of pleading and reaching out to as many connections as possible, I was eventually able to gain entry into the West Bank. However I was still denied entry into Israel, and the 9 digit stamp in my passport would make sure of this at every checkpoint.
My only hope from all of this is that my story will encourage people to ask questions and to learn more about the Palestinian struggle. We need to start by educating ourselves and as many people around us as possible.

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/11/palestinian-american-palestine.html

iraniam · Dec 12, 2013

Britain and US suspend non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels

Britain and the United States have suspended assistance to Syrian rebel forces as the opposition continues to fracture and fall under the influence of hard-line Islamists.

The hold on supplies of non-military assistance such as body armour, communications equipment and, in the American case, armoured vehicles, was in direct response to the takeover by a new pan-Islamist faction of army posts in the north belonging to the western-backed, secular-led Free Syrian Army and its Supreme Military Council.

Among the buildings seized were warehouses storing western aid, including vehicles, food and other supplies.
There has also been fighting between the al-Qaeda factions which did not join that alliance and both the FSA and yet another, non-Islamist alliance whose launch was announced this week, allegedly with ties to Saudi Arabia.

“We are currently investigating events that took place over the weekend,” a Foreign Office spokesman said. “While that investigation is underway, we will not be making any deliveries of equipment to the Supreme Military Council.
“We intend to resume support as soon as we and the SMC are satisfied the conditions on the ground allow the SMC to take safe delivery of equipment provided.”

The suspension of aid has greater symbolic than real consequences, as neither Britain nor the United States provided the lethal military assistance the rebels have so long demanded. Much of the rebels’ weaponry comes from defectors and seized government bases.
The rest has been provided in fits and starts by the rebellion’s backers in the Gulf, largely Saudi Arabia and a string of private donors who have favoured Islamist-led brigades.

The Islamic Front, announced last month, combines a number of brigades including non-al-Qaeda militants who want a hardline Sharia state. It rejected both allegiance to the western-backed political leadership of the Syrian National Council and to peace talks planned for Geneva next month.

British and American envoys met with some of the Islamist leaders that make up the Front in October in the hope of re-forging an alliance.
Its seizure of FSA headquarters near the Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey in Syria’s far north-west would seem to suggest that alliance is dead in the water.

In a further blow, two FSA commanders, Mohammed al-Qadi and Ahmad Jahar, were abducted by members of one of the two main al-Qaeda factions, Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS), near the border town of Azaaz. Their bodies were later discovered nearby.
Perhaps most distressingly of all to those who sympathised with the original goals of the Syrian revolution, one of the country’s best-known secular activists, who had been among the first to raise her voice against President Bashar al-Assad, was abducted this week with her husband and two colleagues from a rebel-held town near Damascus.

Again, militants are thought to be responsible. Razan Zeitouneh had been arrested several times by the regime but had condemned a spate of kidnappings by ISIS.
Louay al-Mokdad, spokesman of the FSA, called on the West to reconsider its suspension, saying the decision was “rushed and mistaken”. However, the FSA itself has suffered from splits, and a former spokesman, Fahd al-Masri, said the decision demonstrated the failure of Gen Salem Idriss, the FSA leader, who now had virtually no military support on the ground.

He said that the aim of the West appeared to be to ensure the victory of neither the regime nor the opposition, but rather to let both sides bleed. “I am reminded of what Henry Kissinger said about the Iran-Iraq war, when he said the best outcome would be for both sides to lose,” he said.
The regime this week secured another tactical victory in its objective of holding on to power in Damascus and Syria’s main western corridor when it recaptured the strategic city of Nabuk, overlooking the main south-north highway.

The victory, accompanied according to opposition activists with the deliberate killing of a number of women and children, enabled it to push its attack further, including on the outskirts of Yabroud, an important staging post for rebel supplies near the Lebanese border.
Those supplies are in any case now cut off by heavy snow on the border, which one local resident said had trapped 27,000 refugees in the town.
“Yabroud is under siege from the highway,” another man, a local aid worker. “People are in a horrible situation there. They are trying to escape by whatever way they can” .

iraniam · Dec 16, 2013

Britain’s policy on Syria has just been sunk, and nobody noticed

The final bankruptcy of American and British policy in Syria came 10 days ago as Islamic Front, a Saudi-backed Sunni jihadi group, overran the headquarters of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at Bab al-Hawa on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey. The FSA, along with the Syrian National Coalition, groups that the United States and Britain have been pretending for years are at the heart of Syrian military and political opposition, has been discredited. The remaining FSA fighters are in flight, have changed sides, or are devoting all their efforts to surviving the onslaught from jihadi or al-Qa’ida-linked brigades.

The US and Britain stopped the delivery of non-lethal aid to the supply depot at Bab al-Hawa as the implications of the disaster sank in. The West’s favourite rebel commander, General Salim Idris, was on the run between Turkey and his former chief supporter and paymaster, Qatar. Turkey closed the border, the other side of which is now controlled by the Islamic Front. The so-called moderate wing of the Syrian insurgency has very limited influence, but its representatives are still being urged by Washington and London to attend the peace conference in Geneva on 22 January to negotiate Bashar al-Assad’s departure from power.

Confusion over what is happening is so great that Western leaders may not pay as much of a political price at home as they should for the failure of their Syrian policy. But it is worth recalling that the Syrian National Coalition and the FSA are the same people for whom the US and UK almost went to war in August, and saw as candidates to replace Assad in power in Damascus. The recent debacle shows how right public opinion in both countries was to reject military intervention.

Who are the winners in the new situation? One is Assad because the opposition to him – which started as a popular uprising against a cruel, corrupt and oppressive dictatorship in 2011 – has become a fragmented movement dominated by al-Qa’ida umbrella organisation the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil); the other al-Qa’ida franchisee, the al-Nusra Front; and the Islamic Front, consisting of six or seven large rebel military formations numbering an estimated 50,000 fighters, whose uniting factor is Saudi money and an extreme Sunni ideology similar to Saudi Arabia’s version of Islam.

The Saudis see this alliance as capable of fighting pro-Assad forces as well as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, but Riyadh’s objections to the latter appears to be based on its independence of Saudi control rather than revulsion at its record of slaughtering Shia, Alawi, Christians, Armenians, Kurds, Turkomans or any dissenting Sunni.

The allegation of Saudi control is becoming easier to substantiate. Until a year ago, the Saudis stayed somewhat in the background when it came to funding the Syrian rebels, in which the leading role was played by Qatar in association with Turkey. But the failure of the rebels to win and US anger that the Qataris and Turks had allowed much of the aid to go to jihadis led to an important change this summer, when Saudi Arabia took over from Qatar as chief supporter of the rebels.

An interesting example of just how hands-on this Saudi direction has become is illustrated by a fascinating interview given by a top defector from the FSA to Isil, Saddam al-Jamal. Commander of the Liwa Allah Akbar battalion, he was until recently the top FSA commander in eastern Syria, much of which is under rebel control. Questioned by his new ally, according to a translation by the Brown Moses Blog, he recalls that “we used to meet with the apostates of Qatar and Saudi Arabia and with the infidels of Western nations such as America and France in order to receive arms and ammo or cash”. He says Western intelligence operatives had of late been worried about the growing influence of al-Qa’ida affiliates and repeatedly asked him why he was growing a beard.

Jamal gives an account of a recent three-day meeting between the FSA commanders from northern and eastern Syria with Western, Saudi, Qatari, Emirati and Jordanian intelligence operatives. This appears to have been soon after the Saudis took over the Syria file from the Qataris. He says the FSA commanders, including General Idris, had a meeting with Prince Salman bin Sultan, the Saudi deputy defence minister who was the leading figure at the meeting. Jamal says that Prince Salman “asked those who had plans to attack Assad positions to present their needs for arms, ammo and money”.

The picture that Mr Jamal paints is of an FSA that was a complete pawn to foreign intelligence agencies, which is one reason why he defected. The Saudis subsequently decided that the FSA would not serve their purposes, and were frustrated by America backing away from war in Syria and confrontation with Iran. They set about using their limitless funds to attract into alliances rebel brigades such as the Islamic Front which would be Sunni fundamentalist, committed to the overthrow of Assad, against political negotiations, but distinct from al-Qa’ida. In reality, it looks highly unlikely that Saudi money will be enough to bring down or even significantly weaken Assad though it may be enough to keep a war going for years.

The old, supposedly moderate, opposition has been marginalised. Its plan since 2011 has been to force a full-scale Western military intervention as in Libya in 2011 and, when this did not happen, they lacked an alternative strategy.

The US, Britain and France do not have many options left except to try to control the jihadi Frankenstein’s monster that they helped create in Syria and which is already helping destabilise Iraq and Lebanon. Turkey may soon regret having given free passage to so many jihadi on their way to Syria. Ankara could close its 500-mile border with Syria or filter those who cross it. But Turkish policy in Syria and Iraq has been so dysfunctional in the past three years that it may be too late to correct the consequences of wrongly convincing itself that Assad would fall.

The Geneva II peace conference on Syria looks as if it will be born dead. In so far as the FSA and its civilian counterparts ever repres-ented anyone in Syria they do so no longer. The armed opposition is dominated by Saudi-sponsored Islamist brigades on the one hand and by al-Qa’ida affiliates on the other. All US, British and French miscalculations have produced in Syria is a re-run of Afghanistan in the 1980s, creating a situation the ruinous consequences of which have yet to appear. As jihadis in Syria realise they are not going to win, they may well look for targets closer to home.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...ust-been-sunk-and-nobody-noticed-9005332.html

iraniam · Dec 16, 2013

Outcry After Children Reportedly Killed In Brutal Bombing In Syria

http://www.buzzfeed.com/miriamberger/outcry-after-children-reportedly-killed-in-brutal-bombing-in

iraniam · Dec 23, 2013

Syrian regime's barrel bomb assault on Allepo kills as hundreds

A nine-day intensive "barrel bomb" bombardment of Aleppo and other northern towns by theSyrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad has killed hundreds of civilians and cast renewed doubt over next month's peace talks.
Reports by several counts all put the death toll inflicted by shelling and the home-made "barrel bombs" dropped from helicopters at more than 300 civilians. An activist on the ground last night told The Daily Telegraph that 480 were dead.

