Al Qaeda-Related and Other Articles Collected 52612

https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attach...
Al Qaeda-Related and Other Articles, Collected 5/26/12

Table of Contents
1.1. Summary 1.2. US 1.2.1. Cases 1.2.1.1. Conduit to Arms Sting, a Star Witness Apologizes for His Crimes 1.2.1.2. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Surveillance Case 1.2.2. Security 1.2.2.1. After Guant namo, Starting Anew, in Quiet Anger 1.2.2.2. An American Jihadist Now Has a Memoir Out 1.2.2.3. Military Will Remain Strong With Cuts, Obama Tells Cadets 1.2.2.4. F.B.I. Chief Says Leak on Qaeda Plot Is Being Investigated 1.3. Middle East 1.3.1. Syria 1.3.1.1. Attack on Houla 1.3.1.1.1. Dozens of Children Die in Brutal Attack on Syrian Town 1.3.1.1.2. U.N. Leaders Condemn Deadly Attack in Syria, Blaming Government Forces 1.3.1.2. Dozens Killed in Large Explosions in Syrian Capital 1.3.2. Yemen 1.3.2.1. Yemeni Army Fights to Retake Town 1.3.2.2. Yemen s Many Factions Wait Impatiently for a Resolution 1.3.2.3. Qaeda Ally Says Yemen Bomb Was Payback for Attacks 1.3.3. Divided Lebanon Powerless to Keep out Syria s War 1.3.4. Some Disdain Both Options in Egypt s Narrowed Race 1.4. Asia 1.4.1. Iran 1.4.1.1. Iran Recalls Its Ambassador From Azerbaijan 1.4.1.2. Iranians Taking Solace in the Past 1.4.2. Pakistan 1.4.2.1. Senate Panel Holds Up Aid to Pakistan
1 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
1.4.2.2. Prison Term for Helping C.I.A. Find Bin Laden 1.4.3. Spent Nuclear Fuel Drives Growing Fear Over Plant in Japan 1.5. Africa 1.5.1. Libya 1.5.1.1. Confronting a False Meme: Libya s Deadly Stinger Equivalents 1.5.1.2. Death of a Terrorist 1.5.2. Somalia: Al Qaeda s Leader Encourages Militants 1.6. Peru Forced to Confront Deep Scars of Civil War
1.1. Summary
(back)
FAIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with 'Fair Use' criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of 'Fair Use' was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. 'Fair Use' legally eliminates the need to obtain permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials if the purposes of display include 'criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.' Section 107 establishes four criteria for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies as a 'fair use'. A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four criteria to qualify as an instance of 'fair use'. Rather, 'fair use' is determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17 /107.shtml THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
1.2. US
(back)
1.2.1. Cases
(back)
(back)
1.2.1.1. Conduit to Arms Sting, a Star Witness Apologizes for His Crimes May 23, 2012 Conduit to Arms Sting, a Star Witness Apologizes for His Crimes By BENJAMIN WEISER and COLIN MOYNIHAN By the time the authorities closed in on Andrew Smulian in Bangkok in 2008, he had lived a life full of intrigue. Born in Britain in 1941, he was raised in South Africa and served in its air force. And in 1966, he became a
2 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
paid South African intelligence asset, using his air cargo company to spy on the military operations of nearby countries that opposed the apartheid regime. But in more recent years, Mr. Smulians business failed, and he became essentially a nomad, moving from one African country to another, living on the edge of society. And then he became ensnared in a purported arms deal with terrorists that turned out to be a sting operation by the American government; he was used unwittingly to capture someone he knew, the Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout. So, that day in March 2008, when Mr. Bout and Mr. Smulian were arrested in Thailand, Mr. Smulian decided to switch sides. Over the past four years, he has cooperated with the authorities against Mr. Bout, meeting regularly with prosecutors and agents, and pleading guilty to supporting terrorism, among other charges. Last fall, at age 70, he became the governments star witness at Mr. Bouts trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan; Mr. Bout was convicted and sentenced to 25 years. On Wednesday, the white-haired Mr. Smulian, now 71, appeared in court, this time for his own sentencing. Both his lawyer and the government cited his extensive cooperation. Although Mr. Smulian faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years, a letter from prosecutors describing his substantial assistance allowed the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, to go below that. She imposed five years, and since Mr. Smulian has been held since 2008, he has less than one year to serve. He was simply a financially vulnerable, out-of-work air transporter who had known Mr. Bout, the judge said in court, and he had been used as a conduit for the government to catch the man it really wanted. There was no evidence, she added, that had Mr. Smulian not been approached in the sting, he would ever have been involved with terrorism. Mr. Smulian testified that he began working for Mr. Bout in the late 1990s, helping to acquire a base in South Africa for Mr. Bouts air-transport operation, and that he later assisted Mr. Bout in setting up companies in Swaziland and Zambia. The Drug Enforcement Administration approached Mr. Smulian as early as 2007, using one of his old friends who was secretly cooperating with the drug agency. Mr. Smulian was asked to convey a potential arms deal to Mr. Bout. He met with Mr. Bout in Moscow. He would meet in Curaao and other places with other informers who posed as representatives of a Colombian terrorist group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Mr. Bout agreed to sell 100 surface-to-air missiles, machine guns, grenades and five tons of C-4 explosives, prosecutors said. He and Mr. Smulian knew that the weapons would be used to kill American pilots stationed in Colombia, the evidence showed. On Wednesday, Mr. Smulians lawyer, Mary E. Mulligan, who had asked for
3 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
time served for her client, called Mr. Smulian deeply remorseful and humble, and cited what she called his viable personal transformation while assisting the government during his four years in custody. Mr. Smulian, in a four-page handwritten letter to the court, said he had used his time to try and rebuild myself. He had completed a course in Latin and was studying Hebrew. He had also read some 437 books, he wrote, and he attached a 15-page handwritten list of the titles. They included writings on Lincoln, Mandela and Gandhi; the complete works of Shakespeare; the Bible; the American Heritage Dictionary; works of science fiction, poetry and self-help (including one on stress management); and a seemingly endless string of novels, thrillers and mysteries. And War and Peace. I categorically accept full responsibility for my conduct, Mr. Smulian told Judge Scheindlin in court, apologizing for his crimes and citing what he described as the magnitude, seriousness and the dire consequences of the crimes I have committed. In a letter to the judge, Ms. Mulligan also said that although Mr. Smulian had worked for the South African government during apartheid, he disavows the ideology of apartheid. A prosecutor, Anjan Sahni, said Mr. Smulians cooperation was indeed critical in helping to refute Mr. Bouts defense. His testimony was consistently careful and precise. Mr. Smulians decision to cooperate has not been without its critics. Mr. Bouts defense lawyer, Albert Y. Dayan, in his summation at his clients trial, called Mr. Smulian a liar who had become intoxicated with an arms deal that he saw as his retirement plan. Mr. Smulians plea agreement states that if deemed necessary, prosecutors would takes steps to protect him and his family after his release from prison, including possibly applying for his entry into the witness protection program.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/nyregion/andrew-smulianstar-witness-against-viktor-bout-gets-5-years-in-prison. html?pagewanted=print
1.2.1.2. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Surveillance Case (back) May 21, 2012 Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Surveillance Case By ADAM LIPTAK WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case concerning the governments use of electronic surveillance to monitor the international communications of people suspected of having ties to terrorist
4 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
groups. The court also issued three decisions, including one denying Social Security benefits to children who were conceived through artificial insemination after their fathers death. SURVEILLANCE The justices agreed to decide whether a challenge may proceed to a 2008 federal law that broadened the governments power to monitor international communications. The law, an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, followed disclosure of the Bush administrations secret program to wiretap international communications without obtaining court warrants in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The 2008 law was challenged by Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups and individuals, including journalists and lawyers who represent prisoners held at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba. The plaintiffs said the law violated their rights under the Fourth Amendment by allowing the government to intercept their international telephone calls and e-mails. Some of the plaintiffs say they now meet clients or sources only in person. The Obama administration has defended the law and contends that the plaintiffs have not suffered an injury direct enough to give them standing to sue. Last year, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled for the plaintiffs on that threshold question. Judge Gerard E. Lynch, writing for the court, said the plaintiffs had shown that they had a reasonable fear that their communications would be monitored and had taken costly measures to avoid being monitored. That was enough, he wrote, to establish standing to challenge the law. The panel did not rule on whether the law violated the Fourth Amendments ban on unreasonable searches. The full Second Circuit declined to rehear the panels ruling by a 6-to-6 vote. In allowing the suit to move ahead, Judge Lynch wrote that the law increased the risk that the communications of American citizens would be intercepted, made it easier for the government to monitor suspects communications and relaxed judicial supervision. In urging the Supreme Court to hear the case, Amnesty International v. Clapper, No. 11-1025, the administration said the plaintiffs should not be allowed to rely on asserted future injuries that are conjectural and not imminent and on self-inflicted harms to establish standing to sue. SURVIVORS BENEFITS Children conceived using their dead fathers sperm are not entitled to Social Security benefits if they were not eligible to inherit property from him under state law, the court ruled in a unanimous decision. The case concerned twins born to Karen Capato 18 months after the death of her husband, Robert, in 2002. The Social Security Administration denied the twins survivors benefits, a determination the Supreme Court endorsed.
5 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
The case, Astrue v. Capato, No. 11-159, turned on the interpretation of provisions of the Social Security Act. The technology that made the twins conception and birth possible, it is safe to say, was not contemplated by Congress in 1939 and 1965, when those provisions were enacted, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court. The law was intended, she wrote, to benefit primarily those supported by the deceased wage earner in his or her lifetime. Its key provision, Justice Ginsburg wrote, was one calling for the Social Security Administration to look to state laws concerning inheritance in determining whether an applicant is the child of the parent in question. The Capatos lived in Florida. Under that states law, a child born after a parents death is entitled to inherit property from the parent only if conceived during the parents lifetime. State laws take varying approaches to that question, meaning that whether such children are entitled to survivors benefits under Social Security will also vary. Justice Ginsburg said that looking to state law to decide eligibility for Social Security benefits was a workable substitute for burdensome case-by-case determinations whether the child was, in fact, dependent on her fathers earnings. Congress remains free to adopt a different approach, Justice Ginsburg concluded. Tragic circumstances Robert Capatos death before he and his wife could raise a family gave rise to this case, she wrote. But the law Congress enacted calls for resolution of Karen Capatos application for childs insurance benefits by reference to state intestacy law. We cannot replace that reference by creating a uniform federal rule the statutes text scarcely supports. IMMIGRATION In a second unanimous decision, the court ruled that the length of immigrant parents lawful residence in the United States should not be considered in determining whether their children may be deported. Federal immigration law allows people who have been lawful permanent residents for at least five years and have lived continuously in the United States for at least seven years to ask the government for leniency if they are threatened with deportation. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled in a series of cases that immigrants who entered the United States as children may count their parents years here to satisfy the residency requirements. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, rejected that interpretation and deferred to the contrary views of the Board of Immigration Appeals in a pair of consolidated cases, Holder v. Gutierrez, No. 10-1542, and Holder v. Sawyers, No. 10-1543. TRANSLATORS A federal law that allows the winning side in a lawsuit to be
6 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
paid back for compensation of interpreters does not cover the cost of translating documents, the court ruled in a 6-to-3 decision. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said the quoted phrase ordinarily refers to the translation of spoken rather than written words. In announcing the decision, Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, No. 10-1472, Justice Alito noted from the bench that it was written in English. Anybody who wants to read it in another language will need to pay to have it translated, he said.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/us/justices-agree-tohear-surveillance-challenge.html?pagewanted=print
1.2.2. Security
(back)
1.2.2.1. After Guant namo, Starting Anew, in Quiet Anger May 25, 2012 After Guantnamo, Starting Anew, in Quiet Anger By SCOTT SAYARE Nice, France
(back)
IT was James, a thickset American interrogator nicknamed the Elephant, who first told Lakhdar Boumediene that investigators were certain of his innocence, that two years of questioning had shown he was no terrorist, but that it did not matter, Mr. Boumediene says. The interrogations would continue through what ended up being seven years, three months, three weeks and four days at the prison camp at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba. An aid worker handling orphans in Sarajevo, Mr. Boumediene (pronounced boom-eh-DIEN) found himself swept up in the panic that followed Sept. 11, 2001. He likens himself to a caged cat, toyed with and tormented by fate and circumstance. I learned patience, Mr. Boumediene, 46, said. He is a private man, trim and square-jawed and meticulously kempt, his eyes set in deep gray hollows. There is no other choice but patience. The United States government has never acknowledged any error in detaining Mr. Boumediene, though a federal judge ordered his release, for lack of evidence, in 2008. The government did not appeal, a Defense Department spokesman noted, though he declined to answer further questions about Mr. Boumedienes case. A State Department representative declined to discuss the case as well, except to point to a Justice Department statement announcing Mr. Boumedienes transfer to France, in 2009. More than a decade has passed since his arrest in Bosnia, since American operatives shackled his feet and hands, dropped a black bag over his head
7 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
and flew him to Guantnamo. Since his release three years ago, Mr. Boumediene, an Algerian by birth, has lived anonymously in the south of France, quietly enraged but determined to start anew and to resist the pull of that anger. He calls Guantnamo a black hole. Islam carried him through, he says. In truth, though, he still cannot escape it, and is still racked by questions. I think back over everything in my life, all the stages, who my friends were, who I did this or that with, who I had a simple coffee with, Mr. Boumediene said. I do not know, even now, why I was at Guantnamo. THERE were early accusations of a plot to bomb the American Embassy in Sarajevo; he lived in that city with his family, working for the Red Crescent, the Muslim branch of the Red Cross. President George W. Bush hailed his arrest in a State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002. In time, those accusations disappeared, Mr. Boumediene says, replaced by questions about his work with Muslim aid groups and suggestions that those groups financed Islamic terrorism. According to a classified detainee assessment from April 2008, published by WikiLeaks, investigators believed that he was a member of Al Qaeda and the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria. Those charges, too, later vanished. In a landmark case that bears Mr. Boumedienes name, the Supreme Court in 2008 affirmed the right of Guantnamo detainees to challenge their imprisonment in court. Mr. Boumediene petitioned for his release. In court, the governments sole claim was that Mr. Boumediene had intended to travel to Afghanistan to take up arms against the United States. A federal judge rejected that charge as unsubstantiated, noting that it had come from a single unnamed informer. Mr. Boumediene arrived in France on May 15, 2009, the first of two non-French former detainees to settle here. Mr. Boumediene retreated into himself at Guantnamo, he says. He speaks little of his past now; with few exceptions, his neighbors know him only as a husband and a father. He lives with the wife and two daughters from whom he was once taken, and a son born here two years ago. More than vengeance, or even justice, he wants a return to normalcy. He lives at the whim of the French state, though. France has permitted Mr. Boumediene to settle in public housing in Nice, where his wife has family, but he is not a French citizen, nor has he been granted asylum or permanent residence. His Algerian and Bosnian passports, misplaced by the American authorities, have not been reissued, leaving him effectively stateless. Money comes in a monthly transfer to his French bank account. He does not know who, exactly, pays it. (The terms of his release have not been made public or revealed even to him.) He has been seeking work for years. RECRUITERS typically scan his rsum with an air of approval, he said, until noting that it ends in 2001. He tells them that his is a particular case, that he spent time in prison. He avoids the word Guantnamo, he
