Bharat Rakshak

MOSCOW, March 3 (RIA Novosti) - The British government is “shallow and immature” and has for centuries played an “unconstructive” role in the Middle East, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview with the Sunday Times.

“To be frank, Britain has played famously in our region an unconstructive role in different issues, for decades, some say for centuries,” Assad said. “How can we expect to ask Britain to play a role while it's determined to militarize the problem?”

He ruled out any suggestions that Britain could help resolve the ongoing conflict in Syria, saying “We do not expect an arsonist to be a firefighter.”

“How can you ask them to play a role in making the situation better, more stable, how can we expect them to make the violence less when they want to send the military supply to the terrorist?” he added.

RoyG wrote: The problem with you're theory is why would Maliki want to throw his entire weight behind Iran and the regime in Syria unless it was to prevent a spillover? There isn't any incentive for him. Sunni's make up a significant portion of Iraq's population and the last thing he would want is civil war ripping the country apart like in Syria.

shyamd wrote:But a sunni Syria can be a bigger threat - particularly if its influenced by the Gulf (the likelyhood is it will be). Anbar and sunni's could split and want to join with "Free Syria". These are realistic threats as you can see with now Anbar protests.

shyamd wrote:

RoyG wrote: The problem with you're theory is why would Maliki want to throw his entire weight behind Iran and the regime in Syria unless it was to prevent a spillover? There isn't any incentive for him. Sunni's make up a significant portion of Iraq's population and the last thing he would want is civil war ripping the country apart like in Syria.

Look Maliki is pro Iran and the current govt set up is very much influenced by Iran - shia brotherhood and all that. The reasons are religious and political as well. Its the sunni shia issue - their country is very much divided on sectarian lines. The iranians have a huge influence particularly in the south - thats reality today. Ayad Allawi is seen as a person who is more for an independent iraq.

If he wants to prevent a spillover he'll have to take act like an independent power i.e. not signing mutual defence pacts with Iran, integrating the IRaqi intel service with the IRanians, supporting Iranian intelligence operation and so on, stop Iranian meddling in his country. You are right - car bombs have gone off in Baghdad and there have been a wave of attacks to warn Maliki off supporting Bashar/Iran.

So why is he backing Bashar? Its because of regional security - Bashars military is less of a threat to Iraq and is under the Iranian fold to an extent (while they have their differences). But a sunni Syria can be a bigger threat - particularly if its influenced by the Gulf (the likelyhood is it will be). Anbar and sunni's could split and want to join with "Free Syria". These are realistic threats as you can see with now Anbar protests.

RoyG wrote: They have also signed a defence cooperation agreement with the United States. Maliki is just balancing both sides to keep the country together. US foreign policy is forcing Iraq to become more proactive wrt FSA in Syria and he has expressed his worry about the spill over in a recent AP interview. Again, he doesn't gain anything by going out of his way to ally himself too much with any one particular power.

RajeshA wrote: So if the Gulf wants Al Anbar, Iraq can exchange it with Al Ahsa in Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia! Wouldn't that be a fair deal?

Syrian rebel fighters seized much of the contested north-central city of Raqqa on Monday after days of heavy clashes with government forces, smashing a statue of President Bashar al-Assad’s father in the central square and occupying the governor’s palace, according to activist groups and videos uploaded to the Internet.

The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the "dirty wars" in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country's descent into full-scale civil war.

Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when he was nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency, an investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic shows.

After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia militias joining the security forces, the special police commando (SPC) membership was increasingly drawn from violent Shia groups such as the Badr brigades.

A second special adviser, retired Colonel James H Coffman, worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up with millions of dollars of US funding.

Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld.

The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse.

Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus's "eyes and ears out on the ground" in Iraq.

"They worked hand in hand," said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. "I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there ... the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture."

Additional Guardian reporting has confirmed more details of how the interrogation system worked. "Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee," claimed Samari, talking for the first time in detail about the US role in the interrogation units.

"Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts."

There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman tortured prisoners themselves, only that they were sometimes present in the detention centres where torture took place and were involved in the processing of thousands of detainees.

The Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation was sparked by the release of classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centres run by the police commandos across Iraq. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years after he pleaded guilty to leaking the documents.

Samari claimed that torture was routine in the SPC-controlled detention centres. "I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library's columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten."

