Unions, Socialists Join Forces to "Occupy Wall Street"

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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Friday, 30 September 2011

by Alex Newman

A growing number of unions, prominent big-government advocates, and socialist groups are joining the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations in New York and “solidarity” protests nationwide.

The trend has some analysts very concerned — particularly after reports claimed union bosses tied to the Obama administration were plotting to bring about chaos. And while the protests which began on September 17 may be small now, supporters and critics alike say this may be only the beginning of something much bigger.

In just the last week several large labor groups have officially announced their support for the occupation. The NYC Transit Workers Union, with nearly 40,000 members, voted to back the protesters on September 28. And the SEIU’s massive 32BJ union, which claims to represent over 120,000 property service workers, recently decided to use an upcoming rally to show “solidarity” with the Wall Street occupiers.

"The call went out over a month ago, before actually the occupancy of Wall Street took place," 32BJ spokesman Kwame Patterson told the Huffington Post. But now "we're all coming under one cause, even though we have our different initiatives."

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union, with over 10,000 members, also endorsed the demonstrations this week. “This occupation on Wall Street calls into question the very foundation in which the capitalist system is based,” it said in a statement, claiming the protests were aiming to hold accountable the “oppressors.”

“Throughout the world, from Egypt to Greece, from China to Madison, Wisconsin, working class people are starting to rise up. The IWW welcomes this,” the group concluded in its endorsement. “We see the occupation of Wall Street as another step — no matter how large or small — in this process.”

According to news reports, more major unions are now considering jumping onboard as well. And powerful organizations backed by “Big Labor” — critics call them “front groups” — are also openly supporting the efforts.

"Their fight is our fight," said Director Michael Kink of the union-backed Strong Economy for All Coalition. "They've chosen the right targets. We also want to see a society where folks other than the top one percent have a chance to say how things go."

Kink‘s organization is backed by some of the most powerful unions in the country, including the SEIU, the AFL-CIO, the Communication Workers of America, several teachers’ unions, and labor groups representing government workers. According to its website the group fights for bigger government and higher taxes.

A broad coalition of socialists and Marxists has jumped on the bandwagon, too. The Socialist Party USA, for example, announced on its website that it “supports the mobilizations to occupy Wall St. in New York and various cities across the US and encourages our locals to take part in these actions.” The party, which aims to create a “new social order,” is even broadcasting a live online video feed from the protests.

Notorious anti-capitalist agitators have recently started to draw attention to the so-called occupation as well — busily touting it to anyone who will listen. Among the biggest names is “documentary-film” maker Michael Moore, who told CNN that the protests would soon spread across America.

The multi-millionaire even went to Wall Street in an effort to attract more media coverage for the occupation. “The people here have lit the spark,” Moore said during a video-taped interview from the protest site (below). “These numbers will grow and they’re going to grow all across the country.”

Moore told the interviewer he wanted to see increased taxes, a “democratic economic system,” and Wall Street bankers whom he blames for the crisis thrown in jail. And even though he didn’t plan to camp out with the protesters, he promised to return often.

“African-American studies” Professor Cornel West, a self-described socialist and the honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, is another one of the big wigs who has joined the campaign. He called it a revolution.

“The elites will tremble in their boots,” he said, noting that Martin Luther King Jr. would smile from the grave. “Don’t be afraid to say revolution.” The crowd repeated each of West’s statements, as if in prayer, and cheered wildly following the short speech.

Openly communist propaganda venues such as the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) are also hyping the events. Even the Communist Party USA-affiliated newspaper People’s World praised the protesters’ signs “demanding curbs on Wall Street, demands for finance reform, job programs for youth, no cuts to Social Security,” and more.

“The Wall Street financiers are terribly afraid,” the publication claimed, saying more than 5,000 demonstrators were present at one point. “Youth taking to the streets to protest the deeds of this nation's financiers constitutes a welcome addition to the big fightback going on in America today. Wall Street had better get used to it.”

Similarly, the communist dictatorship ruling mainland China used its propaganda organs to tout the demonstrations. Calling the alleged American press blackout “shameful,” China Daily Deputy Editor Chen Weihua blasted the so-called “mainstream media” for having “miserably failed” to provide adequate coverage of the thousand or so protesters.

“One US journalist said it was because these people are too left-leaning and do not seem to have a clear goal for their rally,” he wrote. “I am not sure if they are all left-leaning, but a schedule I saw did include sessions on the Communist Manifesto and Spanish Revolution. Still, that does not justify a blackout imposed by the major news media outlets on such a prolonged protest.”

The increasing support for the protests is prompting a mixture of concern and celebration among conservative and free-market-oriented activists. While critical of the unconstitutional alliance between bankers — or “banksters” — and the federal government, constitutionalists remain suspicious of the overwhelming anti-capitalist sentiment displayed by protesters and their supporters.

The objectives of the purportedly “leaderless” anti-Wall Street movement remain somewhat murky — probably on purpose, according to critics. One of the most frequently cited demands, however, is that the government curtail the free-speech rights of companies and organizations.

But in other areas, some conservative activists believe they have found common ground. Some of the websites and organizations associated with the occupation, for example, have even attacked the Federal Reserve, the banker bailouts, and various government wealth transfers to the elite.

“We demand that solutions be found that stop the Federal Reserve from stealing our future,” said a “tactical plan” released by one participating organization known as US Day of Rage. The group blasted “banksters and their minions” and “too big to fail” policies, among other targets.

But more than anything, the protesters and activists appear to be clamoring for bigger government and an end to what little remains of the free market. And according to several reports, the whole movement is actually being orchestrated by anti-capitalist union bosses and tax-funded “community organizers” connected to the Obama administration.

Two of the most prominent individuals alleged to be pulling the strings behind the scenes  are disgraced ACORN founder and union boss Wade Rathke, and regular White House visitor Stephen Lerner of the SEIU. Both were caught earlier this year calling for massive protests, with a video surfacing earlier this year of Lerner scheming to bring down the stock market and destabilize the nation. Numerous analysts called the plots “economic terrorism.”

Despite initial fears among some conservative analysts that the demonstrations would lead to riots and violence from Los Angeles to New York and Boston, the protesters have remained relatively peaceful so far. However, reports of “police brutality” and scuffles with law enforcement continue to surface. And the movement is apparently attracting more supporters every day.

Source: The New American.
Link: http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/9718-unions-socialists-join-forces-to-occupy-wall-street.

US walks out as Iran delivers anti-US speech

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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By EDITH M. LEDERER - Associated Press
Thu, Sep 22, 2011

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — American diplomats led a walkout at the U.N. General Assembly Thursday as Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fiercely attacked the United States and major West European nations as "arrogant powers" ruled by greed and eager for military adventurism.

The two U.S. diplomats, who specialize in the Middle East, were followed out of the chamber by diplomats from more than 30 countries. They included the 27 European Union members, Australia, New Zealand, Somalia, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino and Macedonia, a U.N. diplomat said. Israel boycotted the speech.

Ahmadenijad's fiery anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli rhetoric has been a staple of the General Assembly's ministerial meetings.

Last year, Ahmadinejad provoked a walkout by the U.S., EU, and others when he said a majority of people in the United States and around the world believe the American government staged the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in an attempt to assure Israel's survival.

The provocative comments prompted the U.S. delegation to walk out of Ahmadinejad's U.N. speech, where he also blamed the U.S. as the power behind U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used as fuel for electricity generation or to build nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad's speech pitted the poverty and unhappiness of most countries against the riches and power of the U.S. and unnamed European nations that he accused of perpetuating wars, causing the current global economic crisis and infringing on "the rights and sovereignty of nations."

He attacked the United States and European colonial powers for abducting tens of millions of Africans and making them slaves, for their readiness "to drop thousands of bombs on other countries," and for dominating the U.N. Security Council. He singled out the U.S. for using a nuclear bomb against Japan in World War II and imposing and supporting military dictatorships and totalitarian regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

"It is as lucid as daylight that the same slave masters and colonial powers that once instigated the two world wars have caused widespread misery and disorder with far-reaching effects across the globe since then," Ahmadinejad said. "Do these arrogant powers really have the competence and ability to run or govern the world?"

The Iranian president answered by calling for "the shared and collective management of the world in order to put an end to the present disorders, tyranny and discriminations worldwide." Last year, he said "the future belongs to Iran" and challenged the U.S. to accept that his country has a major role in the world.

Ahmadinejad made no mention of his disputed re-election in June 2009 when security forces systematically crushed opposition protests, the current internal political turmoil that has sharply diminished his power, or Iran's nuclear program which the U.S. and its allies believe is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

"While President Ahmadinejad is lecturing the world from the U.N. podium," Human Rights Watch's U.N. Director Philippe Bolopion said, "dissent is still being crushed ruthlessly in Iran and basic rights demanded by millions in the Arab world are brutally denied to Iranians who are demanding the same."

"The world assembly should take with a grain of salt the remarks of a leader who said nothing about the public hanging yesterday of a 17-year-old in his own country," he said.

In his speech, Ahmadinejad noted "the widespread awakening in Islamic lands ... (in) the pursuit of the realization of justice, freedom and the creation of a better tomorrow." He said "our great nationa stands ready to join hands with other nations to march on this beautiful path."
The Iranian leader accused the U.S. of threatening to place sanctions on anyone who questions the Holocaust and the Sept. 11 attacks with sanctions and military action.