8 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
said, as it often stirs more fear than sympathy. Mr. Boumediene arrived at Guantnamo on Jan. 20, 2002, nine days after the camp began operations. He was beaten on arrival, he said. Refusing food for the final 28 months of his detention, he was force-fed through a tube inserted up a nostril and down his throat, he said. There was a hole in the seat of the chair to which he was chained, sometimes clothed, sometimes not; as the liquid streamed into his stomach, his bowels often released. He emerged gaunt, with wrists scarred from seven years of handcuffs, almost unable to walk without the shackles to which he had grown accustomed, he said. Crowds terrified him, as did rooms with closed doors, said Nathalie Berger, a doctor who worked with Mr. Boumediene shortly after his release. Dr. Berger was moved, she said, by his equanimity and his strength to live. He has no hate for the American people, she said, though Mr. Bush is another matter. Mr. Boumediene has been disappointed too by President Obama, who pledged to close Guantnamo but has not done so. Born in the hills of northwestern Algeria, Mr. Boumediene served for two years in the Algerian military before following a friend to Pakistan in 1990, to aid refugees of the Afghan civil war. He found work as a proctor at an orphanage and school operated by a Kuwaiti aid organization, a post that investigators later seized on as evidence of ties to terrorism. A man identified as a director of the group, Zahid al-Shaikh, is the brother of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, who has been held at Guantnamo since 2006 and is now to be tried before a military court. Mr. Shaikhs signature appeared on Mr. Boumedienes contract, but the two had little interaction, Mr. Boumediene said. He moved to Yemen, studying at the French cultural center in Sana; fighting there drove him to Albania, where he worked for the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates. Deadly riots erupted in 1997, and he received a transfer to Bosnia. Violence seemed to trail him, his interrogators noted. He has come to understand their suspicions, he said. In Nice, Mr. Boumediene has grown friendly with a neighbor, Babette. She brings him coffee, he said, and gifts for his young son. They share meals at Christmas and on Muslim holy days. He feared she might no longer come if she knew his past. In January, though, it was the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantnamo, and there was media coverage. Babette asked if it was true. I told her, Its fate, and its life, Mr. Boumediene said. She still comes to
9 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
call, he said, and still calls him my brother. Little by little, now, there are people who know who I am, he said. Some offer cautious words of encouragement, others their apologies. I do not know what the right reaction is, he said, but he does like a reaction, just the same. Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/world/europe/lakhdarboumediene-starts-anew-in-france-after-years-atguantanamo.html?pagewanted=print
1.2.2.2. An American Jihadist Now Has a Memoir Out (back) May 23, 2012, 12:42 pm--An American Jihadist Now Has a Memoir Out-By ANDREA ELLIOTT-The Times Magazine on Jan. 31, 2010.-The mystery of Omar Hammami a 28-year-old American jihadist wanted by the F.B.I. after joining an Al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia has only deepened in recent months.--Hammami had been the Western face of a militant group known as the Shabaab, starring in rap-infused propaganda videos that celebrated his status as a field commander. But in March, he released a somber video saying his life was in danger due to differences he had with another Shabaab faction. Rumors followed that he had been beheaded. Then, last week, Hammami resurfaced, uploading a lengthy autobiography to the Internet titled The Story of an American Jihadi: Part One.--In the history of militant jihad, there is no one quite like Hammami, whose journey spans the Bible Belt of Alabama and the battlefields of Somalia. While reporting a cover story for the magazine about Hammami in 2010, I corresponded with him through an intermediary. His new memoir expands on the account he gave me.--By turns gripping and quixotic, the 127-page document offers fresh details about Hammamis movements in Somalia and a rare glimpse into the experience of a Western recruit to militant jihad. He traces his unusual childhood in Daphne, Ala., as the son of a white Southern Baptist mother and a Syrian Muslim father. A gifted and popular high-school student, his conversion to Islam left him socially adrift and surrounded by his former vices drugs and girls.--I began to feel like I was being flung into an ocean and asked not to get wet, he writes of his last years in high school. His frustration deepened in college as Hammami embraced Salafiya, an ultraconservative brand of Islam. I had become so averse to America that I wanted to leave.--Hammamis account confirms that his radicalization happened in phases, over a period of years, as he explored competing theologies. But he leaves the impression that people influenced his evolution more than abstract
10 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
ideas. He was deeply moved by a Syrian uncle, whose political imprisonment, Hammami writes, gave me an urge to free the Muslim prisoners around the world. It was his friendship with an American convert in Cairo, where Hammami moved in 2005, that led him to join the Shabaab the following year.--Hammamis tone ranges from battle-hardened to nave. Of his first days in Somalias capital, Mogadishu, he writes, The only thing that bothered me was that I did not see people that looked like Al-Qaeda on every street corner.--He enlisted in the Shabaab, he writes, after randomly spotting his American convert friend with several religious-looking men at a street market in Mogadishu. They took Hammami to a safe house for foreign recruits, en route to military training. Hammami was soon wielding an AK-47, barely escaping death as he and his fellow fighters faced off with Ethiopian troops.--Hammamis dramatic depiction of life on the front lines is filled with surreal bits of Americana. Nights spent staving off hungry lions and giant ants are a Kodak moment. The sun-blasted terrain where the men trained had all the makings of a National Geographic documentary.--The memoir leaves many questions unanswered, including Hammamis whereabouts or precise standing with the fractured insurgency.--While he remains a defiant fugitive of the American government, Hammami still wishes he could have a three-day visit to see my mom, dad and sister, he writes. I often wonder what this experience has done to them.--Hammamis parents, who have lost contact with their son, have lingered over the document.--Its painful, his father, Shafik Hammami, told me over the phone recently. Im reading everything like a history, but in my mind, Im still thinking about him in that situation and theres no way out. And thats really killing me.--Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/an-americanjihadist-now-has-a-memoir-out/?pagemode=print
1.2.2.3. Military Will Remain Strong With Cuts, Obama Tells Cadets (back) May 23, 2012 Military Will Remain Strong With Cuts, Obama Tells Cadets By PETER BAKER COLORADO SPRINGS President Obama vowed on Wednesday to keep the military strong even as he winds down the wars of the last decade and takes the budget knife to Pentagon spending in an age of increasing government austerity. Addressing the graduating cadets of the Air Force Academy, Mr. Obama
11 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
said spending cuts were inevitable for the armed forces but he promised to guard against reductions that would compromise the nations security. Dismissing talk of national decline, he described an American century in which the United States would continue to flourish. Yes, as todays wars end, our military, and our Air Force, will be leaner, he told a stadium filled with the blue uniforms of the next generation of pilots and other officers. But as commander in chief, I will not allow us to make the mistakes of the past. We still face very serious threats. As weve seen in recent weeks, with Al Qaeda in Yemen, there are still terrorists who seek to kill our citizens. He added: Well keep our military, and our Air Force, fast and flexible and versatile. We will maintain our military superiority in all areas: air, land, sea, space and cyber. Mr. Obamas commencement address was his first at a military academy since the last American troops left Iraq, ending nearly nine years of conflict, and came just days after he agreed with NATO allies on a plan to close out the combat mission in Afghanistan. In effect, he used the occasion to outline a vision for the next stage in the nations struggle against terrorism, one that shifts away from large commitments of ground troops and relies more on diplomatic and economic power while drawing on more help from allies. You are the first class in nine years that will graduate into a world where there are no Americans fighting in Iraq, Mr. Obama said. For the first time in your lives and thanks to Air Force personnel who did their part Osama bin Laden is no longer a threat to our country. Weve put Al Qaeda on the path to defeat. And you are the first graduates since 9/11 who can clearly see how well end the war in Afghanistan. He said that his policies would end those wars while still making the country safer, and he noted that the graduates would have fewer deployments and more time to train and rest between missions than their predecessors. But Mr. Obama went into little detail about how financial restraints would affect the Air Force and the military at large. He has proposed a spending plan for the Pentagon that includes nearly $480 billion in cuts over 10 years, but that amount could increase sharply if his administration and Congress do not reach agreement on a plan to avoid deeper automatic cuts currently programmed into law. Republicans have said Mr. Obama is already cutting the armed forces too deeply. A budget plan released by the Obama administration in February called for reducing the number of active-duty Air Force personnel by 3,900 as well as an additional 6,000 from the Reserves and National Guard. Under that plan, about 500 aircraft would be retired as well. Since then, the Guards political patrons have fought back and persuaded Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to reverse some of those cuts, foreshadowing continued struggles in the months and years ahead over how to divvy up scarcer resources. Mr. Obama also used the stage of the academy to implicitly rebut Republican critics who accuse him of not believing in American
12 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
exceptionalism, a charge made most prominently by former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the partys presumptive presidential nominee. Mr. Obama cited previous eras when the nation feared decline, including after Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War and the rise of Asian economies in the 1980s. Repeatedly using the phrase I see an American century, he asserted that the countrys future was bright because of his policies. I see an American century because we have the resilience to make it through these tough economic times, he said, promising to invest in education and innovation while bringing down deficits. We need to get on with nation-building here at home. I know we can, because were still the largest, most dynamic, most innovative economy in the world. And no matter what challenges we may face, we wouldnt trade places with any other nation on earth.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/us/politics/militarywill-withstand-cuts-obama-says.html?pagewanted=print
1.2.2.4. F.B.I. Chief Says Leak on Qaeda Plot Is Being Investigated (back) May 16, 2012 F.B.I. Chief Says Leak on Qaeda Plot Is Being Investigated By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT WASHINGTON The F.B.I. director told a Congressional committee on Wednesday that the authorities were investigating how information about a thwarted plot by Al Qaeda to detonate a bomb on an airliner bound for the United States was leaked to the news media. At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the director, Robert S. Mueller III, said that the disclosure of the information about the plot, which was first reported by The Associated Press on May 7, compromised the United States operations against Al Qaeda. Mr. Mueller said that such a leak threatens operations, puts at risk the lives of sources, makes it much more difficult to recruit sources, and damages our relationships with our foreign partners. Consequently, a leak like this is taken exceptionally seriously, and we will investigate thoroughly, he added. The investigation continues an unprecedented focus by the Obama administration on targeting the sources of unauthorized disclosures of classified information to the news media. The administration has prosecuted six such cases, compared with a total of three under all previous presidents. The prosecutions have had strong bipartisan support from Congress but have been sharply criticized by press advocates as misguided crackdowns on whistle-blowers. On Wednesday, members of the Senate committee
13 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
endorsed the idea of the investigation. Regardless of political consequences, I hope that you get to the bottom of it, said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the ranking member of the committee. Our international partners have been wary of cooperating with us in the wake of the WikiLeaks affair, in which our ability to keep their confidence was severely damaged. The A.P. said it learned of the bomb plot two weeks ago but agreed not to publish an article about it in response to pleas from the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency because an intelligence operation tied to the plot was under way. After the operation was completed, The A.P. published an article about how the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen planned to deploy a suicide bomber with an underwear bomb to blow up a plane headed to the United States. It was later revealed that the underwear bomb was smuggled out of Yemen by a double agent working for Saudi Arabia. Mr. Grassley asked Mr. Mueller about the impact of the leak on the United States ability to work with its allies. My hope is that itll have minimal impact, Mr. Mueller said. And I know that there are discussions are going on with our partners overseas to make certain that whatever impact there is is minimized and precautions are put into place so that, in the future, it does not happen again. Mr. Muellers statements came a week after members of Congress called on C.I.A. officials and other federal officials to investigate the source of the leak. At the time, Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican who is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that the leak was particularly troubling because the plot was one of the most tightly held operations Ive seen in my years in the House. In recent months, the United States has sharply increased the number of drone strikes carried out in Yemen against suspected militants by the C.I.A. and the militarys Joint Special Operations Command. At least 10 militants were reported killed in two airstrikes in southern Yemen on Tuesday, although it was not clear if they were carried out by Yemeni attack planes or American drones. If confirmed as American attacks, that would bring the total number of United States strikes this month to six, and over all this year to 19, according to the Long War Journal, a Web site that monitors drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. The United States conducted a total of 10 airstrikes in 2011, the Web site said. In another sign of the Obama administrations increasing focus on Yemen, President Obama issued an executive order on Wednesday giving the Treasury Department authority to freeze the United States-based assets of anyone who seeks to undermine the American-backed political transition in Yemen. The order is unusual because unlike similar measures authorizing terrorist designations and sanctions, it does not include a list of names or organizations already determined to be in violation. Instead, administration officials said, it is designed to deter individuals who could threaten Yemens
14 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
fragile security and political stability by undermining the transition agreement reached last November that paved the way for the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the election in February of a new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. It is definitely meant today as a message to those who are trying to block a transition that we have this tool to use against them and that they should think again about the policies that they are pursuing, the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said.
Scott Shane and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/world/middleeast/fbi-chiefsays-leak-on-qaeda-plot-is-under-investigation.html?pagewanted=print
1.3. Middle East 1.3.1. Syria