Gilles Peress, a photographer, came across Steele when he was on assignment for the New York Times, visiting one of the commando centres in the same library, in Samarra. "We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I'm looking around I see blood everywhere."

The reporter Peter Maass was also there, working on the story with Peress. "And while this interview was going on with a Saudi jihadi with Jim Steele also in the room, there were these terrible screams, somebody shouting: 'Allah, Allah, Allah!' But it wasn't kind of religious ecstasy or something like that, these were screams of pain and terror."

The pattern in Iraq provides an eerie parallel to the well-documented human rights abuses committed by US-advised and funded paramilitary squads in Central America in the 1980s. Steele was head of a US team of special military advisers that trained units of El Salvador's security forces in counterinsurgency. Petraeus visited El Salvador in 1986 while Steele was there and became a major advocate of counterinsurgency methods.

Steele has not responded to any questions from the Guardian and BBC Arabic about his role in El Salvador or Iraq. He has in the past denied any involvement in torture and said publicly he is "opposed to human rights abuses." Coffman declined to comment.

An official speaking for Petraeus said: "During the course of his years in Iraq, General Petraeus did learn of allegations of Iraqi forces torturing detainees. In each incident, he shared information immediately with the US military chain of command, the US ambassador in Baghdad ... and the relevant Iraqi leaders."

The Guardian has learned that the SPC units' involvement with torture entered the popular consciousness in Iraq when some of their victims were paraded in front of a TV audience on a programme called "Terrorism In The Hands of Justice."

SPC detention centres bought video cameras, funded by the US military, which they used to film detainees for the show. When the show began to outrage the Iraqi public, Samari remembers being in the home of General Adnan Thabit – head of the special commandos – when a call came from Petraeus's office demanding that they stop showing tortured men on TV.

"General Petraeus's special translator, Sadi Othman, rang up to pass on a message from General Petraeus telling us not to show the prisoners on TV after they had been tortured," said Samari. "Then 20 minutes later we got a call from the Iraqi ministry of interior telling us the same thing, that General Petraeus didn't want the torture victims shown on TV."

Othman, who now lives in New York, confirmed that he made the phone call on behalf of Petraeus to the head of the SPC to ask him to stop showing the tortured prisoners. "But General Petraeus does not agree with torture," he added. "To suggest he does support torture is horseshit."

Thabit is dismissive of the idea that the Americans he dealt with were unaware of what the commandos were doing. "Until I left, the Americans knew about everything I did; they knew what was going on in the interrogations and they knew the detainees. Even some of the intelligence about the detainees came to us from them – they are lying."

Just before Petraeus and Steele left Iraq in September 2005, Jabr al-Solagh was appointed as the new minister of the interior. Under Solagh, who was closely associated with the violent Badr Brigades militia, allegations of torture and brutality by the commandos soared. It was also widely believed that the units had evolved into death squads.

The Guardian has learned that high-ranking Iraqis who worked with the US after the invasion warned Petraeus of the consequences of appointing Solagh but their pleas were ignored.

The long-term impact of funding and arming this paramilitary force was to unleash a deadly sectarian militia that terrorised the Sunni community and helped germinate a civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives. At the height of that sectarian conflict, 3,000 bodies a month were strewn on the streets of Iraq.
CV: James Steele

Vietnam

Jim Steele's first experience of war was in Vietnam, where from 1965 to 1975 US combat units were deployed against the communist North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong. 58,000 Americans were killed, dealing a blow to the nation's self-esteem and leading to a change in military thinking for subsequent conflicts.

El Salvador

A 1979 military coup plunged the smallest country in Central America into civil war and drew in US training and funding on the side of the rightwing government. From 1984 to 1986 Steele – a "counterinsurgency specialist" – was head of the US MilGroup of US special forces advisers to frontline battalions of the Salvadorean military, which developed a fearsome international reputation for its death-squad activities. Prof Terry Karl, an expert at Stanford University on El Salvador's civil war, said that Steele's main aim was to shift the fight from so-called total war, which then meant the indiscriminate murder of thousands of civilians, to a more "discriminate" approach. One of his tasks was to put more emphasis on "human intelligence" and interrogation.

Nicaragua

He became involved in the Iran-Contra affair, which saw the proceeds from covert arms sales by senior US officials to Iran used to fund the Contras, rightwing guerrillas fighting Daniel Ortega's leftwing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Steele ran operations at El Salvador's Ilopango airport, from where Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North illegally ran weapons and supplies to the Contras.