Without naming the United States, he asked: "Who imposed, through deceits and hypocrisy, the Zionism and over 60 years of war, homelessness, terror and mass murder on the Palestinian people and on countries in the region?"

Ahmadinejad accused some unidentified European countries of still using the Holocaust "as the excuse to pay fine or ransom to the Zionists." He also said any question about the foundation of Zionism is condemned by the U.S. "as an unforgivable sin."

Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said: "Mr. Ahmadinejad had a chance to address his own people's aspirations for freedom and dignity, but instead he again turned to abhorrent anti-Semitic slurs and despicable conspiracy theories."

When the idea of an independent fact-finding investigation of "the hidden elements" involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was raised last year, he said, "my country and myself came under pressure and threat by the government of the United States."

"Instead of assigning a fact-finding team, they killed the main perpetrator and threw his body into the sea," Ahmadinejad said, referring to the U.S. military's killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in early May.

"Would it not have been reasonable to bring to justice and openly to trial the main perpetrator of the incident in order to identify the elements behind the safe space provided for the invading aircraft to attack the twin world trade towers?," he asked.

Jailed Indonesia cleric threatens Myanmar over Rohingya

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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August 4th 2012, Saturday / AFP

Jailed Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Bashir threatened to wage war if Myanmar continues to harm Muslim Rohingyas, in a letter to the country's president Thein Sein seen on a website Friday.

The 74-year-old is widely regarded as a spiritual leader of radical Islam in Indonesia -- the world's most populous Muslim country -- and is currently serving a 15-year-jail term for funding terror.

"We've heard Muslims screaming in your country because of your acts of evil...you have taken them out from their homes and are killing them," he wrote in the letter dated July 22, which was passed on to followers and published on the website voa-islam.com.

"If you neglect these calls, by Allah our Lord, you have witnessed the fall of proud and conceited countries in the hands of our mujahideen soldiers," he added.

The letter was confirmed as authentic by Son Hadi, the spokesman for Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid (JAT), a group founded by Bashir in 2008 and labeled a terrorist organization by the United States.

An outspoken supporter of violent jihad, Bashir was convicted in 2010 of financing a terror cell in Aceh province. Earlier this year, the country's top court overturned a lower court's decision to cut his 15-year term.

"You must know that we are brothers as Muslims. Their pains is our pain, their sorrows are our sorrows, and their blood that you shed is our blood too," Bashir wrote. "By the will of Allah, we can destroy you and your people."

Son Hadi said Friday that the letter was submitted on Monday to the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta. The embassy was not reachable for comment.

About 100 Muslim extremists from the Indonesian branch of pro-Caliphate organization Hizb ut-Tahrir protested Friday outside the Myanmar embassy and vow a Jihad to stop the "Muslim cleansing".

"We are ready to die to help our fellow Muslims in Myanmar. A Jihad is the only way to stop this massacre," one of the protesters on loudspeaker told the crowd, who shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest).

Violence erupted in June in Rakhine state, in western Myanmar, between Buddhists and Rohingya, leaving about 80 people dead from both sides, according to official estimates deemed low by rights groups.

Myanmar security forces opened fire on Rohingya Muslims, committed rape and stood by as rival mobs attacked each other during the recent wave of sectarian violence, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

The authorities failed to protect both Muslims and Buddhists and then "unleashed a campaign of violence and mass roundups against the Rohingya", the group said in a report.

Reality of creating single Islamic Front in Africa getting closer

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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12 September 2011

Despite US hopes that the killing of Sheikh Osama bin Laden (martyr, Insha'Allah) Islamic movement would suffer irreparable damage, branches of the Al Qaeda and the Salafi groups that adhere to the same path, not only did not weaken, but continue to strengthen their influence, including in the African country of Nigeria, which had not previously been considered by Americans as the source of Jihad, according to the UmmaNews website.

Nigerian Mujahideen remain active in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. Their objective coincided with the objectives of fighters of al-Qaeda. The movement was founded in 2002. It is known as "Boko Haram" - meaning the ban on the spread of Western education, culture and values.

Growth in the number of fighters, "Boko Haram" - is another warning for the West, because it shows how quickly this branch of Al-Qaeda may grow, evolve and eventually become a threat to local puppet regime, the US and its allies.

Islamic fighters from the "Boko Haram" conduct active military operations, which include raids on offices and checkpoints of puppet police, seizure of weapons and ammunition, as well as training of young Muslims who are fighting and training in the desert at the border towns between Nigeria and Niger.

The activities of the Mujahideen were aimed at overthrowing pro-US regime and establish an Islamic government, which they nicknamed the "Nigerian Taliban".

The group was founded in city of Kanam. In 2003, "Boko Haram" began to operate in other major cities, including in Maiduguri and Damaturu, state capitals of Yobe and Borno.

Nigerian puppets took a concerted effort to stem the onslaught of the Mujahideen and the restoration of relative calm. That was in 2003, but since then the group has become much more experienced and stronger. Mujahideen of "Boko Haram" have begun to apply new tactics - Istishhad, or self-sacrifice, operations.

In June, just one month after the Inspector-General of Police Hafiz Ringim had argued that he was "determined" to eliminate the Jihad, the Mujahideen carried out an Istishhad operation against police headquarters in the capital of Abuja. The main purpose of Islamic fighters was to kill Hafiz Ringim, and he barely escaped.

Last month, the Mujahideen detonated a car bomb at the UN building complex in Abuja. As a result of this attack at least 16 foreign aggressors were killed. The operation was a warning to the ruling regime of Nigeria and the Western alliance as well.

As a result of a failure work of the Nigerian puppet police Mujahideen were able to establish contacts and cooperation with the fighters of al-Qaeda operating across the Sahara Desert, which includes Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Morocco.

According to experts, the Mujahideen of "Boko Haram" fight against those segments of society that are oriented to Western values ​​and lifestyles. Their goals are the puppet politicians, political groups and representatives of Christians working for the regime, as well as those who oppose the introduction of Sharia in the country.

Western officials have expressed the assumption that some senior figures of the regime have been providing covert support to the Mujahideen.

Many wealthy people of Nigeria make large donations to Islamic schools and other Islamic institutions. Experts fear that they are also fund the Mujahideen.
Serious concern to Western intelligence services is the proliferation of Islamic movements across Africa, just south of Sahara. Weak protection of the Nigerian border made it possible for Nigerian and Somali Mujahideen from al- Shabaab to cooperate amongst themselves and with other Islamic movements in Africa.

"The sprawling destabilization of the region", that is how experts describe the current situation in Africa. Contacts of "Boko haram" with al-Shabaab in the south and the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in the north of the continent, cannot not cause major concern to the Western alliance.

It becomes quite apparent that the prospect of unification of all Mujahideen in Africa and creation of a unified Islamic front is getting closer.

Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2011/09/12/15115.shtml.

'US-Taliban talks reveal America's failure in Afghanistan'

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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Mon Feb 20, 2012

A top Pakistani leader of the Taliban says the United States seeks to engage in talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan as its mission in the war-battered country has failed, Press TV reports.

Pakistan's Tehrik-i-Taliban's leader Waliur-Rehman Mehsud told Press TV that Washington has sought to launch peace talks with the Afghan Taliban over the US failure in Afghanistan.

Mehsud added that the US-led invasion of Afghanistan was initially aimed at eliminating the Taliban militants or making them surrender.

However, he said, the foreign forces' failure to do so has forced Washington into a negotiating position.

Mehsud added that the US and its allies are trying to hide their defeat in Afghanistan under the guise of advocating dialogue.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Afghan President Hamed Karzai admitted that the peace talks had taken place among the United States, the Afghan government, and Taliban over the past month.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Mehsud rejected reports that Tehrik-i-Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a US assassination drone strike. He said that Hakimullah is alive and well.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/227625.html.

Three injured in pro-, anti-Assad clashes in Lebanon

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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Fri Feb 10, 2012

At least three people have been injured after groups supporting and opposing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad clashed in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.

According to Lebanese sources, pro- and anti-Assad groups exchanged fire in the rival neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen on Friday shortly after an anti-Assad rally was held in Tripoli.

The army had deployed in the area earlier in the day but retreated

Two of the injured are reported to be soldiers, while the third is a passerby.

"There is a heavy armed presence and shooting in the Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Bab al-Tebbaneh and the Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen," a security official said on condition of anonymity.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has told the head of the army to "take necessary measures to halt these events" in the city.

Syrian President Assad, who is fighting an armed insurgency against his government, enjoys the support of the Alawite community.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March and many people have lost their lives in the violence. The West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of killing protesters. But Damascus blames ''outlaws, saboteurs and armed terrorist groups'' for the unrest, insisting that it is being orchestrated from abroad.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/225999.html.

Jordan: Rifts in the valley

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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August 15, 2011
By Tobias Buck

King Abdullah held on to the brown leather folder for only the briefest of moments, as if grasping a hot stone, before passing it to his son. Crown Prince Hussein, too, wasted not a moment before handing the elegantly bound document, containing 42 proposed amendments to the Jordanian constitution, to the official at his side.

The monarch’s broad smile and effusive rhetoric at a palace ceremony in the capital Amman on Sunday told a different story, however: “The recommendations concerning provisions of our constitution that have been presented here today to me is solid proof of Jordan’s ability to revitalize itself,” he said. The country, he added with visible pride, was “heading confidently towards the future to build the new Jordan”.