(back)
(back)
1.3.1.1. Attack on Houla
(back)
1.3.1.1.1. Dozens of Children Die in Brutal Attack on Syrian Town (back) May 26, 2012 Dozens of Children Die in Brutal Attack on Syrian Town By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and HWAIDA SAAD BEIRUT, Lebanon More than 90 people, including at least 32 children under the age of 10, were killed in a central Syrian village, top United Nations officials said Saturday, accusing the government of perpetrating the indiscriminate shelling of civilian neighborhoods. In one of the worst episodes of carnage since the uprising began 15 months ago, Syrian tanks and artillery pounded Houla, a rebelcontrolled village near the restive city of Homs, during the day, opposition groups said, then soldiers and pro-government fighters stormed the village and killed families in their homes late at night. Amateur videos said to be taken in the aftermath showed row after row of victims, many of them small children with what appeared to be bullet holes in their temples. Other videos showed gruesome shrapnel wounds caused by what activists said was a barrage of shelling that started Friday in response to demonstrations after the weekly prayer service and that continued Saturday. United Nations monitors visiting the village on Saturday counted at least 92 bodies and found spent tank shells, which they cited as
15 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
evidence that the Syrian military had violated its part of a truce in firing heavy artillery at civilians. A United Nations statement said the observers confirmed that artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential neighborhood. International officials largely blamed the government. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, and Kofi Annan, his predecessor and envoy to Syria, issued a scathing condemnation. This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centers and violence in all its forms, the top United Nations officials said in a statement. They called on Syria to stop using heavy weapons in population centers and for all sides to cease violence. The White House said the attack was a vile testament to an illegitimate regime that responds to peaceful political protest with unspeakable and inhuman brutality. Gory images posted online particularly the scene of rows of dead children smeared with blood prompted an emotional outpouring of antigovernment demonstrations across Syria and calls for sectarian revenge. Activists said that much of the slaughter had been carried out by pro-government thugs, or shabiha, from the area. Houla is a Sunni Muslim town, while three villages around it are mostly Alawite, the religion of President Bashar al-Assad and whose adherents are the core of his security forces. A fourth village is Shiite Muslim. A man in a black knitted mask who appeared on one YouTube video, for example, said it was time to prepare for vengeance against this awful sectarian regime. The rebel Free Syrian Army, the loose federation of armed militias across the country, issued a statement saying it was no longer committed to the United Nations truce because the plan was merely buying time for the government to kill civilians and destroy cities and villages. We wont allow truce after truce, which prolongs the crisis for years, the statement said. The Syrian government blamed terrorists, its catchall phrase for the opposition, for killing the civilians. State television repeatedly broadcast pictures of members of one household who had been massacred, calling the deaths part of the ugly crimes that the terrorists are committing against the Syrians with the financial support of some Arab states and others.
16 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
SANA, the state-run news agency, said that armed terrorist groups attacked law-enforcement forces and civilians in the nearby town of Teldo, which prompted security forces to intervene and engage the terrorists. But the direct accusation from the United Nations, which is monitoring the tattered April 12 cease-fire, rebutted the governments standard claim that outsiders or their domestic dupes are to blame for the violence. Syria sharply limits access to the country for foreign correspondents, making independent verification of events there difficult. But there has been a pattern of similar government assaults in recent months against villages sympathetic to the opposition. Activists said that there had been firefights between the armed opposition that controlled the village and the government forces besieging it. Although the United Nations statements called for stopping violence on both sides, neither suggested that the opposition was involved in the deaths of civilians in Houla. The massacre also prompted new questions about the continued effectiveness of the truce just as Mr. Annan, the architect of the plan, headed to Damascus. The opposition has criticized the truce, and the United Nations peacekeepers who came with it, as ineffective. There are 271 unarmed military observers on the ground in Syria, nearly the entire contingent of 300 approved by the Security Council, as well as numerous civilian workers. The observers produced a quick assessment, the first time they have issued a publicly damning report so soon after an episode of violence. Despite their efforts, as well as the unusual step of the United Nations directly accusing the government of perpetrating major violence, the massacre soured Syrians even more on their presence, since the killing took place despite observers being deployed in nearby Homs. The United Nations observers reported that in addition to the more than 90 dead, they counted more than 300 wounded, Mr. Annans spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, said. Opposition groups put the death toll at around 100 killed, including 50 children. The United Nations statement stopped short of accusing the government of responsibility for the entire toll. Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the United Nations observer mission in Syria, said in a statement that the killing of innocent children and civilians needs to stop, but added that the circumstances behind all the deaths remained unclear. In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton focused on what she described as the vicious assault that involved a regime artillery and tank barrage on a residential neighborhood. Those who perpetrated this atrocity must be identified and held to
17 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
account, she said in a statement. And the United States will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end. Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, issued a statement accusing Syrias government of committing new massacres and added that France would organize a meeting of the roughly 80-member Friends of Syria group as soon as possible. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, said Britain was looking for a strong international response and hoped to convene an urgent session of the United Nations Security Council in the coming days. The Syrian National Council, the umbrella opposition organization in exile, condemned the killing and called for three days of mourning. Details of what happened were murky, as is often the case in Syria. Saleem Kabani, an activist reached via Skype who said he was in the town, said that government forces had shelled Houla heavily all day Friday, also raking it with machine-gun fire and firing mortar shells. There had already been a substantial toll from that assault, he and others said, with some residents killed as their houses collapsed. Then gunmen from the Free Syrian Army left the center of the town to try to assault the government checkpoints from which much of the barrage originated, he said. Taking advantage of the absence of any armed men inside the village late Friday, government soldiers moved in, along with volunteers from surrounding hamlets, to kill civilians, Mr. Kabani said. Another activist in Homs reached via Skype, using only the name Saif, said the people of Houla were demonstrating on Saturday despite renewed shelling. Activists in Houla had told him that more bodies were left on roads exposed to government fire and in houses, he said. The government appeared to have anticipated the demonstrations that took place on Saturday in solidarity with Houla. Damascus took on the look of an armed camp on Saturday, with closed shops and a heavy military presence. Activists reported demonstrations in at least 10 neighborhoods. Few protesters seemed to accept the government version of events. The regime kills thousands of Syrian citizens, and Annans monitors are watching and writing the number of killed people as if they were game scores, said Fadi, a 25-year-old demonstrator in the southern Damascus district of Qaddam. An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria.
18 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/middleeast /syrian-activists-claim-death-toll-in-village-soars.html?pagewanted= print
1.3.1.1.2. U.N. Leaders Condemn Deadly Attack in Syria, Blaming Government Forces (back) May 26, 2012 U.N. Leaders Condemn Deadly Attack in Syria, Blaming Government Forces By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and HWAIDA SAAD BEIRUT, Lebanon Scores of villagers, including at least 32 children under 10, were killed in a Syrian town near the central city of Homs, top United Nations officials said on Saturday, strongly suggesting that the government of Syria was to blame. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, and Kofi Annan, his predecessor and envoy to Syria, issued a joint statement condemning the attack, which appeared among the worst episodes of carnage since the uprising began 15 months ago. United Nations observers who visited the town of Houla confirmed that artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential neighborhood, the statement said. This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centers and violence in all its forms, the statement from the top United Nations officials said. It called Syria to stop using heavy weapons in population centers and for all sides to cease violence. United Nations observers reported that aside from the 32 children, the monitors counted more than 60 dead adults, bringing the overall toll to at least 92. Ahmad Fawzi, the spokesman for Mr. Annan, also said the observers counted more than 300 wounded. Syrian opposition organizations accused government forces of carrying out the massacre in Houla 15 miles northwest of Homs first by raking the town with tank and mortar shells all day Friday and then by sending soldiers and pro-government thugs to storm the village. They put the death toll around 100, including women and 50 children. The Syrian government accused terrorists, its usual phrase for the opposition, of killing the civilians. Gory images of the aftermath particularly the scene of rows of dead children smeared with blood prompted an emotional outpouring of antigovernment demonstrations across Syria. Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the United Nations observer mission in Syria, said the circumstances behind the deaths remained unclear,
19 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
but he, too, noted that the United Nations observers who visited the town had found spent tank shells there. In his statement, General Mood also called on the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons and on all parties to cease violence in all forms. The massacre was certain to call into question the continued effectiveness of the truce just as Mr. Annan, the architect of the plan, heads to Damascus. The reaction also took on a sectarian tone. Activists said that much of the slaughter had been carried out by pro-government thugs, or shabiha, from the area. Houla is a Sunni Muslim town, while three villages around it are mostly Alawite and a fourth is Shiite Muslim. Since the president and the core of the security services are also Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, there were angry calls for sectarian revenge. A man in a black knitted mask who appeared on one YouTube video, for example, said it was time to prepare for vengeance against this awful sectarian regime. State television repeatedly broadcast pictures of members of one household that had been massacred, calling it part of the ugly crimes that the terrorists are committing against the Syrians with the financial support of some Arab states and others. But there has been a pattern of similar government assaults in recent months against villages sympathetic to the opposition. The Syrian National Council, the umbrella opposition organization in exile, condemned the killing and called for three days of mourning. Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, issued a statement accusing Syrias government of committing new massacres and added that France would organize a meeting of the roughly 80-member Friends of Syria group as soon as possible. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, said Britain was looking for a strong international response and hoped to convene an urgent session of the United Nations Security Council in the coming days. The joint interior military command of the Free Syrian Army, which groups the militias in each city and town, issued a statement saying it was no longer committed to the United Nations truce because it was buying time for the Assad government to kill civilians and destroy population centers. We wont allow truce after truce, which prolongs the crisis for years, the statement said. Details of what happened were still emerging. Amateur videos purporting to be from the town and showed row after row of victims, many of them small children with what appeared to be bullet holes in their temples. Others showed gruesome shrapnel wounds caused by what activists said was a barrage of shelling that started Friday in
20 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
response to demonstrations after the weekly prayer service and that continued Saturday. In its summary of violence around the country, SANA, the state-run news agency, said that armed terrorist groups attacked law-enforcement forces and civilians in the town of Teldo, which it said prompted security forces to intervene and engage the terrorists. Syria sharply limits access to the country for foreign correspondents, making independent verification of events there difficult. Saleem Kabani, an activist reached via Skype who said he was in the town, said that government forces had shelled Houla heavily all day Friday, also raking it with machine-gun fire and mortar shells. There had already been a substantial toll from that assault, he and others said, with some residents killed as their houses collapsed. Then gunmen from the Free Syrian Army left the center of the town to try to assault the government checkpoints from which much of the barrage originated, he said. Taking advantage of the absence of any armed men inside the village late Friday, government soldiers moved in along with volunteers from surrounding hamlets, Mr. Kabani said. Another activist in Homs reached via Skype, using only the name Saif, said the people of Houla were demonstrating on Saturday despite shelling. Saif said the massacre had taken place when the shabiha had rampaged through the town, killing whole families. He gave a slightly lower toll, saying that there were 88 confirmed dead. Activists from inside Houla had told him more bodies were left unreachable on the roads and in houses, Saif said. The government appeared to have anticipated the demonstrations that took place in solidarity with Houla. Damascus took on the look of an armed camp on Saturday, with shuttered shops and a heavy military presence. Activists reported demonstrations in at least 10 neighborhoods. Few protesters seemed to buy the government version of events. The regime kills thousands of Syrian citizens and Annans monitors are watching and writing the number of killed people as if they were game scores, said Fadi, a 25-year-old demonstrator in the southern Damascus district of Qaddam. An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria.
21 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/middleeast /syrian-activists-claim-death-toll-in-village-soars.html?hpw& pagewanted=print
1.3.1.2. Dozens Killed in Large Explosions in Syrian Capital (back) May 10, 2012 Dozens Killed in Large Explosions in Syrian Capital By NEIL MacFARQUHAR BEIRUT, Lebanon Twin suicide car bombs that targeted a notorious military intelligence compound shook the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Thursday, killing and wounding hundreds of people and raising the likelihood of extremist elements propelling the conflict to a more treacherous phase. It was the largest such terrorist attack since the uprising began 14 months ago, with the Health Ministry putting the toll at 55 dead and nearly 400 wounded civilians and soldiers. The dual explosions forged a hellish landscape of incinerated corpses, burning vehicles and a billowing plume of smoke visible throughout Damascus. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But the attack put a spotlight on the growing involvement of Islamic jihadists in the fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, particularly those from an Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda that has been openly agitating to join the fray. That prospect raised fears that Syria was heading into the kind of chaos and bloodletting that plagued Iraq and served as a training ground for terrorists. There is no question that Al Qaeda in Iraq has attempted to push into the vacuum in Syria, said Seth G. Jones, a specialist at the RAND Corporation in counterinsurgency, counterterrorism and Al Qaeda in particular. They are not a majority part of the opposition, and they are not a leading part of the opposition, but they are there. A broad group of people engaged in the fight in Syria including opposition activists, community organizers and outside analysts said they had noticed a jihadi mind-set and vocabulary among opposition fighters. Where once accounts of foreign gunmen seemed to be more rumor than fact, there have been reports of non-Syrians dying in the fight, and statements from some armed elements of the opposition are no longer quite so emphatic that they want foreigners to stay home. Experts compare what is happening in Syria to similar nascent phases in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and northern Mali, where a radicalized domestic core of fighters, eventually supplemented by foreigners and veterans of other jihadi conflicts, gradually swelled into a dangerous, anarchic insurgency. Jihadi Web sites have lit up with discussions for months about the legitimacy of Sunni Muslims fighting the Syrian government dominated by the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, experts said. Iraqi officials have remarked on a small but distinct migration westward of the jihadis in their midst.
22 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
One official close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq said the spate of bombings in Syria in recent months have the same traits, the same methods of Al Qaedas Iraqi affiliate. Experts pointed out that in the years those fighters were flooding Iraq, they had established networks to go to Syria and sometimes train there, so now they are using the same networks to filter back throughout Syria. Ayman al-Zawahri, the Qaeda leader, has called on his faithful to join the fight. Iraqi and American officials have said that a modest number of members of the predominantly Sunni Qaeda in Iraq estimates range between the double digits and the low hundreds have crossed into Syria to join an increasingly volatile and sectarian conflict. It is unclear what effect if any they are having there, but Iraqi officials said insurgent operatives with explosives expertise were among those recruited to fight in Syria. There are insurgents going to fight to Syria for jihad or to change the regime, said Gen. Mahdi Sabeeh al-Gharawi, the commander of the Federal Police in Mosul, in northern Iraq. Whenever there is political turmoil and tension, youll find emerging of those terrorist actions on the ground. What happened today is a simple example. In Iraqs Diyala Province, once an insurgent magnet, security officials said that terrorism suspects hade vanished in recent weeks and were believed to have gone to Syria. There were also indications that Al Qaeda in Iraq was involved in establishing the shadowy group Al-Nusra Front, which has claimed responsibility for a string of recent attacks, Mr. Jones said. The Syrian government crushed an Islamic militancy in the 1980s by drawing the Muslim Brotherhood into a military confrontation where it could not possibly prevail. The government is using the same playbook, experts said. A recent analysis from the International Crisis Group, an independent organization devoted to preventing and resolving deadly conflict, was called Syrias Phase of Radicalization. The fact is that the regimes behavior has fueled extremists on both sides and, by allowing the countrys slide into chaos, provided them space to move in and operate, the report said. The fighting came at a huge cost to civilians and, in its aftermath, security forces engaged in widespread abuse, further radicalizing large swaths of society. The attack on Thursday sheared the face off the nine-story building of the Palestine Branch of military intelligence, long feared as the headquarters for the surveillance, arrest and torture of government opponents, especially Islamic militants. It was nicknamed the Sheraton by prisoners because detainees from so many nations had been dragged into it over the years, activists said. The other building damaged in the compound was the Patrols Branch,
