Lebanese terror group leader’s speeches, TV appearances lack usual zeal and charisma, behavioral researchers say, adding that criticism directed toward Nasrallah from Syria, Lebanon may be cause of his misery
Hanan Greenberg
Published: 02.19.07, 18:52 / Israel News
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is suffering from some form of depression, Israeli behavioral researchers said.
The experts, who examined Nasrallah’s patterns of behavior during recent public appearances and compared it to his conduct in the past, said if their assertion was correct it would be difficult to predict the Hizbullah chief’s actions in the future.
According to the researchers, Nasrallah’s current speeches and TV appearances lack the usual zeal and charisma.
The researchers said Nasrallah’s depression may be the result of criticism directed at him from Lebanon and Syria.
Israeli security establishment officials refused to comment on the researchers’ conclusion, but did say that Nasrallah may attack Israel for the very reason that he feels threatened and unsure of himself.
Other officials, on the other hand, said these may be the first signs of decline in Hizbullah’s status.
Source
Monday, February 19, 2007
Indonesian jihadis: Al Qaeda brainwashed us
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Basri sports a crude tattoo of Mickey Mouse on his wrist and spent his youth drinking alcohol and jamming to Nirvana songs in a rock band.
He was never religious, and even now struggles to remember verses from the Quran, Islam's holy book.
Yet until his arrest this month, the 30-year-old was one of Indonesia's most wanted Islamic militants.
He was accused in the beheadings of three Christian girls and a string of other attacks on Sulawesi island, a key terror front in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
In interviews with The Associated Press, Basri and four other militants detained with him said they were uneducated men, seeking to avenge relatives killed in a Muslim-Christian conflict six years ago.
They said they were brainwashed by members of the al Qaeda linked Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah.
"I was like buffalo with a ring though my nose," Basri said in the interview, which was arranged by police officers who were present through most of it. "If I was pulled, I had no choice but to follow."
Fertile terror recruiting ground
Basri's story shows the complexities of the anti-terror fight in Indonesia, where poor education, poverty and bloody religious fighting in remote provinces continue to provide recruits for Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings and other attacks on Western interests in Indonesia.
It is also a reminder of how al Qaeda's penetration of Sulawesi in 2001 helped create generations of Indonesian Islamic hardliners who are recruiting locals to fan the flames of religious conflict in the area even today.
Police say Basri has formally confessed to taking part in the school girl attack in late 2005, including personally beheading one of the three girls as they walked to school along a quiet jungle path overlooking the town of Poso.
Basri and the other suspects said they evaded arrest for years, learning weapons handling and bomb-making skills from revered Jemaah Islamiyah instructors who either fought or trained in Afghanistan or the southern Philippines -- another Southeast Asian terror hotspot just a short boat journey from Sulawesi.
The crackdown on Sulawesi that netted Basri saw more than 20 suspected Islamic militants killed or arrested -- including several Jemaah Islamiyah ringleaders. But police warn that several more escaped and have likely traveled to the country's main island of Java.
Basri repeated his confession to the AP, describing in detail its planning and execution.
"The preachers told us it was a form of worship," he said. "They said, 'The Christians cut of the heads of Muslim girls in the war, so know it is payback time."'
He killed 20, then cried
Basri claimed he was sorry "not just from my mouth but from deep in my heart."
But he nevertheless joked and laughed as he described how it took two swipes of his machete to lop the head off one of the girls.
Another suspect, Aat, described leaving a bomb in a crowded Christian market that killed 20.
"I didn't think it would be as powerful as that," he said. "I cried the next day."
Central Sulawesi saw 18 months of fighting between Muslim and Christian gangs six years ago that killed up to 1,000 people from both faiths.
Several Arab and Spanish al Qaeda members spent time in the province, handing out weapons and instructing Indonesian fighters at a coastal camp, according to Gen. Abdullah Hendropriyono, the intelligence agency's head at the time.
"It is a fact that al Qaeda took these people to Poso in 2001," he said after showing a reporter video footage of terror training seized from an Arab fighter at the time. "They wanted to create a religious war."
Basri, who goes by a single name, said he did not take part in those training sessions, but was nevertheless a frontline fighter in the war, describing how he saw several relatives killed.
A vow of secrecy
Indonesian authorities occasionally allow media access to terror suspects during investigations. Officers present during the interviews of Basri said this was to counter reports in hardline Islamic media that the men were being tortured or arrested without any evidence and to encourage other militants to give themselves up.
Basri and the other men described how they took an oath of secrecy with Jemaah Islamiyah teachers in 2003 before joining them for weekly indoctrination lessons that were wholly focused on the need for jihad, or holy war, against unbelievers.
In 2005, he and other militants took shooting lessons on a boat at sea, he said.
"These men did not pray or fast, they were gangsters seized upon by these preachers, who told them what they were doing was good, legal and justified by Allah," said Nasir Abbas, a former Jemaah Islamiyah leader in Sulawesi who has since turned police informant.
Basri's arrest came weeks after senior officers made public calls for him and the other men to turn themselves in and meet with local hard-line Muslim leaders to try to enlist their help, with no success.
Police raided their stronghold, sparking gunbattles that killed 14 militants.
Source
He was never religious, and even now struggles to remember verses from the Quran, Islam's holy book.
Yet until his arrest this month, the 30-year-old was one of Indonesia's most wanted Islamic militants.
He was accused in the beheadings of three Christian girls and a string of other attacks on Sulawesi island, a key terror front in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
In interviews with The Associated Press, Basri and four other militants detained with him said they were uneducated men, seeking to avenge relatives killed in a Muslim-Christian conflict six years ago.
They said they were brainwashed by members of the al Qaeda linked Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah.
"I was like buffalo with a ring though my nose," Basri said in the interview, which was arranged by police officers who were present through most of it. "If I was pulled, I had no choice but to follow."
Fertile terror recruiting ground
Basri's story shows the complexities of the anti-terror fight in Indonesia, where poor education, poverty and bloody religious fighting in remote provinces continue to provide recruits for Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings and other attacks on Western interests in Indonesia.
It is also a reminder of how al Qaeda's penetration of Sulawesi in 2001 helped create generations of Indonesian Islamic hardliners who are recruiting locals to fan the flames of religious conflict in the area even today.
Police say Basri has formally confessed to taking part in the school girl attack in late 2005, including personally beheading one of the three girls as they walked to school along a quiet jungle path overlooking the town of Poso.
Basri and the other suspects said they evaded arrest for years, learning weapons handling and bomb-making skills from revered Jemaah Islamiyah instructors who either fought or trained in Afghanistan or the southern Philippines -- another Southeast Asian terror hotspot just a short boat journey from Sulawesi.
The crackdown on Sulawesi that netted Basri saw more than 20 suspected Islamic militants killed or arrested -- including several Jemaah Islamiyah ringleaders. But police warn that several more escaped and have likely traveled to the country's main island of Java.
Basri repeated his confession to the AP, describing in detail its planning and execution.
"The preachers told us it was a form of worship," he said. "They said, 'The Christians cut of the heads of Muslim girls in the war, so know it is payback time."'
He killed 20, then cried
Basri claimed he was sorry "not just from my mouth but from deep in my heart."
But he nevertheless joked and laughed as he described how it took two swipes of his machete to lop the head off one of the girls.
Another suspect, Aat, described leaving a bomb in a crowded Christian market that killed 20.
"I didn't think it would be as powerful as that," he said. "I cried the next day."
Central Sulawesi saw 18 months of fighting between Muslim and Christian gangs six years ago that killed up to 1,000 people from both faiths.
Several Arab and Spanish al Qaeda members spent time in the province, handing out weapons and instructing Indonesian fighters at a coastal camp, according to Gen. Abdullah Hendropriyono, the intelligence agency's head at the time.
"It is a fact that al Qaeda took these people to Poso in 2001," he said after showing a reporter video footage of terror training seized from an Arab fighter at the time. "They wanted to create a religious war."
Basri, who goes by a single name, said he did not take part in those training sessions, but was nevertheless a frontline fighter in the war, describing how he saw several relatives killed.
A vow of secrecy
Indonesian authorities occasionally allow media access to terror suspects during investigations. Officers present during the interviews of Basri said this was to counter reports in hardline Islamic media that the men were being tortured or arrested without any evidence and to encourage other militants to give themselves up.
Basri and the other men described how they took an oath of secrecy with Jemaah Islamiyah teachers in 2003 before joining them for weekly indoctrination lessons that were wholly focused on the need for jihad, or holy war, against unbelievers.
In 2005, he and other militants took shooting lessons on a boat at sea, he said.
"These men did not pray or fast, they were gangsters seized upon by these preachers, who told them what they were doing was good, legal and justified by Allah," said Nasir Abbas, a former Jemaah Islamiyah leader in Sulawesi who has since turned police informant.
Basri's arrest came weeks after senior officers made public calls for him and the other men to turn themselves in and meet with local hard-line Muslim leaders to try to enlist their help, with no success.
Police raided their stronghold, sparking gunbattles that killed 14 militants.
Source
Intresting TV show on Kurdistan
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2491526n
The new Great Game
East and west are jockeying for influence in the Caucasus. The prize is oil and gas
Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday March 5, 2001
The Guardian
A new and potentially explosive Great Game is being set up and few in Britain are aware of it. There are many players: far more than the two - Russia and Britain - who were engaged a century ago in imperial rivalry in central Asia and the north-west frontier.
And the object this time is not so much control of territory. It is the large reserves of oil and gas in the Caucasus, notably the Caspian basin. Pipelines are the counters in this new Great Game.
There are plans for pipe-lines through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, Macedonia - and Albania. Traditional rivalries between east and west are complicated by other threats - from Chechen separatists, Kurds, Albanian guerrilla groups, the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh and, throughout the region, Islamic groups whose activities are causing deep concern to Moscow, Tehran and Washington alike.
"In addition to instability and conflict in the Caucasus and parts of central Asia, there is a longer-term fear that Russia may rebuild its military capabilities, perhaps under a strongly nationalist regime," notes Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, in his recent book, Losing Control. Such a fear he adds, "rarely recognises the significance of a near-endemic Russian perception that Nato expansion and US commercial interests in the Caspian basin are part of a strategic encroachment into Russia's historic sphere of influence".
This is the region both west and east have their eyes on. It is rich in untapped oil and gas while US reserves are running down, China is desperate for more oil, and no one outside the Gulf wants to rely on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Iraq - which have the biggest oil reserves.
Oil is the bait as the US, Russia, Turkey, Iran - and Nato - jockey for alliances, power and influence in this highly combustible but, for most people, little-known, region.
The EU is now getting in on the act. "The European Union cannot afford to neglect the southern Caucasus. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan form a strategic corridor linking southern Europe with central Asia," Chris Patten, the European external relations commissioner, and Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister, told Financial Times readers last month before the first high-level EU visit to the region. "There is perhaps as much oil under the Caspian sea as under the North sea and a huge amount of gas there and in central Asia - good news for energy-hungry Europe," they said.
Soon after the EU visit, Georgia's president, Eduard Shevardnadze, welcomed European and US support for the "Great Silk Road idea". The plan, backed by Washington and American oil companies, including Chevron, is for a pipeline taking Turkmenistan and Kazakh oil to Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, through Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, and through eastern Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Russia is desperate to maintain oil flows through its territory. Iran wants a pipeline running from the Caspian due south. China wants one going due east.
There is also a plan, backed by the US, for a pipeline running from the Bulgarian Black sea port of Burgas through Macedonia to the Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. The idea is for Caspian oil to be shipped to Burgas by tanker from the Black sea ports of Novorossiysk in Russia and Supsa in Georgia.
A feasibility study for this ambitious project - due to be operational by 2005 - is being undertaken by Ambo, a company registered in the US, with, say the Bulgarians, the support of Texaco, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco, Agip and TotalElfFina. It is "very probable" the project will go ahead, a Bulgarian spokesman said last week. It is a "safer" way to take the oil.
While the US and Nato - and now the EU - hold out the prospect of untold wealth for the Caucasian states of the former Soviet Union, the west will also have an important economic stake in Albania and Macedonia. The US already seems to take the view that all Serbs are bad and all Albanians good. The implications for Kosovo, a Serbian province with an overwhelming ethnic Albanian population, and for Macedonia, with armed groups from Kosovo stirring up trouble among the ethnic Albanian population, are potentially immense.
The fight over pipeline routes involves gas as well as oil. Russia wants to supply gas to Turkey; as does Iran, Russia's ally against the Taliban in Afghanistan and a country Russia is supplying with nuclear know-how.
For Britain there is an added factor in this jigsaw puzzle of rivalries and alliances. By 2020, the Ministry of Defence noted in a recent report on the "future strategic context for defence", the UK could be importing 90% of its gas supplies. "The main source of supply," it added, "will include Russia, Iran, and Algeria." Iran's gas reserves, say analysts, are second only to Russia's.
"All options are on the table", says the Foreign Office, adding that Britain has no problem from the "political point of view" with Iran's oil pipeline plan. Watch this space.
richard.norton-taylor@guardian.co.uk
Source
Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday March 5, 2001
The Guardian
A new and potentially explosive Great Game is being set up and few in Britain are aware of it. There are many players: far more than the two - Russia and Britain - who were engaged a century ago in imperial rivalry in central Asia and the north-west frontier.
And the object this time is not so much control of territory. It is the large reserves of oil and gas in the Caucasus, notably the Caspian basin. Pipelines are the counters in this new Great Game.
There are plans for pipe-lines through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, Macedonia - and Albania. Traditional rivalries between east and west are complicated by other threats - from Chechen separatists, Kurds, Albanian guerrilla groups, the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh and, throughout the region, Islamic groups whose activities are causing deep concern to Moscow, Tehran and Washington alike.
"In addition to instability and conflict in the Caucasus and parts of central Asia, there is a longer-term fear that Russia may rebuild its military capabilities, perhaps under a strongly nationalist regime," notes Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, in his recent book, Losing Control. Such a fear he adds, "rarely recognises the significance of a near-endemic Russian perception that Nato expansion and US commercial interests in the Caspian basin are part of a strategic encroachment into Russia's historic sphere of influence".
This is the region both west and east have their eyes on. It is rich in untapped oil and gas while US reserves are running down, China is desperate for more oil, and no one outside the Gulf wants to rely on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Iraq - which have the biggest oil reserves.
Oil is the bait as the US, Russia, Turkey, Iran - and Nato - jockey for alliances, power and influence in this highly combustible but, for most people, little-known, region.
The EU is now getting in on the act. "The European Union cannot afford to neglect the southern Caucasus. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan form a strategic corridor linking southern Europe with central Asia," Chris Patten, the European external relations commissioner, and Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister, told Financial Times readers last month before the first high-level EU visit to the region. "There is perhaps as much oil under the Caspian sea as under the North sea and a huge amount of gas there and in central Asia - good news for energy-hungry Europe," they said.
Soon after the EU visit, Georgia's president, Eduard Shevardnadze, welcomed European and US support for the "Great Silk Road idea". The plan, backed by Washington and American oil companies, including Chevron, is for a pipeline taking Turkmenistan and Kazakh oil to Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, through Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, and through eastern Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Russia is desperate to maintain oil flows through its territory. Iran wants a pipeline running from the Caspian due south. China wants one going due east.
There is also a plan, backed by the US, for a pipeline running from the Bulgarian Black sea port of Burgas through Macedonia to the Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. The idea is for Caspian oil to be shipped to Burgas by tanker from the Black sea ports of Novorossiysk in Russia and Supsa in Georgia.
A feasibility study for this ambitious project - due to be operational by 2005 - is being undertaken by Ambo, a company registered in the US, with, say the Bulgarians, the support of Texaco, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco, Agip and TotalElfFina. It is "very probable" the project will go ahead, a Bulgarian spokesman said last week. It is a "safer" way to take the oil.
While the US and Nato - and now the EU - hold out the prospect of untold wealth for the Caucasian states of the former Soviet Union, the west will also have an important economic stake in Albania and Macedonia. The US already seems to take the view that all Serbs are bad and all Albanians good. The implications for Kosovo, a Serbian province with an overwhelming ethnic Albanian population, and for Macedonia, with armed groups from Kosovo stirring up trouble among the ethnic Albanian population, are potentially immense.
The fight over pipeline routes involves gas as well as oil. Russia wants to supply gas to Turkey; as does Iran, Russia's ally against the Taliban in Afghanistan and a country Russia is supplying with nuclear know-how.
For Britain there is an added factor in this jigsaw puzzle of rivalries and alliances. By 2020, the Ministry of Defence noted in a recent report on the "future strategic context for defence", the UK could be importing 90% of its gas supplies. "The main source of supply," it added, "will include Russia, Iran, and Algeria." Iran's gas reserves, say analysts, are second only to Russia's.
"All options are on the table", says the Foreign Office, adding that Britain has no problem from the "political point of view" with Iran's oil pipeline plan. Watch this space.
richard.norton-taylor@guardian.co.uk
Source
Chomsky: Most Iraqis are traitors
Anger at foreign Arabs builds in Iraq
By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer Mon Feb 19, 3:18 AM ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The wealthy Arab man, sporting a foreign accent, has just given an Iraqi teenager some cash and a bomb when police burst in and arrest him. "You come here from abroad and want to make this young man kill his Iraqi brothers?" an officer asks.
The television ad, widely aired across
Iraq in recent weeks and meant to encourage Iraqis to report suspicious behavior to police, is a startling example of a new strain of anger and discrimination against foreign Arabs in this Arab-majority country.
Suspicion toward foreign Arabs stems, in part, from the fact that the Sunni-led insurgency has included many foreign fighters, most of them Arabs, who are blamed for deadly attacks that have claimed thousands of Iraqi lives.
Foreign Arabs who live in Iraq often try to hide their identities by faking an Iraqi accent or staying silent. Iraqis are usually suspicious when they hear a person speaking Arabic with a non-Iraqi accent.
An Associated Press reporter riding a public bus last month heard one of the passengers telling the driver in conversational Egyptian Arabic to drop him at a stop. After the man, carrying a bag, left the bus, Iraqis began arguing with the driver about why he had let the man on. Several passengers searched the seat where the man had been sitting to make sure he had not left a bomb.
The suspicions have shown up in official pronouncements from the Arab Shiite Muslim-led government of Iraq, too.
After a suicide truck bomb killed more than 132 people and wounded hundreds in a Baghdad market a few weeks ago, the head of the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry's explosives department, Maj. Gen. Jihad al-Jabiri, told state-run Iraqi television: "I call on the government to deport (foreign) Arabs immediately."
Hit by violence from all sides, it is perhaps not surprising that many Shiite Muslim Arabs here have begun showing widespread suspicion of foreign Arabs, who are often from Sunni Muslim countries. Iraq's Shiite-led government is close to
Iran, a non-Arab Shiite Muslim country.
But the discrimination is a troubling sign of just how suspicious Iraqis have become of outsiders as sectarian violence has divided people into camps.
The resentment toward foreign Arabs also has increased regional tensions between Iraq and some of its neighbors, including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, who already are wary of how Shiite leaders are running Iraq.
A day after the Interior Ministry general asked for Arabs' deportation, some Shiite members of parliament echoed the call. That led to a dispute after the parliament speaker, a Sunni Arab, retorted that both Arabs "and others" should be deported — a reference to Iranians. Many Sunnis here fear Iranians are infiltrating Iraq.
Iraqi authorities in recent months also have prevented anyone who holds an Arab-country passport from entering the country without first gaining a security approval that is almost impossible to get.
This measure comes after both Iraqi and U.S. officials have cited instances of Saudi, Syrian, Egyptian, Yemeni and Libyan fighters joining the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. The Iraqi government has tended to blame the insurgency more on foreign fighters than on Iraqis who are
Saddam Hussein loyalists.
The most infamous Arab foreign fighter was Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq group, who was killed by U.S. forces last summer. Another foreign Arab, an Egyptian, took his place after he died, his group said.
Some of the resentment toward foreign Arabs stems from another factor, though — Saddam's longtime preferential treatment toward Palestinians until he was ousted in the 2003 invasion.
Saddam lavished large cash payments on Palestinian suicide bombers in the 1990s, when Iraq faced crippling economic sanctions and many Iraqis were jobless. That caused Iraqis to feel strong resentment toward Palestinians and other Arabs who came to work in Iraq. Palestinians have left in large numbers since the 2003 invasion, because of widespread anger toward them here.
Sabah Abdul-Wahed, a 35-year-old Shiite Muslim cashier at a restaurant in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, said he can't help feeling resentment toward foreign Arabs who live in Iraq.
"They had more privileges than Iraqis, and under Saddam they had better lives than ours," he said. "I don't mean all Arabs but many of them ... Their governments don't like Iraqis. In the past, they liked Iraqi money."
Source
By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer Mon Feb 19, 3:18 AM ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The wealthy Arab man, sporting a foreign accent, has just given an Iraqi teenager some cash and a bomb when police burst in and arrest him. "You come here from abroad and want to make this young man kill his Iraqi brothers?" an officer asks.
The television ad, widely aired across
Iraq in recent weeks and meant to encourage Iraqis to report suspicious behavior to police, is a startling example of a new strain of anger and discrimination against foreign Arabs in this Arab-majority country.
Suspicion toward foreign Arabs stems, in part, from the fact that the Sunni-led insurgency has included many foreign fighters, most of them Arabs, who are blamed for deadly attacks that have claimed thousands of Iraqi lives.
Foreign Arabs who live in Iraq often try to hide their identities by faking an Iraqi accent or staying silent. Iraqis are usually suspicious when they hear a person speaking Arabic with a non-Iraqi accent.
An Associated Press reporter riding a public bus last month heard one of the passengers telling the driver in conversational Egyptian Arabic to drop him at a stop. After the man, carrying a bag, left the bus, Iraqis began arguing with the driver about why he had let the man on. Several passengers searched the seat where the man had been sitting to make sure he had not left a bomb.
The suspicions have shown up in official pronouncements from the Arab Shiite Muslim-led government of Iraq, too.
After a suicide truck bomb killed more than 132 people and wounded hundreds in a Baghdad market a few weeks ago, the head of the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry's explosives department, Maj. Gen. Jihad al-Jabiri, told state-run Iraqi television: "I call on the government to deport (foreign) Arabs immediately."
Hit by violence from all sides, it is perhaps not surprising that many Shiite Muslim Arabs here have begun showing widespread suspicion of foreign Arabs, who are often from Sunni Muslim countries. Iraq's Shiite-led government is close to
Iran, a non-Arab Shiite Muslim country.
But the discrimination is a troubling sign of just how suspicious Iraqis have become of outsiders as sectarian violence has divided people into camps.
The resentment toward foreign Arabs also has increased regional tensions between Iraq and some of its neighbors, including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, who already are wary of how Shiite leaders are running Iraq.
A day after the Interior Ministry general asked for Arabs' deportation, some Shiite members of parliament echoed the call. That led to a dispute after the parliament speaker, a Sunni Arab, retorted that both Arabs "and others" should be deported — a reference to Iranians. Many Sunnis here fear Iranians are infiltrating Iraq.
Iraqi authorities in recent months also have prevented anyone who holds an Arab-country passport from entering the country without first gaining a security approval that is almost impossible to get.
This measure comes after both Iraqi and U.S. officials have cited instances of Saudi, Syrian, Egyptian, Yemeni and Libyan fighters joining the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. The Iraqi government has tended to blame the insurgency more on foreign fighters than on Iraqis who are
Saddam Hussein loyalists.
The most infamous Arab foreign fighter was Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq group, who was killed by U.S. forces last summer. Another foreign Arab, an Egyptian, took his place after he died, his group said.
Some of the resentment toward foreign Arabs stems from another factor, though — Saddam's longtime preferential treatment toward Palestinians until he was ousted in the 2003 invasion.
Saddam lavished large cash payments on Palestinian suicide bombers in the 1990s, when Iraq faced crippling economic sanctions and many Iraqis were jobless. That caused Iraqis to feel strong resentment toward Palestinians and other Arabs who came to work in Iraq. Palestinians have left in large numbers since the 2003 invasion, because of widespread anger toward them here.
Sabah Abdul-Wahed, a 35-year-old Shiite Muslim cashier at a restaurant in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, said he can't help feeling resentment toward foreign Arabs who live in Iraq.
"They had more privileges than Iraqis, and under Saddam they had better lives than ours," he said. "I don't mean all Arabs but many of them ... Their governments don't like Iraqis. In the past, they liked Iraqi money."
Source
Saudi Fatwa: Women Forbidden from Going Online Without Male Guide
Two Saudi clerics issued a fatwa forbidding women from accessing the Internet without the presence of a male guide.
Source: Al-Qabas, Kuwait, February 16, 2007
Source
More sudden jihad syndrome
Cabbie Runs Down Students
Religious Argument Leaves One Hospitalized
POSTED: 5:01 pm CST February 18, 2007
UPDATED: 7:12 pm CST February 18, 2007
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A local cab driver allegedly tried to run over two customers after a fight over religion became heated.
The incident happened early Sunday morning on the Vanderbilt campus and left one man hospitalized and a cab driver arrested, said police
Two students visiting from Ohio were coming from a bar downtown when they got into an argument with their driver over religion, said police. After they paid the driver he allegedly ran them down in a parking lot.
Ibrihim Ahmned, of United Cab, was arrested and charged with assault, attempted homicide and theft. One of the passengers, Andrew Nelson, managed to outrun the cab but Jeremy Invus was taken to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center with serious injuries, said police.
Ahmed has been convicted of misdemeanors including evading arrest in a motor vehicle and driving on a suspended license, said police.
Ahmed was charged with theft because police said the license plate on his cab was listed as stolen. His bond is set at $300,000.
Source
Religious Argument Leaves One Hospitalized
POSTED: 5:01 pm CST February 18, 2007
UPDATED: 7:12 pm CST February 18, 2007
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A local cab driver allegedly tried to run over two customers after a fight over religion became heated.
The incident happened early Sunday morning on the Vanderbilt campus and left one man hospitalized and a cab driver arrested, said police
Two students visiting from Ohio were coming from a bar downtown when they got into an argument with their driver over religion, said police. After they paid the driver he allegedly ran them down in a parking lot.
Ibrihim Ahmned, of United Cab, was arrested and charged with assault, attempted homicide and theft. One of the passengers, Andrew Nelson, managed to outrun the cab but Jeremy Invus was taken to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center with serious injuries, said police.
Ahmed has been convicted of misdemeanors including evading arrest in a motor vehicle and driving on a suspended license, said police.
Ahmed was charged with theft because police said the license plate on his cab was listed as stolen. His bond is set at $300,000.
Source
Cheap bastards
Russian official: Iran stalling reactor payments
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW
Uranium fuel deliveries for a Russian-built nuclear reactor in Iran and its launch could be delayed because of the Iranian government dragging its feet on payments, officials said Monday.
Iran broke the schedule of payments this year under a US$1 billion (€770 million) deal to build the Bushehr nuclear plant, said a government official, who asked not be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He said the Iranians explained the delay in payments by technical reasons.
Asked about the delay in payments, Russia's Federal Nuclear Power Agency spokesman Sergei Novikov said it could derail the launch schedule. Last year, Russia agreed to ship fuel to the Bushehr nuclear plant in southern Iran by March 2007 and launch the facility in September, with electricity generation to start by November.
"The launch schedule definitely could be affected," Novikov told The Associated Press.
In December, Russia supported a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing limited sanctions against Iran over Iran's refusal to stop uranium enrichment.
The United States and its European allies have disputed Iran's nuclear program _ which Tehran says is only for producing fuel and not for making weapons.
Source
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW
Uranium fuel deliveries for a Russian-built nuclear reactor in Iran and its launch could be delayed because of the Iranian government dragging its feet on payments, officials said Monday.
Iran broke the schedule of payments this year under a US$1 billion (€770 million) deal to build the Bushehr nuclear plant, said a government official, who asked not be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He said the Iranians explained the delay in payments by technical reasons.
Asked about the delay in payments, Russia's Federal Nuclear Power Agency spokesman Sergei Novikov said it could derail the launch schedule. Last year, Russia agreed to ship fuel to the Bushehr nuclear plant in southern Iran by March 2007 and launch the facility in September, with electricity generation to start by November.
"The launch schedule definitely could be affected," Novikov told The Associated Press.
In December, Russia supported a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing limited sanctions against Iran over Iran's refusal to stop uranium enrichment.
The United States and its European allies have disputed Iran's nuclear program _ which Tehran says is only for producing fuel and not for making weapons.
Source
Poor Condy, she belives it is about ideology...
By Kevin Peraino
Newsweek International
Feb. 26, 2007 issue - The Doqmosh family stronghold is a world unto itself in Gaza City's Sabra neighborhood. The road leading in is blocked off with the burned-out hulk of a minibus. Dumpsters filled with sand plug other entryways, warning away unwanted visitors. The streets around the compound are eerily deserted. At first, that seems like a good sign, considering the gun battles that have been raging over the past several months. But just inside, up a crumbling flight of concrete stairs, Tamam Doqmosh is plotting her revenge.
Late last year her son Mahmoud was murdered. She grips a framed photo of his corpse, punctured with dozens of tiny red pinpricks like mosquito bites. "Sixty-three bullets," she calmly explains. But when talk turns to the recent ceasefire brokered between Palestinian factions in Mecca, her equanimity fades. "We're not part of this deal!" she cries. "After they killed our son?" She blames 18 members of the Islamist group Hamas for the shooting. "First we'll kill the leader," she says. "Then we'll kill the other 17."
That might seem like the empty threat of a heartbroken mother. After all, Palestinian leaders hoped that the low-grade civil war that has killed about 100 Gazans and wounded 300 more since the beginning of the year was coming to an end. At an emergency summit meeting in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, two weeks ago, Hamas and Fatah agreed to share power in a new "unity government," and the Islamists pledged to "respect" past peace deals with Israel. But similar accords have collapsed in the past. Already politicians are squabbling over the thorny issues of who will control Gaza's security forces and key cabinet ministries in any new government.
Even if the two parties manage to agree, the emotionally charged family rivalries could torpedo the deal. In tight-knit Gaza, feuds between the territory's roughly 100 large clans are something of a local sport, even in times of relative peace. Taxi drivers keep the tallies like box scores. Some of the large households line up behind Fatah; others, Hamas. But family ties often trump party affiliation. And because they are intensely personal, the clan wars are even harder to control than sectarian infighting. "You can give orders to a faction," says a senior Palestinian intelligence officer, who didn't want to be identified because of the secretive nature of his work. But "the most important thing is how we deal with the families."
Money might help. NEWSWEEK has learned that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas plans to convene a committee of party officials and family leaders in the coming days to try to resolve some of the lingering feuds. The meetings will focus on the payment of diehs—one-time cash handouts to each of the victims' families. The intelligence officer believes the whole matter could be settled with $30 million; he's hoping the Saudis will pick up the tab. "If they want it to succeed, they'll have to pay," he insists. Still, he concedes, for many of the families "money's not the problem."
He might have been speaking of the Doqmosh family's next-door neighbors, the al-Dires, who have come up with a solution of their own. Each month, the clan's roughly 1,000 men contribute $2 to a communal fund they call the "family box." They use it partly to buy their own supply of weapons. Ibrahim al-Dire, the household's wiry patriarch, clutches a cigarette in one hand and a fistful of rocket-propelled grenades in the other. In January, he says, three family members were assassinated in the street outside his home. He blames the Doqmoshes, and won't rest, deal or no deal among Palestinian leaders, until he has vengeance. "We know their names," says another family member, 33-year-old Munther al-Dire. "If we find them in the street, we'll kill them."
It won't end there, of course. The Doqmosh family has amassed an arsenal of its own. Over the past year, they have become one of the most powerful forces in Gaza. Lately they tend to be allied with Fatah, but they're also something of a free radical. One member says the clan has 3,000 men "above the age of 16" at its disposal. Another of its elders, Momtaz Doqmosh (his first name translates as "excellent") commands a prominent splinter group of Gaza's Popular Resistance Committees. Munther al-Dire insists he's not intimidated. "We'll deal with this thing between the families," he says. "After we take revenge, maybe we'll be friends again." If only revenge were so tidy.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
Source
Clan law rules in anarchic Palestinian town
By Haitham Tamimi
Reuters
Sunday, February 18, 2007; 7:29 PM
HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - When a car was set on fire in a row between two Palestinian families in Hebron earlier this month, it was not the police who stepped in to restore calm, but a 75-year-old tribal elder.
For Fathi Jadua Oweiwi, head of one of Hebron's largest families, it was the latest in a series of arguments he has helped to resolve in the West Bank town, where Palestinian security forces have effectively lost control.
"If there were any authority here, both sides would have ended up in jail," said Oweiwi. "But there is no authority. So we in Hebron solve our own problems with our own hands."
The Palestinian Authority, set up under interim peace accords in lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, is supposed to police the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel's crackdown on the six-year-old Palestinian uprising, an international embargo against Palestinians since the Islamist Hamas group won last year's election, and internal Palestinian warfare have all left Palestinian police impotent.
Faced with what they say is worsening chaos, Oweiwi and other local leaders have stepped into the vacuum to deal with cases of murder and theft, and land disputes.
Their influence stems from the traditional tribal bonds in Palestinian society which mean they can, if necessary, call on support from hundreds of relatives.
"I can make one telephone call, and in a quarter of an hour a thousand people will be here," said Oweiwi, speaking on a cold winter morning in his Hebron home, next to a pen of goats.
When Palestinian Authority forces first came to Hebron a decade ago, they were strong enough to impose law and order, he said. But power has slipped from their hands.
"The situation is bad and it is getting worse," Oweiwi said. "If the heads of the West Bank tribes disappeared, people would be at each others throats."
Oweiwi's work is not confined to Hebron, a city of about 150,000 people. He has helped resolve a murder in Nablus 50 miles to the north, and he is not the only elder to play the role of lawmaker.
SCRAMBLE FOR GUNS
Naji Mustafa Abu Seneineh, head of Hebron's largest clan, said he recently intervened in a dispute over 40 dunums of land in Bethlehem. Both claimants had legal experts backing their case and the dispute could have turned violent.
"I told them no one can use the land until I got a third expert to judge," said Abu Seneineh, a 56-year-old man with a thick gray beard. "In the meantime, both of them were under my personal protection."
He said the insecurity in Hebron was leading to a scramble for guns and driving up the price of weapons as people sought to defend themselves from anarchy.
"There are some families who are not even eating (because they choose instead) to arm themselves," Abu Seneineh said, speaking in a gold dealer's shop in Hebron's central market.
Both Oweiwi and Abu Seneineh said the power of the families has -- for now -- prevented Palestinian factional warfare from breaking out in the West Bank on the same scale as Gaza, where dozens of people were killed in December and January.
Some families have flexed their muscles in more violent ways. In December, a police station in Hebron was attacked in what security sources said was revenge for the killing by police of a member of a leading local clan.
The attackers kidnapped 15 policemen, shot six in the legs and set fire to 16 police cars.
Security officials say they are largely powerless to curb the violence or challenge tribal authority.
Police morale and capability have been undermined by an the economic embargo in place since Hamas came to power in March last year. Many officers have received only a fraction of their salaries.
OWN EXPENSE
"I'm working for the authority at my own expense, paying my own phone bill," said a Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Restrictions on the movement of Palestinian police in the center of Hebron, where the Israeli army is deployed around several Jewish settlements, also limited their operations, he said.
For a while after the outbreak of the latest Palestinian uprising in 2000, Israeli troops patrolled the whole town and permitted only unarmed Palestinian security deployments.
"An unarmed security officer can't arrest a drug smuggler, because he can't protect himself," the official said. Police were also increasingly wary that any arrest they make could provoke a revenge attack from one of the clans.
Deep-rooted Palestinian political tensions had taken their toll in the West Bank, even if this was not yet as dramatic as in Gaza, the official said.
"The current internal Hamas and Fatah fighting has led to complete chaos," he said. "In the absence of rule of law...criminals and gangs are expanding and threaten the stability of Palestinian society."
For those who do not have the umbrella of a big family to shelter under, the lawlessness is an even greater concern.
Hatem al-Sharif, who runs a small shoe shop in an alley off one of Hebron's main streets, says he spent 1,000 Jordanian dinars ($1,400) on a pistol recently.
"There's no security here for my car, my shop, myself," said Sharif, whose car was stolen last month. "You need to protect yourself," he said, lifting a sweater to reveal the black, unmarked gun which he said came from Egypt.
"I would have bought it sooner if I'd had the money," he added. "If I had the money, I'd buy an M-16 (automatic rifle)."
(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans)
Source
Newsweek International
Feb. 26, 2007 issue - The Doqmosh family stronghold is a world unto itself in Gaza City's Sabra neighborhood. The road leading in is blocked off with the burned-out hulk of a minibus. Dumpsters filled with sand plug other entryways, warning away unwanted visitors. The streets around the compound are eerily deserted. At first, that seems like a good sign, considering the gun battles that have been raging over the past several months. But just inside, up a crumbling flight of concrete stairs, Tamam Doqmosh is plotting her revenge.
Late last year her son Mahmoud was murdered. She grips a framed photo of his corpse, punctured with dozens of tiny red pinpricks like mosquito bites. "Sixty-three bullets," she calmly explains. But when talk turns to the recent ceasefire brokered between Palestinian factions in Mecca, her equanimity fades. "We're not part of this deal!" she cries. "After they killed our son?" She blames 18 members of the Islamist group Hamas for the shooting. "First we'll kill the leader," she says. "Then we'll kill the other 17."
That might seem like the empty threat of a heartbroken mother. After all, Palestinian leaders hoped that the low-grade civil war that has killed about 100 Gazans and wounded 300 more since the beginning of the year was coming to an end. At an emergency summit meeting in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, two weeks ago, Hamas and Fatah agreed to share power in a new "unity government," and the Islamists pledged to "respect" past peace deals with Israel. But similar accords have collapsed in the past. Already politicians are squabbling over the thorny issues of who will control Gaza's security forces and key cabinet ministries in any new government.
Even if the two parties manage to agree, the emotionally charged family rivalries could torpedo the deal. In tight-knit Gaza, feuds between the territory's roughly 100 large clans are something of a local sport, even in times of relative peace. Taxi drivers keep the tallies like box scores. Some of the large households line up behind Fatah; others, Hamas. But family ties often trump party affiliation. And because they are intensely personal, the clan wars are even harder to control than sectarian infighting. "You can give orders to a faction," says a senior Palestinian intelligence officer, who didn't want to be identified because of the secretive nature of his work. But "the most important thing is how we deal with the families."
Money might help. NEWSWEEK has learned that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas plans to convene a committee of party officials and family leaders in the coming days to try to resolve some of the lingering feuds. The meetings will focus on the payment of diehs—one-time cash handouts to each of the victims' families. The intelligence officer believes the whole matter could be settled with $30 million; he's hoping the Saudis will pick up the tab. "If they want it to succeed, they'll have to pay," he insists. Still, he concedes, for many of the families "money's not the problem."
He might have been speaking of the Doqmosh family's next-door neighbors, the al-Dires, who have come up with a solution of their own. Each month, the clan's roughly 1,000 men contribute $2 to a communal fund they call the "family box." They use it partly to buy their own supply of weapons. Ibrahim al-Dire, the household's wiry patriarch, clutches a cigarette in one hand and a fistful of rocket-propelled grenades in the other. In January, he says, three family members were assassinated in the street outside his home. He blames the Doqmoshes, and won't rest, deal or no deal among Palestinian leaders, until he has vengeance. "We know their names," says another family member, 33-year-old Munther al-Dire. "If we find them in the street, we'll kill them."
It won't end there, of course. The Doqmosh family has amassed an arsenal of its own. Over the past year, they have become one of the most powerful forces in Gaza. Lately they tend to be allied with Fatah, but they're also something of a free radical. One member says the clan has 3,000 men "above the age of 16" at its disposal. Another of its elders, Momtaz Doqmosh (his first name translates as "excellent") commands a prominent splinter group of Gaza's Popular Resistance Committees. Munther al-Dire insists he's not intimidated. "We'll deal with this thing between the families," he says. "After we take revenge, maybe we'll be friends again." If only revenge were so tidy.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
Source
Clan law rules in anarchic Palestinian town
By Haitham Tamimi
Reuters
Sunday, February 18, 2007; 7:29 PM
HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - When a car was set on fire in a row between two Palestinian families in Hebron earlier this month, it was not the police who stepped in to restore calm, but a 75-year-old tribal elder.
For Fathi Jadua Oweiwi, head of one of Hebron's largest families, it was the latest in a series of arguments he has helped to resolve in the West Bank town, where Palestinian security forces have effectively lost control.
"If there were any authority here, both sides would have ended up in jail," said Oweiwi. "But there is no authority. So we in Hebron solve our own problems with our own hands."
The Palestinian Authority, set up under interim peace accords in lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, is supposed to police the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel's crackdown on the six-year-old Palestinian uprising, an international embargo against Palestinians since the Islamist Hamas group won last year's election, and internal Palestinian warfare have all left Palestinian police impotent.
Faced with what they say is worsening chaos, Oweiwi and other local leaders have stepped into the vacuum to deal with cases of murder and theft, and land disputes.
Their influence stems from the traditional tribal bonds in Palestinian society which mean they can, if necessary, call on support from hundreds of relatives.
"I can make one telephone call, and in a quarter of an hour a thousand people will be here," said Oweiwi, speaking on a cold winter morning in his Hebron home, next to a pen of goats.
When Palestinian Authority forces first came to Hebron a decade ago, they were strong enough to impose law and order, he said. But power has slipped from their hands.
"The situation is bad and it is getting worse," Oweiwi said. "If the heads of the West Bank tribes disappeared, people would be at each others throats."
Oweiwi's work is not confined to Hebron, a city of about 150,000 people. He has helped resolve a murder in Nablus 50 miles to the north, and he is not the only elder to play the role of lawmaker.
SCRAMBLE FOR GUNS
Naji Mustafa Abu Seneineh, head of Hebron's largest clan, said he recently intervened in a dispute over 40 dunums of land in Bethlehem. Both claimants had legal experts backing their case and the dispute could have turned violent.
"I told them no one can use the land until I got a third expert to judge," said Abu Seneineh, a 56-year-old man with a thick gray beard. "In the meantime, both of them were under my personal protection."
He said the insecurity in Hebron was leading to a scramble for guns and driving up the price of weapons as people sought to defend themselves from anarchy.
"There are some families who are not even eating (because they choose instead) to arm themselves," Abu Seneineh said, speaking in a gold dealer's shop in Hebron's central market.
Both Oweiwi and Abu Seneineh said the power of the families has -- for now -- prevented Palestinian factional warfare from breaking out in the West Bank on the same scale as Gaza, where dozens of people were killed in December and January.
Some families have flexed their muscles in more violent ways. In December, a police station in Hebron was attacked in what security sources said was revenge for the killing by police of a member of a leading local clan.
The attackers kidnapped 15 policemen, shot six in the legs and set fire to 16 police cars.
Security officials say they are largely powerless to curb the violence or challenge tribal authority.
Police morale and capability have been undermined by an the economic embargo in place since Hamas came to power in March last year. Many officers have received only a fraction of their salaries.
OWN EXPENSE
"I'm working for the authority at my own expense, paying my own phone bill," said a Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Restrictions on the movement of Palestinian police in the center of Hebron, where the Israeli army is deployed around several Jewish settlements, also limited their operations, he said.
For a while after the outbreak of the latest Palestinian uprising in 2000, Israeli troops patrolled the whole town and permitted only unarmed Palestinian security deployments.
"An unarmed security officer can't arrest a drug smuggler, because he can't protect himself," the official said. Police were also increasingly wary that any arrest they make could provoke a revenge attack from one of the clans.
Deep-rooted Palestinian political tensions had taken their toll in the West Bank, even if this was not yet as dramatic as in Gaza, the official said.
"The current internal Hamas and Fatah fighting has led to complete chaos," he said. "In the absence of rule of law...criminals and gangs are expanding and threaten the stability of Palestinian society."
For those who do not have the umbrella of a big family to shelter under, the lawlessness is an even greater concern.
Hatem al-Sharif, who runs a small shoe shop in an alley off one of Hebron's main streets, says he spent 1,000 Jordanian dinars ($1,400) on a pistol recently.
"There's no security here for my car, my shop, myself," said Sharif, whose car was stolen last month. "You need to protect yourself," he said, lifting a sweater to reveal the black, unmarked gun which he said came from Egypt.
"I would have bought it sooner if I'd had the money," he added. "If I had the money, I'd buy an M-16 (automatic rifle)."
(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans)
Source
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