The proposed changes to the 1952 constitution are the work of a panel of experts established this year by the palace. Though they fall short of dismantling the king’s sweeping powers, they have been welcomed by most reform activists as a step in the right direction. The changes include the creation of a constitutional court, independent election oversight, steps to curb the powers of the secretive security courts and making it harder to dissolve parliament – measures long demanded by the opposition.

Important as they are in themselves, the proposed reforms also serve a much larger purpose. They represent a crucial part of Jordan’s answer to the wave of political unrest that has swept the Arab world this year – and that has triggered street demonstrations and unusually frank calls for change in the kingdom itself.

Jordan’s pro-democracy protests might seem timid set against the bloody convulsions in neighboring Syria or faraway Libya. But even inside the royal palace, no one doubts that regional turmoil and domestic discontent have presented a searing challenge to the regime as it seeks to balance a desire to preserve stability with the public’s growing demands for economic and political reform.

It is a balancing act that has repercussions far beyond the borders of the Hashemite kingdom. For a start, Jordan is widely seen as a test case for the ability of Arab regimes to pursue democratic reforms from within the system. Unlike other Arab dynasties, King Abdullah’s can still draw on a reservoir of legitimacy and goodwill. Some believe this gives the country a chance of engineering a peaceful and incremental transition to democracy – if the right decisions are made now.

Jordan matters to governments in the region and beyond, furthermore, because it has long played a uniquely important strategic role in the Middle East. Amman is a staunch western ally, a significant US client and a reliable partner for both Israel and the Palestinians. It also enjoys excellent relations with the conservative monarchies and sheikhdoms of the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia.

As one senior western diplomat in Amman points out: “The overriding interest of all these countries is the same: keeping Jordan stable.”

Indeed, the kingdom serves as an invaluable buffer for Israel and the Gulf states alike, shielding them from the chaos that so often torments the region. Israeli leaders, in particular, worry deeply about their eastern neighbor: the future of Israel’s alliance with Egypt is already in doubt, potentially leaving Jordan as its only partner in the Arab world.

Fear of turmoil is not confined to Jordan’s royal palace and allies abroad, however; it is deeply ingrained in society. “Nobody here wants a civil war or chaos or even instability,” says Oraib al-Rantawi, the director of the Al-Quds Center, a reformist think-tank in Amman.

Many analysts and diplomats point to Jordan’s societal make-up as a big factor. It is split between established East Bankers (Native Jordanians), or trans-Jordanians (Native Jordanians), and marginalized West Bankers (Palestinian Jordanians), Jordanians of Palestinian origin. The two groups each account for roughly half the population of about 6.5m, and frequently eye one another with suspicion. The events of Black September in 1970, when Palestinian militants challenged the rule of King Hussein, Abdullah’s father, sparking a brief but bloody civil war, are etched deeply into political consciousness.

“We don’t want to make a leap into the unknown,” says Nawaf Tell, a former Jordanian diplomat who now heads the Center for Strategic Studies in Amman. “Countries like Tunisia and Egypt can afford uncertainty – but Jordan can’t.”

The fear – shared by East Bankers and West Bankers alike – is that any challenge to the regime will unleash confrontation between the two sides. Indeed, the fledgling opposition movement was dealt a severe blow in March, when a protest camp in the center of Amman came under attack from East Bank “loyalists”. The clashes were sparked by rumors the protests were a Palestinian-led effort to weaken the monarchy. The charges had little grounding in reality (most opposition activists were themselves East Bankers (Native Jordanians)) but they forced protest leaders to back down all the same.

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Last month, street protests returned to the capital: one took place outside the royal palace as King Abdullah was hailing the reform proposals. But even opposition activists admit they are a long way from leading a mass movement. The regime clearly has played its part in calming the situation. Since the start of the year, the king and his governments have taken care to show, through a well-publicized blizzard of measures and maneuvers, readiness to address popular discontent.

In January, the government announced it would raise public sector salaries and pensions, and bolster food and energy subsidies. In February, King Abdullah sacked the unpopular government and appointed a new prime minister. He went on to establish the constitutional reform panel and a separate national dialogue committee. The latter reported back in June, suggesting modest revisions to electoral and political party law. The king was quick to endorse the proposals, and promised speedy implementation. Now, in the most important step to date, he has signaled his readiness to rewrite the constitution.

Critics contend that nothing proposed so far is likely to make more than a modest dent in the king’s sweeping powers; he will still be able to appoint and sack prime ministers as he pleases. Nor would the proposals do much to address the under-representation of largely urban West Bank Jordanians (Palestinian Jordanians) in parliament, which is dominated by rural constituencies.

Skepticism lingers even after Sunday’s announcement on the constitution. “This is the classical pattern of reform from above,” says Mustafa Hamarneh, a political analyst. “I think they now see that they have to move forward, but the real test is how far they are ready to go on the ground. They have given the signal – now they must lead the charge.”

According to some observers, the reform process is complicated by a lack of consensus on what is needed – and how much reform the country can stomach. Fault lines are plentiful, and extend far beyond the rift between East Bankers (Native Jordanians) and West Bankers (Palestinian Jordanians). The reform debate pits economic liberalisers against insiders fearful of losing their privileges; and supporters of immediate democratic transition against backers of incremental constitutional reform.

“The king realizes that there is a need for reform, but people are screaming in all kinds of different directions,” says the senior western diplomat in Amman. What is more, some of the screaming is now directed at the palace itself: “People are much more openly critical, not to the point where they question the existence of the monarchy but where they question the choice of people around [the king],” the diplomat adds.

Though feted in the west, King Abdullah is not accorded the same respect and devotion at home as his father. He is said to lack King Hussein’s ability to charm and manipulate leaders of the East Bank tribes, the Hashemite dynasty’s traditional power base. Since the founding of the state in 1922, the tribes and the Hashemites have been bound by an implicit agreement, whereby the former offer unflinching loyalty in exchange for economic and political privileges.

“The East Bankers are now asking a question to the monarchy: ‘This deal that we agreed many decades ago – is it still on?’ So far, they have not heard an answer,” says one well-placed Jordanian observer. East Bankers grumble that the king has surrounded himself with a coterie of wealthy, westernized West Bank Jordanians (Palestinian Jordanians). The fact that his wife, Queen Rania, comes from a Palestinian family has provided further fuel for tribal mistrust.

Most analysts and diplomats caution against reading too much into such complaints. The idea of replacing the king or abandoning the monarchy, they say, remains anathema to the vast majority of Jordanians. He faces neither a strong opposition at home nor political pressure from abroad. Unlike so many rulers in the region, he has the time to make incremental changes.

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One ticking clock the regime cannot ignore, however, is the economy. Jordan, which lacks both oil and water, has long lived beyond its means, making it dependent on the generosity of governments in the US, Europe and the Gulf. Money will almost certainly continue to flow, especially if the country fulfills its goal of joining the Gulf Co-operation Council, a Saudi-led grouping of oil-rich nations. Such transfers, however, may not be enough to cancel out the hit to Jordan’s budget from the rise in global commodity prices – and the corresponding need to boost subsidies for a restive population.

“The protesters raise a number of issues but all of them, if you examine them carefully, have to do with the same thing. Everything revolves around youth unemployment and the bad economic situation,” says Adnan Abu-Odeh, a former minister and ex-head of the royal court.

Economists argue that to boost growth and expand economic opportunities, Jordan will have to prune its bloated public sector and the privileges of regime supporters. Yet few believe such steps will be taken in the current climate. “You cannot take tough decisions without representation,” says a former Jordanian diplomat. “Economic reforms will hit many parts of society hard, and to do that without representation, without accountability and with corruption – that is a recipe for disaster.”

The problem of how to combine economic overhaul with democratic reform adds another layer of complexity. To progress down one track while ignoring the other will be hard. To move ahead on both simultaneously will take skill, determination and a reformist mindset few policymakers in Amman seem to have. “There are,” says Mr Hamarneh, “very few real democrats in the executive.”

Sunday’s announcement of a constitutional overhaul signals that the palace is aware of the risk of standing still. In Jordan, however, it rarely pays to bet against the status quo...

Source: Financial Times.
Link: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/defa5446-c737-11e0-a9ef-00144feabdc0.html.

Is Saudi Arabia really counter-revolutionary?

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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By F. Gregory Gause, III
Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Would the monarchs of the Holy Alliance have supported a democratic uprising anywhere in Europe in 1820? Would Prince Metternich have backed nationalist movements in 1848? Of course not. But their supposed reactionary analogue in the Arab upheavals of 2011, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, has now come out, forcefully if indirectly, for a regime change in Syria. That makes the third time during this Arab spring that Saudi Arabia, the supposed champion of the status-quo, has thrown an Arab leader under the bus. Bashar al-Asad now joins Muammar al-Qaddafi and Ali Abdullah Saleh in the club of Arab leaders Saudi Arabia can do without.

The immediate reaction to the Saudi recall of its ambassador to Damascus in many news outlets (including the BBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post) emphasized the incongruity (and the hypocrisy) of an absolute monarchy that had sent troops to Bahrain to put down popular protests calling on a fellow dictator to stop oppressing his people. But that is the wrong frame in which to understand Saudi Arabia's regional policy during this time of Arab upheaval. The right frame is the regional balance of power battle between Riyadh and Tehran. In that context, the Saudi move against the Asad regime makes much more sense.