23 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
responsible for maintaining and dispatching the intelligence vehicles that prowl the Damascus area. At least 11 soldiers were dead, said a person at the military hospital in the Mezzeh neighborhood, where the bulk of the casualties from the security services were taken. Many of the wounded were local residents cut by flying glass, said one doctor reached by telephone at a government hospital. I was preparing to leave when this big explosion went off, then a minute later another, bigger explosion erupted, said Abu Omar, a 40-year-old father of three who lives a few hundred yards from the Qazzar highway intersection where the suicide bombers struck. Every window in my house broke. I looked out and saw fire and smoke. The explosions went off just before 8 a.m., when the highway was crowded with people driving to work and buses ferrying children to school. The scattered bombings up until now have been either directly in front of security buildings or on Fridays, when not many people are about. So many local residents rushed to the scene that the security services had to fire into the air to disperse them, witnesses said. The two cars were packed with more than 2,200 pounds of explosives, destroying 21 nearby vehicles and damaging more than 100 others, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry read on state television. Pictures on state television showed two large craters in the road. The state media repeatedly accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of financing the attack through their support for the opposition. The opposition blamed the government, claiming it was trying to frighten ordinary Syrians. Experts dismissed the possibility that the government would blow up its own intelligence headquarters. The bombing complicated already difficult United Nations efforts to bolster a wobbly, month-old cease-fire. Condemnations were issued around the globe, including by the United States, Russia and Kofi Annan, the primary architect of the cease-fire. Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the Norwegian officer leading the United Nations observer mission, visited the scene soon after the blasts. This is yet another example of the suffering brought upon the people of Syria from acts of violence, General Mood said in remarks broadcast on state television. We, the world community, are here with the Syrian people, and I call on everyone within and outside Syria to help stop this violence. Jack Healy contributed reporting from Baghdad, Hwaida Saad from Beirut, and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/world/middleeast/ damascus-syria-explosions-intelligence-headquarters. html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print
24 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
1.3.2. Yemen
(back)
1.3.2.1. Yemeni Army Fights to Retake Town (back) May 26, 2012 Yemeni Army Fights to Retake Town By REUTERS ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) The Yemeni Army battled militants linked to Al Qaeda in the southern town of Zinjibar on Saturday, recapturing important positions in the rebel-held city and killing at least 62 Islamist fighters, a military official said. The official said four government soldiers died and four were wounded in the fighting, part of an offensive that began this month to uproot Islamist militants from southern Yemen. He said many of the dead militants were Somalis. The militant group Ansar al Shariah, which is allied with Al Qaedas local branch, has exploited last years antigovernment protests and captured swaths of territory in the southern province of Abyan, including the provincial capital, Zinjibar. The group brought the fight to the capital, Sana, last Monday, claiming responsibility for a suicide bombing of a military parade rehearsal that killed more than 100 soldiers. Yemeni forces recaptured parts of Zinjibar last week and fought militants in the city of Jaar, another militant stronghold, leaving 33 militants and nine soldiers dead. The Yemeni military official said eight soldiers were killed on Saturday when a roadside bomb ripped through their vehicle near Jaar. In Zinjibar, troops found the bodies of 25 militants killed in earlier clashes, he said.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/middleeast/yemeniarmy-fights-to-retake-town.html?pagewanted=print
1.3.2.2. Yemen s Many Factions Wait Impatiently for a Resolution (back) May 23, 2012 Yemens Many Factions Wait Impatiently for a Resolution By EVA SOHLMAN SANA, YEMEN A year ago hundreds of thousands of people flocked to Sanas Change Square and turned it into the symbolic heart of the revolution by calling from their tents for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and euphorically debating the future of Yemen. Today, six months after Mr. Saleh stepped down, a head-high wooden wall has been raised to separate the women from the men and more than a thousand people remain in the square, waiting for the fulfillment of a
25 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
revolution stalled by the former presidents lingering influence and internal divisions. The revolution is not finished yet. Saleh may have resigned, but the old regime still clings on to power, said Fuad al-Himyari, the young, mild-mannered leader of the opposition movements umbrella organization, the Higher Youth Coordination Committee, during an interview in the tent city. In order to leave the square we need to see Saleh and his family removed from the military, and the military needs to be unified, added Mr. Himyari, who is a member of the Islamist party Al Islah and whose poems and sermons at Change Square mosque have earned him the nickname The Poet of the Revolution. According to a Gulf-brokered agreement, which Mr. Saleh signed on Nov. 23, he and his family must give up their powers in exchange for immunity and allow for a peaceful, democratic transition from his 33-year rule. The military, which was divided during the protests and brought the country to the brink of civil war last summer, must also be restructured and integrated. But this process has proven more challenging than expected and has led to great tensions in the capital. In the last month, President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi started the process of replacing some of Mr. Salehs relatives and loyalists from the military while Mr. Saleh tried, but failed, to stop him every step of the way. The most critical moment came when Mr. Salehs half-brother, General Mohammed Saleh al-Ahmar, commander of the air force, refused to step down and briefly took over Sana International Airport. The country is bracing for Mr. Hadis next move. There is a serious conflict between the old and the new presidents. The situation is very tense. We are not on the other side of this yet, said Jamal Benomar, the U.N. envoy to Yemen, during a visit to the country last month. The situation is further complicated by an old triangle of rivalry that sparked the fighting last summer between Mr. Saleh, the powerful tribal Ahmar family, and Major General Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar, a powerful military commander who is unrelated to the Ahmar tribe and who has since defected to the opposition. Some militias, checkpoints and roadblocks remain scattered across the capital. People wonder anxiously if the resounding gunfire in the evenings is caused by weddings or fighting. Sana also suffers daily power cuts because of anti-revolutionary sabotage so that generators buzz constantly in shops, offices and homes. Dinner is sometimes served in complete darkness as the latest developments of the Yemeni political drama are discussed. Those close to Mr. Saleh describe him as a man locked in the delusion that the country cannot manage without him. The bomb attack on the presidential palace last summer did not only cause him long-lasting and painful wounds, but has also led to mild dementia, these sources say.
26 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Last week, the United States warned supporters of Mr. Saleh that it might freeze their assets if they blocked the transfer of power. It was a move intended to end the power struggle and bolster Mr. Hadi, who has made a strong commitment to fight groups linked to Al Qaeda, whose influence expanded during last years political chaos. The fight with the Qaeda militants, which has intensified in the last couple of weeks, further detracts from the countrys democratic transition. On Monday, Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the heart of Sana that killed more than 100 soldiers and wounded several hundred. Meanwhile, the delayed transition has exposed deep divisions within the opposition youth movement. In Change Square alone, there are more than 300 groups represented from independents, womens rights activists, Socialists, Houthi rebels from the north, secessionists from the south, to Al Islah and different tribes many divided along old political and sectarian fault lines. It is very difficult to gather and coordinate and create a platform for all these different groups and clans, said Mr. Himyari. The most visible divide in the square is the one between the independent women and the conservatives of Al Islah. At stake are the future rights of Yemens women and the revolutions democratic outcome. In the early days of the revolution, women played a key role and took an unprecedented place in Yemeni history. They delivered blankets, cooked food and cared for the wounded. Soon they were found at the front lines, side by side with the men, and led protests, slept in the squares, and reported as bloggers and journalists. Tawwakol Karman, the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, shed her veil to address the crowds and became the womens most famous face. Now many fear a backlash. Well-organized, Al Islah has taken the lead, while the women have had difficulty coordinating their views. During the first post-revolution womens conference in March some started throwing shoes at each other after a political argument. In Change Square, where Al Islah has taken control, women described psychological and social pressure to go back to their homes. After a wooden wall was raised to separate men and women under the pretext of allowing women more privacy, women have become conspicuously scarce, with about 5 to 10 women loitering around the area during daytime, fully swathed in black. One of the four women out of the more than 1,000 men still camping in the square is Farida al-Yarimi, a 48-year-old protest leader who has come to be known as The Mother of the Revolution. This is my fourth tent, she said during a visit to her small tent. The
27 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
others were torn down during the fights when Al Islah tried to push me away. Sheik Hamid al-Ahmar, a member of Al Islahs political leadership, played down the womens concerns and explained that the party, which represents moderate to extremely conservative Islamic forces, had changed and become more open. But when asked about the square, he shifted to a sharper tone: There was bad behavior, which turned the square into a discotheque! Those women wanted to go hand in hand with their boyfriends as lovers in the demonstrations. This is not right and is against our religion. This picture was challenged by many in the square who are afraid that Al Islahs rise might lead to the oppression of human and womens rights in an upcoming national dialogue on a new constitution and a new social contract. At such a critical time for the movement, there were hopes that Ms. Karman would play a unifying role. But the normally vociferous activist has been silent. She rejected a request from womens rights activists to help strengthen their voice ahead of the dialogue, said Enas al-Arashi, a political analyst, saying that was possibly because it could cause problems for her within her party, Al Islah. Tawwakol should do something for the women now. She could at least write an op-ed! said an activist in the square, who declined to give her name because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/world/middleeast/24ihtm24-yemen-change.html?pagewanted=print
1.3.2.3. Qaeda Ally Says Yemen Bomb Was Payback for Attacks (back) May 22, 2012 Qaeda Ally Says Yemen Bomb Was Payback for Attacks By ROBERT F. WORTH and ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON A huge suicide bombing in the heart of Yemens capital Monday left more than 100 people dead and hundreds wounded, stunning the countrys beleaguered government and delivering a stark setback to the American counterterrorism campaign against Al Qaedas regional franchise, which has repeatedly tried to plant bombs on United States-bound jetliners. Militants allied with Al Qaeda quickly claimed responsibility for the bombing, in which a man disguised as a soldier blew himself up in the midst of a military parade rehearsal near the presidential palace in Sana, the capital. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in years in Yemen, the dirt-poor south Arabian country that is now central to United States concerns about terrorism. The militant group, which goes by the name Ansar al Shariah, said in a
28 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Facebook post that the attack was aimed at Yemens defense minister and was intended to retaliate for the government campaign against Al Qaedas southern sanctuaries that began this month. The militants appear to be holding out and inflicting heavy losses on Yemens weak and divided army, despite a stepped-up United States campaign of drone strikes and military assistance. By Tuesday, the death toll stood at 105, hospital officials said. The fatalities spread gloom and mourning over the planned national unity day celebrations for which the slain and injured soldiers had been rehearsing. The day commemorates the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990. A full military parade in the vast Sabaeen Square, where the attack took place, was replaced by a smaller ceremony in the air defense college close to the presidential residence, Sana residents said. Conflicting information emerged Tuesday about the bomber. Mohammed Albasha, a Yemen government spokesman in Washington, said on his Twitter account that the bomber had a criminal history and wore a law enforcement uniform to cloak an explosive vest packed with 100s of small metal balls that caused fatal wounds. But Ali Mohammed al-Anisi, Yemens national security chief, told reporters in Sana after the parade that the bomber was a member of Yemens central security forces, news reports from Yemen said. In addition, Agence France-Presse, quoting an unidentified Yemeni security official, said two other men carrying explosive belts under military uniforms were arrested after the suicide bombing, The bombing brought scenes of horrific carnage to the square in Yemens capital, which is heavily fortified and had been spared the worst of the insurgent violence. I saw arms and legs scattered on the ground, said one young soldier named Jamal. The wounded people were piled on top of each other, covered with blood. It was awful. A video of the parade ground posted on YouTube showed throngs of rehearsal participants running in panic and a pile of motionless uniformed bodies after the explosion. The bombing came a week after President Obamas top counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, visited Sana and soon after the discovery of the third attempt to smuggle a bomb aboard a United States-bound jetliner by Qaeda militants based in Yemen. The attack took Yemens security forces completely by surprise and was likely to further weaken morale among troops who are already angry about poor pay, ill treatment and corruption in the top ranks. Hours afterward, Yemens new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, announced the ouster of four high-ranking commanders and delivered a televised address in which he pledged to continue the fight against Al Qaeda until their eradication, no matter what sacrifices are required. Mr. Hadi took power in February from former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the longtime autocrat whose unwillingness to cede power had long been an underlying cause of increasing mayhem in the country.
29 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Although Mr. Hadi appears to be cooperating more eagerly with the United States in the fight against Al Qaeda than his predecessor, he faces extraordinary challenges, including a secessionist movement in the south and a legacy of corruption that has severely weakened efforts to take on the militants. This changes everything the soldiers will be so angry and upset, one midlevel officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The politicians are playing dirty political games, and we are the ones who die. In the south, they are sending soldiers who have fired five bullets in their whole life against Al Qaeda, who fight constantly. Mondays carnage followed an attack on Sunday against three American civilian contractors helping to train Yemens Coast Guard in the port city of Hodeida. The contractors escaped with light injuries, State Department officials said. Witnesses said the attacker on Monday walked from the western part of Sabaeen Square, dressed in military clothes, and detonated a suicide belt just before the defense minister, Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, and his immediate subordinates had been expected to greet the troops. Most of the casualties were members of the Central Security Organization, a paramilitary force commanded by Yahya Saleh, a nephew of the former president, according to several survivors. In the past, Al Qaedas Yemen-based branch eager to build its popularity with Yemenis has tried to avoid deadly attacks on rank-and-file soldiers, and has used frequent online posts to urge them to defect. This year, it kidnapped 75 soldiers in southern Yemen and later released them, saying it was doing so on the orders of the groups commander, Nasser al Wihayshi. In its Facebook statement, Ansar al Shariah tried to justify the attack by saying that the Central Security forces committed massacres against demonstrators during the recent revolution in addition to its attacks against jihadist militants. The group appears to be less concerned about negative publicity now that it is engaged in an all-out battle to defend the territories it has controlled for more than a year in southern Yemens Abyan Province. That campaign began this month, with the Yemeni military carrying out airstrikes and a heavy ground assault and reaching the outskirts of Jaar, the most important of the militant-controlled towns. But in recent days, many soldiers have been killed, and the effort to retake the town appears to have stalled, witnesses said. Yemens most elite counterterrorism unit, trained with American assistance, does not appear to have been deployed. A senior American official in Washington acknowledged on Monday that the Yemeni militarys southern offensive was experiencing fits and starts as army units made up of largely untested conscripts encountered stiff resistance from entrenched militant forces. This is an ongoing struggle, said the official, who follows Yemen closely