He and the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights both counted 86 children among the victims. Distressing photographs of the bloodied corpses of infants have begun circulating the internet, some posted by Aleppo doctors. Many are too gruesome to be published.
In other pictures, children are seen queuing for treatment at the city's makeshift clinics, caked in blood and dust. In yet another video, said to have been taken of a school in the town of Marea north of Aleppo hit by a bomb, children are seen being pulled from the rubble.
After months in which the fighting on the ground has taken second place in international analysis to fears of the rise of al-Qaeda in the rebel ranks and the chances of reaching some sort of political compromise at the "Geneva 2" peace talks, the scale of the suffering has forced the tactics of Mr Assad's army back to centre stage.

"I am deeply concerned at the escalating level of violence in Syria," the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said. "I condemn the use of brutal and indiscriminate weapons in densely-populated civilian areas, such as we have seen in Aleppo in recent days."
Last night the opposition Syrian National Coalition said unless the bombing of Aleppo ceased then they would not attend those planned peace talks in Geneva.

After interviewing survivors, Human Rights Watch said the attacks were illegal under international law.
"Government forces have really been wreaking disaster, killing men, women, and children alike," said Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher. "The Syrian Air Force is either criminally incompetent, doesn't care whether it kills scores of civilians – or deliberately targets civilian areas."

Despite repeated talk of Mr Assad having turned the tide of the war with the support of Iran and reinforcements from Hizbollah and Iraqi Shia militias, advances in one area have often been matched by retreat in others.
The Syrian army has failed to make good its promise of retaking Aleppo, and has lost ground in recent days according to activists on the ground. This may have been a trigger for the recent ferocious bombing – the regime has often retaliated for losses of territory by bombing civilian areas.
"I believe that the regime is taking revenge on Aleppo after it failed in its military campaign which has failed recently to regain control," said a spokesman for the Al-Shams news agency in Aleppo, who gave his name as Abu al-Mujahid.

"Maybe it is also a way of putting pressure on the opposition before the Geneva conference."
Both Hizbollah and the Iraqi militias have concentrated their fighting on areas of Damascus and Homs provinces with large populations of the Shia minority, and Mr Assad has never been able to muster sufficient numbers of his own troops to sustain an assault on the wide northern front.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera television, the head of what is probably the strongest individual rebel brigade, Ahrar al-Sham, Hassan Aboud, repeated his insistence that neither he nor his allies would take any notice of the Geneva conference or any conclusions it might reach.

The government has said it will take part, along with the opposition in exile backed by the West, but it is not clear what Mr Assad's negotiating position will be. He has promised presidential elections for 2014 but rejected demands he state in advance that he will not stand.
Meanwhile the conditions for the 2.5 million refugees abroad – more than a tenth of the population – and those who continue to be subject to the war's ferocity continue to worsen.

"The field hospitals are pitiful," Abu al-Mujahid said. "Hospitals cannot accommodate the wounded. People try to move the injuries to the Turkish hospitals but it's far away. Some people die before arriving.
People are using civilian cars as we don't have enough ambulances.
"Fear and panic dominates the city."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...bomb-assault-on-Allepo-kills-as-hundreds.html

iraniam · Dec 31, 2013

Over 130,000 killed in Syria since uprising: NGO

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/New...0-000-killed-in-Syria-since-uprising-NGO.html

iraniam · Jan 5, 2014

Why President Bashar al-Assad's rule may endure

Beirut, Lebanon
When protesters took to the streets of Syrian cities in March 2011, President Bashar al-Assad looked set to become the latest victim of a revolution like ones that had already toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and were soon to do the same in Yemen and Libya.
But almost three years later, Mr. Assad still inhabits the presidential palace overlooking a battle-scarred Damascus. The tenacity of his regime, the evident disarray within the political opposition, and armed rebel groups' drift toward Islamic extremism have spurred some in the West to voice what was unthinkable just a year ago: that Assad could actually win, and that his survival may even be preferable to a rebel victory, which could bring about a Syria dominated by Al Qaeda-affiliated extremists.

Ryan Crocker, a former US ambassador to Damascus with extensive experience in the Middle East, recently caused a stir by predicting in a New York Times op-ed that Assad would eventually regain the country "inch by bloody inch."
"And do we really want the alternative – a major country in the heart of the Arab world in the hands of Al Qaeda?" he wrote.
Still, although Assad has survived longer than many would have predicted in 2011, his chances of winning the war are slim. Neither side is strong enough to decisively win, and a "victory" would still give him only a shadow of what he had in February 2011, analysts say.

"Assad cannot win the conflict, although he can survive indefinitely," says Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. "Regime forces are too stretched to advance on all fronts, and can only make gains in one or two areas at a time, at the risk of losing ground elsewhere.... There will be no return to the pre-2011 situation."
RECOMMENDED: Do you understand the Syria conflict? Take the quiz
Assad's longevity thus far has largely depended on three factors:

Disorganization among the opposition – with the external, internationally recognized representatives isolated from those on the ground in Syria – and the steady radicalization of armed rebel groups, which has dampened foreign support for the opposition.

The diplomatic, military, and logistical support of Russia and Iran.

The cohesive nature of the Assad regime, which has yet to show any serious sign of buckling.

When the anti-regime protests broke out, Assad responded with brute force, and the casualty toll soared. Initially, the regime's heavy-handed reaction to the demonstrations and failure to offer significant reforms seemed like a strategic error; it sparked a bloody sectarian civil war that is tearing the country apart.

That view is under revision today, however, as the debate on how to remove Assad from power is overtaken by concern in the West that Syria is becoming a haven for Al Qaeda. Recent comments by Mr. Crocker and other former US officials make clear that Assad is no longer necessarily seen as the worst option for Syria's future.
Michael Hayden, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told a conference in early December that an Assad win was "the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes."
The other two options he cited were a continuing sectarian war between Sunni and Shiite extremists – with its path of destruction through the country and destabilization throughout the region – and a breakup of the country, which could lead to the dissolution of other Middle East states created by Britain and France after World War I.
Radicalization

Some analysts are critical of the views of Crocker, Mr. Hayden, and others, arguing that it was Assad's brutal crackdown on initially peaceful pro-democracy activists that led to the radicalization of the opposition in the first place.
"It is the very presence of the Assad regime and the very tactics it has employed that account for the presence of Islamist extremists in Syria. The regime has set the country alight and now presents itself as the fire brigade," says Frederic Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Mr. Hof, who previously served as the Obama administration's liaison with the Syrian opposition, added that the Assad regime's efforts to radicalize the opposition were inadvertently aided by the West, "which failed miserably to support the regime's real opponents."
The Free Syrian Army, originally the main armed opposition group, has been overshadowed by the rise of more militant Islamist groups. The drift by rebel factions toward Islamic extremism was partly due to the regime's brutal tactics, but it was also motivated by a desire to boost their appeal to wealthy Arab patrons in the Gulf.

The competition among rebel groups is a Darwinian contest for funding and weapons. Two of the strongest individual factions today are the Al Qaeda-affiliated groups Jabhat al-Nsura and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
More recently, Saudi Arabia backed the creation of a new rebel coalition, the Islamic Front, grouping together 45,000 to 60,000 fighters from some of the strongest factions. The Islamic Front has rejected a political solution to the conflict, spurned an offer of dialogue with the United States, and aspires to establish an Islamic state once Assad is overthrown.
But even if the West were to tacitly encourage the defeat of Islamic extremist groups in Syria, it is doubtful that the overstretched Syrian military has the capacity to do so.

"I think the regime, in essence, still remains very weak," says Joshua Landis, director of the Center of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and author of the influential "Syria Comment" blog. "Even though the opposition has been so weak and divided and fighting among each other, [Assad] has not been able to make any dramatic gains, and I think we are seeing the apex of the regime effort right now."
Crucial allies

Key to Assad's survival thus far is the military assistance provided by Iran and Russia. Assad's Syria is a vital ally of Iran, forming the cornerstone of an alliance to challenge Israel and Western policies in the Middle East that also includes Lebanon's powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
In an effort to shore up the Assad regime, Hezbollah has dispatched its crack fighters into Syria to battle rebel forces. They have fought in the Damascus suburbs, they retook the border town of Qusayr near Homs in June, and they are currently spearheading an offensive to regain the strategic Qalamoun area north of the capital. Alongside Hezbollah are several Iraqi Shiite militia expeditionary forces. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reportedly has provided arms, training of paramilitary forces, and advice to the Syrian Army.

"Assad has only been able to come back with extensive help from Hezbollah, the IRGC, and Shiite militias that can't stay deployed in Syria forever," says Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Russia also has been a vital diplomatic and logistical supporter of the Assad regime, vetoing draft United Nations Security Council resolutions advocating for stronger action against Damascus and providing the Syrian military with military aid and funds.
Analysts say that while neither Russia nor Iran are necessarily wedded to the long-term survival of Assad himself, there is little chance of either country reversing its policies toward Syria in the near future.

A third factor behind the Assad regime's survival is the nature of the regime itself. Although some senior government officials have defected, the core of the regime appears to be resilient and united, defying hopes in the West that Assad could be unseated by an internal coup.
"The idea that you could have a coup that would get rid of the evil part of the regime is a false way of thinking about this regime. It's not Assad that's evil; it's the system that created an evil Assad," says Mr. Landis. "It's an extremely narrow regime that is built on loyalty to the family and corruption. It can't function in a modern world of nation-states."
Sectarian statelets

Still, if the Assad regime lacks the military resources to regain the rest of the country and decisively crush the armed opposition, what is the best it can hope for?
Probably not much more than what it currently holds, analysts say. That means Damascus, the central cities of Homs and Hama, and the Mediterranean coastal region, which is home to the majority of Syria's Alawite community, the Shiite splinter sect that forms the backbone of the regime. (See map at left: "A post-Assad statelet?")

Aleppo, Syria's second city, and much of the north and east of the country will remain in the hands of the rebel forces.
"Victory for the ruling family at this point is continuing to be propped up in Damascus, nominally ruling western Syria, by Iran and Iranian-backed militias with Russian arms resupplies," Hof says.

In the absence of any cease-fire agreement between the two sides, it is an open question how long the regime would be able to keep the territory under its control. The Ghouta region, east of Damascus, remains heavily contested. If the Islamic Front and other leading rebel groups manage to pull together, with possible financial and logistical backing from Saudi Arabia, they could in the future pose a threat to the regime's hold on western Syria.
A Syria peace conference is scheduled to begin Jan. 22 in Montreux, Switzerland. Few expect an imminent breakthrough, however, to end a conflict that has left more than 110,000 people dead. The best that could perhaps be hoped for is a cease-fire that endorses the current de facto partition of the country, pending a broader settlement.
"I think many people in this regime would accept a trade like this because I think many Alawites know they can't reconquer the other half of the country, which is totally Sunni," says Landis.
A future of isolation

Still, the main difficulty in brokering such a cease-fire is the fact that the opposition lacks any cohesive voice, strategy, or even ideal end result, which would threaten to undermine any deal reached in Montreux.
"A stable political solution also requires an effective and coherent opposition that can sign and uphold a negotiated agreement, but such an opposition does not exist," says Mr. Sayigh of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

It may be another set of imminent negotiations that provides an impetus to resolve the Syria war – the talks between Iran and the P5+1 (Britain, France, China, Russia, the US, and Germany) over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. "The only thing that could alter [everyone's] calculations is a P5+1 deal with Iran ... this could allow agreement among the main external actors on Syria," Sayigh says.

Meanwhile, the de facto partition of Syria appears to be solidifying. That may leave Assad nominally in control of Damascus and the areas outlined above, but still heavily dependent on his Russian and Iranian allies for survival. On his hands will be an economy and infrastructure in tatters, an Alawite community fearful for its future, and almost total diplomatic and financial isolation because of sanctions against the regime.
"The US and Europe will never relegitimize Assad," says Landis. "So even if there is some formal cease-fire, the sanctions will remain imposed on the regime and it will become a North Korea, completely ostracized and a pariah state."

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2014/0105/Why-President-Bashar-al-Assad-s-rule-may-endure

iraniam · Jan 19, 2014

Al-Qaeda training British and European 'jihadists' in Syria to set up terror cells at home

British people fighting in Syria are being trained as “jihadists” and then encouraged to return to the UK to launch attacks on home soil, an al-Qaeda defector and western security sources have told the Telegraph.

In a rare interview on Turkey’s border with Syria, the defector from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) said that recruits from Britain, Europe and the US were being indoctrinated in extremist anti-Western ideology, trained in how to make and detonate car bombs and suicide vests and sent home to start new terror cells.

He has provided the first confirmation from Syrian rebels that young British men are being indoctrinated in extremist anti-Western ideology.
Some of those intent on overthrowing the Syrian regime are being brainwashed by fanatics, the former member of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) warned.

His comments echo the concerns of the security services at a time when it is feared that up to 500 Britons are fighting in Syria and could return to emulate attacks such as the London bombings and 9/11.
Britain’s security and intelligence agencies believe the threat of would-be terrorists being directed back to the UK by al-Qaeda organisers in Syria is growing.

It is feared that as genuine opposition groups fade in the war-torn country, extremist and terror groups such as ISIS will have an increasing influence allowing them to target more foreign recruits for their cause. The threat from Syria is dominating the work of MI5 and the spy agency has had to allocate more and more resources to tackling the danger in the past six months, The Daily Telegraph understands.
In an interview with this newspaper, the defector, known as Murad, said of the foreign fighters he met in Syria: “They talked often about terrorist attacks. The foreigners were proud of 9/11 and the London bombings. The British, French and American mujahideen [holy warriors] in the room started talking about places that they wanted to bomb or explode themselves in Europe and the United States. Everyone named a target. The American said he dreamed of blowing up the White House.”

Tens of thousands of foreign fighters have joined the struggle against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, including up to 500 from Britain. Of these, scores were already known to MI5 for their radical sympathies.
Some have gone to the country with genuine intentions to fight the regime but are then brainwashed by al-Qaeda and encouraged to return home and launch attacks there instead.

“This is a threat that is not going away and is likely to increase,” one senior Whitehall source said.
Last Friday, two 21-year-old men from Birmingham were charged with travelling to Syria to carry out acts of terrorism.
Two 15-year-old boys from France were reported last week to have left Toulouse to join the fighting in Syria. The possibility of French citizens returning from Syria as hardened jihadists was the “biggest threat that the country faces in the coming years,” Manuel Valls, the interior minister, said on Sunday.

France and Europe risk being “overwhelmed” by the phenomenon, he added. Mr Valls estimated that 700 French nationals have either travelled to Syria or returned to France – or are currently en route. Some 21 have been killed.
Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London, estimated last week that up to 50 British fighters have already returned home.

Last month, Richard Walton, the head of Scotland Yard’s counter – terrorism command, said there were already indications that Britons were returning from Syria with orders to carry out attacks, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out a “huge number of operations” to protect the public.
He said: “I don’t think the public realises the seriousness of the problem. The penny hasn’t dropped. But Syria is a game – changer. We are seeing it every day. You have hundreds of people going to Syria, and if they don’t get killed they get radicalised.”
In his first public speech in October, Andrew Parker, the Director General of MI5, said: “For the future, there is good reason to be concerned about Syria. A growing proportion of our casework now has some link to Syria, mostly concerning individuals from the UK who have travelled to fight there or who aspire to do so.”

ISIS, the group from which Murad defected, grew out of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq. It is now being attacked by other rebel groups, including Islamist ones, but ISIS still controls territory, particularly the area close to Syria’s border with Iraq.
Murad said that anti-Western sentiment was virulent and ISIS leaders had discussed attacking Western targets. “The meetings happened in secret,” he said. “But some of my European colleagues in ISIS told me that our emir was sending them to Europe to teach people jihad.”
Many of these foreign volunteers had come to Syria with genuine intentions, moved by images of children and women killed by the regime and hoping to defend their fellow Muslims. Young and impressionable, they had little understanding of al-Qaeda.

However, once they joined ISIS, they were subjected to daily indoctrination. Murad, a Syrian, did not give his age but appeared to be in his early twenties. Until two years ago, he had been at Aleppo University studying law, a subject that al-Qaeda abhors because it involves understanding secular law, not Sharia.

“The teachings by the older jihadists were very hardline,” he said. “I had to edit what I believed about Islam to accept them.”
Murad decided to join ISIS in Aleppo in August last year because he heard that the group was “serving Islam and protecting Muslims”. He spent time with ISIS units in their eastern stronghold of Raqqa, and in Jabal al-Akrad, a rebel-held area near the Mediterranean coast.
Every morning his group would wake at 5am to pray. After that they would study the Koran and then do two or three hours of military training. This included how to make and detonate car bombs and suicide vests.

”We all know how to do this now,” he said. “It is one of the first things they teach us, the simple training. There are different kinds of vests – one where the detonator is attached to a cord and is held the hand, and another that has five detonators on it. We had to wear them to battles. The principal purpose for this is not to let ourselves be kidnapped or arrested. It is very easy. I even taught my two brothers how to make a vest.”
But Murad disagreed with some of the “emir’s” orders that they should fight fellow Syrian rebels and treat them as “kafrs” or “unbelievers”.
“They started killing people from other Islamic groups and calling the rebel Free Syrian Army 'kafr’. But I knew some of the people who they called 'kafr’, and I knew these were good men who had fought the regime honestly under Islam,” said Murad.

He said the commanders would say the military base they were attacking belonged to the Syrian regime, when in fact it was held by other rebels. The final straw, said Murad, came when ISIS killed one of his friends: “Sultan Shami from Damascus defected from the military one and half years ago,” he said. “He became a media activist, and was one of the most wanted by the regime because his work against them was so good. But ISIS kidnapped him and then, ten days later, I found him dead in the basement of an ISIS base”.

Late one night, he escaped across the border to Turkey. “What is happening in Syria is not jihad. ISIS is not protecting Muslims it is killing them,” he said. “I want to tell all the mujahideen not come to Syria. This is not jihad; you will find yourself killing other Muslims.”
Murad did not reveal details of how foreign fighters were travelling between Europe and Syria.

The 300-mile Turkish border with Syria has proven to be porous throughout the Syrian civil war, with weapons, rebel fighters and jihadists being regularly smuggled across. These routes allow Western jihadists to enter the country without having their passport stamped, making it difficult for their country’s intelligence agency to identify that they have been to Syria.

As The Telegraph has previously revealed, al-Qaeda has a network of safe houses which operates in Turkey, through which foreign jihadists wanting to go to Syria – or back home – are funnelled.
Additional reporting by Rory Mulholland in Paris

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-in-Syria-to-set-up-terror-cells-at-home.html

InterestedinCrazy · Jan 21, 2014

Merci barayeh een post et. Jaryane Syria kheili fargh meekoneh agar dari ackhbar eh americaii ya eengilisi ya arabii meekhooni.
Man to Ireland zendegee meekohnam va raasti zeeyad too ackhbar neesteh eenjah barayeekhe eenjah hameh fekr meekonan keh Terrorism eenjah nemeyaad. Ahdamah beeshtar as economy fekr meekohnand.

Amah, vaktikeh ahdam bebeeneh chantah as een 'sleeper cells' hastaan, meetarssan. Man am meetarsaam!

iraniam · Feb 8, 2014

Syria aid convoy bound for Homs comes under attack

A convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid moves through the city of Homs, Syria. The convoy came under attack, but officials said it successfully delivered its supplies to Homs' Old City. (Syrian Arab News Agency / European Pressphoto Agency / February 8, 2014)

By Patrick J. McDonnell
February 8, 2014, 5:05 p.m.

TARTUS, Syria -- In a setback for a United Nations-brokered aid effort, a convoy carrying humanitarian assistance to civilians trapped in the center of the Syrian city of Homs on Saturday was met with gunfire and shelling, breaking a cease-fire.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said on its Facebook page that one volunteer was injured, without releasing further details. But the group said that aid had been delivered to the besieged Old City.

The Syrian state news agency reported that four Red Crescent staffers were hurt in the attack.
The aid convoy came under attack from both rifle fire and mortars from “armed terrorist groups,” the official media reported, using the government’s standard label for rebels.

Various antigovernment activists blamed the attack on the Syrian military in comments to news agencies and on the Internet.
The Red Crescent said two truckloads of food and other aid were delivered to the Old City. A photo released by the group on its Twitter account showed a pair of trucks being unloaded amid the rubble. The group said it was able to deliver 250 food parcels and 190 parcels containing detergents and medicines, the Associated Press reported.

The Old City of Homs remains in the hands of various factions of antigovernment rebels, though the area is surrounded by the Syrian military. About 2,500 civilians are believed to be living in the ancient quarter, lacking sufficient food and other staples.
The plight of civilians trapped in Old Homs has received global attention and was a high-profile issue during Syrian peace talks in Geneva last month. The Syrian government and United Nations officials have pledged to do what they can to aid the residents.

The current aid effort involves a daily cease-fire to allow deliveries of supplies into the Old City and the evacuation of civilians who want to leave. U.N. officials said the rebels and the government had agreed to a daily cessation of hostilities for humanitarian reasons.
But the cease-fire has now been broken on both days of the aid operation, which began Friday with the evacuation of 83 civilians.
On both days, Syrian military forces and police accompanied aid vehicles to a point close to the entrance to the Old City, heavily damaged in more than two years of fighting.

On Saturday, the official media said, one aid vehicle turned back because it had been shot five times by a sniper, while another returned when an “explosive device” detonated on the road, impeding its progress.

Still, reports indicated that two trucks carrying food and other humanitarian aid were able to enter the Old City.
The previous successful aid delivery to the Old City had taken place in May 2012, officials said.
The governor of Homs province, Talal Barazi, accused various rebel factions operating in the Old City of trying to seize the aid and diverting its entry to areas under their control.

Humanitarian groups called on both sides to respect the neutrality of the aid operation and to refrain from firing on the convoys. Officials vowed the aid operation would continue despite the violations of the cease-fire.

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syria-homs-breakdown-20140208,0,5888019.story#ixzz2smda4AGg

iraniam · Feb 8, 2014

Video: Nonviolent Palestinian protesters sing as they are forcibly evicted by soldiers from occupied village

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/02/nonviolent-palestinian-protesters.html

iraniam · Feb 22, 2014

First UN report on children in Syria’s civil war paints picture of ‘unspeakable’ horrors

Syrian children shelter in the doorway of a house, amid gunfire and shelling, in a city affected by the conflict. Photo: UNICEF/NYHQ2012-0218/Alessio Romenzi

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4 February 2014 – Syrian children have been subjected to “unspeakable” suffering in the nearly three years of civil war, with the Government and allied militia responsible for countless killings, maiming and torture, and the opposition for recruiting youngsters for combat and using terror tactics in civilian areas, according to the first United Nations report on the issue.

“Violations must come to an end now,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in the report, which was released yesterday to the Security Council. “I therefore urge all parties to the conflict to take, without delay, all measures to protect and uphold the rights of all children in Syria.”
The report, covering the period from 1 March 2011 to 15 November 2013, lists a raft of horrors that Syria’s children have suffered since the opposition first sought to oust President Bashar al-Assad, ranging from direct commission of abuse, including sexual violence, to more general violation of their rights from school closures and denial of access to humanitarian aid.

“The present report highlights that use of weaponry and military tactics that are disproportionate and indiscriminate by Government forces and associated militias has resulted in countless killings and the maiming of children, and has obstructed children’s access to education and health services,” Mr. Ban writes.

“Government forces have also been responsible for the arrest, arbitrary detention, ill treatment and torture of children. Armed opposition groups have been responsible for the recruitment and use of children both in combat and support roles, as well as for conducting military operations, including using terror tactics, in civilian-populated areas, leading to civilian casualties, including children.”

The report spotlights the disappearance of many children, notes that all parties to the conflict have seriously hampered the delivery of humanitarian assistance in areas most affected by the fighting, and warns that children have experienced a high level of distress as a result of witnessing the killing and injuring of members of their families and peers, or of being separated from their family and/or displaced.
Detailing the detention of children as young as 11 years old for alleged association with armed groups by Government forces in large-scale arrest campaigns, the reports says they were ill-treated and tortured to extract confessions or humiliate them or pressure a relative to surrender or confess.

“Ill treatment and acts tantamount to torture reportedly included beatings with metal cables, whips and wooden and metal batons; electric shock, including to the genitals; the ripping out of fingernails and toenails; sexual violence, including rape or threats of rape; mock executions; cigarette burns; sleep deprivation; solitary confinement; and exposure to the torture of relatives,” the report says.
“Reports indicate that children were also suspended from walls or ceilings by their wrists or other limbs, were forced to put their head, neck and legs through a tire while being beaten, and were tied to a board and beaten.

The report cites a 16-year-old boy as saying he witnessed his 14-year-old male friend being sexually assaulted and then killed, and notes other allegations that boys and in a few instances girls were raped. The 16-year-old said children and adults were beaten with metal bars, their fingernails pulled out, their fingers cut. “Or they were beaten with a hammer in the back, sometimes until death,” he added.
Allegations of sexual violence by opposition groups were also received, but the UN was unable to further investigate them due to lack of access, the report says.

It adds that opposition forces recruited and used both in support roles and for combat, while Government forces used children as human shields. It notes that during the first two years of the conflict, most killings and maiming of children were attributed to Government forces, but mainly due to increased access to heavy weapons and the use of terror tactics opposition groups increasingly engaged in such acts in 2013.
“Armed opposition groups also engaged in the summary execution of children,” it says, reporting that lack of access, including for security reasons, prevented the UN from systematic documentation.

Schools and hospitals have been disproportionally targeted by all parties, with indications that Government forces were the main perpetrators of attacks against hospitals and other health-care infrastructure, mainly opposition-run makeshift health facilities and of threats and attacks against medical personnel, according to the report.

“Injured opposition fighters and civilians, including children, admitted to Government hospitals in perceived pro-opposition areas in Aleppo, Dar’a, Homs and Idlib governorates were reportedly exposed to arrest, detention, ill treatment and acts tantamount to torture by civilian doctors, and/or elements of Government forces,” it says.

The UN also received reports on instances where opposition groups denied medical treatment to injured pro-Government fighters, or misused ambulances, including to cross Government checkpoints.

In his list of recommendations, Mr. Ban calls on all sides to stop all grave violations against children cited in the report, end all indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian areas, including terror tactics, airstrikes, chemical weapons and heavy artillery, allow unimpeded humanitarian access, and immediately release abducted women and children.

https://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47077&Cr=syria&Cr1

iraniam · Feb 26, 2014

Shocking scale of deprivation at Syria camp revealed

This picture taken on January 31, 2014, and released by the UNRWA on February 26, 2014, shows residents of the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk queuing to receive food supplies in Damascus, Syria Photo: UNRWA/AP

A picture showing thousands of residents queuing for food has revealed shocking levels of deprivation inside a beseiged camp in Syria.
The scene of thousands of trapped residents standing among the shells of blackened buildings and mounds of rubble in the Damascus district of Yarmouk was today described as "apocalyptic" by UN officials during a rare visit.

Filippo Grandi, the UN Relief and Work's Agency’s Commissioner General, said he was left “shaken and deeply disturbed” by the conditions he witnessed when humanitarian aid distribution began again on Monday morning.
UN officials have called on both forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebel groups to allow aid workers to deliver much-needed food and medicine into Yarmouk - a predominantly Palestinian neighbourhood where residents have remained trapped for almost a year.

Yarmouk has seen some of the worst fighting in the capital, leading to to severe food shortages and widespread hunger.
The photograph - which was taken last month but released today by the UN - shows thousands of the some 160,000 residents who remain trapped queuing as far as the eye can see for food parcels and water.

The Yarmouk camp, located on the southern edge of Damascus, is one of the hardest-hit of a number of opposition enclaves under tight blockades imposed by pro-government forces.
Activists and aid groups have accused the military of using starvation as a weapon of war, while the government says "terrorists" are holding people hostage in besieged areas.

The UN relief agency has distributed more than 7,000 food parcels in the camp since 18 January. The UN has reported infant malnutrition in the community, which has been reduced to eating animal feed
Activists say at least 85 people had died in Yarmouk since mid-2013 as a result of starvation and illnesses exacerbated by hunger or lack of medical aid.

The call comes as Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General urged Syrian government to authorise more humanitarian staff to work inside the country, devastated by its three-year-old conflict.

The resolution called for the immediate lifting of sieges in specific towns and cities around the country, including Yarmouk, that took in refugees after the creation of Israel, where people have been trapped for eight months by an army siege.
Video posted on YouTube by a citizen journalist shows residents in Yarmouk lining up to receive aid but complaining that the recent aid is much too little and they are still forbidden from leaving the area.

"We don't want aid parcels; open the road, and then we can get food and drink outside," said a woman.
Another man accused the government of using the small aid deliveries as a media stunt to show that the government was helping civilians.
"They bring 10 aid parcels and Syrian TV films and so they say we distributed aid. This is a lie," he said, standing in a group of men, women and children, ruined streets behind them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...N-calls-for-free-access-to-besieged-camp.html

iraniam · Mar 6, 2014

This Heartbreaking Video Imagines What Would Happen If Syria’s War Came To Your Children

“Just because it isn’t happening here, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.” Warning: This video contains sensitive images.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/miriamberger/this-heartbreaking-video-imagines-what-would-happen-if-syria

iraniam · Mar 11, 2014

These Are The Stories Of 15 Fallen Syrians

http://www.buzzfeed.com/miriamberger/these-are-the-stories-of-15-fallen-syrians

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