Syria is Iran's most important and longest-standing Arab ally. Under Bashar's father, Hafiz al-Asad, Damascus was able to sustain good relations with Riyadh while also cultivating the Persian connection. But the son has proven less nimble in balancing his regional relations. Syrian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon (and assumed Syrian involvement, if not directly then indirectly, in the assassination of Saudi ally Rafiq al-Hariri) alienated Riyadh. Bashar even publicly insulted the Saudi king and other Arab leaders over their stance during the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. King Abdullah was hesitant to break fully with Damascus, as demonstrations against the regime accelerated over the past five months, given the importance of Syria in regional politics. But the escalating violence of the past week, coming at the beginning of Ramadan, seemed to seal the issue. Dealing Iran a blow in regional politics trumps the risks of greater instability.

While public opinion is hardly a major factor in Saudi foreign policy decisions, on the break with Syria the King was following, not leading, his people. The Saudi media and Saudi-owned pan-Arab media has been vehemently opposed to Asad's crackdown and sympathetic to the protestors. This is where the Ramadan timing comes into the picture. During the holy month religious feelings are heightened. The sectarian element of the Syrian confrontation, with an ostensibly secular and Alawite Shiite dominated regime brutally suppressing the Sunni Muslim majority, becomes a more prominent element in how the overwhelmingly Sunni Saudis, population and leadership, view events.

The sectarian factor, never absent, is now becoming a more open element in the Saudi-Iranian rivalry. The Saudi and Gulf commentary on events in Bahrain was openly sectarian. While the Saudi leaders do not explain their policies in sectarian terms and tend to view the region more in balance of power terms, they have always thought that sectarianism was their hole card in the confrontation with Iran. There are more Sunnis in the region than Shiites. They know it and the Iranians know it. But playing up the sectarian element of regional conflict will blow back on the Saudis sooner rather than later. Heightened sectarian tension provides fertile ground for extremist salafi jihadist movements like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to sell their anti-Shiite ideas and recruit new members. The Saudi leadership believes it has the AQAP threat under control, but their current actions could be providing a safety net for an organization that, like its parent, has suffered serious reverses in recent years.

The "sectarianization" of regional balance of power conflicts should concern the United States as well. The United States has an interest in a stable Iraq, a stable Lebanon, a Syria that does not implode into all-out civil war, and a Bahrain that overcomes the bitterness of its government's recent brutal crackdown on its citizens. Heightened sectarian feelings work against all those interests. While the Saudis are correct that there are more Sunnis than Shiites in the Muslim world, privileging sectarian identity gives the Iranian regime an entry into the politics of many Arab states. Riyadh would be better served by encouraging a common Arab identity that overcomes sectarian differences and emphasizes the foreignness of Iran in the Arab world while marginalizing sectarian extremists like al Qaeda and its sympathizers.

While the sectarian issue should be a concern for the United States, in the immediate term the Saudi move against the Asad regime places Riyadh squarely on the side of Washington yet again. Even those not particularly friendly to the Saudis call for the United States to join the kingdom in upping the pressure on Damascus. This points to the bankruptcy of another popular "Arab spring" trope -- the supposed crisis in Saudi-U.S. relations. It is certainly true that the two countries have ended up on opposite sides of some regional issues, like the fall of Hosni Mubarak and the Bahraini crackdown. A U.S. veto of a Palestinian statehood resolution in the Security Council will also highlight their differences. But on a number of issues the Saudis and the United States have lined up together -- Libya, Lebanon, containment of Iran -- and even cooperated directly as in Yemen. U.S. arms sales to and military training missions in Saudi Arabia continue apace. The Saudi-U.S. relationship is complicated and changing, but it is hardly on the brink of divorce.

So where do the Saudis stand as the Arab spring undergoes a hot summer and an uncertain fall? Saudi Arabia is against regime change in allied states. It supports its fellow monarchs both out of concern for its own domestic regime security, ideological solidarity, and balance of power politics. It might not like democracy much, and certainly not at home, but that does not mean it will oppose all democratic movements. Its support for the March 14 anti-Syrian coalition in Lebanon in the last two Lebanese elections was crucial. When leaders, even leaders with whom it has had decent relations in the past, no longer can get the job done, the Saudis will help usher them out the door. They will deal with their successors in a pragmatic way (as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in Egypt, the deposers of Saudi ally Hosni Mubarak, quickly realized). They will oppose leaders and groups that they think are allied with Iran, whether it is Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Asad regime in Syria, or Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq. Their focus is on checking and rolling back Iranian influence in the Arab world. That is what drives their policy, not some imagined notion of anti-revolutionary dictatorial solidarity. Let's understand Saudi regional policy for what it is, and let Prince Metternich rest in peace.

Source: Foreign Policy.
Link: http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/09/is_saudi_arabia_really_counter_revolutionary.

Britain to pull 500 troops from Afghanistan: Cameron

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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London (AFP) July 6, 2011

Britain will withdraw a further 500 troops from Afghanistan by the end of next year, but will keep soldiers there in a training role until at least 2023, Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday.

His confirmation that the second largest foreign contingent in Afghanistan will be reduced to 9,000 came a fortnight after President Barack Obama announced a big drawdown of US forces in the war-torn country.

Despite concerns expressed by US and British military officers, Cameron said the withdrawal was possible because Afghanistan's fledgling army and police were increasingly confident as the West prepares to hand over security duties by 2015.

"Today I can announce that the UK will be able to reduce its force levels by a further 500 from 9,500 to 9,000 by the end of 2012," Cameron told the House of Commons.

The announcement comes a day after Cameron returned from a two-day visit to Afghanistan to meet British troops based in the troubled southern province of Helmand and to hold talks with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

He added: "This decision is not only right for Britain, it is right for Afghanistan too. It has given the Afghans a clear deadline against which to plan and has injected a sense of urgency into their efforts.

"Having taken such a huge share of the burden, and having performed so magnificently for a decade, the country needs to know that there is an end point to the level of our current commitment and to our combat operations."

Britain has already announced the withdrawal of 426 auxiliary military personnel by February 2012.

But Cameron stressed that Britain's commitment to Afghanistan would endure after the last NATO combat troops leave the country at the end of 2014.

He said Britain would lead a Sandhurst-style military academy for Afghan army officers "for 10 years starting from 2013."

He announced the creation of the academy during a press conference with Karzai on Tuesday but without giving a timeline for the commitment.

Western governments are heading for the exit door in Afghanistan, with Obama saying this month he would withdraw 33,000 US "surge" troops by the end of 2012, bringing total US forces there down to 65,000.

Canada's combat mission in Afghanistan ends this week while France, Belgium and Spain have also said they will soon bring home some troops.

US and British military commanders have expressed fears that bringing too many troops out too soon could hurt the delicate process of handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces.

During the trip Cameron was forced to cancel a visit to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand and one of the first towns due to be handed over to Afghan control, after a British soldier went missing from his base and was later found dead.

The mysterious death of 21-year-old Scott McLaren appeared to undermine Cameron's claim that security had improved enough for Britain to withdraw some troops soon.

McLaren was the 375th member of the British forces to die since the US-led invasion in October 2001, which came after the Taliban regime refused to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden died in a US raid in Pakistan in May.

But Cameron insisted that Afghan forces were now ready to take on the baton after international forces had "driven Al-Qaeda from its bases" and "halted the momentum of the Taliban insurgency."

"In many places across the country the Afghan National Security Forces now stand ready to begin the process of taking over security responsibility," he told lawmakers.

In Kabul, Cameron made a plea to the Taliban to lay down their weapons and join the political process, and pointed to the example of Northern Ireland where erstwhile bitter foes now share power.

Afghanistan on Wednesday said its troops had killed 276 Taliban-linked rebels in the past fortnight while the military lost 59 troops.

Defense ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi also claimed around 240 rebels had been captured.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Britain_to_pull_500_troops_from_Afghanistan_Cameron_999.html.

The Syrian regime's crimes against children is met by silence in the Arab world

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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2011-06-03

By Nehad Ismail

Most Arab States and Arab media have chosen to remain silent about the brutal crackdown by the Syrian regime against the unarmed civilian protesters. The international stance has been disappointing but the shameful Arab silence is baffling. The impotent Arab League had given the green light for the no-fly zone over Libya and supported the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 which called for the protection of civilians in Libya. Yet the same Arab League has not taken any steps to protect the civilians in Syria.

If we exclude Alarabiya, Aljazeera and Asharq Alawsat, most Arab media kept quiet about the crimes of the Damascus regime.

Silence of the Jordan opposition

Even activists who instigate weekly protests in Jordan to demand reforms are very quiet about the massacres in the Syrian city of Dera’a which is a few kilometers away across the northern border of Jordan.

Well-known so-called vociferous opposition figures in Jordan who demand reforms and more democratization are in denial about the mayhem in neighboring Syria. Why when it comes to Syria have they suddenly transmogrified into Trappist Monks? This silence is explained by the fact that the Syrian regime has for decades been able to portray itself as the last citadel of Pan-Arab Nationalism projecting itself at the forefront of the so-called “rejectionist front”. This sort of stuff has been swallowed whole by the gullible Arab Street.