Iraq

Soon after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, now retired Colonel James Steele was in Baghdad as one of the White House's most important agents, sending back reports to Donald Rumsfeld and acting as the US defence secretary's personal envoy to Iraq's Special Police Commandos, whose intelligence-gathering activities he oversaw. Drawn mostly from violent Shia militia, the commandos developed a reputation for torture and later for their death-squad activities directed against the Sunni community.

harbans wrote:One irony that escapes most. Judea's capital was Jerusalem. When the Romans lorded over that part they referred to it as Palestine. 'Palestine' thus was originally Jewish state. For Abbas to say that Palestine will be a Jew free State is well..

They did everything tha they accuse the Jews of now, and the elite too - are not sons of the soil. Its just that Muslims being the latest to conquer a place have right over it by "right of past conquest", even if others conquer them later.

The dreaded tipping point -- which advocates of the two-solution have been warning about for years -- has finally arrived.

Some argue that this ratio is irrelevant, that Israel's current demographic balance should not be a source of concern, since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The international community doesn't buy this argument, though, since they still see Gaza as occupied since Israel controls its airspace and sea space.

By May 2048, when the State of Israel turns 100 years old, the population of this area will be approximately 55 percent Arab and 45 percent Jewish.

On the final slide of Della Pergola's presentation, he notes three possibilities for the Jewish state: that it be a Jewish state, that it be a democracy, and that it possess all of its historical territory. Israel cannot have all three.

Abu Mazen, the head of the Palestinian Authority, has made it clear that, within the context of an overall settlement, the Palestinian state will be non-militarized: no army, no airforce and no military weapons; just an internal police force. Given the past history of Palestinian-Israeli relations, the willingness of the Palestinian Authority to accept this condition is not insignificant.

Israel is about to turn 65, and the question that confronts it is as old as the 2,000-year-old question posed by Hillel in the Talmud: If not now, when? In just a few more years, it will be too late.

'Indian-origin jihadis' fighting in Syria against Assad regime

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 868094.cms

7th July Update

- KASOTC, Jordan - site where CIA is training FSA to take over chemical weapons depot sites. Sites are spread across the country and are guarded by the Air Force Intelligence alawite units who are very loyal to the regime.
- 2 key objectives that alliance is preparing for - break down of the Syrian govt and seizure of the chemical weapon depots
- Jordanian SF will secure the southern Syrian city of Mafraq (in the event of a breakdown of govt), currently a location for palestinians that are migrating from the Syrian camps into Jordan - they expect the flow to increase as the situation gets worse

Exclusive: UK and French instructors involved in US-led effort to strengthen secular elements in Syria's opposition, say sources

guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 March 2013 14.31 GMT

Jordanian soldiers guard the border with Syria. The Guardian has been told that UK intelligence teams are giving Syrian rebels in Jordan logistical and other advice. Photograph: Muhammad Hamed/Reuters
Western training of Syrian rebels is under way in Jordan in an effort to strengthen secular elements in the opposition as a bulwark against Islamic extremism, and to begin building security forces to maintain order in the event of Bashar al-Assad's fall.

Jordanian security sources say the training effort is led by the US, but involves British and French instructors.

The UK Ministry of Defence denied any British soldiers were providing direct military training to the rebels, though a small number of personnel, including special forces teams, have been in the country training the Jordanian military.

But the Guardian has been told that UK intelligence teams are giving the rebels logistical and other advice in some form.

British officials have made it clear that they believe new EU rules have now given the UK the green light to start providing military training for rebel fighters with the aim of containing the spread of chaos and extremism in areas outside the Syrian regime's control.

According to European and Jordanian sources the western training in Jordan has been going on since last year and is focused on senior Syrian army officers who defected.

"As is normal, before any major decision is taken on this issue, the preparations are made so that when that decision is taken, everything is in place for it to go smoothly. That is what these groups [special forces] do. They go in in advance," a European diplomat said.

A Jordanian source familiar with the training operations said: "It's the Americans, Brits and French with some of the Syrian generals who defected. But we're not talking about a huge operation."

He added that there had so far been no "green light" for the rebel forces being trained to be sent into Syria. But they would be deployed if there were signs of a complete collapse of public services in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, which could trigger a million more Syrians seeking refuge in Jordan, which is reeling under the strain of accommodating the 320,000 who have already sought shelter there.

