Bharat Rakshak

Lebanese voters prevent Hizbollah takeover

Government of 'national salvation' set to rule after pro-Western Saad Hariri fails to claim decisive victory

By Robert Fisk
Monday, 8 June 2009
AP/BILAL HUSSEIN

Supporters of the Free Patriotic Movement of Christian leader Michel Aoun in Beirut yesterday

There will be no Islamic Republic of Lebanon. Nor will there be a pro-Western Lebanese republic. There will, after yesterday's vote – for the Hizbollah-Christian coalition and for the secular Sunni-Christian alliance – be a government of "national salvation" in Beirut, run by an ex-army general-president with ever-increasing powers.

Washington would have preferred that Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister, came out with a clear win. But out of the shadows will come the same crippled, un-healable Lebanon; delightful, unworkable, poor old Lebanon, corrupt, beautiful, vanity-prone, intelligent, democratic – yes, definitely, democratic – and absolutely outside our powers to reform.

The electoral system – a crazed mixture of sectarianism, proportional representation and "list" fixing – means that no one ever really "wins" elections in Lebanon, and yesterday was no different. The "anti-Syrian" parties – the Sunnis, the Druze, half of the Christian community – made sure that their votes prevented a Hizbollah takeover, while the huge Shia vote – for Hizbollah and the Amal party and the Christians who follow the lead of the raving Christian ex-general Michael Aoun – made certain there would be no clear win for America's friends in the country.

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Lebanon's post-election fate tied to region
But the president, who under Lebanon's unwritten constitution must be a Christian Maronite, will be able to fashion some kind of "central bloc" by midday today – or so all Lebanon hopes – which will include Hizbollah, the forces of anti-Syrian Sunni Islam, the Druze and even the Christians. The latter, always their own worst enemies in Lebanon, albeit a minority, will ironically be more powerful than ever because their president is one of them.

Lebanon deployed up to 60,000 troops and armed police to control the ballot boxes and, to their considerable credit, not a single gun-battle appears to have broken out. Given the personal nature of some of the contests – this is a highly tribal society whatever the modernity of Beirut and its suburbs – this was quite an achievement. Driving around the capital, I found only good-natured checkpoints, handing me papers of candidates' names for whom I should vote, both Christians and Muslims, in the same list. If they wore blue hats, they were for Hariri. If they wore yellow hats – and there were conservative Shia Muslim women without scarves – they were for Hizbollah. If they dressed in orange, they were trying to win votes for Aoun.

The Lebanese, a very shrewd people, have been reading the foreign press and listening to the BBC, Al-Jazeera, even Fox News. They knew that for foreigners – the ajnabi – there was only one story: Lebanon becomes a finger of Iran or Syria – or it remains in America's hands. More dangerously, the Israelis would be able to claim it was a "terrorist" state if Hizbollah won. But then the Israelis would claim it was a "terrorist" state if even one minister was a member of Hizbollah. They will have their way.

By last night, it looked as if the spread of parties would win a share of the vote equal to their numbers; that the Shia Muslims would have the largest group of MPs but without a majority, thus allowing Lebanon's power-sharing system to settle back into its old ways. Why should we worry? Yes, it is corrupt. Tens of thousands of Lebanese flew home to vote – you can't vote abroad in Lebanese elections – so who paid their fare? Who has $30m to spend on air fares?

To be a modern state, Lebanon must de-confessionalise. Its president – currently the ex-general Michel Sleiman – should be elected on merit rather than religion. Its prime minister, who must be a Sunni Muslim, should be elected on merit. But the moment you take away these privileges, Lebanon will cease to be Lebanon – because its very identity is sectarian.

Lebanon is a tiny country, just over 4,000 square miles in size, and it is very definitely Muslim (60 per cent of its four million population are Muslim), but it has 18 religious sects which include the descendants of the poor Armenian Christians who, naked and beaten, dragged themselves here after their genocide at the hands of the Turks in 1915. The Assyrians came this way. So did the Persians, Romans, Crusaders, Mamlukes, Arabs and Ottomans. And the Americans, of course, And the Israelis.

Yesterday's election will probably have "united" the poor old Lebanese yet again. In what cauldron, we can only wait to find out.

The politics and the players

*Who were the main players in the parliamentary elections?

A coalition of pro-Western factions competed against an alliance linking the Iranian-backed, pro-Syria Hizbollah (Party of God) and a Christian faction led by the former army chief Michel Aoun. Sunni Muslims strongly supported the pro-Western grouping, which is led by Saad Hariri, the son of the murdered former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, while Shia Muslims supported the Hizbollah-led alliance. Christians were divided.

*Will these polls affect the wider Middle East?

Electoral success for Hizbollah would increase Syrian and Iranian influence over Lebanon, complicating efforts to restart the Middle East peace process. Israel failed to defeat Hizbollah in a 2006 war and would react negatively to its election. The US regards Hizbollah as a terrorist organisation and had vowed to review its aid to Lebanon if the Shia militant group won a place in government.

In Lebanon, the Saudis gave massive financial support to the victorious coalition of Saad Hariri. As long ago as March, one well-connected operative from Riyadh was telling me privately but with evident pride that his country had spent more in Lebanon, a nation of 4 million, than the record-breaking $715 million Barack Obama's campaign spent in the United States. And even if my source was indulging in wild hyperbole, the extent to which Beirut had become a kind of electoral e-Bay for vote buyers from Riyadh and Tehran made international headlines.

The United Arab Emirates will be the next chairman of the Indian Navy's initiative - Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) - validating its existence as a pan-Asian security forum and rubbishing Pakistan's argument terming it as a grouping against the Islamic world.

'The UAE will take over the chairmanship of IONS in March 2010,' a senior naval official told IANS, requesting anonymity.

The development is significant as it would take the fizz out of Pakistan's opposition to the maritime grouping.

According to the official, the Indian Navy's main thrust is to bring Pakistan 'completely on board'. When the chiefs-of-navy of 26 littoral states got together in February 2008 for the first meeting of IONS here, Pakistan was represented by its naval attache.

When the proposal for the forum was put up, Pakistan tried to scuttle it by playing the religious card and terming it as antagonistic to the interests of the Islamic world. But the Indian Navy tackled it by getting UAE and Indonesia into the ambit of IONS.

With Pakistan fully on board, Indian Navy is likely to rotate the chairmanship of the grouping to Islamabad by 2016. If Pakistan backs out, the chairmanship would go to Sri Lanka.

The next year would be important to gauge the effectiveness and success of the Indian Navy's initiative. During the meeting in the UAE the 33 littoral countries that are members of the grouping will also consider the formal requests by the US and Britain's Navy as observer.

'Yes, the US and Britain have sent formal requests to be part of the IONS. The proposal will be considered at the next meeting next year,' the official added.

The request from the major maritime powers has come over an year after the Indian Navy, seeking constructive engagement as primary means of achieving and assuring mutual beneficial maritime security, stability, safety and consequent collective prosperity, set up IONS.

The US and Britain navies have expressed their desire to be part of IONS as the countries have bases in the Indian Ocean region.

Their request follows that of the Chinese Navy, which had approached its Indian counterparts to induct them into IONS either as an observer or associate member. However, the India is not enthusiastic about China's request as it is seen as part of Beijing's grand design to gain access to the Indian Ocean Region.

The IONS (Indian Ocean Naval Symposium) provides a forum for discussion of issues, both regional and global. The Indian Navy wants to generate a flow of information and opinion between naval professionals.

The IONS came into existence as a consequence of the deliberations made by the commanders of the navies around the Indian Ocean who gathered in India in February 2008 at the invitation of Navy Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta.

A uniformly surly front greeted the two high-ranking US delegations, who dropped in on Middle East and Persian Gulf capitals in the past week to allay rising fears with regard to US president Barack Obama's policy of diplomatic engagement with Iran and its allies.
The first was led by Dennis Ross, special adviser to the US secretary of state for South Asia and Gulf affairs; he was followed by US defense secretary Robert Gates.
While working hard to set Middle East rulers' minds at rest, both US officials were treated to an exceptionally harsh message from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) emirates warning President Barack Obama that they would not put up with any bilateral diplomatic or military deals cut with Tehran without their approval.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Middle East sources report that the harshness of the language was as exceptional as the degree of unity among its users.
Even the Qatari ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, who hitherto stood out as Tehran's friend in the Gulf, joined in.
Our Gulf sources disclose the content of the warning addressed by this formidable bloc of Arab rulers to President Barack Obama:
- Forget about deals with Tehran behind our backs and against our wishes. Our consent must first be obtained.
- The Middle East and Gulf are first and foremost a cohesive Arab continuum with no room for an overpowering Iranian presence or influence.
- No US accommodation with Iran or any other party is acceptable if it leaves Tehran in possession of nuclear weapons.
- The Obama administration must understand that the Mideast and Gulf states will resist any arrangement that leaves Iran free to persevere in its expansionist and subversive drives against Arab nations.

Candor gains over diplomacy

Our sources report that this message was approved unanimously on Wednesday, May 6, by a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh.
The summit was formally convened to approve the group's first regional central bank as a gateway to greater economic integration. But most of its deliberations behind closed doors were devoted to Saudi King Abdullah's presentation of the above message as a GCC resolution, before he handed it to Gates who flew in from Cairo to Riyadh that same night.
In a separate briefing to Arab correspondents Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Attiyah, the GCC's secretary general, relayed the substance of its non-economic resolutions:
Council members voiced the hope that US-Iranian diplomatic engagement would not come at the expense of Gulf states. Furthermore, Gulf rulers would not consent to the presence of nuclear weapons anywhere in the region that were not covered by the oversight of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
President Obama was thus advised that the nuclear demilitarization of the Middle East region as a whole, including Israel, was the GCC's preferred solution for Iran's nuclear weapons challenge.
(Obama's attitude on Israel's nuclear assets is covered in a separate article in this issue.)
The administration should not have been surprised by the antagonism shown by the rulers of the Arabian Gulf.
Exactly a week earlier, on April 30, Dennis Ross, accompanied by the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, and National Security Council official Puneet Talwar, found grim faces when he landed in Riyadh to meet Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal.
The prince did not mince his words. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Gulf sources, he accused Washington of handing the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Lebanon to Iran and Syria on a silver platter.
The Saudi government would not stand by and watch its Middle East and Gulf status melting away, he said, but would fight back tooth and nail – not directly against the US, its ally, but against US-Iranian steps in the different Middle East arenas. It has been a long time since Americans heard talk this tough from Riyadh.

Ross warns of irreparable damage to US-Arab ties

But more was to come. The Ross delegation heard the same tune as it wended its way from Bahrain through Oman to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Gulf foreign ministers had only cynical distrust and skepticism for the delegation's contention that the Gulf too could expect to benefit from US engagement of Iran. Last weekend, Ross reported back to Washington that the foreign ministers he met were not authorized to handle high-powered topics such as Iran and its nuclear issues. His advice was to raise the level of exchanges with Gulf governments before US relations in that region suffered irreparable damage.
The envoy also warned his principals that the Saudis planned to exploit the Gulf Cooperation summit of May 6 in Riyadh to denounce the Obama administration's intended dialogue with Iran.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington sources report that the Ross report was put before President Obama Friday, May 1. After consulting with defense secretary Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he decided to consign Gates to the Middle East forthwith; he would set out Sunday, May 3.
Appointments were rushed through with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Saudi King Abdullah, whom Ross had tagged as the spearheads of regional opposition to American-Iranian talks.
It so happened, therefore, that two US delegations were present in Cairo at the same time, both shooting the same line and finding it falling on deaf ears. In fact, from one interview to the next, Arab hostility gained instead of being allayed by their efforts.

No cracks in Egyptian, Saudi resistance

On Monday, May 4, the Ross delegation called on Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Abu al-Gheit. Their conversation produced a statement from Abu al-Gheit expressing hope for American success in changing Iran's behavior in the Middle East. He called Iran's attitude negative in the extreme and "unhelpful for security, stability and peace in the region."
A polished diplomat, the Egyptian foreign minister found smooth words to voice his lack of faith in the outcome of President Obama's policy of engagement with Tehran.
The next day, Tuesday May 5, Gates was received by President Mubarak.
After this interview, the American held the stage. The defense secretary referred the correspondents in his party to "some exaggerated concerns, some notion here in the region that there might some grand bargain between the United States and Iran that would suddenly be sprung on them.”
Such concerns, Gates said, were "completely unrealistic.”
He promised Washington would keep its allies posted on the US bid to enter into dialogue with Iran for the first time after three decades with an assurance that no deal would be hatched in secret.
"We will keep our friends informed about what is going so that nobody gets surprised," he said before leaving for Riyadh, where he was nonetheless met by a furious king when he arrived Wednesday night, May 6.
Abdullah pointed to another US mission, this one to Damascus the following day, as a betrayal of that assurance.
He was referring to Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and White House Middle East envoy Daniel Shapiro whose arrival in the Syrian capital on Thursday May 7 was taken in Riyadh as blatantly signifying that the Obama administration had no intention of taking Saudi and Egyptian opposition into account in its dealings with Syria and Iran.
Thursday night, DEBKAfile revealed exclusively that a third US delegation had been sent to circulate the Gulf – this one in secret. Its mission was to persuade Gulf rulers to draw on their oil fortunes and stake substantial funds for the US and global economic recovery.
(Read more in HOT POINTS at the bottom of this issue)

Iranian footnote

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turned up in Damascus Tuesday, two days before the Americans envoys, Feltman and Shapiro.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iranian sources report that his urgent trip to Damascus was staged to cover up certain embarrassments.
1. Hours before Ahmadinejad was scheduled to land in Brasilia for a triumphal visit to sign contracts for the purchase of Brazilian uranium, President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva suddenly developed cold feet about treading in Hugo Chavez's virulent anti-US footsteps. He cancelled the invitation without warning.
Since Tehran could not afford to lose face, no explanation was offered for the cancelled trip.
2. Iran decided to show the flag in Damascus in a bid to pull Bashar Assad back from flirting with the Arab front, an effort in which Washington failed.

shyamd wrote:Will Saudi Air Bases Host Israel Warplanes for Striking Iran?

SSridhar wrote:That can never happen. One doesn't need to be an Osama-type of Salafist to protest Israeli planes in KSA; anti-Semitism runs deep in the veins of all Saudis irrespective of their religious hypocrisy or not.

Thursday, 18 June 2009 - 25 Jumada Al-Akhir 1430 H

Pakistani gets 3-year jail and 840 lashes for sorcery

By Khaled Al-Jabri

MADINA – The Court of Cassation in Makkah on Wednesday approved …………. sentencing a 70-year-old Pakistani to three years in prison and 840 lashes for indulging in sorcery. ……………………..

The Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice arrested the man after ………….. Talismans, sorcery books, papers with verses of Holy Qur’an and polytheist writings, believed to be used in sorcery, were found in his house in Madina’s Al-Bahar District.

Saudi Gazette

Indian security services arrested the son of the founder of Algeria's dissolved Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Abbasi Madani, for alleged involvement in the deadly 1992 bombing of Algiers' Houari Boumediene Airport, Echorouk reported on Saturday (June 20th). Salim Abbasi, a Qatari citizen, was arrested in Bombay last Wednesday.

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.

A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.

Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.

And a confidential German intelligence report gave a line-by-line description of tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers, with dates and dollar amounts, made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to another charity that was suspected of financing militants’ activities in Pakistan and Bosnia.

The new documents, provided to The New York Times by the lawyers, are among several hundred thousand pages of investigative material obtained by the Sept. 11 families and their insurers as part of a long-running civil lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia and its royal family liable for financing Al Qaeda.

....The agreement is likely to help in curbing activities of terrorists and organized criminal groups indulging in drug and human trafficking, besides dealing in weapons, ammunition, explosives, and radioactive and nuclear materials.

Money laundering, circulation of counterfeit notes and cyber crime will also be addressed, he added.

It will also provide for mutual technical assistance including exchange of professional expertise and training of security and law enforcement personnel and organising seminars and conferences, Chidambaram said.

shyamd wrote:Flight from Muscat to Chennai delayed after hoax bomb threat

CHENNAI: A hoax bomb note created a flutter amongst the passengers of an Oman Air flight bound to Chennai from Muscat on Monday afternoon.

The flight WY 857 had taken off from Muscat at 09:15 (local time there) and was scheduled to arrive in Chennai by 2:30 pm.

Enroute, the crew came across a note on the flight that supposedly announced, “You all are going to die, bye!” The note had been found in the toilet.

The captain of the flight then called for an emergency landing in Mumbai at about 1.15 pm where all the 135 passengers and four infants disembarked.
A bomb squad was pressed into service. It combed the aircraft but found nothing. The flight was then delayed due to some procedural formalities and took off from Mumbai at about 9.45pm.“Such pranks have cost a lot in terms of both time and money. This same flight was to take off from Chennai at about 4 pm,” an airport source said.

“More than 130 Muscat-bound passengers who were to take this flight at 4 pm will now be accommodated in hotels at the expense of Oman Air. They will take off tomorrow at 7 am,” an airport source told The New Indian Express.

Folks the word in Oman is that crew found a suspect package and a note in ze toilet.
Pilots decided on a divert to Mumbai.
Package removed by Indian bomb disposal team. Who did a very professional job in all accounts according to Omani sources
It was a complete elaborate hoax.

Pranay wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world ... ml?_r=1&hp

Saudi Arabian support to terrorism...

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.

A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.

Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.

And a confidential German intelligence report gave a line-by-line description of tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers, with dates and dollar amounts, made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to another charity that was suspected of financing militants’ activities in Pakistan and Bosnia.

The new documents, provided to The New York Times by the lawyers, are among several hundred thousand pages of investigative material obtained by the Sept. 11 families and their insurers as part of a long-running civil lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia and its royal family liable for financing Al Qaeda.

On his first overseas assignment, Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor impressed upon senior leaders of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that India, abounding with youthful energy, visualised a high-octane relationship with the Gulf that went beyond the traditional boundaries of trade and commerce.

Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan on Wednesday passed a new constitution in which it laid claim to the disputed oil-rich province of Kirkuk, a move likely to increase ethnic tension.

The text, which also said that areas within Nineveh and Diyala provinces were part of Iraqi Kurdistan, was approved by 96 of the 111 MPs in the regional parliament in Arbil.

The document will be put before Kurdish voters for ratification on July 25, the same day that the region holds parliamentary and presidential elections.

However, seven MPs walked out of Wednesday's parliamentary session and declared the vote illegal because the legislature's mandate had ended on June 4.

The United Nations on April 22 handed over to the Baghdad government an eagerly awaited report on disputed areas of Iraq, including Kirkuk, in which it refused to contemplate the division of the deeply-contested province.

The Kurds have long striven to expand their northern territory beyond its current three provinces to other areas where the population was historically Kurdish, an ambition that has been bitterly contested by the Arabs who were settled there in large numbers under Saddam Hussein's ousted regime.

In order to dilute historic Kurdish majorities, a number of provincial boundaries were also redrawn so as to include Arab populations and minority groups, further stoking ethnic tensions.

The regional government's new constitution refers to Kurdistan being "composed of Kurds, Turkmen {perhaps meant to placate Turkey}, Arabs, Chaldeans, Syriac, Assyrians, Armenians and others who are citizens of the Kurdistan region."

"This is an important and historic day," said the Kurdish parliament spokesman Adnan al-Mufti.

"For the first time the people of Kurdistan took steps to be the owner of their own constitution and to exercise their natural right."

He said the constitution "recognises and respects the Islamic identity of the majority of the people of Kurdistan in Iraq" and the "full religious rights of Christians and Yazidis".

Kurdistan, whose capital is Arbil in northern Iraq, has its own flag which is raised beside the federal flag, and also has its own slogan, national anthem and national day.

shyamd wrote:SS, I think this is different, This is Saudi Al Qaeda taking refuge in the border regions which are pretty lawless. Also, the Zaidite rebels supposedly supported by Iran, in the northern part of the country fighting a war on the border with KSA.

What do you think SS?

SSridhar wrote:

shyamd wrote:Will Saudi Air Bases Host Israel Warplanes for Striking Iran?

That can never happen. One doesn't need to be an Osama-type of Salafist to protest Israeli planes in KSA; anti-Semitism runs deep in the veins of all Saudis irrespective of their religious hypocrisy or not.

U.S. intelligence then intercepted communications from the highest levels of the Saudi government, including interior minister Prince Nayef, to the governor and other officials of Eastern Province instructing them to go through the motions of cooperating with U.S. officials on their investigation but to obstruct it at every turn.

That was the beginning of what interviews with more than a dozen sources familiar with the investigation and other information now available reveal was a systematic effort by the Saudis to obstruct any U.S. investigation of the bombing and to deceive the United States about who was responsible for the bombing.

The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi’a allies with the apparent intention of keeping U.S. officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organiser.

Capture of 'spies' hits Israel

Published: June 25, 2009 at 1:20 PM

BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 25 (UPI) -- The roundup of around 40 alleged Israeli agents in Lebanon in recent weeks has in all probability been a serious blow for Israeli intelligence at a time when its longtime adversary, Hezbollah, is bracing for another onslaught by the Jewish state.

Both sides are nervous -- Israel because valuable eyes and ears inside Lebanon have been lost, Hezbollah because the existence of these cells, some of them set up 25 years ago, was an immense security failure on its part and will mean it will have to do a lot of housecleaning and reorganizing.

All this means is that two of the Middle East's most ferocious adversaries, whose intelligence war over the years has been one of the most heated in the region, have both been badly damaged and want to hit back.

The turmoil in Iran and the emergence of a hard-line, right-wing government in Israel under hawkish Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fuel this unease and sense of vulnerability on both sides. And in the volatile Middle East, those are usually portents of trouble.

With one cell after another being rolled up, the Israelis will no doubt have told whatever other intelligence assets they may have in Lebanon to lie low. And it seems clear, given the rank of some of the Lebanese arrested in the crackdown, that the Israelis had penetrated Lebanese society and its military widely and deeply.

The alleged agents included a former general in Lebanon's premier security service, two army colonels and a former mayor. Lebanese authorities say most of those arrested, including those just listed, have all confessed that they had been spying in Lebanon for years.

Some said they were recruited by Israel's various intelligence services -- Mossad, which operates outside Israel; the Shin Bet internal security service, which operated in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories; and Aman, military intelligence -- as far back as 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon.

In Lebanon, given Hezbollah's nationwide military structure and the danger it poses for the Jewish state, the Israelis will have to rebuild the networks smashed by Lebanese intelligence and Hezbollah's security branch to regain the intelligence flow that is vital to military operations.

This means that to an extent that can only be guessed at, the Israelis are more vulnerable regarding Hezbollah than they have been for many years.

When Hezbollah abducted Israeli soldiers on the border on July 12, 2006, Israel responded with wave after wave of airstrikes in what became a 34-day war. The Israelis were able to destroy bunkers containing most of Hezbollah's long-range rockets capable of striking deep into Israel, almost to Tel Aviv, in under an hour.

Their intelligence was that good, and some of that must have come from agents they had on the ground. Those assets may no longer be available, and the Israeli air force may not be able to strike with such devastating accuracy next time around.

Hezbollah, too, is jumpy, and with some reason. From what information is available about the alleged spies' activities, they were focused primarily on tracking Hezbollah leaders and key operatives, identifying command centers and safe houses.

Several senior Hezbollah officials who were assassinated were probably targeted by intelligence provided by the Israeli agents. At least one of these agents had secured a commercial contract with Hezbollah's administrative branch to maintain its vehicles and had planted tracking devices in them that went undetected for years.

It does not take a great stretch of the imagination to surmise how many secret facilities and key Hezbollah operatives were uncovered in what must stand as one of the most successful espionage operations mounted in many years.

It seems that the assassination of several senior Hezbollah figures likely resulted from the activities of the Israeli spy rings. Among those killed was the Shiite movement's fabled and shadowy operational chief, Imad Mughniyeh, the most wanted fugitive in the world until Osama bin Laden struck on Sept. 11, 2001.

Mughniyeh, indicted in the United States for the June 1985 hijack of a TWA jetliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was murdered, was assassinated in one of the most secure districts of Damascus, the Syrian capital, after a meeting with Syrian intelligence chiefs.

A bomb placed in the headrest of his SUV was detonated by remote control when he got into the vehicle. It was one of the most spectacular assassinations in the Middle East for years. It hit Hezbollah hard, and it has carried out no operation of any significance against Israel since then.

Hussein Pointed to Iranian Threat
Former president George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq six years ago on the grounds that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to international security. Administration officials at the time also strongly suggested Iraq had significant links to al-Qaeda, which carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The FBI summaries of the interviews -- 20 formal interrogations and five "casual conversations" in 2004 -- were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act

Hussein's fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction..."The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors," Piro wrote. "Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq."

Hussein noted that Iran's weapons capabilities had increased dramatically while Iraq's weapons "had been eliminated by the UN sanctions," and that eventually Iraq would have to reconstitute its weapons to deal with that threat if it could not reach a security agreement with the United States.

Hussein replied that throughout history there had been conflicts between believers of Islam and political leaders. He said that "he was a believer in God but was not a zealot . . . that religion and government should not mix." Hussein said that he had never met bin Laden and that the two of them "did not have the same belief or vision."

Couched in a corporate structure that relies on savvy marketing, attractive rhetoric and smart, modern packaging, projects like IslamOnline represent the effort to change in appearance and language what remains the same in substance

The headquarters of IslamOnline.net is palatial building located on the outskirts of Cairo. Away from the dirt and unrelenting traffic of the bustling Egyptian capital, its shiny and brand new campus is located across the street from an equally palatial mosque. If you’ve spent any time in Cairo, the glass ensconced air-conditioned office of this Qatari-funded online empire can be a welcome respite from the desert heat, undoubtedly for both the casual visitor as well as the nearly one hundred Egyptian men and women who work here.

According to its publicity materials, IslamOnline strives for “an Islamic renaissance” and envisions itself as becoming the largest and most “credible reference on Islam and its peoples”. The website hosts a number of features from “news” to “politics in depth” to “family” and “art and culture”. A whole section is devoted to “Euro-Muslims”, even though the website is based in the Middle East; assumedly perhaps because much of traffic for the website comes not from Egypt itself but from Muslims living in Europe.

The technology is slick, the graphics trendy and the young, energetic staff quite committed to the avowed project of rebranding Islam. Words like “moderate” “diverse” and “plural” are recurrent in the vocabulary of the editors, used repeatedly to describe both their mission and their purpose.

These two facets of IslamOnline, its Egyptian staff and Western consumers and the conscious rebranding of Islam are worthy of attention.

Take first the savvy rhetorical repackaging that is insistent on the fact that the “Islam” it is peddling is both “moderate” and “diverse”. When questioned regarding what constitutes “moderate” Islam, however, the editors are resolute in providing synonyms instead of concrete responses. Ignored thus is the idea that diversity, in essence, stands for the representation of a variety of views that include the extremes, while moderation stands for a particular selection which avoids the extremes.

Also ignored is the reality that selecting what is moderate therefore inherently invokes a judgement and an interpretation regarding what is considered to be so. For instance, on the issue of hijab, the editors of IslamOnline state that the moderate position is that all Muslim women are required to wear the hijab; this is also, they insist, the “majority” position but the process of enumerating what a “majority” means, or why conflicting interpretations are ignored is again left unexplained. The same women who denounce the intolerance of Europeans toward women who wear the headscarf are thus unwilling to tolerate that a Muslim woman can refuse to wear one and still practice her faith.

This lack of self-awareness among the editors of IslamOnline and the self-described promoters of the “correct” and “moderate” Islam is disturbing given the stated aims of the organisation. It is difficult indeed to discern whether the editors and staff of this web-based dawa organisation are being deliberately evasive regarding their project of proffering a particular definition of “moderate” Islam or truly ignorant of their own role in advancing a project whose strings are being pulled by their financiers.

The geographical dynamics of both the headquarters of IslamOnline as well as the constituents of its staff add further complications to the question. 180 Egyptians, men and women, some commuting up to two hours each way, brave the heat and dust of Cairo to work in this air-conditioned glass building reeking of Gulf money. Sitting in neat cubicles, they collect news articles and fatwas for Muslims around the world, most notably in the West.

Their writings say little or nothing at all about the rising unemployment in Cairo, the blatant poverty visible on every city street, or the lack of political process in their country. In fact, these proximate realities, experienced undoubtedly by editors and staff, are all not represented in the conversation and largely the content of IslamOnline. In the deliberate divorce of these two realities then, IslamOnline, in the real and not virtual sense, represents outsourcing at its best: the relegation of dawa to Egyptian Muslims propagating an Islam envisioned by their Gulf financiers.

The disjunction is obvious not simply in the economic disparity between the largely Egyptian producers of IslamOnline, its Qatari backers and its largely Western consumers, but also in the avowed rhetoric of diversity versus its project of propagating the “correct” Islam. The Sharia section, which according to their own statistics is the most popular section of the website, is run by a doctoral student from Al-Azhar University. In his words, the process of compiling the “diverse” and “moderate” views espoused by IslamOnline stands for the effort to combine “authentic” opinions on various subjects from all four Sunni mazhabs. Shiite schools of thought fail to make this authenticity cut and hence are not represented.

A similar conclusion could be reached about the propagators of “authentic” Islam of IslamOnline; a document retrieved from IslamOnline reveals that nearly ninety percent of the sheikhs recruited to provide fatwas are Arab sheikhs with little or no representation for Southeast Asians, South Asians and Muslims from other non-Arab ethnicities.

In conclusion then, the Islam of IslamOnline stands for Islam as understood largely by Sunni Arabs. There is indeed nothing wrong with such a project; Sunni Arabs just like Iranian Shiites or South Asian Sufis have the right to propagate and disseminate information about their particular take on the Islamic faith. Indeed, there is something laudable and commendable also about providing Egyptian Muslim youth with a well funded and inviting workplace where they can interact and earn good livelihoods while living their faith.

The pernicious aspects of projects like IslamOnline lie in the unsaid agendas that undergird their stated goals. Calling a website “IslamOnline” instead of “MuslimsOnline” makes a very particular claim about representing a single and correct doctrinal position whose truth is substantiated by a particular interpretation of religious text. Disguising such a claim in the glib rhetoric of “diversity” and “plurality” while simultaneously excluding entire swathes of Muslim practice such as Shiite theology suggests a deceptive condescension toward both Muslims and non-Muslims consumers of the website.

In larger terms, projects like IslamOnline represent a novel new turn taken by the Islamist project that consciously seeks to redefine itself as “moderate”. Couched in a corporate structure that relies on savvy marketing, attractive rhetoric and smart, modern packaging, it represents the effort to change in appearance and language what remains the same in substance. This new and repackaged Islamism thus continues to privilege Sunni and Arab interpretations of Islam as ultimately authentic and correct but under the glib pretence of being committed to both moderation and diversity.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at [email protected]

RaviBg wrote:Given that UAE and TSP are joined at the hip, what are the chances of these israeli stuff falling to paki hands?

The IDF has started using undercover elite border policemen to quell anti-fence demonstrations in the West Bank, sources in the Central Command said on Tuesday.

Russia-US-Iran: For the record. Russia will not agree to increase sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program in exchange for a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States, a source in Russia's foreign ministry said today, according to Reuters. The source said, "There are no reasons to link these issues or count on Russia being more cooperative in toughening sanctions against Iran if there is progress in talks with the United States on further cuts in strategic offensive weapons."

Nothing in the public record suggests that kind of bargain had any chance of success, ever. This apparent misread of Russian policy and intentions supports the NightWatch concern that administration officials are not listening to friends in the Middle East who report consistently the Russians are making a run at strategic leadership in the Middle East.

They are strategic competitors, not partners. Their proxies are Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, according to the Middle Eastern sources. If Russia backs these four entities and protects their machinations, US initiatives for behavioral modification will never work. The implications are that US policies promoting peace stand no chance of success if they do not contain provisions to counter Russian interests that promote continuing hostility, which Russia can exploit and is exploiting for profit and influence.

Published: July 13, 2009, 23:10

Riyadh: A Saudi official has suggested that foreign workers who have been living in Gulf countries for more than 25 years should be granted free iqamas (work/residence permits) or permanent resident status outside the sponsorship system.

Agencies
Published: July 14, 2009, 17:52

Sana'a: Security was upgraded in Yemen's capital this week after intelligence reports warned of attacks planned against the US Embassy, a security official said on Tuesday.

The intelligence official said the unconfirmed reports indicated attacks were being planned against the US embassies in Algeria and Yemen.
In the wake of the report, the chief of the intelligence issued directives on Monday to beef up security around diplomatic missions in the capital and elsewhere in the country....

shyamd wrote:Yemeni official: Intelligence warn of attacks....

DEBKAfile's military sources report that the IDF and northern command are urgently investigating how a large group of Hizballah terrorists and Lebanese villagers managed to rush the new border fence and hoist Lebanese and Hizballah flags at an unmanned Israeli lookout post at the foot of the Kfar Shaba Farms Hills. The incident occurred Friday, July 17 around the date of the third anniversary of the Lebanon war, a conflict that was in fact triggered by a Hizballah cross-border raid and kidnap of Israeli soldiers.
The intruders left when ordered to by UN peacekeepers. An Israeli force with three tanks arrived then and removed the flags.
The incursion led by Hizballah lawmaker Qassem Hashem caught the Israeli army napping. It was the second reminder in a week that the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group is on the march. Wednesday, July 15, a big blast at a Hizballah weapons depot situated illegally in the South Lebanese village of Khirbat Salim 20 kilometers from the Israeli border.
The incident Friday occurred shortly before Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah delivered a policy speech, in which he announced his movement would join a Lebanese unity government only if it endorsed Hizballah's trumped-up demands for Israel to hand over the four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon 1982 and the remains of Lebanese "martyrs."
In fact, the diplomats were executed by the Lebanese Phalangists and there are no more Lebanese remains in Israel - as Nasrallah knows perfectly well. However, he is maneuvering to force the new Lebanese government to adopt Hizballah's platform. One of his (and Tehran's) goals is to frustrate US President Barack Obama's plans to promote peace negotiations between Israel and Lebanon. The other is to wriggle out of the UN demand for Hizballah to disarm by demonstrating that its militia is the only force capable of pressing Beirut's claims against Israel.