Crimes against children

The mutilated body of Hamza al-Khateeb, the 13 year old boy was returned by Bashar al Assad’s security forces to his family last week in Saida near Dera’a. The body was subjected to brutal beatings and extreme forms of physical torture such as cuts, burns, laceration, bruises as a result of whipping by cable and electrocution. The London Sunday Times reported on Sunday May 29th that “his eyes were swollen and black; there was a deep, dark burn mark on his chest. His neck was broken and his penis cut off”. The pictures of Hamza sent shock waves throughout the Middle East.

To add insult to injury, the Syrian Security thugs arrested Hamza’s father Ali al-Khateeb and forced him to tell the state media that his son was tortured and killed by Islamic extremists. The regime recruited doctors in government hospitals to say they had not seen any signs of physical abuse. How low can a frightened regime stoop to hide its crimes?

Last week the body of Murshed Aba Zaid, 18 was returned to his family. News Agencies reported that Murshed was shot in the face by Bashar’s thugs outside his home in Izraa north of Dera’a, he was taken to hospital for treatment but the security forces snatched him from his hospital bed. When his body was returned to his family last week, they found his neck and nose were broken and showed signs of burns. His abdomen had a huge scar.

Human Rights Watch reported that Syrian detention centers are the worst in the world for the mistreatment of detainees where torture is routine. Amnesty International reports that detainees were forced to lick blood off the prison floor and some were forced to drink from the lavatory bowls.

Yet despite the grisly murders by the Syrian regime; the Arab League remained silent. The Arab regimes remained silent. In the meantime, Walid al-Muallem, the Syria Foreign Minister had the chutzpah to chide the Arab ambassadors in Damascus for not condemning the US and EU for imposing sanction against certain individuals in Syria. None of the Ambassadors dared to remind the Foreign Minister of the Syrian regime’s crimes against the Syrian people. I haven’t heard a single condemnation from any Arab government or official.

Arab and international response has been slow and feeble. With a few exceptions (Qatar and Saudi Arabia) most Arab regimes and media remained silent. There has been no official protest about the collective punishments meted out such as the cutting off water supplies and electricity.

On May 16th the London Financial Times reported that Nick Harvey the UK Armed Forces Minister said it was “highly likely” that the ICC, the International Criminal Court would seek the arrest of BASHAR AL-Assad over his role in the violent crackdown on protesters. Whereas Hamas remained embarrassingly silent, Iran and Hezbollah decided to defend the Syrian regime. The Arab League’s silence is interpreted by many as backing a murderous regime and giving it the green light to continue with its brutal abuse of the Syrian people. We should not expect much from the international community either.

Russia and China are known apologists to the Damascus murderous regime. President Barack Obama has issued a mild reprimand which the Syrian brushed aside with contempt.

Source: Ammon News.
Link: http://en.ammonnews.net/article.aspx?articleNO=12191.

Deal for Yemen's Saleh to depart thrown into doubt

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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AP
Sun, 22/05/2011

Sanaa, Yemen - A deal for Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after 32 years in power was thrown into doubt Sunday after the ruling regime brought hundreds of loyalists into the streets to protest the pact and said he would not sign unless a public ceremony were held that included opposition leaders.

The ruling party statement objecting to a "closed door" signing was the latest in a series of mixed signals from Yemen's embattled president. Saleh has backed away from signing at least twice before, adding to the opposition's deep mistrust of a leader known for adept political maneuvering that has kept him in power for decades.

Yemen's opposition coalition signed the deal Saturday, based on what it said were guarantees the president would sign the next day. Addressing Saleh's call for the opposition to attend Sunday's signing, opposition spokesman Mohammed al-Sabri said, "We are ready to go to the moon if he is really serious. But it is becoming clear that he is backing away."

The U.S.-supported deal, mediated by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, calls for Saleh to step down in 30 days and transfer power to his vice president. It also would give him immunity from prosecution.

Even if Saleh goes ahead with the planned signing, it is far from certain whether that would satisfy the many different groups protesting his rule in the streets.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis poured into a central square Sunday that has become the center of opposition protests, waving Yemeni flags in rejection of the deal. They held banners that read: "Now now Ali, down with the president," and "Go out Ali."

Women mingled with men, unlike in previous protests when female protesters stood on the edge of the square segregated from men, in keeping with Sharia law that mandates separation of the sexes. Children had their faces painted with Yemeni flags, while youths carried pictures of slain protesters. Young men and women held a 6-foot-long (2-meter) Yemeni flag.

The protesters say the deal falls short of their demands for Saleh's immediate departure and the dismantling of his regime. They also reject any immunity for the Yemeni leader and say the opposition parties don't speak for their demands.

"This initiative is only meant to save Ali not Yemen. We are going to continue our revolution until the end. Like Tunisia and Egypt, we will go against the opposition if they form a government while Saleh is still in power," declared Tawakul Karman, a protest leader and senior member of the opposition Islamic fundamentalist Islah Party.

She said the protesters were escalating their push by calling a nationwide general strike.

On Saturday, Saleh condemned the proposed deal as "a coup" and warned the U.S. and Europe that his departure would open the door for al-Qaida to seize control of the fragile nation on the edge of Arabia.

In what appeared to be a state-orchestrated move to show a security void, pro-Saleh militiamen dressed in traditional Yemeni dress with daggers at their waists or brandishing swords roamed the streets Sunday, especially around embassies. In two incidents, diplomatic convoys came under assault and were harassed.

Eyewitnesses said armed men attacked a convoy of the Gulf Cooperation Council's chief mediator, secretary-general Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, for 10 minutes, barring it from reaching the United Arab Emirates Embassy. Pounding the car, they shouted against Gulf intervention in Yemeni affairs.

An Associated Press reporter saw the convoy of the Chinese ambassador being attacked by armed men. An extra police force was deployed to clear the way for the ambassador's car and disperse the crowd.

Meanwhile, dozens of pro-Saleh loyalists demanding the deal be rejected gathered in front of the Police Academy, where the ruling party general assembly had convened to discuss the deal.

"We are coming under pressure, to reject the initiative," said Mohammed Saad, a general assembly member.

Dozens of other supporters erected a big tent in one of Sanaa's main streets, blocking traffic and raising banners that read: "Don't go, don't sign!"

Saleh has managed to cling to power in the face of near daily protests by Yemenis fed up with corruption and poverty. Like other anti-government movements sweeping the Arab world, they took inspiration from the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

The president has swung between offering concessions, taking them back and executing a violent crackdown that has killed more than 150 people, according to the opposition, which says it compiled the tally from lists of the dead at hospitals around the nation.

The bloodshed triggered a wave of defections by ruling party members, lawmakers, Cabinet ministers and senior diplomats. Saleh's own tribe has joined those demanding his ouster. Several top army commanders, including a longtime confidant who heads a powerful armored division, joined the opposition and deployed their tanks in the streets of Sanaa to protect the protesters.

Saleh has been able to survive thanks to the loyalty of Yemen's most highly trained and best-equipped military units, which are led by close family members.

That has raised concerns the political crisis could turn into an armed clash between the rival military forces if a deal is further delayed.

Seeking to win some support in the West for his continued rule, Saleh has warned several times that without him, al-Qaida would take control of the country.

"To the Americans and Europeans, al-Qaida is coming and it will take control," he said Saturday in his televised address to members of the security forces. "The future will be worse than the present."

The United States, which had supported Saleh with financial aid and military equipment to fight the country's dangerous al-Qaida branch, has backed away from the embattled leader.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has an estimated 300 fighters in Yemen and has been behind several nearly successful attacks on U.S. targets, including one in which they got a would-be suicide bomber on board a Detroit-bound flight in December 2009. The explosive device, sewn into his underwear, failed to detonate properly.

The proposal - first put forward in March by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - gives a clear timetable for a transfer of power.

One week after Saleh signs, the opposition takes leadership of a national unity government that will include representatives of Saleh's party. Parliament will then pass a law granting him legal immunity and a day later - 30 days after the deal is signed - he is to step down and transfer power to his deputy.

A month after that, presidential elections are to be held.

Source: al-Masry al-Youm.
Link: http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/447281.

The Jordanian street and the pro-democracy protests

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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By RAY HANANIA
05/17/2011

Yalla Peace: True democracy will not come to the Hashemite Kingdom before a Palestinian state is created.

As citizens across the Arab world have risen in protest against decades of dictatorship in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, one might ask why the same hasn’t happened in Jordan?

In all the other countries, the protests seem to share a major characteristic. The governments reflect an element of the population’s religious or tribal minorities, while the protesters have been left out of power. Libya’s troubles are more tribal, Syria’s are more tribal and religious, and Egypt’s troubles are a combination of religious and secular rivalries.

In Libya, dictator Col. Muammar Gaddafi comes from one of the country’s 140 tribes. The war in Libya is a civil war, fueled in large part by the interference of Western powers, including NATO and the US.

The NATO-American alliance was not hesitant to arm and protect the protesters in Libya, while the same Western powers sat back and watched as Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak was slowly pushed from power.

Egypt’s future remains uncertain. It’s a nation made up of several power bases, the largest including secular Muslims, Orthodox Coptic Christians and religious Muslims under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was not behind the protests there, and neither were the Coptic Christians. But once Mubarak was removed from office and a military junta took control, the divisions were quickly highlighted by friction. Today, the Coptic Christians are under siege, and their future in Egypt remains uncertain.