30 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate diplomatic environment. We need to be patient. More ominously, the official said, Mondays attack in Sana reflects the ability of a militant group like Al Qaeda to strike when it wishes. He added, There is an escalation of attacks, and were all worried about the level of violence. Mondays bombing came against a backdrop of increasing American military and counterterrorism assistance in Yemen. About two dozen members of United States Special Operations forces are providing target information for Yemeni airstrikes against militants, senior American military officials said. Operating from a Yemeni base near Aden, in the southern part of the country, the American troops are using satellite imagery, drone video and electronic intercepts to identify targets for a Yemeni offensive against the insurgents that has intensified this month, the officials said. The American Special Operations officers, who were dispatched to Yemen this month, are also advising Yemeni commanders when and where to deploy their troops. Their ranks are expected to grow to several dozen troops in the coming months, two Pentagon officials said. Some of the details of expanded United States assistance were reported last week by the Los Angeles Times. While these American trainers provided some target information last year before they were withdrawn from Yemen in the wake of the political turmoil, they are now playing an enhanced role as Yemeni Air Force strike missions have increased, two senior American officials said. Were pursuing a focused counterterrorism campaign in Yemen designed to prevent and deter terrorist plots that directly threaten U.S. interests at home and abroad, Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Monday. We have not, and will not, get involved in a broader counterinsurgency effort that would not serve our long-term interests and runs counter to the desires of the Yemeni government and its people. This expanded American military assistance coincides with an increase in a coordinated series of drone attacks by the Central Intelligence Agency and the militarys Joint Special Operations Command. Flying from an allied air base in the region, United States F-15E attack planes are also conducting strikes against militant targets in Yemen, two American officials said. During Mr. Brennans visit to Yemen on May 13, aides to President Hadi showed him photographs of atrocities he said were committed by the militants, including beheadings and crucifixions, an administration official said. It was not clear if the people shown in the photographs were actually crucified or killed and then hoisted upon a wooden cross as a deterrent to anyone challenging the militants authority. Responding to reporters at the NATO summit meeting in Chicago, Mr. Obama said, We are very concerned about Al Qaeda activity and extremist activity in Yemen, adding that theres no doubt that in a country that is still poor, that is still unstable, it is attracting a lot of folks that previously
31 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
might have been in Pakistans tribal areas before the United States began pressuring Qaeda fighters there. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London, Nasser Arrabyee from Sana, Yemen, and Rick Gladstone from New York.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/world/middleeast/dozenskilled-by-bomb-in-yemen-raising-al-qaeda-fears.html?pagewanted=print
1.3.3. Divided Lebanon Powerless to Keep out Syria s War May 24, 2012, 8:53 am Divided Lebanon Powerless to Keep out Syrias War By HARVEY MORRIS Reuters
(back)
Sunni protesters burned tires at a demonstration on Monday. LONDON Lebanon is where other people go to fight their wars. The small Mediterranean republic has been a proxy battleground for its regional neighbors for much of its 70-year history. It was therefore perhaps only a matter of time before the 15-month conflict in Syria spilled over the border. The prospect has raised concerns internationally and prompted a nascent no to war campaign at home. This is our country. #SayNoWarLebanon MTV Lebanon (@MTVLebanon) May 21, 2012 Tension has been rising with a series of clashes linked to events in Syria that have claimed a dozen lives in recent weeks. Zeina Khodr, an Al Jazeera correspondent, charged that: Foreign powers that relied on local allies to wage a proxy war are still using this fractured nation. In protests this week, Shiite demonstrators took to the streets over the kidnapping of 11 of their co-religionists inside Syria. As my colleague Neil MacFarquhar wrote from Beirut this week: The potential for Syrias violence to infect Lebanon has always been considered dangerous, given that the factional and sectarian differences are similar in both countries.
32 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Hezbollah, the heavily armed Shiite Muslim group, supports Syria, as do a smattering of smaller Shiite factions. Most Sunni Muslim organizations would like to see Syrias president, Bashar al-Assad, overthrown. The Syrian government, which fears the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli has become a base for rebels trying to overthrow the Damascus regime, has stirred the pot by complaining to the United Nations that Lebanese border areas are harboring members of Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. The shooting near Tripoli of a Sunni Muslim cleric who opposed the Assad government was a spark for renewed sectarian clashes in the city this week. Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary general, and Saudi Arabias King Abdullah are among international leaders who have expressed concern about the Syrian conflict spreading into Lebanon. Sergei V. Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, blamed Western and Arab governments for supporting and even arming the Syrian opposition rather than pressing them to adhere to a ceasefire. This is a very dangerous policy, he said this week. This may make the Syrian conflict spread over toLebanon. To judge by their public statements, Lebanons divided political leaders have no appetite for being dragged into someone elses fight. Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, called for calm after this weeks Shiite protests and told his followers: We dont want to create a conflict. The government of Najib Mikati, the Sunni prime minister, has declared a policy of disassociation that would keep Lebanon out of foreign conflicts, including Syrias. The future, however, might be beyond the capacity of Lebanons divided factions alone to determine. In the two decades since the formal end of its own civil war, Lebanon has experienced a revival of its traditional Mediterranean hedonism, interspersed with interludes of appalling violence. A full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah exploded at the height of the 2006 holiday season, forcing thousands of tourists for scurry to the exits. In the intervening years, a tourism industry that provides more than a quarter of the countrys income had revived. This year, would-be visitors from the rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf have already been advised by their governments to stay away. Fadi Abboud, the tourism minister, warned that if the countrys security situation did not improve the summer season faced catastrophe. That could turn out to be the least of Lebanons troubles.
33 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/divided-lebanonpowerless-to-keep-out-syrias-war/?pagemode=print&tw_p=twt
1.3.4. Some Disdain Both Options in Egypt s Narrowed Race (back) May 26, 2012 Some Disdain Both Options in Egypts Narrowed Race By KAREEM FAHIM and LIAM STACK CAIRO Faced with what seemed like an impossible choice between a conservative Islamist with a rigid social agenda and a former minister with deep ties to the Mubarak government Ahmed Abdel Fattah, 33, said he planned to sit out the remainder of the voting for Egypts president and hope for better choices in four years. I am not going to play in this dirty game, Mr. Abdel Fattah, a subway worker, said Friday, explaining why he could not support either Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, or Ahmed Shafik, President Hosni Mubaraks final prime minister, who will compete in a runoff vote next month. This is not democracy. These elections are a joke. For some voters, the bubbling enthusiasm that ushered in the countrys landmark presidential election has given way to anger and apathy since candidates who generated excitement, with charisma or progressive appeals, were eliminated from the race. Sensing the disillusionment, and the likelihood that many voters could stay home, Mr. Morsi and Mr. Shafik moved Saturday to widen their support, courting disqualified candidates and portraying themselves as more centrist sometimes by drastically reversing their previous positions. At a news conference in Cairo on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Shafik, who had in the past compared Egypts youthful revolutionaries to a disrespectful child, now praised the martyrs of the uprising and promised to return the fruits of the glorious revolution to the youth. He urged people to vote in the June runoff, and spoke kindly about several of his competitors, including Hamdeen Sabahi, the founder of a Nasserist party whose populist campaign drew millions of voters, giving him a surprising third-place finish in the unofficial vote tallies. Saying he was willing to collaborate with other Egyptian political forces, Mr. Shafik also sought to quiet fears that he represented the government of his friend Mr. Mubarak, saying, There is no turning back. The Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, tried to ease a different strain of voter anxiety: fears that the Islamist group, which holds roughly half the seats in Parliament, will dominate Egyptian politics if Mr. Morsi is elected. Brotherhood officials were trying to meet with several of the disqualified candidates on Saturday to discuss a possible coalition to challenge Mr. Shafik. But that effort seemed to run aground, as two former candidates, Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, released statements saying they were not endorsing Mr. Morsi or any candidate, though they did not say whether that
34 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
would change in the future. And Mr. Sabahi, whose supporters are coveted by both remaining candidates, seemed to be trying to keep his own campaign alive on Saturday. A lawyer representing him told Reuters that the campaign had appealed to the presidential election commission to halt the runoff for reasons that include allegations of irregularities during the first round of voting. Also on Saturday, former President Jimmy Carter, who led a delegation that monitored the first round of the elections, said there were many violations but added that they did not violate the integrity of the elections as a whole. Speaking at a news conference in Cairo, Mr. Carter said restrictions placed on his organization by the Egyptian authorities were the strictest the group had faced in 25 years, and as a result it was not able to certify the process as proper. He added, The Egyptian people have accepted the process we have seen over the last few days as quite successful. Even so, many Egyptians threw up their hands at the results. Some argued that the outcome was inevitable: that an electorate battered by a chaotic transition and under temporary military rule would easily reach for candidates who appealed to fear rather than hope. They made the people reach the level where all they can think about is security and food on the table, Mr. Abdel Fattah said. Nadia Ibrahim, 34, a housewife, articulated a common concern, that the election was threatening to pull Egypt backward. I cant bring myself to vote in the runoff, she said. If the Muslim Brotherhood wins, they will be another N.D.P., she added, referring to the National Democratic Party, the former governing party, whose burned-out headquarters on the Nile is a testament to the revolutions anger. If Shafik wins, the N.D.P. will be back, she said. This is a decision I cant bring myself to morally make. Hussein Gohar, 45, a gynecologist who is a leading member of the liberal Egyptian Social Democratic Party, argued for a different approach, saying that voters whose candidates lost needed to think strategically about Egypts future, and pick their battles. Id rather fight against Shafik, he said. If I fight the Muslim Brotherhood, Im the minority. If I fight against Shafik, I have more revolutionary forces with me, he said, arguing that the opposition needed to unite. For many other people, though, the election worked exactly as it was supposed to. Mohammed Abdel Moneim, 35, a taxi driver, said that though he was not a
35 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
member of the Muslim Brotherhood, he and his family had been impressed by its appeals during the campaign. Theyre organized, they have a project and theyre not thieves, he said, adding that if the Brotherhood performed poorly, Egyptians would surely make their displeasure felt, perhaps by returning to protest in Tahrir Square. Were no longer afraid, he said. If theyre not good, the square is always there. Dina Salah Amer contributed reporting.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/middleeast/somein-egypt-disdain-both-candidates.html?_r=1&hp&pagewanted=print
1.4. Asia
(back)
1.4.1. Iran
(back)
1.4.1.1. Iran Recalls Its Ambassador From Azerbaijan (back) May 22, 2012 Iran Recalls Its Ambassador From Azerbaijan By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN BAKU, Azerbaijan Iran has recalled its ambassador from neighboring Azerbaijan, citing a religious insult, in the latest sign of escalating tensions between the countries. Iranian officials said the envoy, Mohammad B. Bahrami, was summoned to Tehran to discuss recent protests outside the Iranian Embassy in Baku, in which demonstrators were said to have insulted symbols of Islam. Mr. Bahrami left on Monday. He was recalled for consultations, an embassy official, Ahmed Nemati, said in a statement. This month three protests were held outside the embassy. Some demonstrators carried pictures of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, including one that showed him with a bare midriff. In recent months, relations have grown increasingly tense between Azerbaijan, an oil-rich former Soviet republic on the Caspian Sea, and Iran, its southern neighbor. Iran is under severe pressure by the United States and other Western nations over its nuclear program and facing a new round of economic sanctions. Tehran has complained of Azerbaijans improving relationship with Israel, which has included purchasing Israeli-made weapons, and Azerbaijan has denied reports that it had agreed to let Israel use military bases on its territory for a possible airstrike on Iran.
36 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Azerbaijan, meanwhile, has accused Iran of plotting terrorist attacks in Baku. Earlier this year, Azerbaijan arrested 22 people and accused them of being terrorist agents working for Iran. The diplomatic squabble unfolded as Azerbaijan is playing host this week to the hugely popular Eurovision Song Contest. The television spectacle has attracted visitors from around the world, including many Iranians. A spokesman for the Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry, Elman Abdullayev, suggested envy was a factor in the recall of the ambassador. Unfortunately, the development of Azerbaijan, holding such a grand event as Eurovision, the arrival of many guests here, are perceived by some with jealousy, Mr. Abdullayev said. Azerbaijan has complained about Iranian jabs at Eurovision in recent weeks, including rumors on some Iranian Web sites that a gay pride march would be held in Baku during Eurovision. Azerbaijan is a mostly Muslim country but has a secular government, while Iran is an Islamic theocracy. The picketing outside the Iranian Embassy in Baku was apparently a response to anti-Azerbaijan demonstrations in Tehran.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/world/middleeast/afterprotests-iran-recalls-ambassador-from-azerbaijan.html?pagewanted=print
1.4.1.2. Iranians Taking Solace in the Past (back) May 22, 2012 Iranians Taking Solace in the Past By CAMELIA ENTEKHABIFARD Last fall, while reporting on the U.N. General Assembly, I had the chance to meet a number of Iranian journalists accompanying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his trip to New York. At the time, these young Iranian writers told me they were excited about the revolution in Egypt and the possibility of normalized relations between Cairo and Tehran. They were eager to hear about my travels in Egypt, a country they had never seen, and were especially interested in learning about the tomb of Irans last monarch in Cairo. To my surprise, my revelation to them that Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavis tomb inside a mosque is quite humble was greeted with sighs of sadness. May he rest in peace, one young journalist told me. We enjoyed such respect during his reign. Now the world treats us like thieves! Since Irans 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian public has lived in a state of perpetual stress. Besides the violence of the post-revolutionary era, Iranians witnessed the humiliating hostage crisis with the United States, suffered a systematic purge of the political opposition by the Islamic leadership, and endured an eight-year
37 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
war with Iraq that shattered the Iranian economy and damaged the national psyche. I was six years old at the time of the Iranian revolution and have some memories of what life was like before the Iranian monarchy was abolished. My brother, born three years after the revolution, is part of a generation of Iranians who have experienced nothing but war, economic malaise and the threat of renewed conflict. Now Iranians are suffering once again as the world debates their governments nuclear ambitions. The possibility of a military attack against Irans nuclear installations has left ordinary Iranians already struggling to deal with the impact of heavy economic sanctions terrified of a new threat of war. It is this economic misery and constant fear that has left so many Iranians, including those born after the departure of the shah, so nostalgic for the past. The first, second and now third generations of young Iranians born after 1979 have no memory of the countrys pre-revolutionary era. All they hear are stories from parents or family friends describing how during the time of the shah Iranians could travel anywhere they wanted and never had to line up for hours outside foreign embassies to beg for visas, like so many young people do today. These young Iranians roughly 70 percent of the population now listen with pride as their elders talk of the countrys once-strong national currency and regional prowess. And so, more than 30 years after his death, the shahs strong nationalistic sensibility has made him more popular than ever. The post-revolution generations have only heard their country referred to as part of an axis of evil that supports terrorists and deserves to be bombarded. They have come to idealize Irans era of monarchy, associating the shah and his wife with social freedom, economic stability and regional power. Today, life in the Islamic Republic is more difficult than it has been since the eight-year war with Iraq. International economic sanctions, the harshest since the 1979 revolution, have squeezed the struggling middle class even further. Ordinary Iranians live in constant fear that Israel one of Tehrans strongest political allies before 1979 may soon decide to bomb them. So many of the countrys best and brightest students have left Iran to study abroad, and are certainly not willing to come back. Yet talk to any ordinary Iranian, and you will find the vast majority still admire President Barack Obama. In spite of the Obama administrations tough financial sanctions, the public places much of the blame for their economic distress on the government in Tehran. Every day, at the end of her Islamic prayers, a friends mother a 67-year old resident of north Tehran prays for President Obamas good health and re-election. For her, as for many Iranians, the U.S. president represents the final barrier between Iran and a potential Israeli attack. A year and a half since the breakdown of talks over Irans contested nuclear program and the imposition of devastating economic sanctions, Iran has returned to the negotiating table. After the first round of nuclear talks in
38 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Istanbul last month ended on a positive note, Iranians are hopeful that Wednesdays discussions between the P5-plus-1 countries (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) and Iran in Baghdad will pave the way for further progress. For them, the outcome of the nuclear talks is more important than ever. If talks go well and P5-plus-1 negotiators agree to perhaps lift sanctions against the Iranian Central Bank in exchange for Irans suspension of higher grade uranium enrichment, then ordinary Iranians can breath a little easier. A favorable outcome will certainly boost Obamas strong popularity on the streets of Iran. But if negotiations over Irans nuclear program break down and the European Union follows through with an oil embargo set to start in July, life for the post-revolutionary generations of Iranians will become even more miserable. In the meantime, the Iranian people will continue to find solace in remembering their countrys pre-revolutionary past. All they can do is keep praying for a better future, and hope that after 33 years of revolution, they may finally be able to sleep in peace, without fear. Camelia Entekhabifard, the author of Camelia: Save Yourself by Telling the Truth a Memoir of Iran, is a journalist reporting on Iranian and Afghan affairs.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/opinion/iranians-takingsolace-in-the-past.html?pagewanted=print
1.4.2. Pakistan
(back)
1.4.2.1. Senate Panel Holds Up Aid to Pakistan (back) May 24, 2012, 5:00 pm -Senate Panel Holds Up Aid to Pakistan-By JONATHAN WEISMAN-A unanimous Senate Armed Services Committee took a bipartisan shot at Pakistan on Thursday for the sentencing of the physician who helped catch Osama bin Laden, approving a $631.4 billion defense policy bill that withholds aid to the wavering ally until supply lines are open, support for terrorist networks ceases and the doctor, Shakil Afridi, is released.--The committees defense measure for the fiscal year that begins in October largely sticks to the budget caps agreed to last summer and is $4 billion below the version approved by the House on Friday. It leaves in place a delicate compromise on detainee policy from last year that some critics believe authorizes the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects apprehended on U.S. soil.---
39 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, told reporters Thursday that he would try to ban such indefinite detentions when the bill reaches the Senate floor, probably next month. A similar effort, which teamed liberal Democrats with libertarian-minded Republicans in the House, failed last week.--If we deny due process, were failing in our most basic responsibility to uphold and defend the Constitution, he said. Even in our darkest hours, we can and must ensure our Constitution prevails.--But no such divisions are evident over continued American aid to Pakistan. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Armed Services Committees ranking Republican, said that the money, for now is fenced.--The Armed Service Committees action came on the same day a Senate Appropriations Committee panel cut Pakistani aid by $33 million $1 million for each year of the doctors sentence on top of aid cuts previously approved.--All of us are outraged, Mr. McCain said, adding that the Pakistani governments linkage of the jailing of Dr. Afridi to the demand for an apology for an unrelated U.S. airstrike that accidentally killed 24 Pakistanis is beyond ludicrous.--On Wednesday, the doctor was sentenced to 33 years in prison for treason. He had led a phony vaccination campaign to collect DNA and help the Central Intelligence Agency determine that Bin Laden was in a compound in Abbottabad. A tribal court convicted him of conspiring to wage war against Pakistan.--Pakistani government officials have asked the United States to respect its judicial process, but on Capitol Hill, patience has run out, said Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the committee chairman.--Theres a common outrage, a common response wherever you look, he said.--E-mail Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/senate-panelholds-up-aid-to-pakistan/
1.4.2.2. Prison Term for Helping C.I.A. Find Bin Laden (back) May 23, 2012 Prison Term for Helping C.I.A. Find Bin Laden By ISMAIL KHAN PESHAWAR, Pakistan A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency pin down Osama bin Ladens location under the cover of a vaccination drive was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said. A tribal court here in northwestern Pakistan found the doctor, Dr. Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state, said Mutahir Zeb Khan, the
40 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
administrator for the Khyber tribal region. Along with the prison term, the court imposed a fine of $3,500. Dr. Afridi, who may appeal the verdict, was then sent to Central Prison in Peshawar. He had been charged under a British-era regulation for frontier crimes that, unlike the national criminal code, does not carry the death penalty for treason. Under Pakistani penal law, Dr. Afridi almost certainly would have received the death penalty, a Pakistani lawyer said. Dr. Afridis fate has been an added source of tension between Pakistan and the United States, at a time when the countries remain at loggerheads over reopening supply lines through Pakistan to Afghanistan. In Washington, Obama administration officials expressed anger and frustration at the tribal courts decision, but indicated that American officials were working quietly behind the scenes to shorten the sentence or have it dismissed. The doctor was never asked to spy on Pakistan, said a senior American official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda in Pakistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly about the sentencing. He was asked only to help locate Al Qaeda terrorists, who threaten Pakistan and the U.S. He helped save Pakistani and American lives. On Capitol Hill, two of the Senates leading voices on national security, Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and John McCain of Arizona, the panels ranking Republican, angrily denounced the courts sentence. What Dr. Afridi did is the furthest thing from treason, the senators said in a statement. It was a courageous, heroic and patriotic act, which helped to locate the most wanted terrorist in the world a mass murderer who had the blood of many innocent Pakistanis on his hands. In January, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta confirmed that the United States had been working with Dr. Afridi while trying to verify the location of Bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad in the months before the raid. American officials previously said that the doctor had been running a hepatitis B vaccination program as a ruse to obtain DNA evidence from Bin Ladens family, thought to be hiding in the city. American officials say Dr. Afridi did not know the identity of his target. According to Pakistani security officials, Dr. Afridi admitted to helping the C.I.A. before the raid by Navy SEALs that killed Bin Laden last May. That operation angered Pakistani officials, who had not been informed ahead of time and viewed it as a violation of the countrys sovereignty. Dr. Afridi, 48, was detained by Pakistans military intelligence agency near Peshawar in the weeks after Bin Ladens death. A judicial commission in Pakistan investigating the circumstances leading to his death recommended in October that Dr. Afridi be charged with high treason. American officials have said that although Dr. Afridi never gained DNA samples from the compound, his work aided the mission that led to Bin
41 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Ladens death. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for Dr. Afridi to be released. In a television interview in January, Mr. Panetta said, For them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/world/asia/doctor-whohelped-find-bin-laden-given-jail-term-official-says.html?pagewanted=print
1.4.3. Spent Nuclear Fuel Drives Growing Fear Over Plant in Japan (back) May 26, 2012 Spent Nuclear Fuel Drives Growing Fear Over Plant in Japan By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW WALD TOKYO What passes for normal at the Fukushima Daiichi plant today would have caused shudders among even the most sanguine of experts before an earthquake and tsunami set off the worlds second most serious nuclear crisis after Chernobyl. Fourteen months after the accident, a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic. The publics fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe, now that the three nuclear reactors that suffered meltdowns are in a more stable state, and as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region. The worries picked up new traction in recent days after the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said it had found a slight bulge in one of the walls of the reactor building, stoking fears over the buildings safety. To try to quell such worries, the government sent the environment and nuclear minister to the plant on Saturday, where he climbed a makeshift staircase in protective garb to look at the structure supporting the pool, which he said appeared sound. The minister, Goshi Hosono, added that although the government accepted Tepcos assurances that reinforcement work had shored up the building, it had ordered the company to conduct further studies because of the bulge. Some outside experts have also worked to allay fears, saying that the fuel in the pool is now so old that it cannot generate enough heat to start the kind of accident that would allow radioactive material to escape. But many Japanese have scoffed at those assurances and point out that even if the building is able to withstand further quakes, which they question, the jury-rigged cooling system for the pool has already malfunctioned several times, including a 24-hour failure in April. Had the failures continued, they would have
42 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
left the rods at risk of dangerous overheating. Government critics are especially concerned, since Tepco has said the soonest it could begin emptying the pool is late 2013, dashing hopes for earlier action. The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool, said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto Universitys Research Reactor Institute and one of the experts raising concerns. Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, expressed similar concerns during a trip to Japan last month. The fears over the pool at Reactor No. 4, amplified over the Web, are helping to undermine assurances by Tepco and the Japanese government that the Fukushima plant has been brought to a stable condition and are highlighting how complicated the cleanup of the site, expected to take decades, will be. The concerns are also raising questions about whether Japans all-out effort to convince its citizens that nuclear power is safe kept the authorities from exploring other and some say safer options for storing used fuel rods. It was taboo to raise questions about the spent fuel that was piling up, said Hideo Kimura, who worked as a nuclear fuel engineer at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the 1990s. But it was clear that here was nowhere for the spent fuel to go. The worst-case situations for Reactor No. 4 would be for the pool to run dry if there is another problem with the cooling system and the rods catch fire, releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material, or that fission restart if the metal panels that separate the rods are knocked over in a quake. That would be especially bad because the pools, unlike reactors, lacks containment vessels to hold in radioactive material. (Even the roof that used to exist would be no match if the rods caught fire, for instance.) There is considerable disagreement among scientists over whether such catastrophes are possible. But some argue that whether the chances are small or large, changes should be made quickly because of the magnitude of the potential calamity. Senator Wyden, whose state could lie in the path of any new radioactive plumes and who has studied nuclear waste issues, is among those pushing for faster action. After his recent visit to the ravaged plant, Senator Wyden said the pool at No. 4 poses an extraordinary and continuing risk and the retrieval of spent fuel should be a priority given the possibility of further earthquakes. Attention has focused on No. 4s spent fuel pool because of the large number of assemblies filled with rods that are stored at the reactor building. Three other reactor buildings at the site are also badly damaged, but their spent fuel pools held fewer used assemblies. According to Tepco, the pool at the No. 4 reactor, which was not operating at the time of the accident, holds 1,331 spent fuel assemblies, which each contain dozens of rods. Several thousand rods were removed from the core just three months before so the vessel could be inspected. Those rods, which were not fully used up, could more easily support chain reactions than the fully-spent fuel.
43 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Mr. Koide and others warn that Tepco must move more quickly to transfer the fuel rods to a safer location. But such transfers have been greatly complicated by the nuclear accident. Ordinarily the rods are lifted by giant cranes, but at Fukushima those cranes collapsed during the series of disasters that started with the earthquake and included explosions that destroyed portions of several reactor buildings. Tepco has said it will build a separate structure next to Reactor No. 4 to support a new crane. But under the plan, released last month, the fuel removal will begin in late 2013. The presence of so many spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daiichi highlights a quandary facing the global nuclear industry: how to safely store and eventually recycle or dispose of spent nuclear fuel, which stays radioactive for tens of thousands of years. In the 1960s and 1970s, recycling for reuse in plants had seemed the most promising option to countries with civilian nuclear power programs. And as Japan expanded its collection of nuclear reactors, local communities were told not to worry about the spent fuel, which would be recycled. The idea of recycling fell out of favor in some countries, including the United States, which dropped the idea because it is a potential path to nuclear weapons. Japan stuck to its nuclear fuel cycle goal, however, despite leaks and delays at a vast reprocessing plant in the north forcing utilities to store a growing stockpile of spent fuel. Japan did not want to admit that the nuclear fuel cycle might be a failed policy, and did not think seriously about a safer, more permanent way to store spent fuel, said Tadahiro Katsuta, an associate professor of nuclear science at Tokyos Meiji University. The capacity problem was particularly pronounced at Fukushima Daiichi, which is among Japans oldest plans and where the oldest fuel assemblies have been stored in pools since 1973. Eventually, the plant had to build an extra fuel rod pool, despite suspicions among residents that increasing capacity at the plant would mean the rods would be stored at the site far longer than promised. (They were right.) Tepco also wanted to transfer some of the rods to sealed casks, which have become a popular storage option worldwide in recent years, but the community was convinced that it was another stalling tactic. In the end, the company was able to load a limited number of casks at the plant. Unlike the fuel pool at Reactor No. 4 that has caused so much worry, they survived the disaster unscathed. Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/asia/concernsgrow-about-spent-fuel-rods-at-damaged-nuclear-plant-in-
44 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
japan.html?hp&pagewanted=print
1.5. Africa
(back)
1.5.1. Libya
(back)
1.5.1.1. Confronting a False Meme: Libya s Deadly Stinger Equivalents (back) May 24, 2012, 8:01 am-Confronting a False Meme: Libyas Deadly Stinger Equivalents-By C.J. CHIVERS-Sometimes an article on the arms beat makes a claim that both demands attention and merits a deeper dive. The article excerpted below, posted earlier this year on Aviation Weeks Web site, was this kind of read. It began:--Fears that some of the worlds most sophisticated antiaircraft weapons that disappeared from government warehouses in Libya would end up in the hands of stateless insurgent are being realized.--At least some of the roughly 480 high-performance SA-24 Grinch shoulder-launched missiles that disappeared during the Libyan uprising have reappeared in the hands of insurgents on the borders of Israel, senior Israeli officials say.--The advanced weapons were smuggled out of Libya to Iran. From there the supply line split, with some weapons going to Syria and finally to the military wing of the Hezbollah organization in Lebanon. Others were smuggled into Egypt and then to Hamas in Gaza.--They are in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli official tells Aviation Week. I dont know in what numbers. They also are in Lebanon.---KB Mashynostroyeniya-A complete SA-24 manpads system.Any article about militants obtaining some of the worlds most sophisticated antiaircraft weapons is bound to gain notice. But this article was interesting for another reason. Two words leaped out: shoulder-launched.--The weapon at right is a complete shoulder-launched SA-24, an advanced Russian antiaircraft weapon system that is both highly portable and extremely dangerous. Since September, several news organizations have repeated the same claim: that such heat-seeking, man-portable SA-24s have been finding their way from Libyas unsecured depots toward terrorists hands. These reports would seem to confirm one of the great worries in aviation security and counterterrorism circles: that a group like Hezbollah or Al Qaeda could gain access to state-of the-art military weapons with which they could down a civilian airliner.--If the missiles, which are often called Stinger equivalents in news reports, really were in Libya, it would make an already bleak situation with
45 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
unsecured conventional arms there substantially worse. (This site has covered extensively the threat of Libyas much older stock of SA-7 antiaircraft missiles and their spread. For details, go here or here.)--Proof of shoulder-fired SA-24s in Libya would also reorder the Wests understanding of Russian arms exports in the past decade. Russias Kolomna Machine-Building Design Bureau is the sole manufacturer of the SA-24, and it has emphatically denied selling this class of SA-24 missile to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafis Libya. That denial stood in sharp contrast to the Kremlins open acknowledgment of its sale of shoulder-launched SA-24s to Hugo Chvezs Venezuela. Any evidence of a surreptitious transfer to North Africa would raise fresh questions about Moscows arms-trafficking behavior since the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, when international efforts to contain this class of weapon were redoubled. And it would suggest grounds for greater worry. If Russia shipped these weapons to Libya, and then bluntly lied about the sale, where else might it have sent them, too?--Now hold those thoughts. The problem with reports of those shoulderlaunched SA-24s flowing from Libya is that they appear, on the available evidence, to be false. Libya, as near as the records and the work of dozens of researchers, journalists and security contractors has shown, did not possess shoulder-launched SA-24s.--What we know the Qaddafi government possessed, shown at this link, was a larger pedestal-mounted weapon system, known as the Strelets.--The Strelets, like many Libyan weapons that left state custody and could now be available on black or gray markets, is certainly grounds for grave concern. Even though the historical data (more on this below) indicates that such larger and more complex antiaircraft weapons have not been successfully used by terrorists against civilian aircraft in the past, that assessment would provide no comfort if a pedestal-mounted Strelets were to down a passenger airliner on its approach to say, Tripoli, Nairobi, Beirut or Tunis.--It is difficult to assess confidently the risks now posed by the Strelets in Colonel Qaddafis former stock: For one, it remains an open technical question whether the accompanying missiles could be adapted to shoulder fire. (More on that in a supplemental post here.) But it is important to talk about what we are actually talking about. Shipping documents found in Libya show that Russia shipped at least hundreds of SA-24 missiles for the Strelets launchers to Libya. But the reports echoing around the world often focused on the more menacing, and more portable, shoulder-fired SA-24 system. And to date, there has been no evidence its existence in Libya.--The Initial Report-The meme asserting otherwise began in earnest Sept. 7 with a post on a CNN blog that the network broadcast as an exclusive.--The headline read, Libyan Missiles Looted. The report began:--A potent stash of Russian-made surface-to-air missiles is missing from a huge Tripoli weapons warehouse amid reports of weapons looting across war-torn Libya. They are Grinch SA-24 shoulder-launched missiles, also
46 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