The aim of sending western-trained rebels over the border would be to create a safe area for refugees on the Syrian side of the border, to prevent chaos and to provide a counterweight to al-Qaida-linked extremists who have become a powerful force in the north.

British officials say new European guidelines on the Syrian arms embargo, formally adopted by the EU at the beginning of March, allow military training as long as the ultimate aim of that training is "the protection of civilians".

Paris takes an identical view of the EU rules.

Officials in Brussels say the language of the guidelines is less than clear-cut. "It's deliberately hazy," said one. "When it comes to technical assistance, what it means in practice depends on who you ask. The Brits and the French, for example, are much more forward-leaning than others. The principle is that the assistance should be for the protection of civilians, but as we saw in Libya, that can be interpreted in different ways."

British officials argue that training of Syrian forces to fill the security vacuum as the Assad regime collapses would be help safeguard civilian lives.

William Hague, the foreign minister, outlined the goals of such training on Wednesday.

"Such technical assistance can include assistance, advice and training on how to maintain security in areas no longer controlled by the regime, on co-ordination between civilian and military councils, on how to protect civilians and minimise the risks to them, and how to maintain security during a transition," he told parliament. "We will now provide such assistance, advice and training."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "It's not the sort of thing we are going into too much detail on right now. We are big on the transition picture, because at some point Assad is going to fall, and the opposition are going to need help to provide governance in areas they control, and that of course includes security. But security doesn't just mean fighting, it also means basic law and order, and policing."

The Pentagon said last October that a small group of US special forces and military planners had been to Jordan during the summer to help the country prepare for the possibility of Syrian use of chemical weapons and train selected rebel fighters.

That planning cell, which was housed at the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Centre in the north of the capital, Amman, has since been expanded to co-ordinate a more ambitious training programme. But Jordanian sources said the actual training was being carried out at more remote sites, with recent US reports saying it was being led by the CIA.

For the first two years of the Syrian civil war, Jordan has sought to stay out of the fray, fearing a backlash from Damascus and an influx of extremists that would destabilise the precariously balanced kingdom.

"What has happened of late is that there has been a tactical shift," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, a Middle East expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank. "Islamist forces have been gaining steam in the north and Jordan is keen to avoid that in the south. Having been very hands-off, they now see that they have to do something in the south."

He added: "There is a feeling that Jordan simply can't handle a huge new influx of refugees so the idea would be to create a safe zone inside Syria. For them it's a no-win scenario. Everything they had been seeking to avoid has come to pass."

For western and Saudi backers of the opposition, Jordan has become a preferable option through which to channel aid than Turkey. Ankara has been criticised for allowing extremist groups, such as the al-Nusra Front, become dominant on the northern front while it focused on what it sees as the growing threat of Kurdish secessionism.

"The Americans now trust us more than the Turks, because with the Turks everything is about gaining leverage for action against the Kurds," said a Jordanian source familiar with official thinking in Amman.

The US has announced an extra $60m (£40.2m) in direct aid to the rebels, including military rations and medical kits. Asked on Tuesday whether assistance included military training, the US state department spokesman Pat Ventrell replied: "I really don't have anything for you on that. Our policy has been non-lethal assistance."

Earlier this week, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, said Washington was now confident that arms supplies to the rebels would not be diverted to extremists. "There is a very clear ability now in the Syrian opposition to make certain that what goes to the moderate, legitimate opposition is, in fact, getting to them, and the indication is that they are increasing their pressure as a result of that," he said.

Syrian rebels have said that in the past few months there had been a relaxation of the previously strict US rules on what kinds of weapons were allowed across the border, and that portable anti-aircraft missiles had been released from Turkish warehouses where they had been impounded.

Matt Schroeder, who tracks the spread of such weapons for the Federation of American Scientists, said the recent appearance of modern, sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles in the hands of such fragmented rebel groups was deeply troubling in view of their capacity to bring down civilian airlines.

"This is a step above anything we've seen before in the hands of non-state actors," he said. "This is a new and unfortunate chapter in recent manpad [man-portable air-defence] proliferation."

The United States has coordinated a massive airlift of arms to Syrian rebels from Croatia with the help of Britain and other European states, despite the continuing European Union arms embargo, it was claimed yesterday.

The West, and especially Turkey and the United States, want the rebels to be better armed Photo: AFP
By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent 6:51PM GMT 08 Mar 2013
Decisions by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, to provide non-lethal assistance and training, announced in the past week, were preceded by much greater though less direct Western involvement in the rebel cause, according to a Croat newspaper.
It claimed 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November.
The story confirmed the origins of ex-Yugoslav weapons seen in growing numbers in rebel hands in online videos, as described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, but suggests far bigger quantities than previously suspected.
The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria's neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came "from several other European countries including Britain", without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.
British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria.

President Barack Obama has been lukewarm about arming Syrian rebels though many of his aides have been privately been keener.
The story in the Jutarnji List newspaper gave the fullest details yet of the arms shipments which have enabled rebel forces to begin advancing across the north of Syria in recent weeks, after months of stalemate.
The weapons, including rocket launchers, recoil-less guns and the M79 anti-tank weapon, have been seen in rebel hands in numerous videos, and were first spotted by an arms expert Eliot Higgins, who blogs under the name Brown Moses. He traced them moving from Dera'a in the south, near the Jordanian border, to Aleppo and Idlib provinces in the north.
Western officials told the New York Times that the weapons had been bought from Croatia by Saudi Arabia, and that they had been funnelled to rebel groups seen by the west as more secular and nationalist.
The British involvement fits with the government's policy of doing all it can to help the rebels within the EU arms embargo, which was modified but not dropped at the start of this month. Croatia, a close western ally, does not join the EU until July 1 and has yet to implement the relevant EU legislation, though it has denied the newspaper's claims.
The claims were denied by the Foreign Office. "While the Foreign Secretary has ruled out no options for the future, the UK has not supplied weapons to the Syrian opposition," a spokesman said. "This would be a clear breach of the current EU arms embargo."
According to the Croat newspaper, the first cargo planes involved with the shipment were from Turkey, but most have been from Jordanian International Air Cargo, whose Russian-made Ilyushin jets have been seen regularly at Zaghreb airport in recent months.
The airlift of dated but effective Yugoslav-made weapons meets key concerns of the West, and especially Turkey and the United States, who want the rebels to be better armed to drive out the Assad regime but fear ultra-modern weaponry getting into the hands of jihadists and the PKK Kurdish terror group.
Nevertheless, Mr Higgins has recently posted videos showing some of the Croat weapons in the hands of the jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham.
Although regarded as hostile to the West, it fights closely with other Free Syrian Army units regarded as acceptable recipients of weapons

By IANS - NEW DELHI 08th March 2013 06:59 PM
After the visit of a large Saudi business delegation, a Kuwaiti business delegation is now headed here to explore possibilities of diversifying trade ties with India and encourage Indian companies to bid for gas and construct hospitals, schools and other infrastructure projects in the emirate.

The delegation from Kuwait, led by Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad, minister of Amiri Dewan (Royal Court), will pay a three-day visit to India to explore possibilities of expanding and diversifying trade between the two nations.

Kuwait is expected to spend a staggering $117 billion in various sectors over the next three years and it wants Indian companies to bid for gas, railways, construct hospitals and schools and other infrastructure projects.

The projects cover a wide range besides oil and gas sectors. It includes real estate, construction of new cities, hospitals, housing units, infrastructure, roads, airports, metro and railway projects, power and transmission, petrochemicals, gas processing and, pipelines.

The Indian government extended an invitation to Kuwait to send its trade delegation when Advisor to Emir, Sheikh Abdullah Abul Hasan, visited here last month to deliver a special message to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, urging him to help in transforming the Asian continent into an Asian union. Kuwait and other Gulf nations are keen to focus on India, China, South Korea and Malaysia in view of the economic recession in Europe.

Ambassador of Kuwait to India, Sami Mohammad Al-Sulaiman, said Friday that Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad, will have wide ranging discussions with Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily, Minister of External Affairs Salman Khurshid and Commerce Minister Anand Sharma.

The visiting delegation will discuss and explore the possibility of further enhancing the trade and commerce between Kuwait and India.

India is a major importer of crude from Kuwait. It imports about $16 billion of crude annually from Kuwait.

The bilateral trade is in the range of $17.5 billion and Kuwait is keen to diversify the trade relations.

India has consistently been among the top 10 trading partners of Kuwait.

Farouq Al-Zanki, CEO of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, who is accompanying Sheikh Nasser, is likely to meet ONGC Chairman Sudhir Vasudeva and Indian Oil Corporation Chairman R.S. Butola, to discuss ways and means to strengthen ties in hydro carbon sector.

There is a likelihood of exploring the possibility of joint venture for petro-chemicals complex between Kuwait and India, the ambassador said.

Salman Khurshid will host a lunch in honour of the visiting Kuwaiti delegation at Hyderabad House.

Sheikh Nasser will also call on Vice President Hamid Ansari. He will also meet the Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
The Observer, Saturday 9 March 2013 20.38 GMT

Kadom al-Jabouri swings a hammer at the base of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in April 2003. Photograph: Jerome Delay/AP

Ten years ago, Kadom al-Jabouri became the face of the fall of Baghdad. Pictured with a sledgehammer while attempting to demolish the huge statue of Saddam Hussein in the city's Firdos Square, Jabouri's jubilant act of destruction made front pages around the world.

For Tony Blair and President George W Bush, the image was a godsend, encapsulating the delight of a grateful nation that their hated dictator had been ousted. The US networks showed the statue's fall for hours on end.

However, almost exactly a decade later, the "sledgehammer man" – who was helped by a US tank carrier to finally topple the statue – furiously regrets that afternoon and the symbolism of what he was involved in. "I hated Saddam," the 52-year-old owner of a motorcycle spares shop told the Observer. "I dreamed for five years of bringing down that statue, but what has followed has been a bitter disappointment.

"Then we had only one dictator. Now we have hundreds," he says, echoing a popular sentiment in a country mired in political problems and corruption, where killings still occur on an almost daily basis. "Nothing has changed for the better."

Video from the time shows Jabouri, a huge bull of a man in a vest top with close-cropped hair, battering the statue's concrete plinth with furious intensity.

What actually happened that day is still the subject of rival claims. A report in the Los Angeles Times in 2004 suggested that the toppling of the statue was stage-managed. Jabouri denies that. His claim is contested by the American soldiers involved, including the crew of the M-88 tank tow truck that eventually pulled the statue down. Two years ago they told the New Yorker that the hammer belonged to them and that a first sergeant called Leon Lambert handed it to Iraqis who then took turns using it, Jabouri being the first of them.

These days Jabouri is still recognisable as the man from those images, the former champion power-lifter who spent 11 years in Abu Ghraib prison under Saddam. Despite his formidable physique, he could only break off chunks of concrete. Even with a rope supplied by the crew of the M-88, the crowd was still not strong enough to shift it. In the end it was the vehicle that pulled it down.
Click to download...
Link to video: Saddam Hussein statue toppled in Bagdhad, April 2003

Asked why he had been in prison under Saddam, Jabouri answers only that his crime was "semi-political". He has said in the past that he was sent to jail after complaining that Saddam's son, Uday, had not paid him for fixing his motorbike. Eventually he was released in 1996.

Whatever his subsequent regrets, the day the statue came down remains etched in his memory. "I was in my shop here on my own. It was around noon. I heard that the Americans were in the suburbs. I went to get my sledgehammer and headed to Firdos Square," he said. "I had the idea in my mind of knocking down the statue so I went to do it. There were secret police still in the square and fedayeen [Saddam's paramilitary forces]. They were watching what I was doing. But my friends surrounded me to protect me, if they shot.

"The Americans came 45 minutes later. The commander asked if I needed a hand and pulled it down. It was just me at first. Then 30 of us. Then 300. In the end there were thousands in the square. It was all about revenge for me, for what the regime had done to me, for the years I spent in prison."

The regrets began, he says, two years later under US occupation, which he loathed. Nothing since has changed his mind – not the end of the occupation nor the handover of control to Iraq.

"Under Saddam there was security. There was corruption, but nothing like this. Our lives were protected. And many of the basics like electricity and gas were more affordable. After two years I saw no progress. Then there came the killings, robberies and sectarian violence."

He blames Iraq's politicians and the Americans for what has happened to Iraq. "The Americans began it. And then with the politicians they destroyed the country. Nothing has changed. And things seem to get worse all the time. There's no future. Not as long as the political parties running the country are in power," he said.
Kadom al-Jabouri in Baghdad, 2013 Kadom al-Jabouri in Baghdad 10 years after he attacked Saddam's statue. Photograph: Peter Beaumont for the Observer

The "saturation coverage" of the fall of Saddam's statue – according to the most in-depth analysis by the New Yorker's Peter Maass two years ago – "fuelled the perception that the war had been won, and diverted attention from Iraq at precisely the moment that more attention was needed, not less".

The reality, as seen by Jabouri and other Iraqis with the benefit of hindsight, is that the worst times were only beginning, not coming an end.

MOSCOW, March 11 (RIA Novosti) - A ministerial committee in Saudi Arabia is considering to formally drop public beheadings as a method of the capital punishment in the kingdom, Al Jazeera reported citing Saudi Arabian newspapers.

The agency cited Al-Watan daily that the committee, which consists of representatives from the interior and health ministries, the prosecution office and the general directorate of prisons, proposes replacing decapitation with shooting.

According to laws in the oil-rich kingdom, capital punishment is extended on all criminals, who were found guilty of murder, armed robbery, rape and drug trafficking.

The death sentences in Saudi Arabia are carried out by beheading in a public square. Last year Saudi Arabia executed 76 people, comparing to 79 in 2011. This year, 15 people were already beheaded.

Everything has changed since the revolution, except for one thing: The relationship between the administration, the opposition and Washington.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, the Costs of War Project of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University released a report on the casualties and expenditures of the Iraq war.

The preamble of the report states, "The United States invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003 on the false pretext that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The mass destruction of the invasion, occupation, and civil war followed, and amplified the societal and health disintegration caused by the previous decade of sanctions. Iraqi lives and communities remain war-devastated ten years on. American military and contractor families struggle with the loss of loved ones as well as the emotional and economic burdens of living with long-term injuries and illnesses. Total US federal spending associated with the Iraq war has been $1.7 trillion through FY2013. In addition, future health and disability payments for veterans will total $590 billion and interest accrued to pay for the war will add up to $3.9 trillion."

Indeed, a full stop may be put here. But further details are even more striking.

According to the report, the war has killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have contributed to the deaths of as many as four times that number. When security forces, insurgents, journalists and humanitarian workers were included, the war's death toll rose to an estimated 176,000 to 189,000. This number includes 4,488 U.S. military members and at least 3,400 U.S. contractors.

The report also contains an update of a 2011 report of the same Institute, which was produced ahead of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and assessed the cost in dollars and lives from the resulting wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. If combined together, the total estimated death toll from the three wars presently stands at a range of 272,000 to 329,000, excluding indirect deaths caused by the mass exodus of doctors and a devastated infrastructure.

If an interest rate on the war expenses the U.S. is to pay within the next 40 years is added, that would amount to additional $4 trillion.

That's enough for the cost of war. But the big question is whether the human and financial losses were worth the whole endeavor.

The pretext for the war, as is well known, was the false accusations against Saddam Hussein that he possessed weapons of mass destruction. The then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell took a lot of effort to demonstrate to the world some obscure photos meant to prove the accusations. When the U.S. devastated the country by missile strikes and completed the devastation by invading Iraq, it turned out that there were no weapons of the kind. But by that time the job had been done – Saddam was successfully toppled and eventually hanged.

Now, Steven Bucci, the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think-tank, tried to justify the action taken 10 years ago.

"Action needed to be taken," he said in an interview with Reuters, adding that the toppling of Saddam and the results of an unforeseen conflict between U.S.-led forces and al-Qaeda militants drawn to Iraq were positive outcomes of the war.

"It was really in Iraq that 'al-Qaeda central' died," Bucci said. "They got waxed."

Indeed, sticking to principles is definitely a good thing, if it were not for just two small facts that clearly contradict Mr. Bucci's words.

One, prior to the invasion no one ever connected Saddam's regime with al-Qaeda – whatever the term might mean. Definitely, if we start labeling all anti-American insurgents as al-Qaeda militants, then it was the invasion as such that led to their emergence in Iraq. If "waxing" something created by yourselves is the basic motto of the U.S. foreign policy, then, Mr. Bucci, thou hast said it.

Second. Whatever is meant by "al-Qaeda central" that allegedly died in Iraq, this surely was not the end of anti-American insurgency globally. Looking at places as distant from each other as Nigeria and Mali on the one hand to Yemen to South-East Asia, we may clearly see that the wars waged by the U.S. in the "Great Middle East" have only given birth to radical Islamist militant movements farther and farther from the initial battlegrounds.

So, the only "positive" outcome of the war Mr. Bucci and the like are talking about was the toppling and hanging of the fallen dictator. But what about the price?

Iran slid four places to become India’s seventh-largest crude supplier from April to December, as the South Asian nation reduced imports from the Persian Gulf state because of global sanctions. The Middle East producer exported 9.7 million metric tons of crude to India, Asia’s second-biggest energy consumer, in the fiscal year that started in April, according to data given to parliament by P. Lakshmi, the Indian junior oil minister. Iran sold 7.2 percent of the Asian nation’s imports in that period, down from 10.5 percent in the prior 12 months, the data show. The U.S. and its allies enacted sanctions in July to restrict Iran’s oil exports, its largest source of revenue. The countries are trying to pressure the Persian Gulf nation to curb its nuclear program, which they say is designed to develop an atomic weapon. Indian refiners have struggled to get tankers for transporting supplies from Iran, and may have to stop buying crude from there because of difficulties in receiving insurance cover for plants that process the oil. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Venezuela, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Nigeria provided more oil than Iran, according to the data. Iran was India’s third-biggest crude supplier in the fiscal year to 2012, selling 18.1 million tons, according to the data. India, which relies on imports for 80 percent of its oil needs, bought a total of 134 million tons of crude from April to December last year, the government data show. Asia’s third- largest economy took in 171.7 million tons in the year ended March 31, 2012. U.S. Waiver
The drop in India’s imports show that the South Asian nation is complying with a U.S. requirement that calls for “significantly reduced” purchases from Iran. The U.S. in December renewed a waiver for India and eight other nations from a law that cuts institutions off from the American banking system if they process payments for Iranian oil. The exemption is subject to a review every 180 days. Indian refiners planned to reduce their purchases from Iran by as much as 20 percent in the year starting April 1 to keep the waiver, a Bloomberg News survey of five refinery officials last month showed. OPEC’s biggest oil producers, including Iraq and Saudi Arabia, have assured that they have enough supplies to provide extra crude to India if it halts imports from Iran, four people with knowledge of the matter said March 13. Indian refiners may cease buying Iranian crude as local insurers refuse to cover the risks for using the oil, P.P. Upadhya, the managing director at Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd. (MRPL), said March 8. The refiners and the Indian government plan to discuss the option of forming a fund to be run by the processors and government-owned insurers to provide cover for the plants in coming weeks, two people with knowledge of the matter said on March 13.

Three Russian warships anchored in Beirut en route to the port of Tartus in Syria, Sky News reported Friday.

According to the report, the ships carry hundreds of Russian soldiers as well as advanced missile systems.

The reports have given no information so far regarding the ships’ intent.

Moscow has operated the naval facility at Tartus since signing an agreement with Damascus in 1971. Although it is merely a ship repair and refueling station with a limited military presence, it is the sole remaining Russian military base outside of the former Soviet Union.

In January, a flotilla of five Russian warships laden with hundreds of troops, headed toward Syria, as a show of force meant to deter Western armies from intervening in the war-torn nation, the London-based Sunday Times reported.

Previous reports cited Russian diplomats to the effect that the vessels were being put in place in order to evacuate thousands of Russians who still remained in Syria, if the situation in the country called for it.

However, a Russian intelligence source was quoted in the London Times as saying that the presence of over 300 marines on the ships was meant as a deterrent to keep countries hostile to the Bashar Assad regime — a key ally of the Kremlin — from landing special forces in the country.

vic wrote:Now the point is if Syria and Iran will retaliate by funding Shia-Sunni divide in Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan etc etc

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday called on the BRICS nations to intervene to end the conflict in his country, in a letter delivered by his adviser Bouthaina Shaaban during a trip to South Africa.

Speaking to AFP, Shaaban said she had delivered the letter to South African President Jacob Zuma ahead of the BRICS summit in South Africa on March 26.

"Today I passed a message from President Bashar al-Assad to President Jacob Zuma, who will preside over the March 26 BRICS summit, on the subject of the situation in Syria," Shaaban said, reached by telephone from Beirut.

"In this message, President Bashar al-Assad asks for intervention by the BRICS to stop the violence in his country and encourage the opening of a dialogue, which he wishes to start."

Shaaban said during the meeting with Zuma, which was also attended by South Africa's foreign minister, "the president was very positive and deplored the destruction affecting this beautiful country."

The BRICS acronym refers to the nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, all developing powers which opposed the use of force in Libya.