In Syria, the ruling regime is controlled by the Alawis or Alawites, a mystical minority branch of Islam that is closer to the Shi’ites than to the Sunnis. Sunni Muslims are the more dominant in the Arab world. The Shi’ites in the region are predominantly Persian, and closer to Iran.

The majority of the Syrian population are Sunnis, although there is a substantial Christian community there too.

But the religious sects are more tribal in Syria, making Bashar Assad and his Alawite minority which control the government an easier target. Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad took control of Syria in a coup in 1970, following rising protests from the Alawite community against the Sunni Muslim and Christian governments.

Jordan is unlike any of the others. The Jordanian people are mainly Beduin Arabs. Jordan was created from the Fertile Crescent lands of Syria and Palestine, occupied by the Allies after World War I. Palestine was divided into two areas, Trans-Jordan to the East of the river and Palestine to the West. This was based on the British decision to limit Jewish migration to Palestine.

The 1948 war pushed more than 750,000 Palestinian refugees into Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Gaza came under Egyptian control, and the West Bank came under Jordanian control.

The 1967 war pushed more Palestinians, including 1948 refugees, into Jordan. Today, it has about two million Palestinians. Most have become Jordanian citizens, with only 167,000 remaining in refugee camps. That explains Jordan’s dilemma.

The relationship between the Jordanian and Palestinian Arabs has always been tenuous.

While the rest of the Arab world opposed the partition of Palestine, Jordan’s King Abdullah I favored it. In fact, King Abdullah had grand visions of a Greater Arabia to include Iraq, Palestine and Syria (where his brother Faisal had once served as king, but was ousted by the French). Faisal later became king of Iraq.

King Abdullah I was assassinated by a Palestinian when he visited the al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem in 1951.

The Jordanian-Palestinian populations live in a forced political detente in Jordan. Jordanian Arabs are deathly loyal to the monarchy. The vast majority will not rebel against King Abdullah II, fearing that the country will come under Palestinian control.

Jordan’s monarchs have also been more Western, and have allowed a greater sense of democracy to exist, even though the government is controlled by the king himself and ruled by a parliament subject to the king’s whims.

There have been some protests, but they are inhibited by this population balance. And Jordan’s king has the strongest Western backing of any Arab regime. True democracy will not come to a significant part of Jordan’s population, at least not before a Palestinian state is created, and with those Palestinians in Jordan given the choice to live there.

That’s why there are no pro-democracy protests in Jordan.

Source: The Jerusalem Post.
Link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=221026.

The Bedouin of Sinai: Free but dangerous

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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Since Egypt’s revolution, the Bedouin of Sinai have been able to do as they like.

Jun 23rd 2011

HUNKERED inside his fortified compound, North Sinai’s governor, Abdel Wahhab al-Mabrouk, a military man, plans his counter-attack against the peninsula’s rebellious Bedouin. Since the Egyptian uprising five months ago, they have thrown off the yoke of Egypt’s police and are determined to keep it that way. “We’ll kill them if they return,” says a Bedouin sheikh. General Mabrouk has recently repainted one of four police stations in his provincial capital, el-Arish, which the Bedouin torched. Plans for restoring another are in hand. But on the streets outside the governor’s building, uniformed police venture out only under an army escort.

The chaos may be the governor’s best ally. Hospitals are crowded with the victims of tribal vendettas. Notices tied to lamp-posts record the names of women who have disappeared. Traders load their guns before setting off to do business, for fear of highwaymen. In the early hours of June 22nd two Egyptian soldiers were shot dead by masked gunmen in a main street of el-Arish. If such lawlessness continues, hopes an adviser to the governor, everyone will be begging for the police to come back and restore order.

Such hopes are, for the time being, forlorn. The Bedouin of Sinai loathe the old order. Talk to an adult male Bedou in North Sinai, and the chances are he will tell you he has been in prison, sometimes in solitary confinement in a cell too small to sit down in. For years Egyptian bureaucrats from the Nile Valley have refused to let the Bedouin register their land. Checkpoints dotting Sinai’s rocky wastelands prevented the Bedouin from reaching their area’s main cash-cows: the peninsula’s tourist resorts, its oil installations and its giant cement factory. The government buildings that the Bedouin ransacked during the revolution are still littered with security files.

Most Bedouin leaders now prefer to rely on their own people to keep order. For decades, outsiders have manipulated their hierarchies and handpicked their sheikhs; now they are selecting their own. Control over smuggling routes linking Africa to Asia has provided them with enough guns and cash to keep the governor and his heavies away. A businessman robbed of $250,000 found it more sensible to appeal to Bedouin leaders than to the local courts, bereft of police to enforce rulings. “We can’t really arrest anyone any more,” moans the hapless governor.

Few Bedouin say they want to rid Sinai of Egyptian rule altogether, though the more wistful wonder whether Western powers might yet set up a Bedouin dynasty in Sinai as they did with the House of Saud in the Arabian peninsula. The more pragmatic Bedouin want a new contract with the state, including a degree of local autonomy, access to government and army jobs that have long been denied to them, and an amnesty from the sentences passed on them, often in absentia.

The governor has met tribal leaders and freed a few hundred prisoners. Egypt’s justice ministry has signaled its readiness to release others who have served half their terms. Egypt’s post-revolutionary prime minister, Essam Sharaf, has even paid el-Arish a visit, the first holder of his post to do so for years. But Bedouin leaders damned it as a cheap photo opportunity while, away from the cameras, Egyptian generals seemed intent on reviving the old order. “We’re not in the business of legitimizing smugglers, terrorists, drug barons and outlaws,” says an intelligence officer.

In frustration, some Bedouin have resorted to sabotage. Within hours of Mr Sharaf’s departure, a bomb blew up an unguarded pipeline that supplies Israel and Jordan with gas. They may yet attack South Sinai’s oil installations and tourist resorts, and perhaps the Egyptian “guests”—workers whom the government settled on Bedouin territory in an effort to cement the state’s grip. Attacks on cars with Nile Valley license-plates are getting more frequent. The head of a women’s association in Nakhl, an isolated Sinai town, fled back to the main bit of Egypt after 30 years. Bedouin protesters recently cut the road, albeit briefly, between Cairo and the tourist resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The governor denies reports that the vacuum in Sinai’s rocky land, which has around 400,000 inhabitants, has been filled by 400 al-Qaeda men. But he accuses Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, and Hizbullah, the Shia party-cum-militia that holds sway in southern Lebanon, of spotting a chance to stir up trouble. He adds that Salafist groups, who follow the puritanical Saudi model of Islam, have flourished since Hosni Mubarak’s fall. A bomb recently destroyed the walls of Sinai’s main Sufi shrine, but the dome miraculously dropped intact over the tomb.

Seeing threats in every corner, the governor has turned to the secret police, who have survived the uprising remarkably unscathed. By warning that the chaos may spill across the eastern border, he has persuaded Israel to allow 3,000 Egyptian troops into eastern Sinai, which, under the Camp David accords of 1978 that provided for Israel’s withdrawal, is a demilitarized zone. Egyptian military vehicles now proliferate, though Egyptian soldiers have taken a hands-off approach to the Bedouin for fear of being dragged into a domestic squabble with them. The governor toys with the idea of a heavier crackdown, but it is plain that only a political agreement has a chance of restoring calm and preventing the pesky Bedouin from soliciting outside support, which would make Sinai even more dangerous.

Source: The Economist.
Link: http://www.economist.com/node/18867450?story_id=18867450.

Jordanian hard-liner says jailed Salafis go on a hunger strike, demand their release

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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By The Associated Press – Jun 12, 2011

AMMAN, Jordan — A Jordanian Islamic leader says 300 jailed militants have begun a hunger strike to press the government for their release.

Last week, Jordan's King Abdullah II pardoned hundreds, but not hard-liners and those convicted of serious crimes, like manslaughter and rape.

Police confirm that 46 men from the ultraconservative Salafi stream of Islam — banned in Jordan — went on a hunger strike Saturday.

Wesam Omoush insists that the number was 300, including 100 detained for armed attacks that wounded 83 policemen in April. The rest were convicted in terror plots or links to al-Qaida.

On Sunday, tens of veiled wives and children of the jailed Salafis protested outside the prime minister's office demanding freedom for the prisoners.

Omoush said Sunday that the Salafis plan daily protests.

Copyright © 2011 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Seven Algerian soldiers die in Jijel attack

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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2011-05-15

At least seven Algerian soldiers died Friday (May 13th) in a Jijel terror attack. The ANP troops were sleeping when armed terrorists assaulted their barracks in Tizrarane, Ennahar reported. Three terrorists were also killed during the gunfight. Another soldier was reported missing on Saturday. The attack comes a week after a roadside bomb blast killed five ANP troops in El Kennar, Jijel province.

Source: Magharebia.
Link: http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/newsbriefs/general/2011/05/15/newsbrief-01.

German grandchildren of Nazis delve into past

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER, Associated Press – Sat May 14

BERLIN – Rainer Hoess was 12 years old when he found out his grandfather was one of the worst mass murderers in history.

The gardener at his boarding school, an Auschwitz survivor, beat him black and blue after hearing he was the grandson of Rudolf Hoess, commandant of the death camp synonymous with the Holocaust.