known as Igla-S missiles, the equivalent of U.S.-made Stinger missiles.--A CNN team and Human Rights Watch found dozens of empty crates marked with packing lists and inventory numbers that identified the items as Igla-S surface-to-air missiles.--The Human Rights Watch researcher, and CNNs source, was Peter Bouckaert, a veteran investigator in conflict zones who, as part of his organizations efforts to bring attention to the perils of conventional weapons stockpiles in Libya, had found a single empty SA-24 crate and shipping document in that same Tripoli warehouse on Sept. 6. (Other empty crates that CNN mentioned had contained other types of munitions, including SA-7s, the earlier generation of shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile that verifiably was in Qaddafis possession, and has vanished in untold numbers.)--Mr. Bouckaert promptly informed Western journalists of his find. And he initially insisted that these weapons were what is known in nonproliferation circles as man-portable air defense systems, or manpads in other words, shoulder-launched weapons.--Manpads are a weapon of special concern because they are compact, easy to smuggle and relatively simple to use, especially against slow and predictable targets like a civilian jetliner taking off or landing. A complete manpads system typically requires three interconnecting parts a narrow tube containing the missile, a battery about the size of a tennis ball that provides power, and a grip stock that balances on a shooters shoulder and holds the trigger.--While there are superficial similarities between shoulder-launched SA-7s and SA-24s, there are also troubling differences. Unlike the SA-7, which is a first-generation weapon based on decades-old technology, the SA-24 is a fully updated system. It can be fired effectively at aircraft head-on, from the side, or from the rear, and has features to overcome the countermeasures on modern military aircraft designed to confuse and thwart heat-seeking missiles. It also has a longer range, a proximity fuse and a larger warhead. It is, in short, one of the graver threats in the manpads class.--But there is the catch: the SA-24 missiles and tubes found in Libya, for the Strelets, were not part of a system to be fired from the shoulder. If history is a guide, they pose a different magnitude of threat in part because they are more difficult to smuggle. Matthew Schroeder, an analyst who follows manpads proliferation for the Federation of American Scientists, said his review of the history of surface-to-air missile attacks could not find an example of a vehicle-mounted missile being used successfully by a terrorist group. Open-source documents suggest that most if not all terrorist surface-to-air missile attacks on civilian aircraft were committed with shoulder-fired systems, not crew-portable or vehicle-mounted systems, he wrote, by e-mail.---C. J. Chivers/The New York Times-A looted military depot in Gaa, Libya, showing emptied SA-7 crates.-What the Libyan Depots Contained--
47 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
When war erupted in Libya in early 2011, a year of arms spotting began. Security analysts scoured the available materials to tally up what was in government depots, which now have changed hands. Simultaneously, journalists and nongovernment organizations began looking closely at weapons carried by both sides. All manner of former Qaddafi military equipment has been seen in the field, in makeshift museums, in old stockpiles, or in refuse heaps that sometimes contained packaging and shipment papers.--Almost immediately, the presence of SA-24s was established. But every specimen spotted was of the two-tube, vehicle-mounted variety, like those shown in the pictures below.---C. J. Chivers/The New York Times-Detail of an SA-24 battery.-Damien Spleeters-SA-24 parts on the floor of a building occupied by a militia in Libya.-That system fires the same missiles and uses the same batteries as the shoulder-launched SA-24 variant. But it does not come with a grip stock. And when the Russian manufacturer was asked whether it had shipped SA-24 grip stocks to Libya, it expressly said it had not.--A senior Russian official with a long history in the arms trade told Andrew Kramer, a Moscow-based correspondent for The New York Times, that Russia had not provided Libya any shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles since the Soviet Unions collapse which was before the SA-24 was brought into production.--Cautious arms researchers do not readily take governments or arms exporters at their words. So even while firm denials circulated from Moscow, many people kept investigating. Still, no public evidence has surfaced, beyond these echoing news reports, of shoulder-fired SA-24 missiles loose in Libya, as Stingers were in southwest Asia after the United States provided them to anti-Soviet Afghan fighters, decades back.--So why does the claim keep appearing? Does someone know something everyone else does not?--Ben Wedeman, the CNN correspondent who reported the find, said by telephone that beyond the crate and shipping document that Mr. Bouckaert showed his crew last September, CNN had no additional information for its report. As far as manpads go, we never actually saw anything to indicate they were there, he said. Speaking about Mr. Bouckaerts information, he added, We didnt have the technical expertise to go back and check what he told us. Mr. Wedeman said he did see, elsewhere in Libya, the SA-24 vehicle-mounted system.--Aviation Week was also unambiguous when asked about whether it had evidence of SA-24 manpads in Libya. The answer is a definite no, wrote David Fulghum, one of the reporters who wrote the article cited at the top of this post. The Russians didnt supply the manpads version to Libya. Ive never had any indication there was anything but the twin-mount launcher in Libya.--
48 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
-Mr. Fulghum said the news in his article was the indications that the missiles themselves had traveled from Libya to Hamas and Hezbollah, and, given the history of manufacturing jury-rigged weapons in the region, the presence of an updated heat-seeking missile among these groups could pose grave risks.--Human Rights Watch also said it had no evidence of shoulder-launched SA-24s in Libya, though last September Mr. Bouckaert had briefly thought otherwise.--On the night before the CNN report, Mr. Bouckaert was working without full support. Mark Hiznay, the Human Rights Watch arms analyst who typically vets the organizations finds in the field and makes or confirms identification, was on a trans-Atlantic flight and out of reach. Mr. Bouckaert approached The New York Times, saying that he had found an SA-24 manpads crate and that it had been looted. He said CNN would be doing the story, and invited The New York Times to follow up on his find, too.--Upon looking at the document from the crate, which showed that SA-24 batteries and missile tubes had been shipped from Russia to Libya, The New York Times informed Mr. Bouckaert and Human Rights Watch that it would not be running an article about the SA-24s, as there was no evidence of grip stocks. The find of the SA-24 crate and shipping document did not go past what had been already known that Libya possessed the vehiclemounted system.--Instead, Rod Nordland, a correspondent then in Tripoli, set to work writing an article about the discovery of more unsecured SA-7s, the ongoing problems with weapons generally, and the interim governments limited ability to secure its lethal inheritances.--CNN then weighed in, asserting that SA-24 Stinger-equivalents had been looted.--Mr. Bouckaert said in a recent e-mail that while he had initially mistakenly told The New York Times and CNN that the SA-24 crate he found had contained shoulder-fired missiles, he came to understand his mistake during that first night, and did not repeat his assertion that they were manpads when he showed journalists around the same warehouse. He said did not hype his find, and specifically explained the subtleties to journalists.--There was some confusion caused the evening before we went public, when I mistakenly assumed in conversations with CNN and the NYT that the SA-24s were manpads, instead of vehicle-mounted versions. When we took the press to the site the next day, I carefully referred to the SA-24s as surface-to-air missiles, not manpads, and made clear that they could be either used with a vehicle mount or grip stock, and that those firing mechanisms were not found (so we couldnt be conclusive as to which system was shipped).--By this time, the disappearance of shoulder-launched SA-24 missiles was becoming an accepted claim, and was picked up by many Web sites and
49 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
news outlets.--And yet thus far, the credible sources with a field presence in Libya agree: the only heat-seeking, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile to have been found in Libya have been variants of the SA-7.--As the At War blog knows too well, from firsthand experience, arms identification can be very difficult. Precision often proves elusive, especially with weapons that have been manufactured in several configurations and have undergone multiple production cycles, as in the case of Russiandesigned manpads. Add in the secrecy that surrounds trafficking and the specifications of advanced weapons, and the field is vulnerable to error. (Often military units make identification mistakes, and many experts will puzzle or disagree while trying to come to consensus on what might seem a straightforward find.)--Human Rights Watch and Mr. Bouckaert have been providing important fact finding and analysis on the many problems posed by weapons proliferation, and Mr. Wedeman has been one of the most consistently brave, relevant and energetic journalists working in Libya. The mistakes here are of a familiar sort. And the value of the shoulder-fired SA-24 reports, and how they have persistently regenerated, is that they serve to remind those who follow these themes just how difficult this all can be, especially when moving quickly or when not vetting unusual finds against multiple independent sources.--On now to the next case, and to the unresolved question of that mystery submunition scattered by 120-millimeter rockets last year.-Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/confronting-a-falsememe-libyas-deadly-stinger-equivalents/
1.5.1.2. Death of a Terrorist May 22, 2012, 8:59 am Death of a Terrorist By DANIEL POLITI
(back)
Greg Bos/Reuters The wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988. Viewfinder A roundup of opinion and commentary from international media. Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, died Sunday. Megrahi had been released from prison almost three years ago on humanitarian grounds, for suffering from prostate cancer. British Prime Minister David Cameron said that while it had been a mistake to release Megrahi, his death was an opportunity to remember the victims.
50 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
For The Independent, though, Megrahis death is a closure of sorts, but only of the diplomatic fracas that accompanied his release from prison. Crown Copyright, via Associated Press Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, died Sunday.The death of the man who pleaded his innocence right up until the very end changes little, writes The Guardian in an editorial. The families of the victims are as cruelly divided today as they have always been. One problem is that Megrahis actual role in the bombing remains unclear. And so the idea that this low-level Libyan intelligence official was the key player in the bombing that killed 270 people, and that his conviction in 2001 and his death now represent some kind of closure in the case, is an abiding insult to the victims, contends David Horovitz in the Times of Israel. Indeed, says Alex Massie in The Spectator, we should ponder the fact that those primarily responsible for the atrocity in whichever country they may be have not yet been held to account for their actions. Megrahis death merely marks the end of one chapter, writes Scotlands The Herald. In both Edinburgh and London, we need the political will to get to the bottom of this dreadful case. In a piece for The Scotsman, Clive Fairweather, the former chief inspector of prisons for Scotland, argues that Megrahi couldnt have acted alone. For Fairweather, the only way to end the countless whodunnit theories is through an international inquiry. No one can be sure, but my guess is that the truth will not be found, notes Oliver Miles in The Guardian. Only a few will have been in on any secret, and most of them are dead. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Daniel Politi is a freelance writer living in Argentina.
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/death-of-aterrorist/
1.5.2. Somalia: Al Qaeda s Leader Encourages Militants May 12, 2012-Somalia: Al Qaedas Leader Encourages Militants-By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS--51 of 55
(back)
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Al Qaedas leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, has released a new video in which he encourages Somali militants to fight on despite the challenges. In the video, reported Friday by the Site Intelligence Group which monitors militant activities, Mr. Zawahri urges the Shabab militants not to be deterred by American drone attacks. It is Mr. Zawahris second video address to the group, which formally joined Al Qaeda in February. The Shababs fighters have increasingly come under pressure in recent times from regional armies and government forces who are pushing them from three sides inside Somalia. ---Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/world/africa/somalia-al-qaedasleader-encourages-militants.html?pagewanted=print
1.6. Peru Forced to Confront Deep Scars of Civil War (back) May 26, 2012 Peru Forced to Confront Deep Scars of Civil War By WILLIAM NEUMAN LIMA, Peru During a scorched earth military campaign that threatened to topple the government here, the Maoist guerrilla group known as the Shining Path terrorized Peru with assassinations, bombings, beheadings and massacres. So Peruvians were rattled last year when a group of former guerrillas began collecting signatures to create a political party to participate in the democratic process they had once sought to destroy. Among their goals was an amnesty for crimes committed during the war, which lasted from the early 1980s to 2000; it would allow the release of jailed Shining Path leaders, including the groups reviled founder, Abimael Guzmn Reynoso. More than a decade after the struggle largely ceased, the rebels attempt to move into politics has stirred emotions that are still raw and reopened a searing national debate on what the war meant and how to move on. We are at this moment in a fight over what to remember and how to remember, said Jos Pablo Baraybar, executive director of the Peruvian Team for Forensic Anthropology, which has exhumed bodies from several mass graves from the war years. What alarmed many Peruvians about the Shining Paths effort to reinvent itself was that many of the hundreds of thousands of signatures the former guerrillas collected came from college students too young to recall the turmoil of the war. Driving home the point, a television station broadcast interviews with young people who were unable to identify a photograph of Mr. Guzmn, whose bearded face was once as recognizable as that of the president. It showed that many young people dont know anything about what happened, said Fernando Carvallo, national director of the Place of Memory, a three-story museum being built in Lima to commemorate the conflict. In a sign of how deep the wounds remain, even a project intended to be as evenhanded as this one was initially opposed by the previous president, Alan Garca, and has depended on foreign financing, mainly from Germany and the European Union.
52 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
In January, election officials rejected the effort to create a new Shining Path-linked party, ruling that the group adhered to anti-democratic principles and had failed to meet some technical requirements of the election law. Peru has seen impressive, although uneven, economic growth in recent years, but many of the inequities that helped set off the guerrilla conflict remain, including crushing poverty in urban slums and villages and marginalization of indigenous populations. At least one faction of the Shining Path remains active in a remote jungle in central Peru, where its activities are focused on drug trafficking. It recently shot down a military helicopter and killed several soldiers, giving Peruvians an uneasy feeling that the awful past was not so distant. Part of the difficulty here is that both sides, the Shining Path and the government forces, were responsible for horrific abuses. That makes the process of agreeing on what happened more complex than it was in countries like Chile or Argentina, which have tried to come to terms with human rights abuses committed by military dictatorships. Most discussions of how to memorialize the war in Peru begin with the 2003 report of a government-sponsored Truth Commission, which estimated that more than 69,000 people had died in the conflict. The commission concluded that close to half the deaths were caused by the Shining Path and almost a third by government forces. The rest were attributed to various armed groups, including paramilitary forces, another rebel group and village self-defense patrols. Alfredo Crespo, a lawyer for Mr. Guzmn, the Shining Path leader, disputed the panels conclusions, saying that the numbers were inflated and that the government bore responsibility for most of the bloodshed. He said Mr. Guzmn, who was arrested in 1992 and is serving a life sentence, had paid his debt and should be freed. There comes a moment after the war ends when you have to suppress the pain and think about the future of Peruvian society, Mr. Crespo said. You have to heal the wounds and begin a process of national reconciliation. Such words are shocking to many Peruvians, coming on behalf of the man who created the Shining Paths brutal ideology. The group was notorious for killing villagers who did not support it and putting signs on the corpses to warn others of the dangers of dissent. Today, the landscape of memory in Peru is as rocky as the ground at La Hoyada, a lot on the fringes of the city of Ayacucho, the capital of the region of the same name that saw the fiercest fighting during the war. In the 1980s, La Hoyada was a dumping ground for the bodies of people detained and tortured at a nearby military barracks. The site also contained an outdoor oven used to burn some of the bodies. Investigators have exhumed the remains of more than 100 victims from La Hoyada, although they have not identified. A well-known victims rights group, Anfasep, which includes women who believe that their husbands or other relatives may have been secretly buried or cremated at La
53 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Hoyada, has erected a cross there and is asking the government to preserve the site. Adelina Garca, 47, stood on a recent afternoon in the shadow of the concrete tank that once fueled the oven. As with many people, the war came at her from both sides. Her father-in-law was killed by the Shining Path. In December 1983, she was beaten unconscious by government soldiers who hauled off her husband. She never saw him again and believes he was killed and his body dumped at La Hoyada. These plants here know where he is, she said, eyeing the agave plants and bushes that have taken over the lot. If they had mouths, they would tell me where he was buried. The Truth Commission registered more than 4,000 possible mass graves. Mr. Baraybar, the forensic anthropologist, led the exhumation of 92 bodies at Putis, an Andean hamlet in the Ayacucho region where government troops massacred at least 123 villagers in 1984. He said his team has located other burial sites but has been unable to receive government permission for further exhumations. The Ayacucho victims rights group also wants the government to make good on promises to pay reparations to victims families. And it wants the courts to move ahead with cases against the officers responsible for the deaths. The group created one of the countrys first memory museums, in Ayacucho, in 2005. It has a display of clothes worn by people killed in the conflict, which in some cases made it possible for relatives to identify their bodies. And it features a life-size model of a mass grave. If the museum in Ayacucho adopts the victims point of view, the Monument to Military Valor, on a military base in Lima, takes a different approach. The museum is a full-size replica of the Japanese ambassadors residence, where 72 hostages were held for 126 days by another rebel group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. The replica was built so that army commandos could practice a raid on the building beforehand, which they carried out in 1997 in an operation that left 2 commandos, 14 guerrillas and 1 captive dead. But witnesses, including one of the hostages, later said they had seen up to three of the guerrillas surrender, alleging they were killed afterward. A group of military and intelligence officials has been charged in the killings, but the case has dragged on in the courts for years. There is no mention of the charges in the museum, which the director, Maj. William Meyhuay, a veteran of the raid, said were baseless. We want people to know the real story, he said. The Pro-Human Rights Association, based in Lima, has been instrumental in pushing the case arising from the raid and has worked with the La Hoyada families. The fundamental thing about memory is that it has to help us prevent the rise of projects that can bring us back down that road of violence and terror, said Francisco Sobern, the groups executive director. Memory acts like a vaccine. Andrea Zarate contributed reporting.
54 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM
Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/americas/peru-confrontswounds-of-civil-war.html?hpw&pagewanted=print
55 of 55
5/27/2012 5:23 PM

Al Qaeda-Related and Other Articles Collected 52612

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Al Qaeda-Related and Other Articles Collected 52612

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attach...

Al Qaeda-Related and Other Articles, Collected 5/26/12

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/nyregion/andrew-smulianstar-witness-against-viktor-bout-gets-5-years-in-prison. html?pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/us/justices-agree-tohear-surveillance-challenge.html?pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/us/politics/militarywill-withstand-cuts-obama-says.html?pagewanted=print

Scott Shane and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/world/middleeast/fbi-chiefsays-leak-on-qaeda-plot-is-under-investigation.html?pagewanted=print

1.3. Middle East 1.3.1. Syria

1.3.1.1. Attack on Houla

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/middleeast /syrian-activists-claim-death-toll-in-village-soars.html?pagewanted= print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/middleeast /syrian-activists-claim-death-toll-in-village-soars.html?hpw& pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/world/middleeast/ damascus-syria-explosions-intelligence-headquarters. html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/middleeast/yemeniarmy-fights-to-retake-town.html?pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/world/middleeast/24ihtm24-yemen-change.html?pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/world/middleeast/dozenskilled-by-bomb-in-yemen-raising-al-qaeda-fears.html?pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/divided-lebanonpowerless-to-keep-out-syrias-war/?pagemode=print&tw_p=twt

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/middleeast/somein-egypt-disdain-both-candidates.html?_r=1&hp&pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/world/middleeast/afterprotests-iran-recalls-ambassador-from-azerbaijan.html?pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/opinion/iranians-takingsolace-in-the-past.html?pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/world/asia/doctor-whohelped-find-bin-laden-given-jail-term-official-says.html?pagewanted=print

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/death-of-aterrorist/

Date Collected: 5/26/2012 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/americas/peru-confrontswounds-of-civil-war.html?hpw&pagewanted=print

You might also like