Bharat Rakshak

Clashes around military airport' in Aleppo
This is the latest take on Aleppo from the Associated Press:

Rebels and activists in Syria say anti-regime forces are advancing in Aleppo and have taken control of several neighborhoods.

Activists in Aleppo say there are heavy clashes around the city, particularly around a military airport.

A rebel commander Bassam al-Dada told the Associated Press on Thursday that anti-regime fighters have taken two central areas in the country's largest city, including Salaheddin, where battles have raged for months. Al-Dadda is an adviser to rebel leader Riad al-Asaad.

13m ago
Landis: 'Game up in Aleppo, it would seem'
Joshua Landis, the main source of the "Aleppo has fallen" reports, has posted this note on his blog:

Reports from friends inside suggest that Aleppo is falling to rebel troops. Both major Christian areas – al-Syrian al-Jadide and al-Syrian al-Qadime have fallen. The regimes largest Mukhabarat station is in the second area. FSA sharpshooters have gone to the tops of all buildings in these areas with no government opposition.

The major Kurdish neighborhood – Ashrafiya – gave no resistance. The government had been counting on the Kurds to hold back the FSA fighters. Game up in Aleppo it would seem. Regime seems to have cut it loose.

This is what I am being told by Aleppine friends who are on the phone with relatives inside both these areas. They have sharpshooters on top of their buildings. One said the family’s Filipino maid fainted due to the loud shooting earlier in the day. People are terrified.

For now (7:00 Eastern S. Time), an eerie silence has settled over the city. Where will the government try to hold the line?

Obviously all possibility for a ceasefire is off.

Some say the Syrian government is coming back to contest these areas. It is not clear.

39m ago
Government said to be still holding parts of Aleppo
Zaid Benjamin@zaidbenjamin
#BREAKING: 5 main neighborhoods in #Aleppo are still under government control - Abu Laoui al-Halabi, Spokesman of Liwa Sqoor al-Shahbaa
25 Oct 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
49m ago
Rebels said to make crucial gains in Aleppo
There are claims – which at present we can't confirm – that rebel fighters have made major advances in the city of Aleppo, capturing key Kurdish and Christian districts.

Earlier today, residents told AFP that about 200 rebel fighters had entered the Kurdish Ashrafiyeh district for the first time during the conflict.

Ashrafiyeh is strategically important as it sits on city heights and is a route between the central and northern parts of the country's commercial capital, which has been the theatre of intense fighting between rebels and government troops since mid-July.

Syria-watcher Joshua Landis goes further. He is tweeting that the regime has given up the city after rebels also captured Christian areas.

Joshua Landis@joshua_landis
Syria Regime Gives up Aleppo. FSA sharpshooters on top of all buildings in a-Syrian jadide and Qadime, Christian heartland #Syria #Aleppo
25 Oct 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Joshua Landis@joshua_landis
Shooting has stopped totally in Aleppo. Eerie silence overtakes city as government relinquishes control and Rebels take over. #Syria #Aleppo
25 Oct 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
If this is true, it remains to be seen whether the regime will attempt to drive the rebels out again. Meanwhile, Karl Sharro is wondering how the rebel fighters will treat the Christians ...

Karl Sharro@KarlreMarks
What will happen after the rebels captured the Christian areas in Aleppo will be very crucial for the future. I hope wisdom wins. #syria
25 Oct 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Another tweet disputes Landis's claim:

Joshua Landis@joshua_landis 25 Oct 12
Shooting has stopped totally in Aleppo. Eerie silence overtakes city as government relinquishes control and Rebels take over. #Syria #Aleppo
Muhammed Hamze@mhamze
@joshua_landis this is completely wrong, my family are in #Aleppo, still they are fighting there
25 Oct 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
FSA seen in al-Sabeel district of Aleppo:

Salman Shaikh@Salman_Shaikh1
Spoke to friend in #Aleppo. FSA under her window. She is in one of the most prosperous neighbourhoods (alSabeel) of Aleppo. #Syria

Hassan Kojar, the speaker at the gathering, is affiliated with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Syrian Kurdish party linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the separatist militia which has been fighting an invigorated campaign against Ankara in recent months.

"There are some traitors among the Kurds speaking ill of Ocalan, but speaking ill of Ocalan is speaking ill of all the Kurds," he continues. A large flag above him bears the face of the PKK's incarcerated founder, Abdullah Ocalan, whose image can be seen hanging from the walls of most public buildings in Derik, which also goes by its Arabic name al-Malikiyah. PKK graffiti can be seen scrawled the walls near the city's main square.

Rival Kurdish parties complain that the PYD is holding a tight grip on power, not allowing them to participate in new institutions or hang the red, green, and white flag emblazoned with a yellow sun that is used in Iraqi Kurdistan. Instead, a yellow, red, and green striped flag preferred by the PYD, flies above local buildings.

The internal disputes are threatening to derail efforts to build the foundations of an autonomous region in the northeast of Syria. Local officials refrain from talking of independence, instead stressing they want federalism or autonomy, but what is clear is that they are determined to run things here themselves, racing to put in place the means to protect and govern before the state's or the opposition's attention turns to this resource rich region.

However, for neighboring Turkey, the dominance of a party linked to its bitter adversary, is provocation -- and a development that could spark further conflagration of the Syrian civil war outside the country's borders.

Innocent says Kurds are Syria’s “decisive minority, and they have been on the fence.”

Heydemann credits Kurdish leaders for largely resisting President Assad’s bid to secure their loyalty. But on the other hand, he says, “they have also resisted efforts by the opposition leadership to draw the Syrian Kurdish community firmly onto the side of the revolution.” Kurdish misgivings over the composition of Syria’s political opposition create gaps that Heydemann says “remain very, very large. Efforts have continued to try to bridge those gaps, but they haven’t made a great deal of progress.”

ISTANBUL — Volunteers who join the Kurdish insurgency against Turkey must abandon Islamic religious practice and must forego “emotional ties” to anyone outside the group, as well as swear words and sex, or face trial and prison, according to a Syrian-born Kurd who defected from the group to Turkey over the summer.
[...]
The PKK has been waging a war against Turkey for three decades, demanding the creation of a Kurdish state in southern Turkey. Thousands of Turks have been killed by PKK actions, and the United States and the European Union have branded it a terrorist organization.

The defector’s disclosures helped avert the PKK capture of Semdinli, a mainly Kurdish town of 19,000 in southeast Turkey, officials there said in August. The PKK was routed instead, losing more than 100 fighters. But the PKK offensive continues, with at least 112 Turks and 325 separatists killed between July and mid-October, and casualties mounting daily on both sides.

The defector revealed that 250 to 300 insurgents were being mustered to attack Semdinli, the weapons they carried, where landmines would be planted and even the tactics for evading surveillance by Israeli-manufactured Heron drones. He also disclosed a fact of strategic significance: Part of the staging for the Semdinli operation took place at Sehidan, a PKK base inside Iran, where he had also been stationed, a sign of a tacit, though possibly passive, role by Iran in the PKK’s assault against Turkey.

“Because Turkish planes and artillery cannot strike Iranian soil, the (PKK) organization moves freely on Iranian soil,” R.S. told Turkish authorities. “We do not interfere in Iran, and they do not attempt to provide enforcement against us.”
Kurds also inhabit portions of Iraq, where they’ve established an autonomous regional government in three provinces that operates largely independently of the central government in Baghdad; and portions of Syria, where a PKK affiliate now controls much of northeast Syria with the apparent acquiescence of the besieged government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

R.S. portrayed the PKK as anti-Islamic. Performing daily prayers, fasting and reading the Quran are among the offenses that could land a recruit in prison, he told Turkish authorities. Instead, fighters were told that the religion of Kurds is Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s most ancient religions, and they should worship fire. There are said to be fewer than 200,000 Zoroastrians today, mostly in Iran and India. [That shows again it was a rather dumb Turkish or perhaps even western idea - to foist Zoroastrrianism on the Kurds, in order to connect them to both anti-Islamism as well as Iran].

Other offenses that could land a recruit in jail were forging an emotional relationship outside the organization, sexual relations, carrying an electronic device or disobeying orders. PKK members held for spying or sexual relations “are tortured in prison,” and those who sold weapons or have spied “are sentenced to death . . . by firing squad.” Civilians who disobey PKK orders are kidnapped and detained in prison, then either executed or released after payment of a fine, he said.

The defector also provided Turkish authorities the noms de guerre, hometowns and deployments of more than 100 PKK recruits and officers he’d trained with. They included 74 Kurds from Turkey, 13 from Syria, five from Iran, two from Iraq and a scattering from as far afield as Kyrgyzstan. [that also indicates it was part of a Turkish infiltration effort, and even if no real names have been revealed, this would simply be a cover to eliminate people]

PKK recruitment of Syrian Kurds had risen dramatically by late 2011 as that country’s civil war intensified, and they were the largest source of new blood in the PKK, outnumbering Turkish Kurds more than 2-to-1, R.S. said. R.S. indicated he was unhappy with the apparent cooperation between the PKK, its Syrian affiliate, the People’s Council of Syrian Kurdistan, and the Assad government in Damascus. “The oppression Kurds experienced in Syria for years is clear to see,” he said. “However, the PKK is not carrying out any attacks against the Syrian government in the face of this oppression.” If Syria’s Kurds “stand up to the Bashar Assad regime instead of submitting, the Assad regime cannot survive,” he told his interrogators.

He contrasted the PKK’s view of Assad with its assault on Turkey. In comments that could be seen as self-serving for a newly arrived defector, he said the PKK “ignores the rights accorded to the Kurdish people by the Turkish state and carried out all its attacks against Turkey.” [thats almost surely tutored]

One of the PKK’s biggest worries, R.S. said, is the unmanned Heron drones that Turkey deploys to spot insurgents, using cameras by day and thermal monitors by night, he said. On the eve of the offensive, the organization banned the use of radios, to prevent the drones from tracking their movements, and all communications were to be written on notepaper and encoded. Standard issue for fighters included lined umbrellas that enable insurgents “to move freely without being detected by drones and military positions.” The PKK also distributed raincoats, he said.

“Raincoats stop thermal cameras from detecting body heat so long as they are kept dry . . . and at least two inches from the body,” R.S. said. At the first sound of a drone, “we run to shelters. Those who are outside hide motionless under a rock or tree.” [Are Pakistanis running short of raincoats?]
[...]

Like many recruits, R.S. joined the PKK in part to get away from family problems – some analysts say this is the primary reason young men, and women, take to the hills. He signed up in Damascus in the summer of 2010, and after a week of indoctrination, returned to his hometown in northeastern Syria for one night. Along with two couriers, he boarded a raft on the Tigris River and traveled to Iraq.
[...]
R.S. did not say exactly what led him to defect, but it may have been partly personal. During training, he had befriended a young Turkish Kurd, who also had joined in mid-2010, but commanders would not allow them to be deployed together. The two young men had been deployed to Sehidan in May and were on guard duty when they decided to leave.

Fully aware that a major attack was being prepared on the town of Semdinli, they walked for three days and arrived on the outskirts of the town. There, they expected police or soldiers to capture them, “however we encountered no police or soldiers at this time.” So they walked to the headquarters of the military police and surrendered. [therefore his Turkish-Kurdi companion was most likely a decoy]

LeT is generally believed to have been created by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, to fight against Indian forces in Kashmir. Islamabad has used LeT and the Afghan Taliban to interfere with its neighbors. But LeT, unlike the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, which are based in rural and remote mountain regions, conspires globally. LeT agents and sympathizers permeate the large South Asian Muslim communities and their overseas contingents in Britain and the United States. The group operated through the so-called “North Virginia ‘paintball jihad’” network, whose members were taken down by U.S. authorities and sentenced to long prison terms in 2003-05. The Saudi willingness to act against LeT shows a desire to dissociate the world’s leading Muslim country from a major terrorist apparatus and its ideology. Pakistan has alienated its Arab patron by its uncooperative attitude toward Washington in the elimination of Osama Bin Laden, reflecting the Pakistani habit of blaming terrorism in its neighborhood on America. India resents Pakistan’s foot-dragging investigation of the Mumbai assault, with its evidence of complicity from within the ISI.Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the “emir” or commander of LeT, although placed repeatedly under house arrest in Pakistan, has also been repeatedly released by Pakistani authorities. Late in 2011, he emerged as a prominent figure in the Difa-e-Pakistan (Defense of Pakistan) council, a bloc of Islamist and other groups, some of them banned, and all dedicated to obstructing the country’s cooperation with the United States in supplying NATO forces in Afghanistan. Saeed has flouted a $10 million reward for his arrest offered by Washington earlier this year, advertising that he can operate with impunity in Pakistan.In this context, both Saudi Arabia and India were disturbed gravely by the near-fatal shooting of Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year old girl targeted by the Pakistan Taliban for her dedication to educating her peers, and now recuperating in Britain. The bullet that struck Malala Yousufzai may have helped spur a Saudi turn away from Pakistan and towards greater cooperation with India.
. The appearance of the Indian Mujahideen and similar groups aligned with al Qaeda has deeply unsettled India’s non-Muslim majority and its Muslim minority, the latter having maintained a position of Indian patriotism in recent years. Homicidal attacks on India’s ubiquitous Sufi shrines have been followed by revelations of success by the Indian Mujahideen in recruiting members of the Indian Muslim elite, including medical, engineering, information technology, journalism, and governmental professionals.
General Secretary of the All-India Ulema and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB), based at Lucknow in north India, has undertaken bold initiatives to affirm Muslim allegiance to India. Last year, Kichowchhwi, who also advocates education of girls, called for the expulsion of Wahhabi and Deobandi agitators from Indian Muslim communal institutions. He declared, “Sufi and Sunni Muslims are nationalists and are always ready for any kind of service to the nation. . . Sufi and Sunni Muslims who constitute the overwhelming majority of Muslims in India respect humanity and can never be traitor[s] to their nation.”Saudi Arabia and India have a common interest in curtailing radical Islam, a danger of which Pakistan seems uncomprehending. Better relations between the two powers, and more pressure on Islamabad, are therefore a development to be cheered by the larger world

brihaspati wrote:Apart from the doubts, Turkey itself might be involved in propagating certain types of news and propaganda against the PKK:

http://www.adn.com/2012/10/25/2671902/i ... gency.html
Inside Turkey’s Kurdish insurgency: No sex, no swearing, no Quran
By Roy Gutman — McClatchy Newspapers

ISTANBUL — Volunteers who join the Kurdish insurgency against Turkey must abandon Islamic religious practice and must forego “emotional ties” to anyone outside the group, as well as swear words and sex, or face trial and prison, according to a Syrian-born Kurd who defected from the group to Turkey over the summer.
[...]
R.S. portrayed the PKK as anti-Islamic. Performing daily prayers, fasting and reading the Quran are among the offenses that could land a recruit in prison, he told Turkish authorities. Instead, fighters were told that the religion of Kurds is Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s most ancient religions, and they should worship fire. There are said to be fewer than 200,000 Zoroastrians today, mostly in Iran and India. [That shows again it was a rather dumb Turkish or perhaps even western idea - to foist Zoroastrrianism on the Kurds, in order to connect them to both anti-Islamism as well as Iran].

Carl wrote:

brihaspati wrote:Apart from the doubts, Turkey itself might be involved in propagating certain types of news and propaganda against the PKK:

http://www.adn.com/2012/10/25/2671902/i ... gency.html
Inside Turkey’s Kurdish insurgency: No sex, no swearing, no Quran
By Roy Gutman — McClatchy Newspapers

ISTANBUL — Volunteers who join the Kurdish insurgency against Turkey must abandon Islamic religious practice and must forego “emotional ties” to anyone outside the group, as well as swear words and sex, or face trial and prison, according to a Syrian-born Kurd who defected from the group to Turkey over the summer.
[...]
R.S. portrayed the PKK as anti-Islamic. Performing daily prayers, fasting and reading the Quran are among the offenses that could land a recruit in prison, he told Turkish authorities. Instead, fighters were told that the religion of Kurds is Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s most ancient religions, and they should worship fire. There are said to be fewer than 200,000 Zoroastrians today, mostly in Iran and India. [That shows again it was a rather dumb Turkish or perhaps even western idea - to foist Zoroastrrianism on the Kurds, in order to connect them to both anti-Islamism as well as Iran].

Very odd combination indeed - no sex plus Zoroastrianism plus cultish group-loyalty. But why would the Turks be involved in foisting Zoroism on the Kurds? I know that the Gulenists actively try to assimilate the Kurds, even giving them more freedom of language, etc., but wanting to keep them as part of neo-Ottoman Islam.

The presence of foreign Islamic militants battling Syria's regime is raising concerns over the possible injection of al-Qaida's influence into the country's civil war.

Syria's rebels share some of those misgivings. But they also see in the foreign extremists a welcome boost: experienced, disciplined fighters whose battlefield valor against the better-armed troops of President Bashar Assad is legendary.

Nothing typifies the dilemma more than Jabhat al-Nusra, a shadowy group with an al-Qaida-style ideology whose fighters come from Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the Balkans and elsewhere. Many are veterans of previous wars who came to Syria for what they consider a new "jihad" against Assad.

The group has become notorious for numerous suicide bombings during the 19-month-old conflict targeting regime and military facilities. Syria's rebels have tried to disassociate themselves from the bombings for fear their uprising will be tainted with the al-Qaida brand.

But several hundred fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra – Arabic for "the Support Front" – have also been a valued addition to rebel ranks in the grueling, three-month battle for control of Aleppo, Syria's largest city.

Their reputation in battle circulates among Aleppo's rebels like an urban legend. Soon after opposition forces launched their assault on the city in July, government troops almost drove them out of the key district of Salaheddin – until 40 Jabhat al-Nusra fighters rushed to the front and fended them off, according to a story told by many rebels.

The group's fighters have played a similar role along the multitude of front lines that divide this city of 3 million people, where regime forces and rebels have been at a standstill, fighting street to street but unable to score a decisive victory. Many rebels talk of the al-Nusra fighters' prowess as snipers.

"They rush to the rescue of rebel lines that come under pressure and hold them," one rebel said. "They know what they are doing and are very disciplined. They are like the special forces of Aleppo."

But he added: "The only thing is that they are too radical." He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by both Jabhat al-Nusra and the Assad regime.

In a statement posted on militant websites Wednesday, Jabhat al-Nusra rejected a proposed cease-fire during the four-day Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, which starts Friday. International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has been trying to cobble together such a truce, saying the government in Damascus and some rebels have agreed to the idea.

But Jabhat al-Nusra called a truce a "filthy game," saying it has no faith that Assad's regime would respect one. Some Syrian rebel leaders have also expressed skepticism, since previous cease-fire attempts have gone nowhere.

Jabhat al-Nusra is the largest grouping of foreign jihadis in Syria, and the rebels say they number about 300 fighters in Aleppo, as well as branches in neighboring Idlib province, the city of Homs and the capital Damascus. Any direct links to al-Qaida are unclear, although U.S. and Iraqi officials have said they believe members of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq have crossed the border to join the fight against Assad.

There are no reliable figures for the number of foreign fighters in Syria, although available estimates put the number in the hundreds, rather than the thousands.

Many al-Nusra fighters wear long tunics and baggy pants in the style of mujahedeen or "holy warriors" in Afghanistan, and nearly all have beards, a hallmark of religious piety. A few smear kohl on their eyes and have long hair, emulating what they believe is a style favored by Islam's Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.

The fighters keep a low profile. They have turned a government building in Aleppo into their headquarters, but it is barely noticeable since it contains no banners or flags to give it away. Only occasional graffiti announces their presence in the city: "Jabhat al-Nusra is coming." Rebels who spoke with The Associated Press about the group had no clear idea about its leadership.

The fighters shun the media, but information gleaned from Syrians in contact with them paints a picture of militant Muslims motivated by a jihadi ideology not unlike that of al-Qaida. Their members include propagandists, trainers, surgeons and other medical doctors.

Many Syrian rebels are themselves pious Muslims who frame the fight against Assad's regime in a religious context. But some see the jihadis' brand of Islam as too starkly black-and-white and intolerant, dividing the world between the faithful and the infidels. Their presence, some fear, casts doubts on whether a post-Assad Syria will embrace democratic values or come under the sway of Islamists.

A staffer at a field hospital in a rebel-held part of Aleppo, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals for talking about the group, said the al-Nusra fighters "are fine now, because they are fighting alongside the rebels."

An AP team witnessed some of the frictions at the field hospital in mid-October. Several al-Nusra fighters entered, and one of them – a tall, lanky non-Arab dressed in black with a black headband – was enraged by the presence of foreign journalists at the facility.

"They are all spies who are here to collect information," he said in English, shaking the automatic rifle that was slung over his shoulder.

Another fighter, who appeared to be of North African origin, tried to force a female photographer to leave the hospital after she attempted to photograph the X-ray of a wounded fighter's head.

A Syrian rebel commander confronted the two men.

"There is nothing in Islam that permits you to treat guests like this. Furthermore, it is a woman," he said. The fighters left and the commander offered tea and dates to the photographer and several other journalists.

Opposition members also worry that the presence of foreign jihadis in Syria lends credibility to the regime's repeated assertions that the rebellion is the work of terrorist groups carrying out a "foreign conspiracy."

Jabhat al-Nusra has claimed responsibility for a string of suicide bombings, including several in Damascus. It unleashed an Oct. 3 suicide blast in Aleppo that killed more than 30 people, targeting a square where pro-regime fighters congregated. After each blast, the rebels' Free Syrian Army umbrella group underlines that it does not approve of suicide bombings as a tactic.

"Their presence is reducing the popular support that we desperately need in areas where we operate," a senior political official of the Free Syrian Army, said in neighboring Turkey. "I appreciate their motives for coming to Syria. We cannot deny Muslims their right to jihad, but we want them to leave." He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss concerns over the group.

Still, in Aleppo, the image of pious Islamic warriors coming to help in the fight against Assad is an attractive one. Though Jabhat al-Nusra is predominantly made up of foreigners, a few Syrians have joined, mostly ultraconservative Muslims.

Syrians can join only if they are backed by two full members who must swear on the Quran to tell the truth about the applicant. The fighters run training programs for their Syrian members as well as others who want to learn fighting skills but don't want to join the group.

The high esteem in which the Jabhat al-Nusra fighters are held has a great deal to do with the unruly behavior and lack of discipline of many rebels.

One recent night, al-Nusra fighters brought the bodies of four Syrian rebels who were killed when a fellow rebel they were interrogating over suspicion that he was stealing grabbed an assault rifle and shot them. A fifth rebel was wounded.

Later, when comrades of the four dead heard the news they gathered outside the hospital and, enraged, fired their entire bullet magazines into the air. Another group of fighters reacted similarly when struck by grief over the death of a comrade.

Residents of Aleppo also complain that some rebels take unfair advantage of their position.

Fighters go straight to the front of the line at bakeries to buy bread when residents have to wait hours for their turn. Some demand that wounded comrades be treated ahead of civilians at the field hospital.

"I don't have time to wait in line," said a 19-year-old army deserter who joined the rebels in Aleppo and gave only his first name, Hani.

Iraqi militants pour into Syria, turning civil war into sectarian war

Article by: YASIR GHAZI and , TIM ARANGO Updated: October 27, 2012 - 6:13 PM

BAGHDAD - Militant Sunnis from Iraq have been going to Syria to fight against President Bashar Assad for months. Now Iraqi Shiites are joining the battle in increasing numbers, but on the government's side, transplanting Iraq's explosive sectarian conflict to a civil war that is increasingly fueled by religious rivalry.

Some Iraqi Shiites are traveling to Tehran first, where the Iranian government, Syria's chief regional ally, is flying them to Damascus. Others take tour buses from the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Iraq, on the pretext of making a pilgrimage to an important Shiite shrine in Damascus that for months has been protected by armed Iraqis. While the buses do carry pilgrims, Iraqi Shiite leaders say, they are also ferrying weapons, supplies and fighters to aid the Syrian government.

"Dozens of Iraqis are joining us, and our brigade is growing day by day," Ahmad al-Hassani, 25, an Iraqi fighter, said from Damascus. He said that he arrived there two months ago, taking a flight from Tehran. The Iraqi Shiites are joining forces with Shiite fighters from Lebanon and Iran, driving Syria ever closer to becoming a regional sectarian battlefield.

Increasingly entangled

Lebanon, which has 100,000 Syrian refugees, was pushed to the brink when a Sunni intelligence chief was assassinated in a bombing many there blamed on Syria and its allies in Lebanon. Jordan, sheltering more than 180,000 refugees, has struggled to contain the violence on its border. Turkey, with more than 100,000 refugees, has traded artillery fire with Syria since Syrian shelling killed five civilians near the border early this month.

Now Iraq, haunted by its own sectarian carnage, has become increasingly entangled in the Syrian war. And Iran, which, like Iraq, is majority-Shiite, appears to be playing a critical role in mobilizing Iraqis.

According to interviews with Shiite leaders in Baghdad, the Iraqi volunteers are receiving weapons and supplies from the Syrian and Iranian governments, and Iran has organized travel for Iraqis willing to fight in Syria on Assad's side. Iran has also pressed the Iraqis to organize committees to recruit young fighters. Such committees have recently been formed in Iraq's Shiite heartland in the south and in Diyala Province, a mixed province north of Baghdad.

Battle over faith

Many Iraqi Shiites increasingly see the Syrian war -- which pits the Sunni majority against a government dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam -- as a battle for the future of Shiite faith. This sectarian cast has been heightened by the influx of Sunni extremists aligned with Al-Qaida, who have joined the fight against Assad much as they did in the last decade against the Shiite-led Iraqi government.

"Syria is now open to all fighters, and Al-Qaida is playing on the chords of sectarianism," said Ihsan al-Shammari, an analyst and professor at Baghdad University's College of Political Science. "My biggest fear from the Syrian crisis is the repercussions for Iraq, where the ashes of sectarian violence still exist."

One young Iraqi, Ali Hatem, who was planning to travel to Tehran, then to Damascus, said he saw the call to fight for Assad as part of a "divine duty."

Abu Sajad said he joined the fight after the rebellion began, but recently returned to his home in Basra. "I can tell that things are going to be crazy in Syria," he said. "It's a sectarian war, and it's even worse than the one we had here, which was between the militias and the political parties. In Syria, all of the people are involved. You can feel the hatred between the Sunnis and the Alawites. They will do anything to get rid of each other."

http://www.startribune.com/world/176115951.html?refer=y

The giant banner with a portrait of Bashar al-Assad, strung across a busy street in South Beirut, proclaimed loyalty to the Syrian president — and cursed his enemies.

“Those who hate the Lion of Syria are sons of bitches,” it read, in Arabic slang with a play on the meaning of the Assad name.

Elsewhere in the Arab world he may be hated as a bloody tyrant, but in Hizbollah’s South Beirut stronghold Mr Assad is still a hero.

A couple of streets away, the British hostage Terry Waite was held captive for four years until his release in 1991, and nearby is the site of the notorious massacre of Sabra and Shatila where perhaps as many as 3500 people were murdered by pro-Israeli militias in 1982.

Hizbollah’s reclusive leader Hassan Nasrallah, the undisputed head of Lebanon’s Shia Muslims, lives nearby in a heavily guarded apartment complex. Hizbollah’s own police force, in khaki fatigues, patrol the streets, which are noticeably more crowded and scruffier than in the centre of Beirut with its nightclubs and fashionable shops.

Hizbollah - “the party of God” - needed help from neighbouring Syria to become the most powerful force in Lebanese politics, and it could always depend on the ruling family in Damascus during its wars with Israel.

Now in Mr Assad’s time of need Lebanon’s Shias have mostly been loyal in return - providing logistical and moral support and even sending fighters into Syria’s civil war to kill his enemies.

But in Lebanon there are as many Christians and Sunni Muslims as there are Shia. Now, as doubts grow that Mr Assad will survive and Syria’s civil war begins to spread into Lebanon, The Sunday Telegraph has been told of secret arguments raging inside Hizbollah’s ranks about whether the time has come to stop backing Mr Assad.

To many in South Beirut, where Hizbollah runs hospitals, schools, and rubbish collections, and pays pensions to the families of slain fighters, that would be unthinkable.

“Bashar is a major backer of our resistance, and so we are for him,” said Ahmad Suleiman, 43, a burly Hizbollah loyalist.

Mr Suleiman’s house was blasted into rubble in an air strike during the bloody 2006 war with Israel that Hizbollah claims to have won; in 1996 his brother was killed by an Israeli tank shell, making him “a martyr” he says proudly. He can remember “arrogant” Israeli soldiers patrolling his streets during the invasion of Lebanon, when he was a boy — streets that are still scarred with bullets from that time.

“The resistance”, as Hizbollah is called by its supporters, relied on Syrian and Iranian weapons and training to fight the Israelis. A bond was thus forged between Damascus, Tehran and South Beirut that until now has always looked unbreakable.

Many Hizbollah supporters insist it is Assad who is the victim, not the opposition, and that he is worthy of their support.

“In Syria there are terrorist attacks, torture, killing and beheading, all done by the enemies of the regime,” Mr Suleiman said. “This is not a revolution like the one in Egypt. Ninety per cent of the Syrians support Bashar. He is a good man and he will survive.

“If it looks as if he is in real danger, we will send thousands of our men into Syria. And if America or Nato is stupid enough to intervene, we will be there defending Arab lands.”

There were reports of fresh fighting in Syria on Saturday, with opposition activists claiming Syrian artillery bombarded cities, in breach of a truce meant to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday. Both the government and rebels agreed a truce. Mohammed Doumany, an activist from the Damascus suburb of Douma, said he had counted 15 explosions in an hour and said at least two civilians had been killed. There were also reports of heavy fighting along the Syria-Turkey border.

Hizbollah has a private army, regarded as a terrorist organisation by the United States, which is much stronger than Lebanon’s national army - yet it is also inside Lebanon’s government as part of an uneasy arrangement of rival political parties.

Since it was founded in the 1980s it has built a reputation as a formidably disciplined organisation, tolerating no public dissent. But a year ago the rival Palestinian militant organisation Hamas, which controls Gaza, abandoned its support for Mr Assad. Now, insiders say, Hizbollah is engaged in a fierce debate behind closed doors over whether to follow suit.

“There are different points of view, with some saying that we should push for a settlement within Syria and not bank on Assad staying,” said one Lebanese with connections to senior Hizbollah circles.

Some Hizbollah members, including clerics, fear that their support for Mr Assad is dragging them into a dangerous fight with Sunni Arabs - the other side of Islam’s main sectarian divide - in Syria and Lebanon, he said.

They say it is now urgent to end their support for Mr Assad, so that a new relationship can be formed with whoever comes to power in Syria next.

“There is an awareness inside Iran and Hizbollah that they are going to have confrontation with the Sunnis, or are going to have to bridge the gap between them,” the source said. “The hardest topic is Syria. The future of Hizbollah and the Shia is directly related to the future of Syria. If Bashar is to be sacrificed, let’s sacrifice him and not Syria.”

The most dramatic sign of dissent within Hizbollah is the cancellation of a forthcoming party convention that is usually held every three years - the first time anybody can remember it being dropped. The official explanation is that it would be a security risk.

But a Shia politician from an important political family said: “They are not able to hold their convention because they are afraid they cannot agree on Syria.”

Disagreement is said to be strongest between civilian Hizbollah members, who are more likely to favour cutting links with Damascus, and its powerful military wing, trained and indoctrinated by Iran and still fiercely loyal to the Syrian regime.

“I have heard that the division is deep between the Lebanese branch of Hizbollah and the military. Hassan Nasrallah decided to cancel the convention,” said the source. “He was worried he would not be able to come up with a final resolution.”

Mr Nasrallah pledged his loyalty to the Damascus regime in public several times at the beginning of the crisis, but has shown much less enthusiasm about doing so recently.

“Nasrallah is anxious,” said one observer of the South Beirut political scene. “At every crossroads he watches closely what is happening.”

Car bombings and clashes between militias, alarming signs that Syria’s violent struggle is spreading to Lebanon, have forced many of his followers to wonder where their involvement with Mr Assad is leading them.

Dozens of Lebanese have died in fighting between pro- and anti-Assad factions in Lebanon’s cities this year, and the car bomb assassination nine days ago of the country’s spy chief, who was one of Syria’s biggest enemies in Beirut, brought back frightening memories of Lebanon’s own 15-year-long civil war.

Beyond Lebanon, Hizbollah’s prestige, once sky-high, now looks tarnished. Instead of being praised among Arabs for standing up to Israel, it is seen by many as the lackey of a bloodstained dictator.

When Hamas abandoned its support for Syria, under pressure from Palestinians appalled by the regime’s slaughter, Ismail Haniya, its leader in Gaza, dramatically announced it during Friday prayers in Cairo. “I salute the Syrian people who seek freedom, democracy and reform,” he said. There were calls of “No Hizbollah and no Iran” from the crowd.

For sticking with the Damascus regime, Hizbollah has been criticised by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf States.

Its support for the Assad regime was “an obvious strategic mistake”, said Abdel-Halim Qandil, the co-founder of the new left-of-centre Egyptian political party Kefaya (Enough). “It would have been better to be neutral or to keep silent,” he said.

There is growing unease even among Hizbollah’s grass-roots supporters in its political heartlands of South Beirut, and speculation that it will lose out politically as well.

“My mother has always voted for Hizbollah, but she has seen the television pictures of dead children in Syria and she is horrified,” said one Hizbollah supporter. “Of course she is behind the resistance. But for the first time in her life I think she may not vote for them in the next election.”

Discovery has opened new chapter in understanding maritime trade of Indian Ocean countries, say historians

A Tamil-Brahmi script inscribed on a potsherd, which was found at the Khor Rori area in Oman, has come to light now. The script reads “nantai kiran” and it can be dated to first century CE, that is, 1900 years before the present. The discovery in the ancient city of Sumhuram has opened a new chapter in understanding the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean countries, according to specialists in history.

It was by chance that the potsherd was sighted. Alexia Pavan, an Italian archaeologist, had displayed the potsherd during an international ceramic workshop on “The Indian Ocean Trade and the Archaeology of Technology at Pattanam in Kerala” held in September in Kochi. P.J. Cherian, Director, Kerala Council of Historical Research (KCHR), and Roberta Tomber of the British Museum, London, had jointly organised the workshop. Pottery from several Indian Ocean countries was on display during the workshop. K. Rajan, Professor, Department of History, Pondicherry University, D. Dayalan, Regional Director, Archaeological Survey of India, and V. Selvakumar, Head of the Department of Epigraphy and Archaeology, Tamil University, Thanjavur, spotted the potsherd displayed by Dr. Pavan.

The Italian Mission to Oman (IMTO) had found this potsherd during its second archaeological excavation in 2006 in the Khor Rori area. The Director of the excavation was Alessandra Avanzini and Dr. Pavan was part of the team. Since 1997, the Mission of University of Pisa, forming part of the IMTO, has been working in Oman in two sites: Sumhuram in Khor Rori and Salut in Nizwa.

Personal name

The potsherd was found in a residential area of Sumhuram city. Dr. Pavan said it was part of a lid made by reusing the shoulder of an amphora. Soot traces visible along the external ridge suggest the use of the lid for a cooking pot. The sherd was discovered in a layer mixed with a few pottery pieces and animal bones, “which [layer] corresponds to one of the most important constructional phase of the city, to be dated to the first century CE,” she said. So the sherd could be dated to first century CE or a little earlier. There was so much of Indian material, including beads, coins and pottery, discovered during the excavation that it was important to show the relationship between India and the southern coast of Oman, she added.

The script “nantai kiran,” signifying a personal name, has two components, Dr. Rajan said. The first part “[n] antai” is an honorific suffix to the name of an elderly person. For instance, “kulantai-campan,” “antai asutan,” “korrantai” and so on found in Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions could be cited. The second component “Kiran” also stands for a personal name. More than 20 poets of the Tamil Sangam age [circa third century BCE to third century CE] have “kiran” as part of their personal names. “Thus, the broken piece of the pot carries the personal name of an important trader who commanded a high regard in the trading community,” Dr. Rajan argued.

It was generally believed that India’s contact with the Mediterranean world began with the Roman trade and much of the studies were concentrated on the Red Sea ports such as Quseir al-Qadim and Berenike, both in Egypt. While the excavation at Quseir al-Qadim yielded potsherds with the Tamil-Brahmi texts reading “kanan,” “catan” and “panai ori,” the one found at Berenike was engraved with the Tamil-Brahmi script “korrapuman.” The latest discovery in Oman was significant as it opened a new avenue in understanding the impact of the Indian Ocean trade, particularly on the west coast of the peninsular India, Dr. Rajan said. The region was known for frankincense and there was a possibility that trade in horses could also have taken place in these ports. (Frankincense is an aromatic gum resin used for burning as incense).

“Excavations by the University of Pisa have confirmed Sumhuram’s link with the ancient frankincense route and its cultural links with the frankincense-based kingdoms in southern Arabia,” Dr. Rajan said.

In the context of the advanced scholarship available on Tamil-Brahmi, estimated Dr. Cherian, this epigraphic evidence from Khor Rori had a great significance. “To the best of my knowledge, Khor Rori is the first South Arabian site to yield epigraphic evidence of the early historic phase [that is, when written records began].” Earlier, in the Mediterranean maritime trade network, only Myos Hormos and Berenike (on the Red Sea coast of Egypt) and a few sites in Sri Lanka had produced Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions outside India.

The importance of Khor Rori rested on the fact that it was an important pre-Islamic port-city in the ancient Indian Ocean exchanges between the Mediterranean region and India, Dr. Cherian said. The port of Sumhuram could be dated to circa third century BCE to fourth century ACE. This site could be crucial in tracing the maritime history of the Red Sea, the South Arabian and the Mesopotamian coasts and their hinterlands which could have played a pivotal role in the long-distance maritime trade between Tamilakam and the Mediterranean between the first century BCE and the fourth century CE, he added.

“It is unfortunate that the geographical and the cultural significance of the South Arabian region and its links with ancient south India has not been properly studied for various reasons,” said Dr. Cherian, who recently did field studies in Oman including at Sumhuram (Khor Rori) and the nearby Al Baleed sites. The Euro-centric perspectives that became dominant after the Roman Empire seem to have erased more history than they probably produced anew. In the absence of textual evidence for the early historic period, he said, archaeological evidence and to some extent, anthropological sources such as myths were the available means to retrieve such lost histories.

Dr. Cherian added: “This artefact with a post-firing Tamil-Brahmi script is, therefore, a find with a dual significance both as material and textual evidence. The challenge now is to seek associated archaeological finds from elsewhere, especially peninsular India.”

Brisk trade activity

The substantial quantity — the largest-ever assemblage from any Indian site — of 3,384 torpedo jar fragments and 1,720 turquoise glazed pottery from Pattanam suggested the brisk trade activity between Tamilakam and the South Arabian regions. (The KCHR, in association with other agencies has been excavating the Pattanam site, near Ernakulam, from 2007. Archaeologists feel that Pattanam could be Muziris/Muciri, which was a flourishing port on the west coast during the Tamil Sangam age, which coincided with the classical period in the West). “The presence of frankincense crumbs in almost all trenches at Pattanam is yet another indication of the site’s connection with South Arabia, including Khor Rori and the Al Baleed region, famed as the ‘land of incense’,” Dr. Cherian said.

This nasty narrative, fed thru the controlled ‘independent’ media and borrowed from the Libyan humanitarian intervention under the aegis of ‘R2P’ (responsibility to protect), is all just a MISO – military information support operation – for regime change in Syria.

First, they tried to exploit the threat of chemical weapons – it didn’t work and it didn’t look persuasively gory on TV screens. Then the scaremongers evoked more TV-friendly cluster munitions with helpful Cyrillic letters alluding to their Soviet/Russian origin. This preposterous canard didn’t fly either.

Today, we are supposed to believe in yet another disinformation fulmination – the barrel bomb baloney.

'In recent months the Syrian regime reached a new stage of violence in the country by sending Mig planes and then using so called barrel bombs – explosives packed inside large oil drums packed with TNT, ‘ French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said during a meeting Wednesday with representatives from local committees of the 'liberated zones' to the Syrian North on October 17.

During WW2, the pilots of the Wehrmacht Luftwaffe used to drop empty fuel barrels from notorious Junkers Ju 87 or Stuka dive bombers, in addition to onboard whining sirens, as an innovative psychological weapon to strike panic among civilian populations and to demoralize the armed forces of a designated target country.

Today, their Western handlers of rented jihadists are trying to whip up a media frenzy to plant the following story: Syrian Air Force MIGs massively exploit ‘barrel bombs’ with TNT to wipe out cities & citizens.
Barrel Bomb: An oil barrel or IED bomb?

A cursory dissection of the video trash that has flooded the TV channels has revealed that civilians, including journalists, are big suckers for all things military, especially blood & horror:

1. Mistaken identity: upon closer look, it turned out that the aircraft in question were not MIGs and the munitions were not ‘barrel bombs’: ‘a number of videos marked as barrel bombs that were clearly L-39s (mislabeled as MiGs) dropping OFABs (small bombs), so expect there will be a number of videos mislabeled as such in the future as well.’

2. There were all types of barrels paraded in front of the TV cameras, but none of that makeshift junk would qualify as auxiliary ordnance to be installed & released from any state of the art supersonic jet fighter. Otherwise ‘barrel bombs’ would have been used instead of JDAMs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) as a weapon of choice for airstrikes by the US in Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan.

3. However, all those clunky barrels perfectly fit the description of IEDs found in explosives manuals, which are extolled and promoted by jihadist websites.

Naturally, when Syrian Armed Forces defuse terrorists’ IEDs, there’s a possibility they might drop the barrels – with or without explosives – back on their perpetrators. Civilians call it returning a favor; the military tags it ‘returning fire’.

The hidden agenda of this propaganda coup is pretty obvious: having failed to win the ‘hearts & minds’ of the population, the terrorists and jihadists for hire have resorted to a disinformation campaign to discredit the authorities and cover up their atrocities against peaceful civilians in Syria.

In their fervent struggle, a Syrian rebel group has "arrested" a Lebanese journalist in Aleppo saying his “presence as a journalist no longer receives approval in areas controlled by the rebels.”

­Fidaa Itani, who works for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBCI) and several other news outlets, was travelling though Aleppo under protection of a rebel group when he was arrested and handed over to another rebel group which controls a small town some 30km away from the besieged port-city. The rebels said on their Facebook page they found Itani’s work “incompatible with the path of the Syrian revolution and rebels.”

They promised to free the reporter “shortly” who is now in rebel custody – after the necessary documents and information are acquired. Itani was seized after he raised suspicions, taking pictures and videos of “large amounts of operations” in Syria’s second largest city. The content of his reports also seems to fallen foul of how the rebels’ want the popular uprising against Bashar Al-Assad’s government should be covered. “Reports and videos have not proven yet Itani's involvement with any party that works against the revolution, but his presence as a journalist no longer receives approval in areas controlled by the rebels,” the group said in a statement.

LBCI, as well as Lebanese MPs, are in contact with the group and their leader, Abu Ibrahim. They expect Itani to be set free in a couple of days. Abu Ibrahim and the Azaz rebel group have abducted Lebanese nationals before. Eleven Lebanese pilgrims, who were returning from Iran through Syria, were kidnapped by the group in May. Only two of them have been released so far. The rebels have used the term “detained” to describe the abduction of the journalist, but they in fact have committed “a criminal action” and “kidnapped” him, Manuel Ochsenreiter, editor-in-chief of the German monthly news magazine Zuerst, told RT.

“Indeed this is an alarming development but this is not new,” he said. “He is not the first journalist to have been kidnapped in Syria. We see a huge number of journalists that were killed by the rebels in Syria, who were killed by the Al-Qaeda related groups. I just want to remember the journalists of the Syrian TV channel, Syrian News TV where some journalist were killed and where the building was attacked at the end of June this year.”

At the same time the Syrian government does not prevent journalists making reports that disagree with the official line, says Ochsenreiter, who himself had visited Damascus during the conflict. “I was in Damascus and what I can say is that I met a lot of journalists who were not filing reports consistent with the official line of the Syrian government’s cause and they were not detained, they were not kidnapped, they were free to work in the country,” he said. “So, you see that there is a huge difference how journalists work in Syria and there is a monster huge difference in the risk.”

Itani was kidnapped just hours after the release of a video in which Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawari had called for Muslims to kidnap Westerners as a bargaining chip, to win the release of its members held captive around the world. In a new video posted online he also urged Islamists to support Syrian rebels with “all that they can.”

This is not the first a foreign reporter has gone missing in the Arab country since it plunged into civil unrest in March 2011. In one of the most recent incidents, Ukrainian reporter Anhar Kochneva disappeared several weeks ago and has not yet been freed. In total, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, three international reporters remain unaccounted for in Syria, while over 20 have been killed adding to more than 20,000 casualties suffered by Syria.

Satya_anveshi wrote:Been a while since anyone posted William Engdahl.

According to an informed assessment by Gajendra Singh, retired Indian diplomat with decades of
service in the Middle East and a deep familiarity with the ethnic mix inside Syria, were the minority
Alawite regime of Al-Assad to fall, the country would rapidly descend into a bloodbath that would make
estimates of 17,000 killed to date a mere prelude. Singh estimates, “A defeat of Assad led regime will
lead to slaughter of Alawites, Shias, Christians, even Kurds and Druzes. In all, 20 % of a population of
20 Million.”

Three of the world’s oldest mosques are about to be destroyed as Saudi Arabia embarks on a multi-billion-pound expansion of Islam’s second holiest site. Work on the Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, where the Prophet Mohamed is buried, will start once the annual Hajj pilgrimage ends next month. When complete, the development will turn the mosque into the world’s largest building, with the capacity for 1.6 million worshippers.

But concerns have been raised that the development will see key historic sites bulldozed. Anger is already growing at the kingdom’s apparent disdain for preserving the historical and archaeological heritage of the country’s holiest city, Mecca. Most of the expansion of Masjid an-Nabawi will take place to the west of the existing mosque, which holds the tombs of Islam’s founder and two of his closest companions, Abu Bakr and Umar.

Just outside the western walls of the current compound are mosques dedicated to Abu Bakr and Umar, as well as the Masjid Ghamama, built to mark the spot where the Prophet is thought to have given his first prayers for the Eid festival. The Saudis have announced no plans to preserve or move the three mosques, which have existed since the seventh century and are covered by Ottoman-era structures, or to commission archaeological digs before they are pulled down, something that has caused considerable concern among the few academics who are willing to speak out in the deeply authoritarian kingdom.

“No one denies that Medina is in need of expansion, but it’s the way the authorities are going about it which is so worrying,” says Dr Irfan al-Alawi of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. “There are ways they could expand which would either avoid or preserve the ancient Islamic sites but instead they want to knock it all down.” Dr Alawi has spent much of the past 10 years trying to highlight the destruction of early Islamic sites.

With cheap air travel and booming middle classes in populous Muslim countries within the developing world, both Mecca and Medina are struggling to cope with the 12 million pilgrims who visit each year – a number expected to grow to 17 million by 2025. The Saudi monarchy views itself as the sole authority to decide what should happen to the cradle of Islam. Although it has earmarked billions for an enormous expansion of both Mecca and Medina, it also sees the holy cities as lucrative for a country almost entirely reliant on its finite oil wealth.

Heritage campaigners and many locals have looked on aghast as the historic sections of Mecca and Medina have been bulldozed to make way for gleaming shopping malls, luxury hotels and enormous skyscrapers. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of the 1,000-year-old buildings in the two cities have been destroyed in the past 20 years.

In Mecca, the Masjid al-Haram, the holiest site in Islam and a place where all Muslims are supposed to be equal, is now overshadowed by the Jabal Omar complex, a development of skyscraper apartments, hotels and an enormous clock tower. To build it, the Saudi authorities destroyed the Ottoman era Ajyad Fortress and the hill it stood on. Other historic sites lost include the Prophet’s birthplace – now a library – and the house of his first wife, Khadijah, which was replaced with a public toilet block.
[...]
Until recently, redevelopment in Medina has pressed ahead at a slightly less frenetic pace than in Mecca, although a number of early Islamic sites have still been lost. Of the seven ancient mosques built to commemorate the Battle of the Trench – a key moment in the development of Islam – only two remain. Ten years ago, a mosque which belonged to the Prophet’s grandson was dynamited. Pictures of the demolition that were secretly taken and smuggled out of the kingdom showed the religious police celebrating as the building collapsed.

The disregard for Islam’s early history is partly explained by the regime’s adoption of Wahabism, an austere and uncompromising interpretation of Islam that is vehemently opposed to anything which might encourage Muslims towards idol worship.

In most of the Muslim world, shrines have been built. Visits to graves are also commonplace. But Wahabism views such practices with disdain. The religious police go to enormous lengths to discourage people from praying at or visiting places closely connected to the time of the Prophet while powerful clerics work behind the scenes to promote the destruction of historic sites.

Dr Alawi fears that the redevelopment of the Masjid an-Nabawi is part of a wider drive to shift focus away from the place where Mohamed is buried. The spot that marks the Prophet’s tomb is covered by a famous green dome and forms the centrepiece of the current mosque. But under the new plans, it will become the east wing of a building eight times its current size with a new pulpit. There are also plans to demolish the prayer niche at the centre of mosque. The area forms part of the Riyadh al-Jannah (Garden of Paradise), a section of the mosque that the Prophet decreed especially holy..“Their excuse is they want to make more room and create 20 spaces in a mosque that will eventually hold 1.6 million,” says Dr Alawi. “It makes no sense. What they really want is to move the focus away from where the Prophet is buried.”

A pamphlet published in 2007 by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs – and endorsed by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz al Sheikh – called for the dome to be demolished and the graves of Mohamed, Abu Bakr and Umar to be flattened. Sheikh Ibn al-Uthaymeen, one of the 20th century’s most prolific Wahabi scholars, made similar demands.

“Muslim silence over the destruction of Mecca and Medina is both disastrous and hypocritical,” says Dr Alawi. “The recent movie about the Prophet Mohamed caused worldwide protests... and yet the destruction of the Prophet’s birthplace, where he prayed and founded Islam has been allowed to continue without any criticism.”

To the Syrian rebels, the offer was enticing: Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles and ammunition at below-market price, with supplies plentiful. The dealers were convincing: two of them had European passports, one a British passport, and they claimed to have been involved in supplying arms during the Bosnia war.

Three meetings took place in Istanbul between representatives of the rebels and the dealers, including the Briton, calling himself Emile, to organise shipments. An initial payment of around $40,000 was made.

The delivery was on time, as had been a previous shipment. But it soon became apparent that something was wrong.Rifles exploded during a firefight. There was a second such “accident”, and a third, leading to injuries. An examination of the remaining consignments revealed that propellants inside some of the cartridges had been replaced with ground explosives with three or four times design-pressure, with the aim of bursting them in the breach.

With Syria’s civil war getting increasingly vicious and dirty, the opposition has come across “abandoned” government arms that were proved to have been doctored. But the presence of the arms traffickers, including the Briton, has led to claims that the Syrian regime is using foreign agents to undermine the opposition.

Abdurrahman Abu-Nasr, a rebel representative who attended one of the meetings with the dealers in Istanbul three weeks ago, recalled “Emile” as a man in his late 40s who was of Arab – part-Syrian – origin. “He spoke fluent English, he told us that he had lived in England. Another man had a Belgian passport, but I think his family were from somewhere like Morocco. They were giving good prices, only around $ 2.50 per round [The average price had gone up to $5 at times].

“The man with the British passport told us he had supplied the Mujahedin in Bosnia, he knew a lot about defence equipment. My friend and I asked whether they were acting on behalf of their governments. They did not admit they were, but did not deny it totally either. It was clever, it left us wondering.”

There is no evidence to suggest that the man calling himself “Emile” has any connection with the British intelligence agencies.

The UK government is supplying “non-lethal” aid to the Syrian opposition, including satellite communications equipment, and thus, say security sources, it would not have been possible for regime agents to have infiltrated such a chain.

Speaking about arms supplies, the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said recently: “I don’t rule out any option in the future because we don’t know how the situation will develop.” He denied that supplies are being “outsourced” through Qatar or Saudi Arabia.

The rebels who met “Emile” and his colleagues are investigating the role of a conduit who had acted as a referee.

Sabotaging ammunition is not new to counter-insurgency warfare. The British engineered the supply of doctored bullets in the Second Matabele War in the 1890s and the Waziristan campaign in the 1930s. The Americans used the tactic in Vietnam, and both they and the Russians have carried out such operations in Afghanistan.

It was a longer way of saying the same as the former kick-boxer, Abu Mufaa: the ceasefire would exist in name only. Piles of rubbish litter the streets of Aleppo Piles of rubbish litter the streets of Aleppo, where the battle for control continues

And even then, despite Brigadier General al-Btaish's impressive title, it is not clear how many rebel fighters he speaks for. The officer describing himself as the Free Syrian Army's chief of staff, Col Ahmad Hijazi, rejected the idea of a ceasefire altogether: "We did not and will not agree to a ceasefire," he told BBC Arabic on Wednesday.

"The regime is used to treachery and scheming. It is not to be trusted." The Syrian government has formally accepted the truce - but reserves the right to retaliate if attacked. The Free Army is, in reality, more a brand name for hundreds of different militias than a single organisation with a unified command structure.
Decisive battle

The UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, says "most" rebel commanders agree with his proposal. But, even if that is true of the highly qualified statements from some FSA leaders, there are other groups involved in the fight. One of those is the al-Nusra Front, militant jihadis fighting alongside the FSA. On Wednesday, they issued a communique stating: "There will be no truce between us and this whorish, murderous regime... Only the sword shall be between us and God is the almighty judge."
[...]
There are small local ceasefires: places where the local army commander and the rebels have just decided to leave each other alone for the time being (usually to the relief of the local population).

In one village, in August, we found that a well-known local drug lord who led one rebel group had killed the local Free Army commander and taken over leadership of all the fighters in the area. He then did a deal with the police and army - he would not attack them; they would leave him to his drugs-smuggling business. In that village, at least, a kind of peace reigned.

28th October 2012

The Wahhabi brand of Islam, which teaches hatred toward Christians, Jews, and even other types of Muslims, has been spreading in America, terrorism experts and critics of Saudi Arabia say. Left unchecked, it could present a national security threat, they warn.

The hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on terrorism, technology, and homeland security saw experts and senators urge that action be taken to stop the extreme ideas of Wahhabism. Senators laid plenty of blame on Saudi Arabia.

Senator Schumer, a Democrat of New York and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that the pact between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi clerics that glues Saudi Arabia together as a nation is "nothing short of a deal with the devil."

"Wahhabism is an extremist, exclusionary form of Islam that not only denigrates other faiths but also marginalizes peaceful followers of Islam like the Shia and moderate Sunnis," Mr. Schumer said. "The Saudis give the Wahhabis protection and support in exchange for the Wahhabis promising not to undermine the Saudi royal family. The Wahhabis get to preach the hate and extremism that form the core tenets of Wahhabism without consequence."

Mr. Schumer said he has written numerous letters to the Saudi government asking it to denounce hateful Wahhabi teachings - specifically at the madrassahs they run - but has yet to receive any response indicating a change in policy.

One witness at the hearing, Alex Alexiev of the Center for Security Policy, said: "Without the exorbitant sums of Saudi money spent on supporting extremist networks and activities, the terrorist threat we are facing today would be nowhere as acute as it is. The evidence of conscious Saudi subversion of our societies and values.is so overwhelming that to tolerate it further would be unconscionable."

Another witness, the director of the Islam and Democracy program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an anti-terrorism think tank,Stephen Schwartz, said that the Saudis are "two-faced."

"Wahhabi-Saudi policy has always been two-faced: that while Wahhabis preach hostility and violence against non-Wahhabi Muslims, they simultaneously maintain a policy of alliance with Western military powers - first Britain, then the U.S. and France - to assure their control over the Arabian Peninsula," Mr. Schwartz said.

Mr. Schwartz cited several organizations as being involved in disseminating the Wahhabi ideology in America, several of which claim to be mainstream Muslim groups. He said the Islamic Society of North America; the Council on American-Islamic relations; the American Muslim Alliance, and the American Muslim Council are a "Wahhabi lobby." He said both ISNA and CAIR maintain "open and close relations with the Saudi government."

Mr. Schumer, a frequent critic of the Saudis, said he is particularly concerned by the influence of Wahhabi clerics in federal prisons and in the armed forces, and has written to the inspectors general of the Department of Justice and the Pentagon.

In response to a question by the subcommittee's chairman, Senator Kyl, a Republican of Arizona, about the breadth of Al Qaeda activities in America, the assistant director of counterterrorism at the FBI, Larry Mefford, said that the FBI has ongoing operations in 40 states against the terrorist group and its suspected members.

Mr. Kyl said that yesterday's hearing was the first in what would be a series of hearings examining Wahhabi influence in America.

By Christof Lehmann – Wednesday morning the renown journalist Maya Naser was shot dead by a sniper while he was reporting from the scene of two bomb blasts in central Damascus. Maya Naser was working for PRESS TV and Al–Alam in Damascus. The PRESS TV station chief Hussein Mortada was wounded in the event but is recovering from his injuries. Journalists are frequently targeted by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the variety of radical Islamist terrorist organizations which have been attracted to Syria since the onset of the attempted subversion in March 2011. The timing of the assassination indicates that Maya Naser may have been targeted because he came dangerously close to revealing serious war crimes of the Turkish government.

Since early 2011 more than 20 journalists have been killed in Syria. In some incidents journalists have been captured, tortured and executed. In at least one incident a journalist has been shot dead by FSA troops in an attempt to scapegoat the Syrian military. Bombs exploded in buildings of Syrian Radio and TV.

The targeting of journalists coincides with concerted efforts to deprive Syrian media from reporting on the crisis from a Syrian perspective. On the initiative of the Arab League, and in violation of international law, both Nilesat and Arabsat stopped carrying Syrian Radio and TV signals over their satellite services in June. Meanwhile, western and and western allied Arab news services continue misrepresenting facts about the crisis in Syria.

In several well documented cases, Al Jazeera employees were directly involved in provoking or organizing the violence which was than broadcasted to defame the Syrian military and government. BBC re-used a photo with victims of the war on Iraq, claiming them to be victims of Syrian military forces. CNN´s Awra Damon filed numerous false reports. Her work is documented in an exposé by Scot Creighton. (1)

Western and western allied media coverage seems to underline the NATO doctrine that absolute image control is part of every modern warfare operation. Combine this with the fact that a US Special Forces training circular from 2010 admits that the USA for the foreseeable future will predominantly be involved in irregular war (2), and NATO´s perception of the subversion in Libya in 2011 as teachable moment and model for future interventions (3) it would not be exactly alarmist to state that Syrian journalists are being systematically targeted to secure absolute image control.

Knowing what Maya Naser has been investigating during the last days of his life gives a clear indication of which images the FSA and the Turkish government want to control.

During the last days, leading up to the assassination of Maya Naser and the wounding of the Al-Alam and PRESS TV station chief in Damascus, Hussein Mortada, Maya was investigating a case which had the potential to lead to the impeachment of the Erdogan led government of Turkey and indictments for serious war crimes and human rights violations.

Earlier this month the Workers´Party – Turkey filed criminal charges for the Turkish governments support of the Free Syrian Army and related terrorist groups. Only days before his assassination, Maya Naser entered into an ad hoc investigative alliance into the alleged war crimes and human rights violation of the Turkish government with leading members of the Workers´Party Turkey, international lawyer Christopher Black, and the author of this article.

Maya Naser could not only confirm many of the Workers´Party´s allegations against the Turkish government, he could provide the evidence.

In an correspondences to the Foreign Affairs Secretary of the Workers´Party, Harun Çakan, international lawyer Christopher Black, and the author of this article, Maya Naser confirmed that thousands of insurgents have been infiltrated into Syria via Turkey over the last few weeks. He also confirmed that some of the SAM-7 missiles which recently had been shipped from Libya, via Turkey had begun appearing in the hands of insurgents in Syria.

According to Maya Naser´s information, the bulk of these insurgents came from other Arab countries as well as Afghanistan. Turkish insurgents who had been captured or killed in Syria usually held supervisory and command positions and seemed better trained than the average insurgent. The Workers´Party – Turkey accuses the Turkish government for using the Apaydin refugee camp in Hatay to house, train and supervise FSA insurgents. (4)

Maya Naser could not only corroborate these allegations. His detailed information about the identity of some of the killed and captured insurgents could potentially result in the impeachment of the Erdogan led Turkish government.

Almost one month ago, Maya Naser wrote, ”while I was covering the military operations in Aleppo, we saw the ID documents of 13 Turkish insurgents. When checking their identities we discovered that one of the fighters was the brother of the 2003 HSBC bomber from Istanbul”.” Such information”, Maya Naser wrote, ”led us to believe that the Turkish government is sending those convicted or under suspicion of being Al-Qaeda members to fight as insurgents in Syria”.

In subsequent, personal conversations between Maya Naser and the author of the article, he reiterated that there is further evidence that corroborates the suspicion that the government of Turkey is sending prisoners who have received a death sentence and those who serve life time sentences to Syria as an opportunity to be released from prison and as a chance to clear their record.

International lawyer Christopher Black responded to Maya Naser´s information, stating that if his information was correct, then the Turkish government is committing a war crime under the Rome Statute, which forbids forced service of non-combatants in war. According to Christopher Black it would be possible to file a complaint with the ICC against Turkey and NATO if corroborating evidence could be produced, stating that if Turkey is involved in these crimes, then its partners are equally guilty.

Two days later Maya Naser was shot by a sniper when he and his cameraman rushed to the scene of a double bomb attack in Damascus. Whether the timing of the assassination is coincidental or not it is certain that the death of Maya Naser may delay an investigation. It will not stop it.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012
NATO Using Al Qaeda Rat Lines to Flood Syria With Foreign Terrorists
2007-2008 US West Point reports reveal Al Qaeda network behind NATO's so-called "freedom fighters." Extremists in Syria were behind Iraq War foreign terrorist influx, not Syrian government.
by Tony Cartalucci

October 25, 2012 - The discredited and now obscure, defected Syrian ambassador Nawaf Fares, had claimed mid-summer of 2012 that the Syrian government had been behind the influx of foreign terrorists that entered Iraq during the later phases of the US-British occupation of Iraq. These terrorists took part in campaigns of sectarian-driven violence that divided and destroyed an already devastated Iraq. Fares spectacularly claimed that he himself was involved in organizing terrorist death squads in a hamhanded attempt to implicate the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

What Fares actually revealed however, was an invisible state within Syria, one composed of Saudi-aligned, sectarian extremism, operating not only independently of the government of President Assad, but in violent opposition to it. This "state-within-a-state" also so happens to be directly affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, the leading forces now fighting in Syria with significant Western-backing against the Syrian government.

The documented details of this invisible terror state were exposed in the extensive academic efforts of the US Army's own West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). Two reports were published between 2007 and 2008 revealing a global network of Al Qaeda affiliated terror organizations, and how they mobilized to send a large influx of foreign fighters into Iraq.

Carl wrote:Kurds fighting with FSA groups in Aleppo now.