"He beat me, because he projected on me all the horror he went through," Rainer Hoess said, with a shrug and a helpless smile. "Once a Hoess, always a Hoess. Whether you're the grandfather or the grandson — guilty is guilty."

Germans have for decades confronted the Nazi era head-on, paying billions in compensation, meticulously teaching Third Reich history in school, and building memorials to victims. The conviction Thursday in Munich of retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk on charges he was a guard at the Sobibor Nazi death camp drives home how the Holocaust is still very much at the forefront of the German psyche.

But most Germans have skirted their own possible family involvement in Nazi atrocities. Now, more than 65 years after the end of Hitler's regime, an increasing number of Germans are trying to pierce the family secrets.

Some, like Hoess, have launched an obsessive solitary search. Others seek help from seminars and workshops that have sprung up across Germany to provide research guidance and psychological support.

"From the outside, the third generation has had it all — prosperity, access to education, peace and stability," said Sabine Bode, who has written books on how the Holocaust weighs on German families today. "Yet they grew up with a lot of unspoken secrets, felt the silent burdens in their families that were often paired with a lack of emotional warmth and vague anxieties."

Like others, Hoess had to overcome fierce resistance within his own family, who preferred that he "not poke around in the past." Undeterred, he spent lonely hours at archives and on the Internet researching his grandfather.

Rudolf Hoess was in charge of Auschwitz from May 1940 to November 1943. He came back to Auschwitz for a short stint in 1944, to oversee the murder of some 400,000 Hungarian Jews in the camp's gas chambers within less than two months.

The commandant lived in a luxurious mansion at Auschwitz with his wife and five children — among them Hans-Rudolf, the father of Rainer. Only 150 meters (yards) away the crematories' chimneys were blowing out the ashes of the dead day and night.

After the war, Hoess went into hiding on a farm in northern Germany; he was eventually captured and hanged in 1947, in front of his former home on the grounds of Auschwitz.

"When I investigate and read about my grandfather's crimes, it tears me apart every single time," Hoess said during a recent interview at his home in a little Black Forest village.

As a young man, he said, he tried twice to kill himself. He has suffered three heart attacks in recent years as well as asthma, which he says gets worse when he digs into his family's Nazi past.

Today, Hoess says, he no longer feels guilty, but the burden of the past weighs on him at all times.

"My grandfather was a mass murderer — something that I can only be ashamed and sad about," said the 45-year-old chef and father of two boys and two girls. "However, I do not want to close my eyes and pretend nothing ever happened, like the rest of my family still does ... I want to stop the curse that's been haunting my family ever since, for the sake of myself and that of my own children."

Hoess is no longer in contact with his father, brother, aunts and cousins, who all call him a traitor. Strangers often look at him with distrust when he tells them about his grandfather — "as if I could have inherited his evil."

Despite such reactions, descendants of Nazis — from high-ranking officials to lowly foot soldiers — are increasingly trying to find out what their families did between 1933 to 1945.

"The Nazis — the first generation — were too ashamed to talk about the crimes they committed and covered everything up. The second generation often had trouble personally confronting their Nazi parents. So now it is up to the grandchildren to lift the curses off their families," said Bode.

It was only during her university years — reading books about the Holocaust — that Ursula Boger found out her grandfather was the most dreaded torturer at Auschwitz.

"I felt numb for days after I read about what he did," recalled Boger, a shy, soft-spoken woman who lives near Freiburg in southwestern Germany. "For many years I was ashamed to tell anybody about him, but then I realized that my own silence was eating me up from inside."

Her grandfather, Wilhelm Boger, invented the so-called Boger swing at Auschwitz — an iron bar that hung on chains from the ceiling. Boger would force naked inmates to bend over the bar and beat their genitals until they fainted or died.

Boger, 41, said it took her several years of therapy and group seminars to begin to come to terms with the fact her grandfather was a monster.

"I felt guilty, even though I hadn't committed a crime myself, felt like I had to do only good things at all times to make up for his evil," she said.

Like Hoess, Boger never personally met her grandfather, who died in prison in 1977. After her father died five years ago, she found old letters from her grandfather begging to see his grandchildren in prison — something that never happened.

"It all just doesn't go together," Boger said. "He is the man who killed a little boy with an apple who came in on a transport to Auschwitz, by smashing his head against a wall until he was dead, and then picked up and ate that apple.

"At the same time, he put a picture of myself as a little girl over his bed in prison. How am I supposed to come to terms with this?"

Tanja Hetzer, a therapist in Berlin, helps clients dealing with issues related to their family's Nazi past. While there are no studies or statistics, she said, many cases indicate that descendants of families who have never dealt with their Nazi family history suffer more from depression, burnout and addiction, in particular alcoholism.

In one prominent case, Bettina Goering, the grandniece of Hermann Goering, one of the country's leading Nazis and the head of the Luftwaffe air force, said in an Israeli TV documentary that she decided to be sterilized at age 30 "because I was afraid to bear another such monster."

Some grandchildren of Nazis find a measure of catharsis in confronting the past.

Alexandra Senfft is the granddaughter of Hanns Elard Ludin, Hitler's Slovakia envoy who was involved in the deportation of almost 70,000 Jews. After Ludin was hanged in 1947, his widow raised the children in the belief their father was "a good Nazi."

In her book, "The Pain of Silence," Senfft describes how a web of lies burdened her family over decades, especially her mother, who was 14 years old when her beloved father was hanged.

"It was unbearable at times to work on this book, it brought up fears and pain, but at the same time I got a lot out of writing it all down," Senfft, a lively 49-year-old, explained during an interview at a Berlin coffee shop.

"If I had continued to remain oblivious and silent about my grandfather's crimes, I would have become complicit myself, perhaps without even being aware of it."

Senfft said she also wrote the book so her children could be free of guilt and shame, and that confronting family pasts is essential for the health of German society as a whole so that history does not repeat itself.

These days Rainer Hoess lectures schoolchildren about the Nazi era and anti-Semitism. A few months ago, he visited Auschwitz for the first time and met a group of Israeli students.

That day was "probably the most difficult and intense day in my life," Hoess said, but it was also liberating because he realized that the third generation of Jews after the Holocaust did not hold him responsible. One Israeli girl even gave him a little shell with a blue Star of David painted on it, which he now wears around his neck on a black leather necklace at all times.

Hoess was embroiled in controversy in 2009 when Israeli media reported he tried to sell some of his grandfather's possessions to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial. But email correspondence seen by the AP backs up Hoess' assertion that he would have been just as willing to donate the items. Hoess eventually donated everything he owned from his grandfather — including a trunk, letters and a cigar cutter — to the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich.

Hoess acknowledges that his grandfather will probably never stop haunting him. After his visit to Auschwitz, he met Jozef Paczynski, a Polish camp survivor and the former barber of Commandant Hoess.

"Somehow, subconsciously, I was hoping that maybe he would tell me one positive story about my grandfather, something that shows that he wasn't all evil after all, that there was some goodness in him," Hoess confided.

Paczynski asked Hoess to get up and walk across the room — then told him: "You look exactly like your grandfather."

Afghanistan likely to be given observer status in SCO

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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May 14, 2011
Vladimir Radyuhin

Afghanistan may join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an observer at the group’s 10th jubilee summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, next month, Russia’s Foreign Minister said.

The SCO will also consider the applications of India and Pakistan to join the organization as full members, Mr. Sergei Lavrov said.

India and Pakistan currently have observer status in the SCO along with Iran and Mongolia. The regional security group has six permanent members – China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

“A few days ago Afghanistan submitted a request to grant it observer status. The request will be considered at the upcoming summit,” Mr. Lavrov told reporters after a meeting of the SCO Foreign Ministers in Almaty on Saturday.

The SCO summit in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, on June 15 will approve the organization's anti-drugs strategy for 2011-2016, Mr. Lavrov said.

He revealed that the SCO Foreign Ministers approved final criteria for admission of new members that are expected to be endorsed at the SCO summit in Astana. He said India and Pakistan had both submitted formal applications for upgrading their observer status to full membership. Until recently only Pakistan was known to have made the request.

Mr. Lavrov’s remarks suggested however, that while Afghanistan’s request may be granted at the SCO summit, formal admission of India and Pakistan as new members may not be on the cards yet.

The SCO decision to lift its six-year moratorium on admission of new members appears to be linked to the worsening situation in Afghanistan and the coming drawdown of the U.S.-led coalition forces from the country.

“In our view, the situation in Afghanistan will keep tension high in the region, remaining a source of terror, extremism and illegal trafficking of drugs and weapons,” Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Yerzgan Kazykhanov was quoted as stating at the SCO ministerial meeting on Saturday.

The killing of Osama bin Laden may trigger a “new wave of terror” in the region, he said.

Source: The Hindu.
Link: http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article2019243.ece.

India emerging out of shadows in Afghanistan as Pakistan stumbles

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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Tejinder Singh
May 14, 2011

India the silent operator in Afghanistan started emerging out of the shadows in Afghanistan as the veiled connections of Pakistani players to terror outfits become clear according to developments of the past weeks.

Commenting on the recently concluded visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Afghanistan, the United States on Friday welcomed Indian role saying, “India can play a constructive role in Afghanistan and in the region, and we would certainly welcome their involvement.”

