http://www.president.ir/en/74818
news id: 74818 - Monday 10 February 2014 - 12:25
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Submitting credential of new ambassador of Mexico
Submitting credential of new ambassador of Mexico
http://www.president.ir/en/74818
news id: 74818 - Monday 10 February 2014 - 12:25
http://www.president.ir/en/74818
news id: 74818 - Monday 10 February 2014 - 12:25
President in a meeting with New Mexican Ambassador: Iran enjoys cordial ties with Latin American states, Mexico
President in a meeting with New Mexican Ambassador: Iran enjoys cordial ties with Latin American states, Mexico
http://www.president.ir/en/74822
Ulises Canchola Gutierrez, New Mexican Ambassador, respectively, in a meeting on Monday submitted his credential to the President Hassan Rouhani.
news id: 74822 - Monday 10 February 2014 - 12:43
President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran enjoys cordial ties with Latin American states including Mexico, stressing there is a strong will to expand Tehran-Mexico City relations in line with national interests.
Today, the President said, grounds have been prepared for fostering cultural and economic relations between Iran and Mexico.
For his part, the Mexican envoy said he will make his effort to develop all-out bilateral cooperation between the two nations.
http://www.president.ir/en/74822
Ulises Canchola Gutierrez, New Mexican Ambassador, respectively, in a meeting on Monday submitted his credential to the President Hassan Rouhani.
news id: 74822 - Monday 10 February 2014 - 12:43
President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran enjoys cordial ties with Latin American states including Mexico, stressing there is a strong will to expand Tehran-Mexico City relations in line with national interests.
Today, the President said, grounds have been prepared for fostering cultural and economic relations between Iran and Mexico.
For his part, the Mexican envoy said he will make his effort to develop all-out bilateral cooperation between the two nations.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Some Mexican Catholics now find God in Islam
Some Mexican Catholics now find God in Islam
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_25133713/some-mexican-catholics-now-find-god-islam
By William Schaefer, Global Post
Posted: 02/13/2014 11:25:22 AM MST
MEXICO CITY — For almost five centuries Catholicism has been the dominant religion in Mexico.
In 1970, Catholics comprised 96.7 percent of Mexico's population. By 2010, that number had fallen to 82.7 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. Most of this change is attributed to growth in other Christian denominations. Evangelicals, Protestants and Jehovah's Witnesses now account for 8 percent of Mexicans who identify with a religion.
And a small yet growing group of converts are seeking spiritual salvation in Islam. In fact, Pew estimates Mexico will be home to 126,000 Muslims by 2030, up from 111,000 in 2010.
Why are some Mexicans leaving the Catholic Church and converting?
The reasons are as diverse as the population. Some question Catholic doctrine and the concept of the Trinity — three Gods in one, Father, Son and Holy Spirit — as opposed to one God in Islam. Others express disgust in ongoing allegations of sex scandals and pederasty that have plagued the church in the past decade. Still others say they want to have a better understanding of Islam.
Martha Alamilla, 23, was born and raised in a Catholic family. Alamilla has always believed in a higher power but, she said, when she began to question some of the principles of the church, she found the answers proffered unsatisfactory.
“There was never a doubt in my mind that God existed,” she said one Friday following prayers at the mosque, “but there were always things that I would ask about my religion that didn't make sense to me. I always got answers like, 'well, because,' and 'it's God and God is that way,' and 'because God said it was that way.'”
For Alamilla, who has a degree in industrial robotic engineering, these answers only drove her from the church in search of better answers.
Alamilla said that her original perception of Islam was one of terrorism and oppression, but in the course of studying the Koran and meeting Muslims, she discovered a belief system that answers the questions she has been asking.
“I realized it's a beautiful religion. Everything about it makes sense,” Alamilla said. “There's an answer to every single question the I've ever had in the Koran or in the Sunna.”
After studying Islam for six months, Alamilla officially converted in a ceremony called the Shahada, during which a person professes before two Muslim witnesses that, “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of God.”
Alamilla said that one of the most common misunderstandings about Islam is that the women are oppressed, aren't allowed to express themselves and are forced to wear veils or cover themselves. In the course of her studies Alamilla said the she learned that wearing a veil or hijab is optional.
“Every single Muslim I've met is a wonderful person,” she said. “Not because they were necessarily born that way but because religion makes then that way.”
Alamilla has embraced her new faith, but revealing her decision to her Catholic family is another story. Her mother and brother know that she has been studying Islam, but she said she is not ready to tell them of her conversion.
“I want to prove to them first with my actions that I've changed as a person,” she said. “When I tell them that I've converted I want them to see that I'm still the same person but trying to be better.”
Standing off to the side, listening to Martha Alamilla describe her change of faith was Leslie Camarillo.
Camarillo faced a similar loss of faith in the Catholic Church and has been a practicing Muslim for three years. Camarillo said that from the time she was a child she questioned the doctrine of the church.
“I found a hypocrisy about the church when I was a child,” Camarillo said. “Every time I saw figures of fire and flames I was scared and afraid of God.”
Part of the hypocrisy could be found in the concept of the Trinity, she said.
“About this Trinity. How come God is so magnificent that he would want to be human and make himself die but still be immortal in heaven?” she asked rhetorically.
Camarillo doesn't shy from sharing her personal search for a faith to believe in. Like Alamilla, she grew up in a Catholic household.
“I always thought about God,” Camarillo said in a subtle, quiet tone. “I always thought that there is a master or a God who created everything.”
“I tried many religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and many others,” she said. “I had a personal life that was like very liberal. I tried many drugs and stuff. It isn't a bad thing for me because now I know what is good and what is wrong. ... I promised myself that once I found a religion that truly answered all my questions without doubt, I will embrace it.”
Camarillo said she sees in Islam lessons she can share with others who are searching for something to believe in.
“I can advise other guys or girls who are searching around,” Camarillo said. “The main thing is that your connection with God is unique.”
According to a paper published in 2011 by Camila Pastor de Maria y Campos, a research professor at the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas in Mexico City, there are additional reasons some Mexicans are converting to Islam. In her report, “To be a new Muslim in Mexico: the political economy of the faith,”Campos writes that Islam offers a mark of cosmopolitan distinction for some converts, and the wearing of a hijab is considered fashionable by women.
Campos also found that some convert because they find Islam's egalitarian message appealing, others express a desire to build a religious society in Latin America similar to the Nation of Islam in the United States, and some convert because of marriage.
Said Louahabi has lived in Mexico City for over 20 years and has witnessed first hand the Islam's growing appeal in Mexico. Louahabi is a multilingual Morrocan national who runs his own language school and at other times works as a translator. He serves as the president of the education center of the Muslim community mosque.
Louahabi recalls a time, in the 1990s, when Mexico's Islamic community was too small to merit a mosque of even this size. It was a time when most of the Muslims were diplomats and businessman stationed in the capital city.
The Islamic community was made up of “very few local people, mostly foreigners,” Louahabi said. “We were about 80 people, because, honestly, they didn't know about Islam.”
Louahabi estimates that the there were about 80 Muslims when he came to Mexico City in 1994.
“It took me two months, three months to find a Muslim when I first came to Mexico,” he said.
Today, being a Muslim in Mexico is a wholly different environment, he said.
“Now, the majority are Mexican,” he said. “God brings them. It's very hard to say why we have become very successful at this time. Almost every Friday we are having people who are embracing Islam. Sometimes five in one Friday.”
Louahabi said that women in Mexico seem to exhibit more interest in Islam than men.
When asked why this is, he responded, “ they [women] have a lot of questions and a lot of doubts that priests from other religions could not answer.”
This reporting was made possible through a fellowship funded by the Luce Foundation and administered by the International Center for Journalists.
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_25133713/some-mexican-catholics-now-find-god-islam
By William Schaefer, Global Post
Posted: 02/13/2014 11:25:22 AM MST
Leslie Camarillo, left, and Martha Alamilla, both from Mexico City, at the Centro Educativo de la Comunidad Musulmana in Mexico City, following Friday prayers. (Bill Schaefer/GlobalPost)
MEXICO CITY — For almost five centuries Catholicism has been the dominant religion in Mexico.
In 1970, Catholics comprised 96.7 percent of Mexico's population. By 2010, that number had fallen to 82.7 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. Most of this change is attributed to growth in other Christian denominations. Evangelicals, Protestants and Jehovah's Witnesses now account for 8 percent of Mexicans who identify with a religion.
And a small yet growing group of converts are seeking spiritual salvation in Islam. In fact, Pew estimates Mexico will be home to 126,000 Muslims by 2030, up from 111,000 in 2010.
Why are some Mexicans leaving the Catholic Church and converting?
The reasons are as diverse as the population. Some question Catholic doctrine and the concept of the Trinity — three Gods in one, Father, Son and Holy Spirit — as opposed to one God in Islam. Others express disgust in ongoing allegations of sex scandals and pederasty that have plagued the church in the past decade. Still others say they want to have a better understanding of Islam.
Martha Alamilla, 23, was born and raised in a Catholic family. Alamilla has always believed in a higher power but, she said, when she began to question some of the principles of the church, she found the answers proffered unsatisfactory.
“There was never a doubt in my mind that God existed,” she said one Friday following prayers at the mosque, “but there were always things that I would ask about my religion that didn't make sense to me. I always got answers like, 'well, because,' and 'it's God and God is that way,' and 'because God said it was that way.'”
For Alamilla, who has a degree in industrial robotic engineering, these answers only drove her from the church in search of better answers.
Alamilla said that her original perception of Islam was one of terrorism and oppression, but in the course of studying the Koran and meeting Muslims, she discovered a belief system that answers the questions she has been asking.
“I realized it's a beautiful religion. Everything about it makes sense,” Alamilla said. “There's an answer to every single question the I've ever had in the Koran or in the Sunna.”
After studying Islam for six months, Alamilla officially converted in a ceremony called the Shahada, during which a person professes before two Muslim witnesses that, “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of God.”
Alamilla said that one of the most common misunderstandings about Islam is that the women are oppressed, aren't allowed to express themselves and are forced to wear veils or cover themselves. In the course of her studies Alamilla said the she learned that wearing a veil or hijab is optional.
“Every single Muslim I've met is a wonderful person,” she said. “Not because they were necessarily born that way but because religion makes then that way.”
Alamilla has embraced her new faith, but revealing her decision to her Catholic family is another story. Her mother and brother know that she has been studying Islam, but she said she is not ready to tell them of her conversion.
“I want to prove to them first with my actions that I've changed as a person,” she said. “When I tell them that I've converted I want them to see that I'm still the same person but trying to be better.”
Standing off to the side, listening to Martha Alamilla describe her change of faith was Leslie Camarillo.
Camarillo faced a similar loss of faith in the Catholic Church and has been a practicing Muslim for three years. Camarillo said that from the time she was a child she questioned the doctrine of the church.
“I found a hypocrisy about the church when I was a child,” Camarillo said. “Every time I saw figures of fire and flames I was scared and afraid of God.”
Part of the hypocrisy could be found in the concept of the Trinity, she said.
“About this Trinity. How come God is so magnificent that he would want to be human and make himself die but still be immortal in heaven?” she asked rhetorically.
Camarillo doesn't shy from sharing her personal search for a faith to believe in. Like Alamilla, she grew up in a Catholic household.
“I always thought about God,” Camarillo said in a subtle, quiet tone. “I always thought that there is a master or a God who created everything.”
“I tried many religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and many others,” she said. “I had a personal life that was like very liberal. I tried many drugs and stuff. It isn't a bad thing for me because now I know what is good and what is wrong. ... I promised myself that once I found a religion that truly answered all my questions without doubt, I will embrace it.”
Camarillo said she sees in Islam lessons she can share with others who are searching for something to believe in.
“I can advise other guys or girls who are searching around,” Camarillo said. “The main thing is that your connection with God is unique.”
According to a paper published in 2011 by Camila Pastor de Maria y Campos, a research professor at the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas in Mexico City, there are additional reasons some Mexicans are converting to Islam. In her report, “To be a new Muslim in Mexico: the political economy of the faith,”Campos writes that Islam offers a mark of cosmopolitan distinction for some converts, and the wearing of a hijab is considered fashionable by women.
Campos also found that some convert because they find Islam's egalitarian message appealing, others express a desire to build a religious society in Latin America similar to the Nation of Islam in the United States, and some convert because of marriage.
Said Louahabi has lived in Mexico City for over 20 years and has witnessed first hand the Islam's growing appeal in Mexico. Louahabi is a multilingual Morrocan national who runs his own language school and at other times works as a translator. He serves as the president of the education center of the Muslim community mosque.
Louahabi recalls a time, in the 1990s, when Mexico's Islamic community was too small to merit a mosque of even this size. It was a time when most of the Muslims were diplomats and businessman stationed in the capital city.
The Islamic community was made up of “very few local people, mostly foreigners,” Louahabi said. “We were about 80 people, because, honestly, they didn't know about Islam.”
Louahabi estimates that the there were about 80 Muslims when he came to Mexico City in 1994.
“It took me two months, three months to find a Muslim when I first came to Mexico,” he said.
Today, being a Muslim in Mexico is a wholly different environment, he said.
“Now, the majority are Mexican,” he said. “God brings them. It's very hard to say why we have become very successful at this time. Almost every Friday we are having people who are embracing Islam. Sometimes five in one Friday.”
Louahabi said that women in Mexico seem to exhibit more interest in Islam than men.
When asked why this is, he responded, “ they [women] have a lot of questions and a lot of doubts that priests from other religions could not answer.”
This reporting was made possible through a fellowship funded by the Luce Foundation and administered by the International Center for Journalists.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
El plan de siete fases de Al Qaida
El plan de siete fases de Al Qaida
http://islammdp.blogspot.com/2014/02/el-plan-de-siete-fases-de-al-qaida.html
4/2/14
Etiquetas: al qaeda11-s, hezbollah, siria, terrorismo
En ciertos círculos salafi-yihadistas ha estado circulando un así llamado “plan estratégico de Al Qaida” que la organización intentaría implementar en un período de 20 años. Dicho plan comenzó en 2000 y pretende estar terminado hacia el año 2020.
La creencia más extendida es que las actividades terroristas de Al Qaida son aleatorias y no están gobernadas por una clara estrategia. Sin embargo, esto es un error.
Una agencia de seguridad, casi un año después del inicio del conflicto en Siria, pudo interceptar una correspondencia entre el líder del Frente al Nusra, Abu Mohammed al Yulani, y una prominente figura de Al Qaida en el Líbano, en la que se detallaban los planes del grupo yihadista para después de la caída del régimen de Siria y la toma del poder en ese país, que incluían el reclutamiento de expertos en medicina, química y telecomunicaciones, y la expansión al Líbano en preparación de otras operaciones.
Documentos obtenidos por la agencia de seguridad revelan que la estrategia de Al Qaida en el Líbano y la región incluye objetivos específicos, tanto en lo que respecta a la lucha sobre el terreno como al nivel del reclutamiento y movilización.
Algunas de las características del plan fueron mencionadas en un libro publicado en 2005 por el periodista jordano, Fuad Hussein, y titulado “Zarqawi, la Segunda Generación de Al Qaida”, Hussein entrevistó a Sheij Abu Mohammed al Maqdisi, un prominente ideólogo de Al Qaida, y a Abu Musab al Zarqawi, en la prisión de Suaqa, en Jordania.
Otro libro que circula en los foros yihadistas y titulado “Así es como vemos y queremos el yihad”, arroja luz sobre los objetivos, planes y fases a través de las cuales Al Qaida quiere tomar el poder. El plan llama a expandir las actividades yihadistas para cubrir todo el mundo “y ampliar la fuerza de la nación y aterrorizar a sus enemigos”. El plan está dividido en siete fases y cubre dos décadas, de 2000 a 2010, el año en que “la victoria final” debería ser alcanzada.
La primera fase, desde 2000 a 2003, es calificada como “la fase del despertar”. Esta fase se está concentrada en “el despertar de la nación” “mediante el asestamiento de un poderoso golpe a la cabeza de la serpiente en Nueva York”. El objetivo es empujar a EEUU a reaccionar de tal forma que “corone a Al Qaida como el líder de la nación”. Esto impulsaría lo que Al Qaida denomina “cruzada contra el Islam”, que incluiría la invasión de Iraq y Afganistán y que, según Al Qaida, convertiría a los norteamericanos en una presa fácil” y ayudaría a extender la organización, tal como como sucede hoy en día. Esta fase terminó con la ocupación de Iraq en 2003.
La segunda fase, de 2003 a 2006 es la fase de “abrir los ojos”. En esta fase, el plan de Al Qaida era combatir al enemigo de forma continua, mientras desarrollaba las capacidades del “yihad electrónico”, en preparación de la tercera fase.
En paralelo, Al Qaida buscaría expandirse tranquilamente en algunas partes estratégicas del mundo árabe e islámico, mientras usaba a Iraq como base para desplegarse luego en los estados vecinos al inicio de la tercera fase. Además, serían realizados esfuerzos para recaudar fondos a través de las organizaciones caritativas.
En la tercera fase, de 2007 a 2010, que es calificada como “el ascenso y la permanencia de pie”, importantes cambios tendrían lugar en la región que rodea Iraq.
En primer lugar, el foco será dirigido al Sham (Gran Siria). En su libro, el periodista jordano afirma que la idea de crear una rama de la organización en la Gran Siria, que sería conocida como el Yund al Sham, fue propuesta en los días de la ocupación soviética de Afganistán, aunque la idea no pudo ponerse en práctica antes debido a la invasión de Afganistán por parte de EEUU.
Hussein explica que los abogados de esta idea volvieron a Siria, el Líbano e Iraq en 2005 para prepararse para cualquier oportunidad que se les presentara allí. Al final de esta fase, Al Qaida habría iniciado, en teoría, los preparativos para iniciar operaciones directas en Palestina y en la frontera con Israel para “establecer a Al Qaida como el legítimo líder de la nación”.
La cuarta fase, desde 2010 a 2013, es llamada “la recuperación” y ha coincidido con la ola de levantamientos de la Primavera Árabe y la crisis en Siria. En esta fase, Al Qaida dirigirá su atención hacia el derribo de los regímenes árabes mediante la participación directa en una insurgencia contra ellos.
El plan de Al Qaida, según los documentos, sería el de “desacreditar a los regímenes a los ojos de la población mediante la exposición de su colaboración con la política estadounidense”. Esto, según el plan de al Qaida, iría parejo con el crecimiento del poder de la organización y el agotamiento del poder estadounidense a través de los combates directos, pero también con “ataques electrónicos contra la economía norteamericana y contra instalaciones petrolíferas árabes con el fin de dañar a los regímenes árabes y a sus protectores occidentales”.
La quinta fase, de 2013 a 2016, sería “la declaración del califato o del estado islámico”, que es el último objetivo de la organización. Esta fase vería muchas transformaciones internacionales, que comenzarían con el declive del eje anglosajón y la emergencia de nuevos poderes mundiales contra los que los musulmanes no tienen un antagonismo, como India y China, en tandem con el crecimiento de Al Qaida.
La sexta fase, de 2016 a 2020, es la fase de la “guerra total”. Los ideólogos de Al Qaida estiman que el inicio de 2016 sería “el comienzo de la confrontación entre la fe y la no creencia, que empezaría poco después del establecimiento del califato islámico”, lo cual viene recogido en varios discursos de Osama bin Laden.
La última fase o fase final tendría lugar sobre el año 2020. Por entonces, según los planes de Al Qaida, “la capacidad del estado islámico se incrementará cuando los musulmanes superen el número de 1.500 millones”.
Los documentos que subrayan esta estrategia fueron publicados en 2005. Comparando su contenido con la realidad, uno comprende que muchos de los objetivos han sido alcanzados: los ataques de Nueva York en 2001; la utilización de Afganistán e Iraq para la creación de “un ejército yihadista” y la subsiguiente expansión a Siria y la creación del Estado Islámico de Iraq y Siria (EIIS) en 2013. La pregunta es: ¿seguirá Al Qaida creciendo en fuerza hasta lograr la victoria en 2020?.
Hezbolá a los ojos de Al Qaida
Los sitios y páginas web yihadistas han hecho también circular un libro llamado “Hezbolá y la diseminación de la secta shií” en la que se habla de la ideología del Partido de la Resistencia libanés desde la perspectiva de Al Qaida. El libro fue publicado en primer lugar por el sitio web Minbar al Tauhid wal Yihad, que está dirigido a promover las ideas del ideólogo de Al Qaida Sheij Abu Mohammed al Maqdisi, el mentor de Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
El libro resume la percepción yihadista sobre Hezbolá y advierte a los sunníes, en especial a los palestinos, en contra de “caer presa del partido shií libanés”. “Hezbolá es la puerta mayor del gran complot internacional shií. Hezbolá utiliza el tema de Palestina para expandir el shiísmo por el mundo”, afirma.
El autor del libro, Sheij Abdul Munim Halimeh, se ha aliado con el Frente Islámico contra el EIIS en Siria. También cabe mencionar que el libro fue publicado en 2002, casi una década antes de la intervención de Hezbolá en el conflicto sirio.
Al Manar
http://islammdp.blogspot.com/2014/02/el-plan-de-siete-fases-de-al-qaida.html
4/2/14
Etiquetas: al qaeda11-s, hezbollah, siria, terrorismo
En ciertos círculos salafi-yihadistas ha estado circulando un así llamado “plan estratégico de Al Qaida” que la organización intentaría implementar en un período de 20 años. Dicho plan comenzó en 2000 y pretende estar terminado hacia el año 2020.
La creencia más extendida es que las actividades terroristas de Al Qaida son aleatorias y no están gobernadas por una clara estrategia. Sin embargo, esto es un error.
Una agencia de seguridad, casi un año después del inicio del conflicto en Siria, pudo interceptar una correspondencia entre el líder del Frente al Nusra, Abu Mohammed al Yulani, y una prominente figura de Al Qaida en el Líbano, en la que se detallaban los planes del grupo yihadista para después de la caída del régimen de Siria y la toma del poder en ese país, que incluían el reclutamiento de expertos en medicina, química y telecomunicaciones, y la expansión al Líbano en preparación de otras operaciones.
Documentos obtenidos por la agencia de seguridad revelan que la estrategia de Al Qaida en el Líbano y la región incluye objetivos específicos, tanto en lo que respecta a la lucha sobre el terreno como al nivel del reclutamiento y movilización.
Algunas de las características del plan fueron mencionadas en un libro publicado en 2005 por el periodista jordano, Fuad Hussein, y titulado “Zarqawi, la Segunda Generación de Al Qaida”, Hussein entrevistó a Sheij Abu Mohammed al Maqdisi, un prominente ideólogo de Al Qaida, y a Abu Musab al Zarqawi, en la prisión de Suaqa, en Jordania.
Otro libro que circula en los foros yihadistas y titulado “Así es como vemos y queremos el yihad”, arroja luz sobre los objetivos, planes y fases a través de las cuales Al Qaida quiere tomar el poder. El plan llama a expandir las actividades yihadistas para cubrir todo el mundo “y ampliar la fuerza de la nación y aterrorizar a sus enemigos”. El plan está dividido en siete fases y cubre dos décadas, de 2000 a 2010, el año en que “la victoria final” debería ser alcanzada.
La primera fase, desde 2000 a 2003, es calificada como “la fase del despertar”. Esta fase se está concentrada en “el despertar de la nación” “mediante el asestamiento de un poderoso golpe a la cabeza de la serpiente en Nueva York”. El objetivo es empujar a EEUU a reaccionar de tal forma que “corone a Al Qaida como el líder de la nación”. Esto impulsaría lo que Al Qaida denomina “cruzada contra el Islam”, que incluiría la invasión de Iraq y Afganistán y que, según Al Qaida, convertiría a los norteamericanos en una presa fácil” y ayudaría a extender la organización, tal como como sucede hoy en día. Esta fase terminó con la ocupación de Iraq en 2003.
La segunda fase, de 2003 a 2006 es la fase de “abrir los ojos”. En esta fase, el plan de Al Qaida era combatir al enemigo de forma continua, mientras desarrollaba las capacidades del “yihad electrónico”, en preparación de la tercera fase.
En paralelo, Al Qaida buscaría expandirse tranquilamente en algunas partes estratégicas del mundo árabe e islámico, mientras usaba a Iraq como base para desplegarse luego en los estados vecinos al inicio de la tercera fase. Además, serían realizados esfuerzos para recaudar fondos a través de las organizaciones caritativas.
En la tercera fase, de 2007 a 2010, que es calificada como “el ascenso y la permanencia de pie”, importantes cambios tendrían lugar en la región que rodea Iraq.
En primer lugar, el foco será dirigido al Sham (Gran Siria). En su libro, el periodista jordano afirma que la idea de crear una rama de la organización en la Gran Siria, que sería conocida como el Yund al Sham, fue propuesta en los días de la ocupación soviética de Afganistán, aunque la idea no pudo ponerse en práctica antes debido a la invasión de Afganistán por parte de EEUU.
Hussein explica que los abogados de esta idea volvieron a Siria, el Líbano e Iraq en 2005 para prepararse para cualquier oportunidad que se les presentara allí. Al final de esta fase, Al Qaida habría iniciado, en teoría, los preparativos para iniciar operaciones directas en Palestina y en la frontera con Israel para “establecer a Al Qaida como el legítimo líder de la nación”.
La cuarta fase, desde 2010 a 2013, es llamada “la recuperación” y ha coincidido con la ola de levantamientos de la Primavera Árabe y la crisis en Siria. En esta fase, Al Qaida dirigirá su atención hacia el derribo de los regímenes árabes mediante la participación directa en una insurgencia contra ellos.
El plan de Al Qaida, según los documentos, sería el de “desacreditar a los regímenes a los ojos de la población mediante la exposición de su colaboración con la política estadounidense”. Esto, según el plan de al Qaida, iría parejo con el crecimiento del poder de la organización y el agotamiento del poder estadounidense a través de los combates directos, pero también con “ataques electrónicos contra la economía norteamericana y contra instalaciones petrolíferas árabes con el fin de dañar a los regímenes árabes y a sus protectores occidentales”.
La quinta fase, de 2013 a 2016, sería “la declaración del califato o del estado islámico”, que es el último objetivo de la organización. Esta fase vería muchas transformaciones internacionales, que comenzarían con el declive del eje anglosajón y la emergencia de nuevos poderes mundiales contra los que los musulmanes no tienen un antagonismo, como India y China, en tandem con el crecimiento de Al Qaida.
La sexta fase, de 2016 a 2020, es la fase de la “guerra total”. Los ideólogos de Al Qaida estiman que el inicio de 2016 sería “el comienzo de la confrontación entre la fe y la no creencia, que empezaría poco después del establecimiento del califato islámico”, lo cual viene recogido en varios discursos de Osama bin Laden.
La última fase o fase final tendría lugar sobre el año 2020. Por entonces, según los planes de Al Qaida, “la capacidad del estado islámico se incrementará cuando los musulmanes superen el número de 1.500 millones”.
Los documentos que subrayan esta estrategia fueron publicados en 2005. Comparando su contenido con la realidad, uno comprende que muchos de los objetivos han sido alcanzados: los ataques de Nueva York en 2001; la utilización de Afganistán e Iraq para la creación de “un ejército yihadista” y la subsiguiente expansión a Siria y la creación del Estado Islámico de Iraq y Siria (EIIS) en 2013. La pregunta es: ¿seguirá Al Qaida creciendo en fuerza hasta lograr la victoria en 2020?.
Hezbolá a los ojos de Al Qaida
Los sitios y páginas web yihadistas han hecho también circular un libro llamado “Hezbolá y la diseminación de la secta shií” en la que se habla de la ideología del Partido de la Resistencia libanés desde la perspectiva de Al Qaida. El libro fue publicado en primer lugar por el sitio web Minbar al Tauhid wal Yihad, que está dirigido a promover las ideas del ideólogo de Al Qaida Sheij Abu Mohammed al Maqdisi, el mentor de Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
El libro resume la percepción yihadista sobre Hezbolá y advierte a los sunníes, en especial a los palestinos, en contra de “caer presa del partido shií libanés”. “Hezbolá es la puerta mayor del gran complot internacional shií. Hezbolá utiliza el tema de Palestina para expandir el shiísmo por el mundo”, afirma.
El autor del libro, Sheij Abdul Munim Halimeh, se ha aliado con el Frente Islámico contra el EIIS en Siria. También cabe mencionar que el libro fue publicado en 2002, casi una década antes de la intervención de Hezbolá en el conflicto sirio.
Al Manar
El Papa critica la 'limosna' de la 'aparente piedad filantrópica' del que da lo que le sobra
El Papa critica la 'limosna' de la 'aparente piedad filantrópica' del que da lo que le sobra
http://islammdp.blogspot.com/2014/02/el-papa-critica-la-limosna-de-la.html
4/2/14
Etiquetas: cristianismo
El Papa Francisco pide empobrecerse y critica la "limosna" de la "aparente piedad filantrópica" del que da lo que lo sobra, en su primer mensaje para la Cuaresma desde que asumió el Pontificado, que ha sido presentado este martes en el Aula Juan Pablo II de la Sala de Prensa del Vaticano.
Así, advierte de que "la verdadera pobreza duele" y ha alertado de que "no sería válido un despojo sin esta dimensión penitencial". "Desconfío de la limosna que no cuesta y no duele", subraya.
Además, denuncia que "cuando el poder, el lujo y el dinero se convierten en ídolos, se anteponen a la exigencia de una distribución justa de las riquezas".
Por eso, el pontífice ha invitado a preguntarse en la próxima Cuaresma de qué se pueden privar los hombres a fin de ayudar y enriquecer a otros con su pobreza", a través de su primer mensaje desde que fue elegido pontífice para el tiempo de Cuaresma, firmado el 26 de diciembre de 2013. El documento se divide en dos puntos fundamentales: 'La gracia de Cristo' y 'Nuestro testimonio'.
En la primera parte, el Pontífice explica que cuando Jesús se hace pobre no lo hace por la "pobreza en sí misma", sino para "consolar, salvar y liberar" a los hombres de su miseria. "Dios no hizo caer sobre nosotros la salvación desde lo alto, como la limosna de quien da parte de lo que para él es superfluo con aparente piedad filantrópica", ha añadido en este sentido.
Al preguntarse qué es la pobreza con la que Jesús enriquece a los hombres, contesta que se trata de su "modo de amar, de estar cerca" de los hombres. De este modo, asegura que lo que da libertad, salvación y felicidad "es su amor lleno de compasión, de ternura, que quiere compartir" con la humanidad. Por eso, asegura que "la riqueza de Cristo es la mayor riqueza". En esta línea, afirma que la única verdadera miseria es "no vivir como hijos de Dios y hermanos de Cristo".
Realizar obras concretas
El Papa invita también "a mirar las miserias de los hermanos, a tocarlas, a hacerse cargo de ellas y a realizar obras concretas a fin de aliviarlas".
"La riqueza de Dios no puede pasar a través de nuestra riqueza, sino siempre y solamente a través de nuestra pobreza, personal y comunitaria, animada por el Espíritu de Cristo", asegura.
En este sentido, distingue entre tres tipos de miseria. La miseria material, o pobreza material, la que "toca a cuantos viven en una condición que no es digna de la persona humana" y la Iglesia, que ayuda "a curar estas heridas que desfiguran el rostro de la humanidad". Por ello, destaca que ayudando a los pobres se trata, a su vez de parar en el mundo "las violaciones de la dignidad humana, las discriminaciones y los abusos, que, en tantos casos, son el origen de la miseria".
"Es necesario que las conciencias se conviertan a la justicia, a la igualdad, a la sobriedad y al compartir", ha reclamado.
La esclavitud del vicio
Al Pontífice también le preocupa la miseria moral, que ha definido como la esclavitud "del vicio y del pecado". "¡Cuántas familias viven angustiadas porque alguno de sus miembros, a menudo joven, que tienen dependencia del alcohol, las drogas, el juego o la pornografía! ¡Cuántas personas han perdido el sentido de la vida, están privadas de perspectivas para el futuro y han perdido la esperanza!", lamenta.
También se entristece por las personas Y cuántas personas se ven obligadas a vivir esta miseria por condiciones sociales injustas y por falta de un trabajo, lo cual "les priva de la dignidad que da llevar el pan a casa, por falta de igualdad respecto de los derechos a la educación y la salud".
Igualmente, ha puesto de manifiesto la miseria espiritual "que golpea cuando el hombre se aleja de Dios y rechaza su amor. A su juicio, si el hombre considera que no necesita a Dios, se dirige a un camino de fracaso". "Dios es el único que verdaderamente salva y libera", añade.
Por todo ello, invita a los cristianos a "llevar el anuncio liberador de que existe el perdón del mal cometido, que Dios es más grande que el pecado y ama gratuitamente, siempre, y que el hombre está hecho para la comunión y para la vida eterna. "Unidos a Él, podemos abrir con valentía nuevos caminos de evangelización y promoción humana", afirma.
elmundo.es
http://islammdp.blogspot.com/2014/02/el-papa-critica-la-limosna-de-la.html
4/2/14
Etiquetas: cristianismo
El Papa Francisco pide empobrecerse y critica la "limosna" de la "aparente piedad filantrópica" del que da lo que lo sobra, en su primer mensaje para la Cuaresma desde que asumió el Pontificado, que ha sido presentado este martes en el Aula Juan Pablo II de la Sala de Prensa del Vaticano.
Así, advierte de que "la verdadera pobreza duele" y ha alertado de que "no sería válido un despojo sin esta dimensión penitencial". "Desconfío de la limosna que no cuesta y no duele", subraya.
Además, denuncia que "cuando el poder, el lujo y el dinero se convierten en ídolos, se anteponen a la exigencia de una distribución justa de las riquezas".
Por eso, el pontífice ha invitado a preguntarse en la próxima Cuaresma de qué se pueden privar los hombres a fin de ayudar y enriquecer a otros con su pobreza", a través de su primer mensaje desde que fue elegido pontífice para el tiempo de Cuaresma, firmado el 26 de diciembre de 2013. El documento se divide en dos puntos fundamentales: 'La gracia de Cristo' y 'Nuestro testimonio'.
En la primera parte, el Pontífice explica que cuando Jesús se hace pobre no lo hace por la "pobreza en sí misma", sino para "consolar, salvar y liberar" a los hombres de su miseria. "Dios no hizo caer sobre nosotros la salvación desde lo alto, como la limosna de quien da parte de lo que para él es superfluo con aparente piedad filantrópica", ha añadido en este sentido.
Al preguntarse qué es la pobreza con la que Jesús enriquece a los hombres, contesta que se trata de su "modo de amar, de estar cerca" de los hombres. De este modo, asegura que lo que da libertad, salvación y felicidad "es su amor lleno de compasión, de ternura, que quiere compartir" con la humanidad. Por eso, asegura que "la riqueza de Cristo es la mayor riqueza". En esta línea, afirma que la única verdadera miseria es "no vivir como hijos de Dios y hermanos de Cristo".
Realizar obras concretas
El Papa invita también "a mirar las miserias de los hermanos, a tocarlas, a hacerse cargo de ellas y a realizar obras concretas a fin de aliviarlas".
"La riqueza de Dios no puede pasar a través de nuestra riqueza, sino siempre y solamente a través de nuestra pobreza, personal y comunitaria, animada por el Espíritu de Cristo", asegura.
En este sentido, distingue entre tres tipos de miseria. La miseria material, o pobreza material, la que "toca a cuantos viven en una condición que no es digna de la persona humana" y la Iglesia, que ayuda "a curar estas heridas que desfiguran el rostro de la humanidad". Por ello, destaca que ayudando a los pobres se trata, a su vez de parar en el mundo "las violaciones de la dignidad humana, las discriminaciones y los abusos, que, en tantos casos, son el origen de la miseria".
"Es necesario que las conciencias se conviertan a la justicia, a la igualdad, a la sobriedad y al compartir", ha reclamado.
La esclavitud del vicio
Al Pontífice también le preocupa la miseria moral, que ha definido como la esclavitud "del vicio y del pecado". "¡Cuántas familias viven angustiadas porque alguno de sus miembros, a menudo joven, que tienen dependencia del alcohol, las drogas, el juego o la pornografía! ¡Cuántas personas han perdido el sentido de la vida, están privadas de perspectivas para el futuro y han perdido la esperanza!", lamenta.
También se entristece por las personas Y cuántas personas se ven obligadas a vivir esta miseria por condiciones sociales injustas y por falta de un trabajo, lo cual "les priva de la dignidad que da llevar el pan a casa, por falta de igualdad respecto de los derechos a la educación y la salud".
Igualmente, ha puesto de manifiesto la miseria espiritual "que golpea cuando el hombre se aleja de Dios y rechaza su amor. A su juicio, si el hombre considera que no necesita a Dios, se dirige a un camino de fracaso". "Dios es el único que verdaderamente salva y libera", añade.
Por todo ello, invita a los cristianos a "llevar el anuncio liberador de que existe el perdón del mal cometido, que Dios es más grande que el pecado y ama gratuitamente, siempre, y que el hombre está hecho para la comunión y para la vida eterna. "Unidos a Él, podemos abrir con valentía nuevos caminos de evangelización y promoción humana", afirma.
elmundo.es
Iranian Nuclear Accord Advances
Iranian Nuclear Accord Advances
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304549504579316643349109898
Obama Threatens Veto of Sanctions
By Jay Solomon, Carol E. Lee and Laurence Norman
Updated Jan. 12, 2014 7:44 p.m. ET
World powers and Iran agreed to begin implementing a pact to curb Tehran's nuclear program on Jan. 20, setting the stage for six months of diplomacy intended to end Tehran's atomic weapons threat, officials said.
Under Sunday's deal, Iran will stop producing near-weapons grade nuclear fuel and start rolling back or freezing other nuclear work next week, said U.S., European and Iranian officials.
In turn, the U.S. and European Union will start easing some of their punitive economic sanctions on Iran, starting next week with suspending a ban on Iran's trade of petrochemicals, autos and precious metals.
U.S. and European officials hailed the latest milestone as a way to peacefully contain Iran's nuclear program, while acknowledging that failure was a real possibility given the complexity of the talks.
Still, the accord fueled political friction within the U.S. Senior U.S. lawmakers quickly criticized the deal for not going far enough to rein in Iran's nuclear capabilities, setting up a likely political showdown between the White House and Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.
The reaction prompted President Barack Obama to signal his determination to protect the pact by threatening a veto over new sanctions sought by lawmakers in Congress.
"Today's agreement…marks the first time in a decade that the Islamic Republic of Iran has agreed to specific actions that halt progress on its nuclear program and roll back key parts of the program," Mr. Obama said in a statement on Sunday. "Taken together, these and other steps will advance our goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
A growing coalition of Republican and Democratic lawmakers are pushing legislation to enact new economic sanctions on Iran. They argue their bill will ensure Tehran doesn't renege on its commitments or back out of the diplomacy.
"I am worried the administration's policies will either lead to Iranian nuclear weapons or Israeli airstrikes," said Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), a leading supporter of the bill. "It's time for the United States Senate to pass common-sense bipartisan legislation, now co-sponsored by 59 senators, to ensure this process leads to the peaceful dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), a close White House ally, has no plans to soon bring the bill to the floor for a vote, people familiar with the process said. But, given the legislation's strong bipartisan support, it was unclear how long Mr. Reid can buck pressure to hold a vote, making the Obama administration's lobbying of individual senators even more critical. The lawmakers said they have a veto-proof number of 67 supporters in the Senate.
Israel didn't immediately react to the Iran deal but it has criticized the diplomacy with Tehran in the past, saying the terms should be tougher.
The implementation agreement reached Sunday was negotiated between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—the U.S., U.K., France, Russia and China—plus Germany, a diplomatic bloc called the P5+1. It followed by more than six weeks the signing of the provisional pact in Geneva.
U.S. and European diplomats said the complexity of the talks illustrated how difficult it will be to forge a final agreement, which will address evidence Tehran has clandestinely developed nuclear weapons technologies. Iran denies that charge.
The next stage—talks aimed at making the final agreement—are expected to begin in two to three weeks, said U.S. and Iranian officials. A senior U.S. official said the Americans judge chances of a final deal to be about "50-50."
"But there is a real opportunity here," the official said.
U.S. and European officials said the most important elements of the interim agreement includes Iran's commitment to stop its production of near weapons grade fuel—which is uranium enriched to 20% purity—and to eliminate its stockpile of that type of nuclear fuel.
Iran also agreed to cap its production of lower-enriched uranium during the negotiations and to halt its plans to commission the Arak heavy water reactor capable of producing weapons usable plutonium.
U.S. officials cited enhanced inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities by the U.N.'s watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, as a vital benefit of the interim deal. Washington and the IAEA are particularly focused on better understanding Iran's enrichment capabilities and the status of the Arak heavy water reactor.
Tehran has refused, however, to give the IAEA access to its military sites, particularly the Parchin base, where weapons work is believed to have occurred.
The U.S. officials acknowledged that crucial elements of Iran's nuclear infrastructure will remain operational. Iran will continue to be allowed to conduct research and development on the centrifuge machines it uses to produce nuclear fuel, though no new machines will be allowed to be installed. Some work on the Arak reactor also will be allowed to continue, U.S. officials said.
Critics of the agreement on Capitol Hill also argued that the deal risked providing Iran with too many economic benefits, therefore eroding Tehran's incentive to negotiate. U.S. officials said the sanctions relief offered Iran equaled $7 billion, $4.2 billion of which are oil revenues frozen in offshore accounts.
Under the implementation agreement announced Sunday, Iran would get a first installment on that money, $550 million, on Feb. 1.
But Iran has already benefited from a significantly strengthened currency and financial market since the deal was signed in November. That deal set in motion negotiations to work out the technical aspects of the agreement.
"Iran's economy is showing signs of recovery after years of sanctions, due in no small part to the recent sanctions relief…and a perception that the Obama administration may no longer be committed to ratcheting up the economic pressure," said Mark Dubowitiz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative think tank which advises Congress on Iran sanctions.
The Obama administration has strongly denied that it is easing pressure on Tehran and said it would move quickly to impose new sanctions if Iran didn't reach a final agreement. "Unprecedented sanctions and tough diplomacy helped to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and I'm grateful to our partners in Congress who share our goal," Mr. Obama said.
Iranian officials hailed the agreement as an important step in President Hasan Rouhani's efforts to re-engage with the Western world. The cleric and politician took office in August vowing to revitalize Iran's economy by rolling back the economic sanctions. But he has faced stiff resistance from conservative factions in Tehran, including from the elite Revolutionary Guards. Iranian leaders on Sunday said the extension of the diplomacy will strengthen Mr. Rouhani's hand.
"We reached a good agreement very quickly, no one believed this could be done," former President Hashemi Rafsanjani told Iranian media Sunday. "This is a win-win for both sides."
—Farnaz Fassihi and Naftali Bendavid contributed to this article.
Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com, Carol E. Lee at carol.lee@wsj.com and Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304549504579316643349109898
Obama Threatens Veto of Sanctions
By Jay Solomon, Carol E. Lee and Laurence Norman
Updated Jan. 12, 2014 7:44 p.m. ET
World powers and Iran agreed to begin implementing a pact to curb Tehran's nuclear program on Jan. 20, setting the stage for six months of diplomacy intended to end Tehran's atomic weapons threat, officials said.
Under Sunday's deal, Iran will stop producing near-weapons grade nuclear fuel and start rolling back or freezing other nuclear work next week, said U.S., European and Iranian officials.
In turn, the U.S. and European Union will start easing some of their punitive economic sanctions on Iran, starting next week with suspending a ban on Iran's trade of petrochemicals, autos and precious metals.
U.S. and European officials hailed the latest milestone as a way to peacefully contain Iran's nuclear program, while acknowledging that failure was a real possibility given the complexity of the talks.
Still, the accord fueled political friction within the U.S. Senior U.S. lawmakers quickly criticized the deal for not going far enough to rein in Iran's nuclear capabilities, setting up a likely political showdown between the White House and Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.
The reaction prompted President Barack Obama to signal his determination to protect the pact by threatening a veto over new sanctions sought by lawmakers in Congress.
"Today's agreement…marks the first time in a decade that the Islamic Republic of Iran has agreed to specific actions that halt progress on its nuclear program and roll back key parts of the program," Mr. Obama said in a statement on Sunday. "Taken together, these and other steps will advance our goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
A growing coalition of Republican and Democratic lawmakers are pushing legislation to enact new economic sanctions on Iran. They argue their bill will ensure Tehran doesn't renege on its commitments or back out of the diplomacy.
"I am worried the administration's policies will either lead to Iranian nuclear weapons or Israeli airstrikes," said Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), a leading supporter of the bill. "It's time for the United States Senate to pass common-sense bipartisan legislation, now co-sponsored by 59 senators, to ensure this process leads to the peaceful dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), a close White House ally, has no plans to soon bring the bill to the floor for a vote, people familiar with the process said. But, given the legislation's strong bipartisan support, it was unclear how long Mr. Reid can buck pressure to hold a vote, making the Obama administration's lobbying of individual senators even more critical. The lawmakers said they have a veto-proof number of 67 supporters in the Senate.
Israel didn't immediately react to the Iran deal but it has criticized the diplomacy with Tehran in the past, saying the terms should be tougher.
The implementation agreement reached Sunday was negotiated between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—the U.S., U.K., France, Russia and China—plus Germany, a diplomatic bloc called the P5+1. It followed by more than six weeks the signing of the provisional pact in Geneva.
U.S. and European diplomats said the complexity of the talks illustrated how difficult it will be to forge a final agreement, which will address evidence Tehran has clandestinely developed nuclear weapons technologies. Iran denies that charge.
The next stage—talks aimed at making the final agreement—are expected to begin in two to three weeks, said U.S. and Iranian officials. A senior U.S. official said the Americans judge chances of a final deal to be about "50-50."
"But there is a real opportunity here," the official said.
U.S. and European officials said the most important elements of the interim agreement includes Iran's commitment to stop its production of near weapons grade fuel—which is uranium enriched to 20% purity—and to eliminate its stockpile of that type of nuclear fuel.
Iran also agreed to cap its production of lower-enriched uranium during the negotiations and to halt its plans to commission the Arak heavy water reactor capable of producing weapons usable plutonium.
U.S. officials cited enhanced inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities by the U.N.'s watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, as a vital benefit of the interim deal. Washington and the IAEA are particularly focused on better understanding Iran's enrichment capabilities and the status of the Arak heavy water reactor.
Tehran has refused, however, to give the IAEA access to its military sites, particularly the Parchin base, where weapons work is believed to have occurred.
The U.S. officials acknowledged that crucial elements of Iran's nuclear infrastructure will remain operational. Iran will continue to be allowed to conduct research and development on the centrifuge machines it uses to produce nuclear fuel, though no new machines will be allowed to be installed. Some work on the Arak reactor also will be allowed to continue, U.S. officials said.
Critics of the agreement on Capitol Hill also argued that the deal risked providing Iran with too many economic benefits, therefore eroding Tehran's incentive to negotiate. U.S. officials said the sanctions relief offered Iran equaled $7 billion, $4.2 billion of which are oil revenues frozen in offshore accounts.
Under the implementation agreement announced Sunday, Iran would get a first installment on that money, $550 million, on Feb. 1.
But Iran has already benefited from a significantly strengthened currency and financial market since the deal was signed in November. That deal set in motion negotiations to work out the technical aspects of the agreement.
"Iran's economy is showing signs of recovery after years of sanctions, due in no small part to the recent sanctions relief…and a perception that the Obama administration may no longer be committed to ratcheting up the economic pressure," said Mark Dubowitiz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative think tank which advises Congress on Iran sanctions.
The Obama administration has strongly denied that it is easing pressure on Tehran and said it would move quickly to impose new sanctions if Iran didn't reach a final agreement. "Unprecedented sanctions and tough diplomacy helped to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and I'm grateful to our partners in Congress who share our goal," Mr. Obama said.
Iranian officials hailed the agreement as an important step in President Hasan Rouhani's efforts to re-engage with the Western world. The cleric and politician took office in August vowing to revitalize Iran's economy by rolling back the economic sanctions. But he has faced stiff resistance from conservative factions in Tehran, including from the elite Revolutionary Guards. Iranian leaders on Sunday said the extension of the diplomacy will strengthen Mr. Rouhani's hand.
"We reached a good agreement very quickly, no one believed this could be done," former President Hashemi Rafsanjani told Iranian media Sunday. "This is a win-win for both sides."
—Farnaz Fassihi and Naftali Bendavid contributed to this article.
Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com, Carol E. Lee at carol.lee@wsj.com and Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
Saudis Back Syrian Rebels Despite Risks
Saudis Back Syrian Rebels Despite Risks
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/world/middleeast/saudis-back-syria-rebels-despite-a-lack-of-control.html
By ROBERT F. WORTH JAN. 7, 2014
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — On his eighth trip to fight with the rebels in Syria, in August, Abu Khattab saw something that troubled him: two dead children, their blood-soaked bodies sprawled on the street of a rural village near the Mediterranean coast. He knew right away that his fellow rebels had killed them.
Abu Khattab, a 43-year-old Saudi hospital administrator who was pursuing jihad on his holiday breaks, went to demand answers from his local commander, a notoriously brutal man named Abu Ayman al-Iraqi. The commander brushed him off, saying his men had killed the children “because they were not Muslims,” Abu Khattab recalled recently during an interview here.
It was only then that Abu Khattab began to believe that the jihad in Syria — where he had traveled in violation of an official Saudi ban — was not fully in accord with God’s will. But by the time he returned to Riyadh, where he now volunteers in a program to discourage others from going, his government had overcome its own scruples to become the main backer of the Syrian rebels, including many hard-line Islamists who often fight alongside militants loyal to Al Qaeda.
The disillusionment of Abu Khattab — who asked that his full name be withheld because he still fears retribution from jihadists — helps illustrate the great challenge now facing Saudi Arabia’s rulers: how to fight an increasingly bloody and chaotic proxy war in Syria using zealot militia fighters over whom they have almost no control.
The Saudis fear the rise of Al Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria, and they have not forgotten what happened when Saudi militants who had fought in Afghanistan returned home to wage a domestic insurgency a decade ago. They officially prohibit their citizens from going to Syria for jihad, but the ban is not enforced; at least a thousand have gone, according to Interior Ministry officials, including some from prominent families.
But the Saudis are also bent on ousting Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and his patron, Iran, which they see as a mortal enemy. Their only real means of fighting them is through military and financial support to the Syrian rebels. And the most effective of those rebels are Islamists whose creed — rooted in the puritanical strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia — is often scarcely separable from Al Qaeda’s.
Abu Khattab, a slight-figured man with bulging eyes and the scraggly beard of an ultra-orthodox Salafist Muslim, embodies some of these paradoxes. He now volunteers here once a week to warn young men about the false glamour of the Syrian jihad at the government’s rehabilitation center for jihadists. “There is a shortage of religious conditions for jihad in Syria,” he said. Many of the fighters kill Syrian civilians, a violation of Islam, he added.
But as Abu Khattab talked about Syria, his own convictions seemed scarcely different from those of the jihadists he had carefully denounced (two officials from the Interior Ministry were present during the interview). He made clear that he considered Shiite Muslims and Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect to be infidels and a terrible danger to his own people.
“If the Shiites succeed in controlling Syria, it will be a threat to my country,” Abu Khattab said. “I went to Syria to protect my country.”
At times, his sectarian feelings seemed to outshine his unease about the excesses of some of his more extreme comrades. He did not deny that he had often fought alongside members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the brutal jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Abu Khattab also mentioned proudly that he is no stranger to jihad. He fought as a teenager in Afghanistan (“With the government’s permission!”) and, a few years later, in Bosnia. He chose not to fight the Americans in Iraq “because there are too many Shiites there,” he said, with a look of distaste on his face.
Yet this is a man who lectures inmates at the rehabilitation center every week about ethics and war. The center, like many Saudi institutions, has been somewhat embarrassed by the contradictions of Saudi policy with regard to Syria. Although the center incarcerates some men who have been arrested for trying to travel to Syria, last summer the nephew of Abdelrahman al-Hadlaq, its director, was killed while fighting there. His mother posted statements on Twitter saying she was proud of him.
More recently, the center suffered an even more stinging disappointment involving one of its best-known graduates, a reformed jihadist named Ahmed al-Shayea. He became famous in Saudi Arabia after surviving his own suicide bombing in Iraq in 2004, a bombing arranged by militants with Al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch.
Mr. Shayea was burned and disfigured, but after months in a hospital he emerged and proclaimed himself cured of the jihadist mind-set. He was known as the “living suicide,” and in 2009 an American author, Ken Ballen, devoted an entire chapter to a glowing portrait of him in his book, “Terrorists in Love.”
In November, Mr. Shayea slipped out of Saudi Arabia to Syria, where he is now fighting with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He proudly trumpets his return to jihad on his Twitter feed, which features a picture of him clutching a rifle with his mangled hands.
The Saudi authorities say they have urged their citizens not to go to Syria, but cannot keep track of every Saudi who wants to go fight there. “We try to prevent it, but there are limits to what we can do,” said Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry. “You cannot prevent all young men from leaving the kingdom. Many of them travel to London or other places, and only then to Turkey, and Syria.”
Abu Khattab’s path to Syria was similar to that of many others here and across the Arab world. He read about the uprisings in 2011, but it was Syria that touched his heart. It was not just because of the bloodshed, he said, but because his Sunni brothers were being killed by Alawites and Shiites.
When he first went, in the summer of 2012, he flew directly from Riyadh to the Turkish city of Antakya, near the Syrian border, he said. There were other Saudi men heading for the battlefield on the flight with him, he said, and no sign of a Saudi government effort to monitor or restrain them.
In Turkey, he found many other foreign fighters, and Syrian rebels who were eager to take them to the battlefield. “They especially like Saudis, because the Saudis are more willing to do suicide operations,” he said.
Over the next year, Abu Khattab said, he returned to Syria seven more times, usually on holidays, leaving his wife to care for their four children and staying for 10 days to two weeks each time. He fought with a variety of groups, seeing battle many times — in Aleppo, in Homs and in the countryside of Latakia, near the coast. He wielded a Kalashnikov rifle most of the time, but sometimes a heavier Russian-made machine gun known in the field as a 14.5.
Gradually he became disillusioned with the chaos of the battle. He often found himself among men who openly branded the rulers of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states as infidels, deserving slaughter. He said this bothered him, but it did not stop him from returning to the battlefield.
In the end, it was the slaughter of innocents that made him decide to quit, he said, and a broader feeling that the rebels alongside him were not doing it for the right reasons. “If the fight is not purely to God, it’s not a real jihad,” he said. “These people are fighting for their flags.”
But there was another reason he gave up the fight.
“Bashar has started to put Sunnis on the front line,” he said of Syria’s leader. “This is a big problem. The rebels do not want to fight them. The real war is not against Bashar himself, it is against Iran. Everything else is just a false image.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/world/middleeast/saudis-back-syria-rebels-despite-a-lack-of-control.html
By ROBERT F. WORTH JAN. 7, 2014
In Damascus on Tuesday, men helped a wounded girl who survived what activists said was an airstrike by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Bassam Khabieh/Reuters
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — On his eighth trip to fight with the rebels in Syria, in August, Abu Khattab saw something that troubled him: two dead children, their blood-soaked bodies sprawled on the street of a rural village near the Mediterranean coast. He knew right away that his fellow rebels had killed them.
Abu Khattab, a 43-year-old Saudi hospital administrator who was pursuing jihad on his holiday breaks, went to demand answers from his local commander, a notoriously brutal man named Abu Ayman al-Iraqi. The commander brushed him off, saying his men had killed the children “because they were not Muslims,” Abu Khattab recalled recently during an interview here.
It was only then that Abu Khattab began to believe that the jihad in Syria — where he had traveled in violation of an official Saudi ban — was not fully in accord with God’s will. But by the time he returned to Riyadh, where he now volunteers in a program to discourage others from going, his government had overcome its own scruples to become the main backer of the Syrian rebels, including many hard-line Islamists who often fight alongside militants loyal to Al Qaeda.
Clothes covered in dust after the airstrike. Saudis are prohibited from going to Syria for jihad, but the ban is not enforced. Bassam Khabieh/Reuters
The disillusionment of Abu Khattab — who asked that his full name be withheld because he still fears retribution from jihadists — helps illustrate the great challenge now facing Saudi Arabia’s rulers: how to fight an increasingly bloody and chaotic proxy war in Syria using zealot militia fighters over whom they have almost no control.
The Saudis fear the rise of Al Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria, and they have not forgotten what happened when Saudi militants who had fought in Afghanistan returned home to wage a domestic insurgency a decade ago. They officially prohibit their citizens from going to Syria for jihad, but the ban is not enforced; at least a thousand have gone, according to Interior Ministry officials, including some from prominent families.
But the Saudis are also bent on ousting Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and his patron, Iran, which they see as a mortal enemy. Their only real means of fighting them is through military and financial support to the Syrian rebels. And the most effective of those rebels are Islamists whose creed — rooted in the puritanical strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia — is often scarcely separable from Al Qaeda’s.
Abu Khattab, a slight-figured man with bulging eyes and the scraggly beard of an ultra-orthodox Salafist Muslim, embodies some of these paradoxes. He now volunteers here once a week to warn young men about the false glamour of the Syrian jihad at the government’s rehabilitation center for jihadists. “There is a shortage of religious conditions for jihad in Syria,” he said. Many of the fighters kill Syrian civilians, a violation of Islam, he added.
But as Abu Khattab talked about Syria, his own convictions seemed scarcely different from those of the jihadists he had carefully denounced (two officials from the Interior Ministry were present during the interview). He made clear that he considered Shiite Muslims and Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect to be infidels and a terrible danger to his own people.
“If the Shiites succeed in controlling Syria, it will be a threat to my country,” Abu Khattab said. “I went to Syria to protect my country.”
At times, his sectarian feelings seemed to outshine his unease about the excesses of some of his more extreme comrades. He did not deny that he had often fought alongside members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the brutal jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Abu Khattab also mentioned proudly that he is no stranger to jihad. He fought as a teenager in Afghanistan (“With the government’s permission!”) and, a few years later, in Bosnia. He chose not to fight the Americans in Iraq “because there are too many Shiites there,” he said, with a look of distaste on his face.
Yet this is a man who lectures inmates at the rehabilitation center every week about ethics and war. The center, like many Saudi institutions, has been somewhat embarrassed by the contradictions of Saudi policy with regard to Syria. Although the center incarcerates some men who have been arrested for trying to travel to Syria, last summer the nephew of Abdelrahman al-Hadlaq, its director, was killed while fighting there. His mother posted statements on Twitter saying she was proud of him.
More recently, the center suffered an even more stinging disappointment involving one of its best-known graduates, a reformed jihadist named Ahmed al-Shayea. He became famous in Saudi Arabia after surviving his own suicide bombing in Iraq in 2004, a bombing arranged by militants with Al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch.
Mr. Shayea was burned and disfigured, but after months in a hospital he emerged and proclaimed himself cured of the jihadist mind-set. He was known as the “living suicide,” and in 2009 an American author, Ken Ballen, devoted an entire chapter to a glowing portrait of him in his book, “Terrorists in Love.”
In November, Mr. Shayea slipped out of Saudi Arabia to Syria, where he is now fighting with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He proudly trumpets his return to jihad on his Twitter feed, which features a picture of him clutching a rifle with his mangled hands.
The Saudi authorities say they have urged their citizens not to go to Syria, but cannot keep track of every Saudi who wants to go fight there. “We try to prevent it, but there are limits to what we can do,” said Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry. “You cannot prevent all young men from leaving the kingdom. Many of them travel to London or other places, and only then to Turkey, and Syria.”
Abu Khattab’s path to Syria was similar to that of many others here and across the Arab world. He read about the uprisings in 2011, but it was Syria that touched his heart. It was not just because of the bloodshed, he said, but because his Sunni brothers were being killed by Alawites and Shiites.
When he first went, in the summer of 2012, he flew directly from Riyadh to the Turkish city of Antakya, near the Syrian border, he said. There were other Saudi men heading for the battlefield on the flight with him, he said, and no sign of a Saudi government effort to monitor or restrain them.
In Turkey, he found many other foreign fighters, and Syrian rebels who were eager to take them to the battlefield. “They especially like Saudis, because the Saudis are more willing to do suicide operations,” he said.
Over the next year, Abu Khattab said, he returned to Syria seven more times, usually on holidays, leaving his wife to care for their four children and staying for 10 days to two weeks each time. He fought with a variety of groups, seeing battle many times — in Aleppo, in Homs and in the countryside of Latakia, near the coast. He wielded a Kalashnikov rifle most of the time, but sometimes a heavier Russian-made machine gun known in the field as a 14.5.
Gradually he became disillusioned with the chaos of the battle. He often found himself among men who openly branded the rulers of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states as infidels, deserving slaughter. He said this bothered him, but it did not stop him from returning to the battlefield.
In the end, it was the slaughter of innocents that made him decide to quit, he said, and a broader feeling that the rebels alongside him were not doing it for the right reasons. “If the fight is not purely to God, it’s not a real jihad,” he said. “These people are fighting for their flags.”
But there was another reason he gave up the fight.
“Bashar has started to put Sunnis on the front line,” he said of Syria’s leader. “This is a big problem. The rebels do not want to fight them. The real war is not against Bashar himself, it is against Iran. Everything else is just a false image.”
Fallout From Syria Conflict Takes Rising Toll on Mideast
Fallout From Syria Conflict Takes Rising Toll on Mideast
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303433304579302540213869618
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jay Solomon
Updated Jan. 5, 2014 10:06 p.m. ET
BEIRUT—Spiraling violence and advances by al Qaeda-linked fighters in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are underscoring the cost of Syria's civil war as it increasingly spills over the country's borders.
The rise of the Islamist forces in Iraq is particularly worrisome to the Obama administration. In response, U.S. officials said Sunday they were seeking to boost military support—though they emphasized no troops—for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to help in his campaign to push back al Qaeda. U.S. officials are also considering new military aid for Lebanon, which is plagued by rising sectarian violence.
Resurgent al Qaeda-allied forces battled Sunday in both Iraq and in neighboring Syria. Fighters in Iraq's Anbar Province pillaged American weapons from armories after taking control of the town of Fallujah and skirmished with Iraqi government troops on the road to Baghdad, said residents and officials there.
In Syria, al Qaeda-linked militants battled as well—but this time on the defensive. Syrian rebels said they fought al Qaeda militants on Sunday in at least five northern zones the rebels held. Many Syrian rebels have turned on the main al Qaeda group—the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, which is increasingly reviled for its extremism and violence.
This broadening instability, according to Middle East diplomats and experts, is placing the White House in a growing diplomatic quandary as its regional allies fall into competing camps amid a intensifying proxy battle between regional powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia.
While the U.S. is trying to shore up the Shiite-led government in Iraq, it simultaneously is strongly supporting Lebanon's government and Sunni militias in Syria that are attempting to weaken Iran's political allies in Beirut and Damascus.
The U.S.'s ability to navigate these worsening regional divisions will greatly influence international attempts to stabilize Iraq, Lebanon and Syria in the coming months, said these diplomats.
It will likely also determine whether President Barack Obama succeeds in achieving the top two foreign policy initiatives of his second term—securing an Arab-Israeli peace agreement and forging a deal with Iran to contain its nuclear program.
"One could see ignoring the conflict in Syria if the violence there was the only issue," said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But it's increasingly evident that the conflict there won't be contained."
In Iraq, the surge of fighting involving fighters affiliated with al Qaeda signaled the extremist force's well-armed and well-organized return two years after U.S. forces ended their eight-year Iraqi war following more than 4,000 American deaths and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties.
In Fallujah, which had been the scene of some of the most entrenched fighting between U.S. forces and anti-U.S. insurgent fighters during the U.S. war, ISIS forces over recent days have seized police and army headquarters. There, they have taken the automatic weapons and artillery left behind by American forces for Iraqi government security forces.
Pushing on from Fallujah toward the capital, the al-Qaeda-allied fighters claimed Sunday to control a portion of the town of Abu Ghraib, the prison town between Fallujah and Baghdad where U.S. jailers tortured inmates. Thousands of families have fled the renewed fighting in Fallujah.
Iraqi officials told the Associated Press that 22 soldiers and 12 civilians died in Sunday's fighting in Anbar Province. In Baghdad, bombings linked to the Qaeda forces killed at least another 20 people on Sunday, according to AP.
ISIS also hold parts of the Anbar provincial capital, Ramadi, Iraqi officials say. On Sunday, helicopter gunships of the Iraqi military attacked three suspected militant sites around Ramadi, killing more than 30 ISIS fighters, Iraqi Police Gen. Ismail Mahlawi said. One of three air attacks mistakenly hit government-allied tribal fighters, killing five, Gen. Mahlawi said.
"We fear that Anbar will merge with Syria," to become the Middle East's first al Qaeda state, said Iraqi Col. Ammar Ahmed, who is stationed in Anbar.
Senior American officials said on Sunday that the Pentagon and State Department have been holding discussions with Iraq leaders in recent days to support efforts to push back the al Qaeda advances. These include the acceleration of weapons shipments to Iraq, including 100 Hellfire missiles, which have been used in recent days by the government.
"Even if we had a small number of troops in Iraq, it's not like they should be fighting in Fallujah to deal with this issue 10 years after the U.S. invasion," said Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy National Security Adviser. "U.S. troops on the ground would not, in our judgment, make the situation better."
American officials stressed, though, that there were no plans to use American troops or air power to assist Baghdad in its fight. They said the strategic decision to pull out of Iraq was now irreversible.
"We will help them in their fight; but this fight, in the end they will have to win, and I am confident they can," Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Israel on Sunday.
Iraq's Shiite-led government has in recent days tried to convince tribes in Anbar to lead the fight against ISIS. Anbar's tribal leaders rallied their followers starting in 2006 to join the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda that later became known as the Sahwa, or Awakening. The Sunni movement withered after tribal forces complained of persecution and nonpayment from the government.
Mr. Kerry said U.S. officials already were also in contact with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province.
In Syria, meanwhile, an array of rebel groups battled fighters with ISIS in Raqqa, the group's stronghold in Syria, and in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. At least 60 people were killed in the day's fighting, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Rebel groups battling ISIS included some rebel forces that previously had coordinated with the al Qaeda-linked group, including the Islamic Front, a coalition of Islamist rebel forces that Saudi Arabia has supported.
ISIS is one of hundreds of rebel forces that have claimed territory in northern Syria during what started as a peaceful uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad three years ago.
While better-armed and better-funded than many rebels, ISIS has alienated many in rebel-held Syrian territory for often-violent treatment of civilians and even other rebels as ISIS tries to consolidate its base in northern Syria and impose its strict form of Islamic law.
Gulf Arab countries that support the opposition to Mr. Assad's government increasingly have urged other rebels to turn against ISIS. News reports suggest it was the torture and killing of a popular doctor in the opposition city of Aleppo, a death blamed on ISIS, that sparked the surge of rebel attacks on ISIS.
—Mohammed Nour Alakraa in Beirut; a correspondent in Fallujah, Iraq; and Carol E. Lee in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Ellen Knickmeyer at ellen.knickmeyer@wsj.com and Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303433304579302540213869618
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jay Solomon
Updated Jan. 5, 2014 10:06 p.m. ET
Fighters patrol in Fallujah, Iraq, on Sunday. Residents and officials said U.S. weapons were pillaged from armories after fighters took control of Fallujah and skirmished with Iraqi government troops on the road to Baghdad. The spillover of violence in the region from Syria's civil war has raised concerns. Reuters
BEIRUT—Spiraling violence and advances by al Qaeda-linked fighters in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are underscoring the cost of Syria's civil war as it increasingly spills over the country's borders.
The rise of the Islamist forces in Iraq is particularly worrisome to the Obama administration. In response, U.S. officials said Sunday they were seeking to boost military support—though they emphasized no troops—for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to help in his campaign to push back al Qaeda. U.S. officials are also considering new military aid for Lebanon, which is plagued by rising sectarian violence.
Resurgent al Qaeda-allied forces battled Sunday in both Iraq and in neighboring Syria. Fighters in Iraq's Anbar Province pillaged American weapons from armories after taking control of the town of Fallujah and skirmished with Iraqi government troops on the road to Baghdad, said residents and officials there.
In Syria, al Qaeda-linked militants battled as well—but this time on the defensive. Syrian rebels said they fought al Qaeda militants on Sunday in at least five northern zones the rebels held. Many Syrian rebels have turned on the main al Qaeda group—the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, which is increasingly reviled for its extremism and violence.
This broadening instability, according to Middle East diplomats and experts, is placing the White House in a growing diplomatic quandary as its regional allies fall into competing camps amid a intensifying proxy battle between regional powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia.
While the U.S. is trying to shore up the Shiite-led government in Iraq, it simultaneously is strongly supporting Lebanon's government and Sunni militias in Syria that are attempting to weaken Iran's political allies in Beirut and Damascus.
The U.S.'s ability to navigate these worsening regional divisions will greatly influence international attempts to stabilize Iraq, Lebanon and Syria in the coming months, said these diplomats.
It will likely also determine whether President Barack Obama succeeds in achieving the top two foreign policy initiatives of his second term—securing an Arab-Israeli peace agreement and forging a deal with Iran to contain its nuclear program.
"One could see ignoring the conflict in Syria if the violence there was the only issue," said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But it's increasingly evident that the conflict there won't be contained."
In Iraq, the surge of fighting involving fighters affiliated with al Qaeda signaled the extremist force's well-armed and well-organized return two years after U.S. forces ended their eight-year Iraqi war following more than 4,000 American deaths and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties.
In Fallujah, which had been the scene of some of the most entrenched fighting between U.S. forces and anti-U.S. insurgent fighters during the U.S. war, ISIS forces over recent days have seized police and army headquarters. There, they have taken the automatic weapons and artillery left behind by American forces for Iraqi government security forces.
Pushing on from Fallujah toward the capital, the al-Qaeda-allied fighters claimed Sunday to control a portion of the town of Abu Ghraib, the prison town between Fallujah and Baghdad where U.S. jailers tortured inmates. Thousands of families have fled the renewed fighting in Fallujah.
Iraqi officials told the Associated Press that 22 soldiers and 12 civilians died in Sunday's fighting in Anbar Province. In Baghdad, bombings linked to the Qaeda forces killed at least another 20 people on Sunday, according to AP.
Mourners in Najaf on Sunday carry the coffin of an Iraqi soldier who was killed during clashes in Fallujah. Reuters
ISIS also hold parts of the Anbar provincial capital, Ramadi, Iraqi officials say. On Sunday, helicopter gunships of the Iraqi military attacked three suspected militant sites around Ramadi, killing more than 30 ISIS fighters, Iraqi Police Gen. Ismail Mahlawi said. One of three air attacks mistakenly hit government-allied tribal fighters, killing five, Gen. Mahlawi said.
"We fear that Anbar will merge with Syria," to become the Middle East's first al Qaeda state, said Iraqi Col. Ammar Ahmed, who is stationed in Anbar.
Senior American officials said on Sunday that the Pentagon and State Department have been holding discussions with Iraq leaders in recent days to support efforts to push back the al Qaeda advances. These include the acceleration of weapons shipments to Iraq, including 100 Hellfire missiles, which have been used in recent days by the government.
"Even if we had a small number of troops in Iraq, it's not like they should be fighting in Fallujah to deal with this issue 10 years after the U.S. invasion," said Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy National Security Adviser. "U.S. troops on the ground would not, in our judgment, make the situation better."
American officials stressed, though, that there were no plans to use American troops or air power to assist Baghdad in its fight. They said the strategic decision to pull out of Iraq was now irreversible.
"We will help them in their fight; but this fight, in the end they will have to win, and I am confident they can," Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Israel on Sunday.
Iraq's Shiite-led government has in recent days tried to convince tribes in Anbar to lead the fight against ISIS. Anbar's tribal leaders rallied their followers starting in 2006 to join the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda that later became known as the Sahwa, or Awakening. The Sunni movement withered after tribal forces complained of persecution and nonpayment from the government.
Mr. Kerry said U.S. officials already were also in contact with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province.
In Syria, meanwhile, an array of rebel groups battled fighters with ISIS in Raqqa, the group's stronghold in Syria, and in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. At least 60 people were killed in the day's fighting, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Rebel groups battling ISIS included some rebel forces that previously had coordinated with the al Qaeda-linked group, including the Islamic Front, a coalition of Islamist rebel forces that Saudi Arabia has supported.
ISIS is one of hundreds of rebel forces that have claimed territory in northern Syria during what started as a peaceful uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad three years ago.
While better-armed and better-funded than many rebels, ISIS has alienated many in rebel-held Syrian territory for often-violent treatment of civilians and even other rebels as ISIS tries to consolidate its base in northern Syria and impose its strict form of Islamic law.
Gulf Arab countries that support the opposition to Mr. Assad's government increasingly have urged other rebels to turn against ISIS. News reports suggest it was the torture and killing of a popular doctor in the opposition city of Aleppo, a death blamed on ISIS, that sparked the surge of rebel attacks on ISIS.
—Mohammed Nour Alakraa in Beirut; a correspondent in Fallujah, Iraq; and Carol E. Lee in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Ellen Knickmeyer at ellen.knickmeyer@wsj.com and Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com
How the Sunni-Shia schism is dividing the world
How the Sunni-Shia schism is dividing the world
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-the-sunnishia-schism-is-dividing-the-world-8899780.html
The unprecedented Saudi refusal to take up its Security Council seat is not just about Syria but a response to the Iranian threat
Robert Fisk Wednesday 23 October 2013
The Muslim world’s historic – and deeply tragic – chasm between Sunni and Shia Islam is having worldwide repercussions. Syria’s civil war, America’s craven alliance with the Sunni Gulf autocracies, and Sunni (as well as Israeli) suspicions of Shia Iran are affecting even the work of the United Nations.
Saudi Arabia’s petulant refusal last week to take its place among non-voting members of the Security Council, an unprecedented step by any UN member, was intended to express the dictatorial monarchy’s displeasure with Washington’s refusal to bomb Syria after the use of chemical weapons in Damascus – but it also represented Saudi fears that Barack Obama might respond to Iranian overtures for better relations with the West.
The Saudi head of intelligence, Prince Bandar bin Sultan – a true buddy of President George W Bush during his 22 years as ambassador in Washington – has now rattled his tin drum to warn the Americans that Saudi Arabia will make a “major shift” in its relations with the US, not just because of its failure to attack Syria but for its inability to produce a fair Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.
What this “major shift” might be – save for the usual Saudi hot air about its independence from US foreign policy – was a secret that the prince kept to himself.
Israel, of course, never loses an opportunity to publicise – quite accurately – how closely many of its Middle East policies now coincide with those of the wealthy potentates of the Arab Gulf.
Hatred of the Shia/Alawite Syrian regime, an unquenchable suspicion of Shia Iran’s nuclear plans and a general fear of Shia expansion is turning the unelected Sunni Arab monarchies into proxy allies of the Israeli state they have often sworn to destroy. Hardly, one imagines, the kind of notion that Prince Bandar wishes to publicise.
Furthermore, America’s latest contribution to Middle East “peace” could be the sale of $10.8bn worth of missiles and arms to Sunni Saudi Arabia and the equally Sunni United Arab Emirates, including GBU-39 bombs – the weapons cutely called “bunker-busters” – which they could use against Shia Iran. Israel, of course, possesses the very same armaments.
Whether the hapless Mr Kerry – whose risible promise of an “unbelievably small” attack on Syria made him the laughing stock of the Middle East – understands the degree to which he is committing his country to the Sunni side in Islam’s oldest conflict is the subject of much debate in the Arab world. His response to the Saudi refusal to take its place in the UN Security Council has been almost as weird.
After lunch on Monday at the Paris home of the Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud al-Faisal, Kerry – via his usual anonymous officials – said that he valued the autocracy’s leadership in the region, shared Riyadh’s desire to de-nuclearise Iran and to bring an end to the Syrian war. But Kerry’s insistence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his regime must abandon power means that a Sunni government would take over Syria; and his wish to disarm Shia Iran – however notional its nuclear threat may be – would ensure that Sunni military power would dominate the Middle East from the Afghan border to the Mediterranean.
Few realise that Yemen constitutes another of the Saudi-Iranian battlegrounds in the region.
Saudi enthusiasm for Salafist groups in Yemen – including the Islah party, which is allegedly funded by Qatar, though it denies receiving any external support – is one reason why the post-Saleh regime in Sanaa has been supporting the Zaidi Shia Houthi “rebels” whose home provinces of Sa’adah, al Jawf and Hajja border Saudi Arabia. The Houthis are – according to the Sunni Saudis – supported by Iran.
The minority Sunni monarchy in Bahrain – supported by the Saudis and of course by the compliant governments of the US, Britain, et al – is likewise accusing Shia Iran of colluding with the island’s majority Shias. Oddly, Prince Bandar, in his comments, claimed that Barack Obama had failed to support Saudi policy in Bahrain – which involved sending its own troops into the island to help repress Shia demonstrators in 2011 – when in fact America’s silence over the regime’s paramilitary violence was the nearest Washington could go in offering its backing to the Sunni minority and his Royal Highness the King of Bahrain.
All in all, then, a mighty Western love affair with Sunni Islam – a love that very definitely cannot speak its name in an Arab Gulf world in which “democracy”, “moderation”, “partnership” and outright dictatorship are interchangeable – which neither Washington nor London nor Paris (nor indeed Moscow or Beijing) will acknowledge. But, needless to say, there are a few irritating – and incongruous – ripples in this mutual passion.
The Saudis, for example, blame Obama for allowing Egypt’s decadent Hosni Mubarak to be overthrown. They blame the Americans for supporting the elected Muslim Brother Mohamed Morsi as president – elections not being terribly popular in the Gulf – and the Saudis are now throwing cash at Egypt’s new military regime. Assad in Damascus also offered his congratulations to the Egyptian military. Was the Egyptian army not, after all – like Assad himself – trying to prevent religious extremists from taking power?
Fair enough – providing we remember that the Saudis are really supporting the Egyptian Salafists who cynically gave their loyalty to the Egyptian military, and that Saudi-financed Salafists are among the fiercest opponents of Assad.
Thankfully for Kerry and his European mates, the absence of any institutional memory in the State Department, Foreign Office or Quai d’Orsay means that no one need remember that 15 of the 19 mass-killers of 9/11 were also Salafists and – let us above all, please God, forget this – were all Sunni citizens of Saudi Arabia.
Commentary:
And this is the last of the three articles on the most sickening subject of sectarianism hounding the two major sects of Islam, that by now, has began to suffocate the religious as well as the political fibre of this sacred faith. There appears to be no letting-up in the size, scope and magnitude of genocides and mayhems, as the blood of innocent Muslims continue to spill. The World powers seem to appear not only bewildered, they are refusing to cut down the culprit to its size.
If history is any guide, this sort of evil was encountered by the adherents of Christian faith as well and it took them almost one half of a century to get rid off this curse. Robert Fisk, another Non-Muslim author has, however, presented a brilliant and succinct analysis of this perilous phenomena facing Islam and Muslims !
Agha Shaukat Jafri
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-the-sunnishia-schism-is-dividing-the-world-8899780.html
The unprecedented Saudi refusal to take up its Security Council seat is not just about Syria but a response to the Iranian threat
Robert Fisk Wednesday 23 October 2013
The Muslim world’s historic – and deeply tragic – chasm between Sunni and Shia Islam is having worldwide repercussions. Syria’s civil war, America’s craven alliance with the Sunni Gulf autocracies, and Sunni (as well as Israeli) suspicions of Shia Iran are affecting even the work of the United Nations.
Saudi Arabia’s petulant refusal last week to take its place among non-voting members of the Security Council, an unprecedented step by any UN member, was intended to express the dictatorial monarchy’s displeasure with Washington’s refusal to bomb Syria after the use of chemical weapons in Damascus – but it also represented Saudi fears that Barack Obama might respond to Iranian overtures for better relations with the West.
The Saudi head of intelligence, Prince Bandar bin Sultan – a true buddy of President George W Bush during his 22 years as ambassador in Washington – has now rattled his tin drum to warn the Americans that Saudi Arabia will make a “major shift” in its relations with the US, not just because of its failure to attack Syria but for its inability to produce a fair Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.
What this “major shift” might be – save for the usual Saudi hot air about its independence from US foreign policy – was a secret that the prince kept to himself.
Israel, of course, never loses an opportunity to publicise – quite accurately – how closely many of its Middle East policies now coincide with those of the wealthy potentates of the Arab Gulf.
Hatred of the Shia/Alawite Syrian regime, an unquenchable suspicion of Shia Iran’s nuclear plans and a general fear of Shia expansion is turning the unelected Sunni Arab monarchies into proxy allies of the Israeli state they have often sworn to destroy. Hardly, one imagines, the kind of notion that Prince Bandar wishes to publicise.
Furthermore, America’s latest contribution to Middle East “peace” could be the sale of $10.8bn worth of missiles and arms to Sunni Saudi Arabia and the equally Sunni United Arab Emirates, including GBU-39 bombs – the weapons cutely called “bunker-busters” – which they could use against Shia Iran. Israel, of course, possesses the very same armaments.
Whether the hapless Mr Kerry – whose risible promise of an “unbelievably small” attack on Syria made him the laughing stock of the Middle East – understands the degree to which he is committing his country to the Sunni side in Islam’s oldest conflict is the subject of much debate in the Arab world. His response to the Saudi refusal to take its place in the UN Security Council has been almost as weird.
After lunch on Monday at the Paris home of the Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud al-Faisal, Kerry – via his usual anonymous officials – said that he valued the autocracy’s leadership in the region, shared Riyadh’s desire to de-nuclearise Iran and to bring an end to the Syrian war. But Kerry’s insistence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his regime must abandon power means that a Sunni government would take over Syria; and his wish to disarm Shia Iran – however notional its nuclear threat may be – would ensure that Sunni military power would dominate the Middle East from the Afghan border to the Mediterranean.
Few realise that Yemen constitutes another of the Saudi-Iranian battlegrounds in the region.
Saudi enthusiasm for Salafist groups in Yemen – including the Islah party, which is allegedly funded by Qatar, though it denies receiving any external support – is one reason why the post-Saleh regime in Sanaa has been supporting the Zaidi Shia Houthi “rebels” whose home provinces of Sa’adah, al Jawf and Hajja border Saudi Arabia. The Houthis are – according to the Sunni Saudis – supported by Iran.
The minority Sunni monarchy in Bahrain – supported by the Saudis and of course by the compliant governments of the US, Britain, et al – is likewise accusing Shia Iran of colluding with the island’s majority Shias. Oddly, Prince Bandar, in his comments, claimed that Barack Obama had failed to support Saudi policy in Bahrain – which involved sending its own troops into the island to help repress Shia demonstrators in 2011 – when in fact America’s silence over the regime’s paramilitary violence was the nearest Washington could go in offering its backing to the Sunni minority and his Royal Highness the King of Bahrain.
All in all, then, a mighty Western love affair with Sunni Islam – a love that very definitely cannot speak its name in an Arab Gulf world in which “democracy”, “moderation”, “partnership” and outright dictatorship are interchangeable – which neither Washington nor London nor Paris (nor indeed Moscow or Beijing) will acknowledge. But, needless to say, there are a few irritating – and incongruous – ripples in this mutual passion.
The Saudis, for example, blame Obama for allowing Egypt’s decadent Hosni Mubarak to be overthrown. They blame the Americans for supporting the elected Muslim Brother Mohamed Morsi as president – elections not being terribly popular in the Gulf – and the Saudis are now throwing cash at Egypt’s new military regime. Assad in Damascus also offered his congratulations to the Egyptian military. Was the Egyptian army not, after all – like Assad himself – trying to prevent religious extremists from taking power?
Fair enough – providing we remember that the Saudis are really supporting the Egyptian Salafists who cynically gave their loyalty to the Egyptian military, and that Saudi-financed Salafists are among the fiercest opponents of Assad.
Thankfully for Kerry and his European mates, the absence of any institutional memory in the State Department, Foreign Office or Quai d’Orsay means that no one need remember that 15 of the 19 mass-killers of 9/11 were also Salafists and – let us above all, please God, forget this – were all Sunni citizens of Saudi Arabia.
Commentary:
And this is the last of the three articles on the most sickening subject of sectarianism hounding the two major sects of Islam, that by now, has began to suffocate the religious as well as the political fibre of this sacred faith. There appears to be no letting-up in the size, scope and magnitude of genocides and mayhems, as the blood of innocent Muslims continue to spill. The World powers seem to appear not only bewildered, they are refusing to cut down the culprit to its size.
If history is any guide, this sort of evil was encountered by the adherents of Christian faith as well and it took them almost one half of a century to get rid off this curse. Robert Fisk, another Non-Muslim author has, however, presented a brilliant and succinct analysis of this perilous phenomena facing Islam and Muslims !
Agha Shaukat Jafri
In the Middle East, an ancient war is new again
In the Middle East, an ancient war is new again
http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/01/03/an-ancient-war-is-new-again/
by Michael Petrou on Friday, January 3, 2014 4:24pm
Of the various slurs and insults that opposing sides in Syria’s civil war fling at each other, there are some so archaic, they seem not to belong in a modern conflict. Among them is the Arabic and Persian term Majous, used by Sunni Muslim rebels against supporters of President Bashar al-Assad. Those familiar with the Christmas story might recognize its similarity to magi, as in the three wise men who came from the East with gifts for the baby Jesus.
The term originally referred to followers of Zoroastrianism, a now all-but-vanished religion that predates Islam. Rebels employ it today to deny the shared Islamic faith of their adversaries. Assad’s family and many of his supporters are Alawite Muslims, followers of an offshoot of Shia Islam. “It means they’re not Muslims, because they’re still these weirdo Zoroastrians,” says Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “And they’re not even Arabs. They’re crypto-Iranians.”
It is language that speaks to the deepening sectarian fault lines running through Syria and, increasingly, throughout the Islamic Middle East. In Iraq, for example, al-Qaeda leaders boasting about prison breaks near Baghdad last summer said they had damaged the country’s “Safavid” government. The Safavids were a Persian dynasty that brought Shia Islam to what is now Iraq some 400 years ago.
Divisions between the Sunni and Shia interpretations of Islam are almost as old as the faith itself. But what’s happening now is a particularly bitter and often violent clash, and one that is intensified by a geopolitical power struggle between the two dominant nations in the region, Shia-ruled Iran and Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, each acting as standard-bearers for Islam’s two major sects. Some have likened the struggle to a Middle Eastern version of the Cold War, with Iran and Saudi Arabia playing the roles of America and the Soviet Union, and other states in the region lining up behind them.
For the Sunni-ruled countries of the Arabian Peninsula, any sign that Iran is becoming stronger—by improving its nuclear capabilities, or even by moving toward normalizing its relations with Washington—stokes anxiety. They fear Iran itself, and the possibility that a more powerful Iran might embolden and stir up dissent among their own Shia populations. Repercussions of the struggle within Islam are not limited to the Muslim world, either. America and Israel, motivated by their own standoff with Iran, side with the Sunni camp. Russia, seeing an opportunity to counter Western influence in the region, backs Shia Iran and Alawite-led Syria.
The Shia-Sunni conflict “is not just a hoary religious dispute, a fossilized set piece from the early years of Islam’s unfolding, but a contemporary clash of identities,” Vali Nasr writes in The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future. “Theological and historical disagreements fuel it, but so do today’s concerns with power, subjugation, freedom and equality, not to mention regional conflicts and foreign intrigues. It is, paradoxically, a very old, very modern conflict.”
The Middle East’s sectarian divide sharpened following the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Until then, Sunnis dominated the region, with Shia strength concentrated in Iran. When America toppled Saddam Hussein and brought democracy to Iraq, it also liberated the country’s Shias, who had long been suppressed by Saddam and his mostly Sunni power base, despite forming a majority of Iraq’s population.
“This was a tremendous earthquake in the regional balance of power,” says Landis. “It strengthened Iran tremendously. It made the Sunni powers extremely fearful of this growing Shia menace—at least what they saw as a menace.”
The Shia’s ascendency in Iraq was neither smooth nor peaceful. Sunni extremists resisted with suicide bombings and attacks on Shia religious processions and mosques. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was clear about his movement’s goals. The Shia, he wrote in a 2004 letter, are “the insurmountable obstacle, the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy and the penetrating venom.
“If we succeed in dragging them into the arena of sectarian war, it will become possible to waken the inattentive Sunnis, as they feel imminent danger and annihilating death at the hands of Sabeans.”
Zarqawi, like Syrian rebel commanders today, reached far into history for an anti-Shia slur. The Sabeans were pagans of southwest Arabia. The Shia of today, he implied, are similarly godless. Zarqawi succeeded, to some degree, in provoking a sectarian war in Iraq whose bloody reverberations continue today. He also pulled Iran deeper into the conflict. In 2005, a cleric there described Sunni suicide bombers in Iraq as “wolves without pity,” and vowed, “Sooner, rather than later, Iran will have to put them down.”
Since then, Shia prime ministers with close ties to Iran have governed Iraq. A once Sunni-ruled state has shifted into Iran’s sphere of influence. It was this reality that prompted King Abdullah of Jordan in 2004 to warn of a Shia “crescent” stretching from Iran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon that would alter the Sunni-Shia balance of power and risk destabilizing the region.
At the time, Abdullah’s comments sounded alarmist, says Matteo Legrenzi, an associate professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Today, they seem prescient. “Sectarianism is now one of the defining characteristics of the current moment in Middle East politics.”
The hot centre of this divide is Syria, where Sunnis form a majority, but where the Alawite Assad family has ruled for more than 40 years. It might have been possible, early in the uprising, for the country to avoid the religious animosity now tearing it apart. The popular movement against Assad was not initially a rebellion against the Alawites and, for a time, Assad’s regime maintained the loyalty of many of his Sunni soldiers.
Assad’s decision to arm Alawite civilian militias helped shape the conflict as a religious one, creating the perception among Alawites that the uprising was against them and not just Assad’s regime, says Frederic Wehrey, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Clerics and media outlets in the Gulf augmented the war’s sectarian nature by “demonizing” Alawites and focusing on Iran’s support for the Assad regime, says Wehrey, who is the author of Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprising. “The Gulf [states] and the Saudis see this as a pivotal moment in checking Iran’s regional influence. This is the strategic prize. The rest of the Arab world’s position hinges on what happens in Syria.”
This belief has pushed Sunni governments and private donors in the region to support Sunni rebel militias in Syria—some of whom subscribe to an extremist version of Islam and include foreign fighters in their ranks. Iran, for its part, has sent advisers from the Revolutionary Guards to fight for Assad, along with the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia, Hezbollah.
“It’s a regional war. All the militias in Syria have become proxies for a much broader Sunni-Shia struggle,” says Landis. “You could look at this like Central Europe during the Thirty Years War between Protestants and Catholics, because, in many ways, the Middle East is in the pre-Enlightenment world. Sunnis and Shias have not accepted each other as equal partners in Islam.”
By the time the Thirty Years War was over in 1648, millions were dead. The death toll from ongoing Sunni-Shia disputes—even in the charnel house of Syria—is much smaller. And while religious differences are an accelerant, the clashes are also about power and wealth.
“The grievances always stem from actual situations of disempowerment and of the nature of authoritarian systems of government,” says Legrenzi, citing as an example Bahrain, where a Sunni minority that includes the king dominates a Shia majority. Public demonstrations in 2011 were put down with help from Saudi troops and armour, and police from the United Arab Emirates.
Despite attempts by some commentators at the time—including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—to frame the unrest as an Iran-backed plot, Legrenzi and Wehrey both describe the uprising as an indigenous one fuelled by a genuine desire for a more just and equitable society.
Sunni and Shia powers have also co-operated when it suited them. Saudi Arabia and Iran were allies against Communism prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. More recently, Iran backed the Palestinian Sunni militia Hamas against Israel—though this partnership has unravelled because of Iran’s support for Assad.
The Muslim world, in other words, is not condemned to unending antagonism between its major sects. But the divide today is deep and violent, even at street level. Faith-driven lynchings have claimed victims from Egypt to Pakistan. There is little reason to believe this acrimony will soften soon.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/01/03/an-ancient-war-is-new-again/
by Michael Petrou on Friday, January 3, 2014 4:24pm
Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Of the various slurs and insults that opposing sides in Syria’s civil war fling at each other, there are some so archaic, they seem not to belong in a modern conflict. Among them is the Arabic and Persian term Majous, used by Sunni Muslim rebels against supporters of President Bashar al-Assad. Those familiar with the Christmas story might recognize its similarity to magi, as in the three wise men who came from the East with gifts for the baby Jesus.
The term originally referred to followers of Zoroastrianism, a now all-but-vanished religion that predates Islam. Rebels employ it today to deny the shared Islamic faith of their adversaries. Assad’s family and many of his supporters are Alawite Muslims, followers of an offshoot of Shia Islam. “It means they’re not Muslims, because they’re still these weirdo Zoroastrians,” says Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “And they’re not even Arabs. They’re crypto-Iranians.”
It is language that speaks to the deepening sectarian fault lines running through Syria and, increasingly, throughout the Islamic Middle East. In Iraq, for example, al-Qaeda leaders boasting about prison breaks near Baghdad last summer said they had damaged the country’s “Safavid” government. The Safavids were a Persian dynasty that brought Shia Islam to what is now Iraq some 400 years ago.
Divisions between the Sunni and Shia interpretations of Islam are almost as old as the faith itself. But what’s happening now is a particularly bitter and often violent clash, and one that is intensified by a geopolitical power struggle between the two dominant nations in the region, Shia-ruled Iran and Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, each acting as standard-bearers for Islam’s two major sects. Some have likened the struggle to a Middle Eastern version of the Cold War, with Iran and Saudi Arabia playing the roles of America and the Soviet Union, and other states in the region lining up behind them.
For the Sunni-ruled countries of the Arabian Peninsula, any sign that Iran is becoming stronger—by improving its nuclear capabilities, or even by moving toward normalizing its relations with Washington—stokes anxiety. They fear Iran itself, and the possibility that a more powerful Iran might embolden and stir up dissent among their own Shia populations. Repercussions of the struggle within Islam are not limited to the Muslim world, either. America and Israel, motivated by their own standoff with Iran, side with the Sunni camp. Russia, seeing an opportunity to counter Western influence in the region, backs Shia Iran and Alawite-led Syria.
The Shia-Sunni conflict “is not just a hoary religious dispute, a fossilized set piece from the early years of Islam’s unfolding, but a contemporary clash of identities,” Vali Nasr writes in The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future. “Theological and historical disagreements fuel it, but so do today’s concerns with power, subjugation, freedom and equality, not to mention regional conflicts and foreign intrigues. It is, paradoxically, a very old, very modern conflict.”
The Middle East’s sectarian divide sharpened following the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Until then, Sunnis dominated the region, with Shia strength concentrated in Iran. When America toppled Saddam Hussein and brought democracy to Iraq, it also liberated the country’s Shias, who had long been suppressed by Saddam and his mostly Sunni power base, despite forming a majority of Iraq’s population.
“This was a tremendous earthquake in the regional balance of power,” says Landis. “It strengthened Iran tremendously. It made the Sunni powers extremely fearful of this growing Shia menace—at least what they saw as a menace.”
The Shia’s ascendency in Iraq was neither smooth nor peaceful. Sunni extremists resisted with suicide bombings and attacks on Shia religious processions and mosques. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was clear about his movement’s goals. The Shia, he wrote in a 2004 letter, are “the insurmountable obstacle, the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy and the penetrating venom.
“If we succeed in dragging them into the arena of sectarian war, it will become possible to waken the inattentive Sunnis, as they feel imminent danger and annihilating death at the hands of Sabeans.”
Zarqawi, like Syrian rebel commanders today, reached far into history for an anti-Shia slur. The Sabeans were pagans of southwest Arabia. The Shia of today, he implied, are similarly godless. Zarqawi succeeded, to some degree, in provoking a sectarian war in Iraq whose bloody reverberations continue today. He also pulled Iran deeper into the conflict. In 2005, a cleric there described Sunni suicide bombers in Iraq as “wolves without pity,” and vowed, “Sooner, rather than later, Iran will have to put them down.”
Since then, Shia prime ministers with close ties to Iran have governed Iraq. A once Sunni-ruled state has shifted into Iran’s sphere of influence. It was this reality that prompted King Abdullah of Jordan in 2004 to warn of a Shia “crescent” stretching from Iran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon that would alter the Sunni-Shia balance of power and risk destabilizing the region.
At the time, Abdullah’s comments sounded alarmist, says Matteo Legrenzi, an associate professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Today, they seem prescient. “Sectarianism is now one of the defining characteristics of the current moment in Middle East politics.”
The hot centre of this divide is Syria, where Sunnis form a majority, but where the Alawite Assad family has ruled for more than 40 years. It might have been possible, early in the uprising, for the country to avoid the religious animosity now tearing it apart. The popular movement against Assad was not initially a rebellion against the Alawites and, for a time, Assad’s regime maintained the loyalty of many of his Sunni soldiers.
Assad’s decision to arm Alawite civilian militias helped shape the conflict as a religious one, creating the perception among Alawites that the uprising was against them and not just Assad’s regime, says Frederic Wehrey, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Clerics and media outlets in the Gulf augmented the war’s sectarian nature by “demonizing” Alawites and focusing on Iran’s support for the Assad regime, says Wehrey, who is the author of Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprising. “The Gulf [states] and the Saudis see this as a pivotal moment in checking Iran’s regional influence. This is the strategic prize. The rest of the Arab world’s position hinges on what happens in Syria.”
This belief has pushed Sunni governments and private donors in the region to support Sunni rebel militias in Syria—some of whom subscribe to an extremist version of Islam and include foreign fighters in their ranks. Iran, for its part, has sent advisers from the Revolutionary Guards to fight for Assad, along with the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia, Hezbollah.
“It’s a regional war. All the militias in Syria have become proxies for a much broader Sunni-Shia struggle,” says Landis. “You could look at this like Central Europe during the Thirty Years War between Protestants and Catholics, because, in many ways, the Middle East is in the pre-Enlightenment world. Sunnis and Shias have not accepted each other as equal partners in Islam.”
By the time the Thirty Years War was over in 1648, millions were dead. The death toll from ongoing Sunni-Shia disputes—even in the charnel house of Syria—is much smaller. And while religious differences are an accelerant, the clashes are also about power and wealth.
“The grievances always stem from actual situations of disempowerment and of the nature of authoritarian systems of government,” says Legrenzi, citing as an example Bahrain, where a Sunni minority that includes the king dominates a Shia majority. Public demonstrations in 2011 were put down with help from Saudi troops and armour, and police from the United Arab Emirates.
Despite attempts by some commentators at the time—including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—to frame the unrest as an Iran-backed plot, Legrenzi and Wehrey both describe the uprising as an indigenous one fuelled by a genuine desire for a more just and equitable society.
Sunni and Shia powers have also co-operated when it suited them. Saudi Arabia and Iran were allies against Communism prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. More recently, Iran backed the Palestinian Sunni militia Hamas against Israel—though this partnership has unravelled because of Iran’s support for Assad.
The Muslim world, in other words, is not condemned to unending antagonism between its major sects. But the divide today is deep and violent, even at street level. Faith-driven lynchings have claimed victims from Egypt to Pakistan. There is little reason to believe this acrimony will soften soon.
Sunni monarchs back YouTube hate preachers: Anti-Shia propaganda threatens a sectarian civil war which will engulf the entire Muslim world
Sunni monarchs back YouTube hate preachers: Anti-Shia propaganda threatens a sectarian civil war which will engulf the entire Muslim world
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sunni-monarchs-back-youtube-hate-preachers-antishia-propaganda-threatens-a-sectarian-civil-war-which-will-engulf-the-entire-muslim-world-9028538.html
World View: There is now a pool of jihadis willing to fight and die anywhere
Patrick Cockburn
Sunday 29 December 2013
Anti-Shia hate propaganda spread by Sunni religious figures sponsored by, or based in, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, is creating the ingredients for a sectarian civil war engulfing the entire Muslim world. Iraq and Syria have seen the most violence, with the majority of the 766 civilian fatalities in Iraq this month being Shia pilgrims killed by suicide bombers from the al-Qa'ida umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis). The anti-Shia hostility of this organisation, now operating from Baghdad to Beirut, is so extreme that last month it had to apologise for beheading one of its own wounded fighters in Aleppo – because he was mistakenly believed to have muttered the name of Shia saints as he lay on a stretcher.
At the beginning of December, al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula killed 53 doctors and nurses and wounded 162 in an attack on a hospital in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, which had been threatened for not taking care of wounded militants by a commentator on an extreme Sunni satellite TV station. Days before the attack, he announced that armies and tribes would assault the hospital "to take revenge for our brothers. We say this and, by the grace of Allah, we will do it".
Skilled use of the internet and access to satellite television funded by or based in Sunni states has been central to the resurgence of al-Qa'ida across the Middle East, to a degree that Western politicians have so far failed to grasp. In the last year, Isis has become the most powerful single rebel military force in Iraq and Syria, partly because of its ability to recruit suicide bombers and fanatical fighters through the social media. Western intelligence agencies, such as the NSA in the US, much criticised for spying on the internet communications of their own citizens, have paid much less attention to open and instantly accessible calls for sectarian murder that are in plain view. Critics say that this is in keeping with a tradition since 9/11 of Western governments not wishing to hold Saudi Arabia or the Gulf monarchies responsible for funding extreme Sunni jihadi groups and propagandists supporting them through private donations.
Satellite television, internet, YouTube and Twitter content, frequently emanating from or financed by oil states in the Arabian peninsula, are at the centre of a campaign to spread sectarian hatred to every corner of the Muslim world, including places where Shia are a vulnerable minority, such as Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Malaysia. In Benghazi, in effect the capital of eastern Libya, a jihadi group uploaded a video of the execution of an Iraqi professor who admitted to being a Shia, saying they had shot him in revenge for the execution of Sunni militants by the Iraqi government.
YouTube-inspired divisions are not confined to the Middle East: in London's Edgware Road there was a fracas this summer when a Salafi (Sunni fundamentalist) cleric held a rally in the face of objections from local Shia shopkeepers. Impelled by television preachers and the social media, sectarian animosities are deepening among hitherto moderate Sunni and Shia, with one Shia figure in the UK saying that "Even in London you could open the address books of most Sunni without finding any Shia names, and vice versa."
The hate propaganda is often gory and calls openly for religious war. One anti-Shia satellite television station shows a grouping of Shia clerical leaders, mostly from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, labelled as "Satan's assistants". Another asks "Oh Sunni Muslims, how long will you wait when your sons are led to be hanged in Iraq? Is it now time to break the shackles?" A picture of a woman in black walking between what appear to be two militiamen is entitled "Shia men in Syria rape Sunni sisters", and another shows the back of a pick-up truck heaped with dead bodies in uniform, titled "The destiny of Syrian Army and Shia soldiers". Some pictures are intended to intimidate, such as one showing an armed convoy on a road in Yemen, with a message addressed to the Shia saying: "Sunni tribes are on the way".
Sectarian animosities between Sunni and Shia have existed down the centuries, but have greatly intensified since the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the eight-year Iran-Iraq war that followed it. Hatreds increased after the US invasion of Iraq and the takeover of what had been a Sunni-run state under Saddam Hussein by the majority Shia community, which generated a ferocious sectarian civil war that peaked in 2006-07 and ended with a Shia victory. Opposition to Iran and the new Shia-run state of Iraq led to Sunni rulers emphasising the Shia threat. Shia activists point in particular to the establishment in 2009 of two satellite channels, Safa TV and Wesal TV, which they accuse of having strong anti-Shia bias. They say that Saudi clerics have shown great skill in communicating extreme sectarian views through modern communications technology such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, giving them a much wider audience than they had previously enjoyed.
An example of the inflammatory views being pumped out over YouTube is a sermon by Nabil al-Awadi, a cleric in Kuwait, who has 3.4 million followers on Twitter. His speech is devoted to "exposing the biggest conspiracy the Muslim world faces", which turns out to be a plot "conceived in Qom [the Shia holy city in Iran], and handled by sayyids and chiefs in Tehran, to get rid of the nation of Islam, aiming to desecrate the Kaaba [the building in Mecca that is Islam's most sacred site] brick by brick".
Mr Awadi relates that Iraq fell to an enemy whom he does not name, but he clearly means the Shia, often referred to as Safavids after the Iranian dynasty of that name. He says that in Iraq "they were killing the imams with drills in their heads until they are dead and they put the bodies in acid to burn until they died". But the speaker looks forward to a holy war or jihad in Syria, where a great battle for the future of Islam will be fought and won. He warns that "they did not know that jihad is staying and will put fear in their hearts even if they are in Washington, even if they are in London, even if they are in Moscow".
In Egypt, the Shia are only a small minority, but a cleric named Mohamed Zoghbi reacted furiously to the suggestion that they appear on satellite television to debate religious differences. "We would cut off their fingers and cut off their tongues," he said. "I must cut off the Shia breath in Egypt." Bloodthirsty threats like this have great influence on ordinary viewers, since many Egyptians watch religious channels continuously and believe the opinions expressed on them. An example of what this kind of incitement can mean for Shia living in communities where Sunni are the overwhelming majority was demonstrated in June in the small village of Zawyat Abu Musalam, in Giza governorate in Egypt. Some 40 Shia families had previously lived in the village until an enraged mob, led by Salafist sheikhs, burned five houses and lynched four Shia, including a prominent local figure.
Video films of the lynching, which took place in daylight, show the savage and merciless attacks to which Shia minorities in many countries are now being subjected.
Hazem Barakat, an eyewitness and photojournalist, minutely recorded what happened and recorded it on Twitter in real time. "For three weeks, the Salafist sheikhs in the village have been attacking the Shias and accusing them of being infidels and spreading debauchery," he told Ahram Online. Film of the incident shows a man, who looks as if he may already be dead, being dragged through a narrow street in the village by a mob. Among the four dead was 66-year-old Hassan Shehata, a well-known Shia leader who had been twice jailed under Hosni Mubarak for "contempt for religion". Police came to the village but arrived late. "They were just watching the public lynching like everyone else and did not stop anything," said Mr Barakat.
A significant sign of the mood in Egypt is that immediately after the lynchings, a TV host said that Mr Shehata had been killed because he had insulted the Prophet Mohamed's relatives. Several Salafist and conservative Facebook pages are cited by Ahram Online as having lauded the murders, saying that this was the beginning of eliminating all the three million Shia in Egypt.
Given that Shia make up between 150 and 200 million of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, they are a small and usually vulnerable minority in all countries aside from Iran and Iraq, though they are numerous in Lebanon, Pakistan and India. In Tunisia last year, a pro-Palestinian march by Shia in the city of Gabes was attacked by Salafists chanting, "There is no god but Allah and the Shia are the enemies of God." Tunisian eyewitnesses cite the influence of Egyptian and Saudi religious channels, combined with the Salafists claiming to be the last defence against an exaggerated threat of a takeover by Iran and the Shia.
The propaganda war became more intense from 2006 on, when there were mass killings of Sunni in Baghdad which, having previously been a mixed city, is now dominated by the Shia, with Sunnis confined to enclaves mostly in the west of the city. The Sunni community in Iraq started a protest movement against persecution and denial of political, social and economic rights in December 2012. As the Iraqi government failed to conciliate the Sunni with concessions, a peaceful protest movement mutated into armed resistance.
The enhanced prestige and popularity of the Shia paramilitary movement Hezbollah, after its success against Israel's air and ground assault in 2006, may also be a reason why Sunni governments tolerated stepped-up sectarian attacks on the Shia. These often take the form of claims that Iran is seeking to take over the region. In Bahrain, the Sunni monarchy repeatedly asserted that it saw an Iranian hand behind the Arab Spring protests in early 2011, though its own international inquiry later found no evidence for this. When President Obama said in September that Bahrain, along with Iraq and Syria, suffered from sectarian tensions, the Bahraini government furiously denied that any such thing was true.
Social media, satellite television, Facebook and YouTube, which were praised at the start of the Arab Spring as the means for a progressive breakthrough for freedom of expression, have turned into channels for instilling hatred and fear. Fighters in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and other countries beset by violence often draw their knowledge of the world from a limited number of fanatical internet preachers and commentators calling for holy war by Sunni against Shia; often such people are crucial in sending young volunteers to fight and die in Syria and Iraq.
A recent study of dead rebel fighters in Syria by Aaron Y Zelin of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation indicates that jihadi death notices revealing country of origin show that 267 came from Saudi Arabia, 201 from Libya, 182 from Tunisia and 95 from Jordan. The great majority had joined Isis and the al-Nusra Front, both of which are highly sectarian organisations. A deeply dangerous development is that the foreign fighters, inspired by film of atrocities and appeals to religious faith, may sign up to go to Syria but often end up as suicide bombers in Iraq, where violence has increased spectacularly in the past 12 months.
There is now a fast-expanding pool of jihadis willing to fight and die anywhere. The Saudis and the Gulf monarchies may find, as happened in Afghanistan 30 years ago, that, by funding or tolerating the dissemination of Sunni-Shia hate, they have created a sectarian Frankenstein's monster of religious fanatics beyond their control.
Commentary:
This is the first of a series of articles on this most dangerous subject matter, that is being circulated across the globe. The tragic irony of this observation is that a Non-Muslim author such as Patrick Cockburn is bringing this sad saga to the attention of the World. Both Sunni and Shia Muslims better beware and recognize that the reality of 1400 years of Islamic history evidences that one sect can not overpower the other regardless of its size and the number of adherents it controls.
What matters most , though, is that not a single World power capable of empowering one sect over the other is Muslim much less Sunni or Shia !
Agha Shaukat Jafri
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sunni-monarchs-back-youtube-hate-preachers-antishia-propaganda-threatens-a-sectarian-civil-war-which-will-engulf-the-entire-muslim-world-9028538.html
World View: There is now a pool of jihadis willing to fight and die anywhere
Patrick Cockburn
Sunday 29 December 2013
Anti-Shia hate propaganda spread by Sunni religious figures sponsored by, or based in, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, is creating the ingredients for a sectarian civil war engulfing the entire Muslim world. Iraq and Syria have seen the most violence, with the majority of the 766 civilian fatalities in Iraq this month being Shia pilgrims killed by suicide bombers from the al-Qa'ida umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis). The anti-Shia hostility of this organisation, now operating from Baghdad to Beirut, is so extreme that last month it had to apologise for beheading one of its own wounded fighters in Aleppo – because he was mistakenly believed to have muttered the name of Shia saints as he lay on a stretcher.
At the beginning of December, al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula killed 53 doctors and nurses and wounded 162 in an attack on a hospital in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, which had been threatened for not taking care of wounded militants by a commentator on an extreme Sunni satellite TV station. Days before the attack, he announced that armies and tribes would assault the hospital "to take revenge for our brothers. We say this and, by the grace of Allah, we will do it".
Skilled use of the internet and access to satellite television funded by or based in Sunni states has been central to the resurgence of al-Qa'ida across the Middle East, to a degree that Western politicians have so far failed to grasp. In the last year, Isis has become the most powerful single rebel military force in Iraq and Syria, partly because of its ability to recruit suicide bombers and fanatical fighters through the social media. Western intelligence agencies, such as the NSA in the US, much criticised for spying on the internet communications of their own citizens, have paid much less attention to open and instantly accessible calls for sectarian murder that are in plain view. Critics say that this is in keeping with a tradition since 9/11 of Western governments not wishing to hold Saudi Arabia or the Gulf monarchies responsible for funding extreme Sunni jihadi groups and propagandists supporting them through private donations.
Satellite television, internet, YouTube and Twitter content, frequently emanating from or financed by oil states in the Arabian peninsula, are at the centre of a campaign to spread sectarian hatred to every corner of the Muslim world, including places where Shia are a vulnerable minority, such as Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Malaysia. In Benghazi, in effect the capital of eastern Libya, a jihadi group uploaded a video of the execution of an Iraqi professor who admitted to being a Shia, saying they had shot him in revenge for the execution of Sunni militants by the Iraqi government.
YouTube-inspired divisions are not confined to the Middle East: in London's Edgware Road there was a fracas this summer when a Salafi (Sunni fundamentalist) cleric held a rally in the face of objections from local Shia shopkeepers. Impelled by television preachers and the social media, sectarian animosities are deepening among hitherto moderate Sunni and Shia, with one Shia figure in the UK saying that "Even in London you could open the address books of most Sunni without finding any Shia names, and vice versa."
The hate propaganda is often gory and calls openly for religious war. One anti-Shia satellite television station shows a grouping of Shia clerical leaders, mostly from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, labelled as "Satan's assistants". Another asks "Oh Sunni Muslims, how long will you wait when your sons are led to be hanged in Iraq? Is it now time to break the shackles?" A picture of a woman in black walking between what appear to be two militiamen is entitled "Shia men in Syria rape Sunni sisters", and another shows the back of a pick-up truck heaped with dead bodies in uniform, titled "The destiny of Syrian Army and Shia soldiers". Some pictures are intended to intimidate, such as one showing an armed convoy on a road in Yemen, with a message addressed to the Shia saying: "Sunni tribes are on the way".
Sectarian animosities between Sunni and Shia have existed down the centuries, but have greatly intensified since the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the eight-year Iran-Iraq war that followed it. Hatreds increased after the US invasion of Iraq and the takeover of what had been a Sunni-run state under Saddam Hussein by the majority Shia community, which generated a ferocious sectarian civil war that peaked in 2006-07 and ended with a Shia victory. Opposition to Iran and the new Shia-run state of Iraq led to Sunni rulers emphasising the Shia threat. Shia activists point in particular to the establishment in 2009 of two satellite channels, Safa TV and Wesal TV, which they accuse of having strong anti-Shia bias. They say that Saudi clerics have shown great skill in communicating extreme sectarian views through modern communications technology such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, giving them a much wider audience than they had previously enjoyed.
An example of the inflammatory views being pumped out over YouTube is a sermon by Nabil al-Awadi, a cleric in Kuwait, who has 3.4 million followers on Twitter. His speech is devoted to "exposing the biggest conspiracy the Muslim world faces", which turns out to be a plot "conceived in Qom [the Shia holy city in Iran], and handled by sayyids and chiefs in Tehran, to get rid of the nation of Islam, aiming to desecrate the Kaaba [the building in Mecca that is Islam's most sacred site] brick by brick".
Mr Awadi relates that Iraq fell to an enemy whom he does not name, but he clearly means the Shia, often referred to as Safavids after the Iranian dynasty of that name. He says that in Iraq "they were killing the imams with drills in their heads until they are dead and they put the bodies in acid to burn until they died". But the speaker looks forward to a holy war or jihad in Syria, where a great battle for the future of Islam will be fought and won. He warns that "they did not know that jihad is staying and will put fear in their hearts even if they are in Washington, even if they are in London, even if they are in Moscow".
In Egypt, the Shia are only a small minority, but a cleric named Mohamed Zoghbi reacted furiously to the suggestion that they appear on satellite television to debate religious differences. "We would cut off their fingers and cut off their tongues," he said. "I must cut off the Shia breath in Egypt." Bloodthirsty threats like this have great influence on ordinary viewers, since many Egyptians watch religious channels continuously and believe the opinions expressed on them. An example of what this kind of incitement can mean for Shia living in communities where Sunni are the overwhelming majority was demonstrated in June in the small village of Zawyat Abu Musalam, in Giza governorate in Egypt. Some 40 Shia families had previously lived in the village until an enraged mob, led by Salafist sheikhs, burned five houses and lynched four Shia, including a prominent local figure.
Video films of the lynching, which took place in daylight, show the savage and merciless attacks to which Shia minorities in many countries are now being subjected.
Hazem Barakat, an eyewitness and photojournalist, minutely recorded what happened and recorded it on Twitter in real time. "For three weeks, the Salafist sheikhs in the village have been attacking the Shias and accusing them of being infidels and spreading debauchery," he told Ahram Online. Film of the incident shows a man, who looks as if he may already be dead, being dragged through a narrow street in the village by a mob. Among the four dead was 66-year-old Hassan Shehata, a well-known Shia leader who had been twice jailed under Hosni Mubarak for "contempt for religion". Police came to the village but arrived late. "They were just watching the public lynching like everyone else and did not stop anything," said Mr Barakat.
A significant sign of the mood in Egypt is that immediately after the lynchings, a TV host said that Mr Shehata had been killed because he had insulted the Prophet Mohamed's relatives. Several Salafist and conservative Facebook pages are cited by Ahram Online as having lauded the murders, saying that this was the beginning of eliminating all the three million Shia in Egypt.
Given that Shia make up between 150 and 200 million of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, they are a small and usually vulnerable minority in all countries aside from Iran and Iraq, though they are numerous in Lebanon, Pakistan and India. In Tunisia last year, a pro-Palestinian march by Shia in the city of Gabes was attacked by Salafists chanting, "There is no god but Allah and the Shia are the enemies of God." Tunisian eyewitnesses cite the influence of Egyptian and Saudi religious channels, combined with the Salafists claiming to be the last defence against an exaggerated threat of a takeover by Iran and the Shia.
The propaganda war became more intense from 2006 on, when there were mass killings of Sunni in Baghdad which, having previously been a mixed city, is now dominated by the Shia, with Sunnis confined to enclaves mostly in the west of the city. The Sunni community in Iraq started a protest movement against persecution and denial of political, social and economic rights in December 2012. As the Iraqi government failed to conciliate the Sunni with concessions, a peaceful protest movement mutated into armed resistance.
The enhanced prestige and popularity of the Shia paramilitary movement Hezbollah, after its success against Israel's air and ground assault in 2006, may also be a reason why Sunni governments tolerated stepped-up sectarian attacks on the Shia. These often take the form of claims that Iran is seeking to take over the region. In Bahrain, the Sunni monarchy repeatedly asserted that it saw an Iranian hand behind the Arab Spring protests in early 2011, though its own international inquiry later found no evidence for this. When President Obama said in September that Bahrain, along with Iraq and Syria, suffered from sectarian tensions, the Bahraini government furiously denied that any such thing was true.
Social media, satellite television, Facebook and YouTube, which were praised at the start of the Arab Spring as the means for a progressive breakthrough for freedom of expression, have turned into channels for instilling hatred and fear. Fighters in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and other countries beset by violence often draw their knowledge of the world from a limited number of fanatical internet preachers and commentators calling for holy war by Sunni against Shia; often such people are crucial in sending young volunteers to fight and die in Syria and Iraq.
A recent study of dead rebel fighters in Syria by Aaron Y Zelin of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation indicates that jihadi death notices revealing country of origin show that 267 came from Saudi Arabia, 201 from Libya, 182 from Tunisia and 95 from Jordan. The great majority had joined Isis and the al-Nusra Front, both of which are highly sectarian organisations. A deeply dangerous development is that the foreign fighters, inspired by film of atrocities and appeals to religious faith, may sign up to go to Syria but often end up as suicide bombers in Iraq, where violence has increased spectacularly in the past 12 months.
There is now a fast-expanding pool of jihadis willing to fight and die anywhere. The Saudis and the Gulf monarchies may find, as happened in Afghanistan 30 years ago, that, by funding or tolerating the dissemination of Sunni-Shia hate, they have created a sectarian Frankenstein's monster of religious fanatics beyond their control.
Commentary:
This is the first of a series of articles on this most dangerous subject matter, that is being circulated across the globe. The tragic irony of this observation is that a Non-Muslim author such as Patrick Cockburn is bringing this sad saga to the attention of the World. Both Sunni and Shia Muslims better beware and recognize that the reality of 1400 years of Islamic history evidences that one sect can not overpower the other regardless of its size and the number of adherents it controls.
What matters most , though, is that not a single World power capable of empowering one sect over the other is Muslim much less Sunni or Shia !
Agha Shaukat Jafri
Monday, February 3, 2014
Ganó el pueblo salvadoreño
Ganó el pueblo salvadoreño
http://elblogdesalvador.net/2014/02/gano-el-pueblo-salvadoreno-2/
Posted: 03 Feb 2014 05:30 AM PST
Pueblo salvadoreño, muchas gracias. Gracias a la militancia y simpatizantes del FMLN por haber confiado en Oscar y en mí. Los salvadoreños conocen y comparten los principios que el FMLN defiende: la vida, la libertad, el Buen Vivir.
Este 2 de febrero fue un día histórico: nos pronunciamos a favor de la gran transformación económica y social que ha comenzado en nuestro primer gobierno. Sin lugar a dudas: ganó el pueblo salvadoreño.
El Tribunal Supremo Electoral llamaría a una segunda vuelta, a la que Oscar y yo nos presentaremos con la misma convicción. La seguridad nos la da la gente al demostrarnos su aprobación y respaldo.
Me siento honrado al ser el candidato que obtuvo mayor número de votos en esta primera vuelta. Este reconocimiento no hace más que impulsarme a seguir dando lo mejor de mí.
Quiero también reconocer el excelente trabajo del Tribunal Supremo Electoral, de los miles de observadores nacionales e internacionales y los vigilantes de los diferentes partidos políticos. El trabajo de ustedes contribuye al fortalecimiento la democracia en El Salvador.
La masiva asistencia de salvadoreños a las urnas, para hacer efectivo su derecho a elegir sus gobernantes, refleja que cada día somos una sociedad más democrática que se apropia de sus derechos. Esto constituye un paso fundamental para una sociedad que avanza hacia el Buen Vivir.
Oscar y yo volvemos a comprometernos con ustedes, amigas y amigos, nos comprometemos en seguir presentando nuestro Programa de Gobierno “El Salvador Adelante”, que nació del pueblo y es para el pueblo.
Llamo a toda la militancia y a los simpatizantes del FMLN a salir nuevamente a las calles, a las casas, a compartir esta visión de país, de futuro. Nosotros vamos a seguir posicionando la verdad. Nosotros seguiremos jugando limpio. Ese es nuestro estilo de trabajo, ha sido nuestro estilo de gobernar y lo seguirá siendo. Ahora decimos: ¡a seguir trabajando! ¡Adelante!
http://elblogdesalvador.net/2014/02/gano-el-pueblo-salvadoreno-2/
Posted: 03 Feb 2014 05:30 AM PST
Pueblo salvadoreño, muchas gracias. Gracias a la militancia y simpatizantes del FMLN por haber confiado en Oscar y en mí. Los salvadoreños conocen y comparten los principios que el FMLN defiende: la vida, la libertad, el Buen Vivir.
Este 2 de febrero fue un día histórico: nos pronunciamos a favor de la gran transformación económica y social que ha comenzado en nuestro primer gobierno. Sin lugar a dudas: ganó el pueblo salvadoreño.
El Tribunal Supremo Electoral llamaría a una segunda vuelta, a la que Oscar y yo nos presentaremos con la misma convicción. La seguridad nos la da la gente al demostrarnos su aprobación y respaldo.
Me siento honrado al ser el candidato que obtuvo mayor número de votos en esta primera vuelta. Este reconocimiento no hace más que impulsarme a seguir dando lo mejor de mí.
Quiero también reconocer el excelente trabajo del Tribunal Supremo Electoral, de los miles de observadores nacionales e internacionales y los vigilantes de los diferentes partidos políticos. El trabajo de ustedes contribuye al fortalecimiento la democracia en El Salvador.
La masiva asistencia de salvadoreños a las urnas, para hacer efectivo su derecho a elegir sus gobernantes, refleja que cada día somos una sociedad más democrática que se apropia de sus derechos. Esto constituye un paso fundamental para una sociedad que avanza hacia el Buen Vivir.
Oscar y yo volvemos a comprometernos con ustedes, amigas y amigos, nos comprometemos en seguir presentando nuestro Programa de Gobierno “El Salvador Adelante”, que nació del pueblo y es para el pueblo.
Llamo a toda la militancia y a los simpatizantes del FMLN a salir nuevamente a las calles, a las casas, a compartir esta visión de país, de futuro. Nosotros vamos a seguir posicionando la verdad. Nosotros seguiremos jugando limpio. Ese es nuestro estilo de trabajo, ha sido nuestro estilo de gobernar y lo seguirá siendo. Ahora decimos: ¡a seguir trabajando! ¡Adelante!
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