On the question of if the U.S. - India equation is changing especially in Afghanistan, the State Department spokesman Mark Toner told journalists, “We talk about Afghanistan with India and – as well as other regional issues. Our bilateral relationship with India is quite close and robust,” adding, “We recognize India’s role in the region and are frankly encouraged by it playing a more active and constructive role.”

During a visit to Kabul on May 12-13, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got a rare privilege to address a joint session of the Afghan parliament, just over a week after al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. commandos in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.

In his address a sign of the deepening links between the two countries, Singh told Afghan lawmakers, "Terrorism and extremism are alien ideas to our people. They only bring death and destruction in their wake."

Singh reiterated commitment to fight terrorism in the region, saying: "We cannot and must not allow the flames of extremism and terrorism to be fanned once again."

Commenting on the ongoing attempts to make a peace deal with Taliban, Singh said, "India will respect the choices you make," adding, "Our only interest is to see a stable, peaceful and independent Afghanistan living in peace with its neighbors."

On Thursday, Singh pledged an additional $500 million in aid to Afghanistan, on top of $1.5 billion already promised to the war ravaged country.

President Barack Obama had spoken to Prime Minister Singh before his visit “to discuss the successful American action against Osama Bin Laden and to review progress in implementing the initiatives launched during the President’s November 2010 visit to India,” according to a White House communique.

“The two leaders also discussed global and regional issues of mutual concern,” the White House said.

On the other hand, Islamabad was struggling to keep domestic pro-Islamic voices in check while trying to keep pace with American acceleration on global war on terror.

The upcoming Chicago trial of David Headley aka Daood Gilani and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the two Pakistanis who allegedly planned and conducted the Mumbai sanguinary terror attacks is becoming a headache for Pakistan and the U.S. as well as those two are implicating the Pakistani government and its intelligence agency ISI in the ghastly attack that killed six Americans and scores of Indians.

In the court documents emerging prior to the trial, Rana was cited as saying that his acts of providing material support to terrorists in the Mumbai attacks as alleged by U.S. prosecutors ''were done at the behest of the Pakistani government and the ISI, not the Lashkar (e-Taiba) terrorist organization.''

In addition, Rana invoked his friend and fellow conspirator Headley's Grand Jury testimony in which the latter too implicates ISI.

A U.S. official familiar with the ongoing case, on condition of anonymity told AHN, “The U.S. will definitely try to keep as much of the upcoming hearing classified to do damage control against ISI but definitely the cat is out of the bag,” adding, “It is only a matter of time as the U.S. foreign policy shifts from Pakistan-oriented to India-loving.”

Source: All Headline News (AHN).
Link: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90048402?India%20emerging%20out%20of%20shadows%20in%20Afghanistan%20as%20Pakistan%20stumbles.

Hundreds of Islamic activists clash with Police in Bangladesh, 200 detained

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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Saleem Samad
Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh
May 1, 2011

Hundreds of Islamic activists, wearing the traditional white Muslim dress, wearing skull caps and sporting copies of the Koran, marched in Dhaka on Sunday, where the police imposed a ban on political rallies.

Riot police wearing bullet-proof vest and armed with batons, tear gas and shot guns, clashed with the protesters who vowed to besiege the city center on Sunday for 48 hours.

A police spokesperson said nearly 200 protesters were wounded during the class with riot-police. An estimated 150 Islamic activists were detained, whisked away in prison vans.

Eyewitnesses said police lobbed tear gas canisters and used a water cannon to flush the agitating Islamic activists when they refused to vacate the area prohibited for assembly of people.

The protesters threw brickbats and chanted “Allah O’Akbar” (God is great) and fought a pitch battle with police. Scores of police and a few journalists were wounded during the fighting. None of the victims were wounded from police firing, a senior police officer Krisnapada Roy said.

The supporters and activists of Islami Andolan Bangladesh (Movement for Restoration of Islam in Bangladesh) are opposing secular policies of the government, especially recently proposed gender equality and education policies.

Earlier, the Islamist leader Mufti Muhammad Rezaul Karim declared on Saturday that if the government thwarts their planned protest rally, they would call for general strike in a bid to paralyze the country.

Prime minister Shiekh Hasina slammed the Islamists and argued that despite her government adhered to secular policies, but does not contradict the basic tenants of Islam. The Islamists, however, accuses the democratically elected government two years ago as anti-Islamic and vows to overthrow and establish controversial Sharia laws and Islamic constitution.

Source: All Headline News (AHN).
Link: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90047029?Hundreds%20of%20Islamic%20activists%20clash%20with%20Police%20in%20Bangladesh%2C%20200%20detained.

Unity among North Waziristan groups crumbles

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press – Thu Apr 28

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Crumbling unity among militants could provide the Pakistan army an opening to conduct a limited offensive against a particularly vicious Taliban group in a strategic tribal region, according to analysts and a senior military official.

The target of such an operation in North Waziristan would be the most violent factions within the so-called Pakistani Taliban. Their leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, is believed to be increasingly isolated after executing a prominent former Pakistani official over the objections of senior militant leaders.

Although Mehsud has been linked to attacks in neighboring Afghanistan, his main focus appears to be in plotting carnage elsewhere in Pakistan. And that makes him a prime target for the army.

Washington has long urged the Pakistanis to launch an operation in North Waziristan, a region overrun by an assortment of militant groups including al-Qaida. Most U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan take place in North Waziristan.

Already there are more than 30,000 soldiers in North Waziristan, and some analysts say the Pakistani army could quickly redeploy to the area. The army has 140,000 soldiers in the tribal regions that border Afghanistan

The Pakistanis, however, are unlikely to target the Haqqani group, which the U.S. considers its greatest enemy in Afghanistan. U.S. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, complained last week that Pakistan's secret service maintains links to the Haqqani network. The Haqqanis are Afghan Taliban who control parts of eastern Afghanistan and have bases in North Waziristan.

If the Haqqanis and other militant groups in North Waziristan cooperate with a military assault against the Pakistani Taliban, that would give the army more options.

The fissures among the militants were laid bare in February, when Mehsud released a gruesome video that confirmed the shooting death of former Pakistani spy Sultan Amir Tarar, better known as Col. Imam, according to a senior Pakistan army officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

As Pakistan's consul general in Afghanistan's Kandahar province during the Taliban's rule, Imam was the conduit for money and weapons to the religious movement. A former Pakistani intelligence officer, Imam met regularly with Afghan Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Imam was known to have kept contact with leading Taliban in hiding in Pakistan since the U.S.-led coalition ousted them from power in Afghanistan in 2001.

Mehsud's group had held Imam for 10 months. The killing confounded Pakistani military officials. They had long believed the Haqqanis held sway over the myriad of groups — including militants from Uzbekistan, Chechnya and the Middle East — operating in North Waziristan.

"We always thought that the Afghan Taliban had a sway over these groups, but Col. Imam's killing shows that no one is in control of anyone there," he said. "His death was a shock for us."

Taliban members who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they feared being arrested said Mullah Omar made a personal plea for Imam's life. Also requesting that Imam's life be spared was Sirajuddin Haqqani, a key leader of the Haqqani group.

The senior military official said Mehsud defied Mullah Omar and Sirajuddin Haqqani and went ahead with the execution after the government and army refused his demands to free several of his imprisoned men.

Not only that, Mehsud boasted on a jihadi website about the killing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. The same website carried an Urdu language condemnation of Mehsud's organization, calling those behind the execution "beasts" and "ignoble killers," SITE said.

The divisions that Imam's death revealed among the militant groups could provide an opportunity for the army to hit hard at insurgents in the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali, where Mehsud set up bases after fleeing last year's military assault on his headquarters in neighboring South Waziristan, according to Mahmood Shah, a retired army brigadier and former security point-man for the government in the tribal regions.

Mir Ali is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the town of Miram Shah, where the Haqqanis are based.

Tribal elders from North Waziristan, all of whom were too afraid to talk on the record, fearing retribution from militants, said the landscape in their home region has undergone massive upheavals since the army operation in South Waziristan.

They said Mehsud and his men were among the most troublesome of the militants, largely because of their affiliation with criminal gangs.

Mehsud and his followers are also among the richest, having accumulated wealth through kidnappings for ransom, thefts and extortion, said a tribal elder from Shawal district of North Waziristan.

Mehsud's close affiliation with Lashkar-e-Janghvi, a Punjabi-based Sunni Muslim militant group blamed for dozens of attacks against minority Shiite Muslims, has also provided him with a reservoir of suicide bombers. They have carried out dozens of attacks throughout Pakistan and in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject said the Jordanian suicide bomber who killed six CIA operatives in Afghanistan's Khost province in December 2009 was trained by Lashkar-e-Janghvi's Qari Hussain, who was also a member of Mehsud's group. Hussain was killed in a drone attack but was quickly replaced by a cousin and fellow tribesman of Mehsud's.

Mehsud has overseen the Pakistani Taliban ever since his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a CIA missile strike on Aug. 5, 2009. Hakimullah Mehsud is affiliated with the Taliban's most violent factions and has survived U.S. and Pakistani attempts on his life.

In recent years the United States has identified Mir Ali as the site of a reconstituted al-Qaida. Also on the run in Mir Ali is Ilyas Kashmiri, a confidante of Mehsud's. The United States this month put a $5 million bounty on Kashmiri's head.

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Gannon is The Associated Press special regional correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan.