AINA News Digest

AINA News Digest

001 04/24/2014 Video Shows Syrian Rebels May Have U.S.-made Antitank Missiles
002 04/24/2014 The Blair Doctrine
003 04/24/2014 Syriac Gazetter Preserves Endangered Middle East Christian Cultures
004 04/24/2014 Why Persecution of Egypt's Christians Is Not Over
005 04/24/2014 Elections in Kirkuk: The Kurdish Fight for the Arab Vote
006 04/24/2014 Iraqi Kurds Reach Agreement on New Government
007 04/24/2014 UN Chief: Syria War Threatens Lebanon's Stability
008 04/24/2014 Turkish Genocide Scholar Visits Assyrian, Armenian Genocide Memorials in Yerevan
009 04/24/2014 She Survived the Turkish Genocide, But Lost Her Assyrian Identity
010 04/24/2014 Tony Blair Denounces Muslim Brotherhood in Speech on Islamic Terrorism
011 04/24/2014 Jihadists Now Control Secretive U.S. Base in Libya


AINA News Digest

001 04/24/2014 Video Shows Syrian Rebels May Have U.S.-made Antitank Missiles
AMMAN, Jordan -- Video has surfaced that appears to show antitank guided missiles in the hands of a rebel faction operating in southern Syria, the latest indication that sophisticated U.S. weaponry is making its way to antigovernment fighters in Syria.
The video, posted April 13 on YouTube, seems to depict a fighter from a group called the Omari Brigades firing a BGM-71 TOW missile at what appears to be a bunkered Syrian army tank.
Although other videos circulating on the Internet have shown rebel groups in northern Syria firing TOW missiles, this marks the first time the U.S.-made weapon has appeared publicly in the arsenal of insurgents in southern Syria, a key front close to the Jordanian border.
TOW missiles may also be showing up in central Syria. The Ahmad Al-Abdo Battalions, a rebel faction based in the mountainous Qalamoun region between Syria and Lebanon, has likewise uploaded videos of what appear to be TOW missiles being deployed in combat.
A commander of the Lions of Allah battalions who goes by the nickname Abu Yasser, said TOW missiles had recently become available to his group, which operates outside Damascus, the Syrian capital.
"I think a large shipment has arrived, because you can now buy it on the black market," he said via Skype.
The accuracy of the various videos could not be authenticated. But Charles Lister, visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, who monitors weapon flows to Syria, identified the arms in the video from southern Syria as TOW missiles.
The weapon is designed to pierce the kind of armor found on Russian tanks, a mainstay of the Syrian army's ground operations. The missile's unique optical sighting mechanism distinguishes it from other weapons in the rebel arsenal, such as the Chinese-made HJ-8 "Red Arrow" variant, Lister said.
It was not clear who might have supplied the TOW missiles, but the international black market and foreign nations are possible sources.
A number of U.S. allies, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have the missiles. The Pentagon last year approved a $1-billion sale of 15,000 TOW missiles to Saudi Arabia, a major backer of the Syrian opposition.
An Omari Brigades spokesperson, contacted via Skype, denied receipt of TOW missiles, insisting the weapons in the video were from the group's stores of Red Arrow antitank missiles.
The Omari brigades were the first recipients in southern Syria of the Chinese-made Red Arrows, delivered as part of a Saudi-financed pipeline that stretched from Jordan as far as Croatia, according to reports in 2012.
The Omari faction is the southern affiliate of the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, led by Jamal Maarouf, a construction worker turned rebel commander in Idlib province, in northern Syria. Maarouf has become the focal point for Western support because of his self-proclaimed moderate stance. Former comrades, however, have accused him of being a profiteer and warlord.
The delivery of the TOW system would be a potential boost to opposition fighters, who have pressed Western powers to supply them with more sophisticated arms, such as shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. The Obama administration has balked, fearing the weapons could be turned against civilian aircraft.
Experts say antitank weapons alone are unlikely to alter the course of the 3-year-old war. The government of President Bashar Assad has been making steady gains against the U.S.-backed rebels, pushing insurgents back on several key fronts, including the suburbs of Damascus and in Homs province.


002 04/24/2014 The Blair Doctrine
Tony Blair's latest speech on Islam is significant as much for what it doesn't mention as for what it does. Not long ago, a speech of this sort would have been rich with contrasts between dictatorship and democracy. Democracy, the audience would have been told solemnly, equals freedom and modernity.
Instead Blair mentions the word 'democracy' only three times.
The first time he's referring to Israel and the second time he disavows the entire program of dropping elections on Muslim countries and expecting their populations to make the right choices. Instead he argues,
"Democracy cannot function except as a way of thinking as well as voting. You put your view; you may lose; you try to win next time; or you win but you accept that you may lose next time. That is not the way that the Islamist ideology works."
This is very much a post-Arab Spring speech and though he offers obligatory praise of that over-hyped phenomenon, the lessons he has drawn from its failure make for a changed perspective.
How changed? Blair endorses the Egyptian popular overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood and urges support for the new government within the larger context of "supporting and assisting" those who take on "Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood".
That's an impossible position in Washington D.C., but it emerges naturally out of an understanding that democracy isn't enough and that an Islamist political victory inherently dismantles democracy.
"Islamist ideology", Blair says, has an "exclusivist" ultimate goal, which is "not a society which someone else can change after winning an election". The Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist groups, he says, are both part of an "overall ideology" in which "such extremism can take root". They are all totalitarian group that differ on "how to achieve the goals of Islamism" rather than on "what those goals are."
Democracy is downright destructive in a political landscape in which Islamic political forces compete. Instead Blair's new doctrine replaces democracy with religious freedom.
The former British Prime Minister calls for supporting "the principles of religious freedom and open, rule based economies. It means helping those countries whose people wish to embrace those principles to achieve them. Where there has been revolution, we should be on the side of those who support those principles and opposed to those who would thwart them."
That position, Blair continues, leads him to support the Egyptian uprising against the Muslim Brotherhood and even interim Assad rule until a final agreement is concluded.
While that may not seem like much, imagine the last 15 years if the obsession with using democracy to replace dictatorships had instead been turned to promoting religious freedom at the expense of Islamic rule. Imagine if we made tolerance for Christians and other religious minorities into the defining line instead of the meaningless one of holding majority rule Muslim elections.
The Blair Doctrine surgically replaces democracy with religious freedom while leaving the larger worldview so common in European and American political circles untouched so that it does not seem like a shift, but a natural adaptation to the failures of the Arab Spring.
Blair cannot and will not say that the problem with democracy in countries with an Islamic majority is the tyranny of the majority, nor does he ever use the word 'secularism', and his rhetoric is largely dependent on assumptions made in the aftermath of the Cold War by a comfortable West.
He speaks positively of globalization, without conceding that the UK has a terrorism crisis largely because of it. He briefly mentions the export of 'radicalism' from the Middle East, but aside from the Muslim Brotherhood's growing power in Europe, he doesn't elaborate.
To a multicultural left that already embraces Burkas and FGM, his speech is rage fodder. But while Blair may have helped turn Islam into a problem in the UK, it's his foes on the left who have championed its worst aspects.
Tony Blair is no Geert Wilders and the UK's problem with Islam is in no small part of his making due to his government's immigration policies, but revolutionary ideas are more likely to be accepted from thoroughly establishment sources.
In his speech, Blair argues that reactionary Islamic rule is the problem, rather than mere tyranny. It's a shift that invalidates the entire political Islam movement behind the Arab Spring. And for all the many ways that he covers his tracks, subdividing Islam from Islamism, he does hold a nearly firm line on Islamic rule. That is a rarity in a world order which had come to embrace political Islam as the future.
And yet Blair's speech isn't really that revolutionary. It's a reaction to current events such as the degeneration of Erdogan's Turkey, once used by Western diplomats as a model of Muslim democracy, into a brutal tyranny whose abuses the world is no longer able to ignore, the collapse of the Arab Spring and the failure of elections to bring peace to the religious conflicts in the Muslim world.
The establishment parties and pundits have had little to say about it. The Obama-Romney foreign policy debate has been largely mirrored across the ocean in Europe. Widely hated by his own party, Blair has little to lose by offering a shift that seems very mild, while explaining the failures of the past 15 years in terms of a new paradigm. It's much more graceful than Cameron's episodes of unconvincingly bellicose rhetoric, to say nothing of his opposite number, and yet for all its shortcomings, it's also very promising.
If religious freedom replaces democracy as the metric by which we judge Muslim countries, if we put as much effort into protecting the rights of minorities as we did into promoting elections, we will finally be on the right track. And even if we accomplish little, the metric effectively blocks the political ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood and its various front groups.
And that is no small thing.
The Blair Doctrine, while paying ample lip service to the peaceful nature of Islam, would block the rise of Islamic political parties. It would make pluralism into the new democracy and "religious extremism" into the new tyranny. It would be far less interested in majority rule elections and far more cognizant of protecting the diversity of political and religious expression.
It would apply the very metrics that the modern left insists on applying to the West, but refuses to apply to the Third World, to the Muslim world.
Republicans could do worse than put copies of the speech into the hands of presidential candidates still mumbling confused nonsense about the region. Blair offers much of the same rhetoric, but with a clear focus on the lack of religious freedom. If Romney had been operating from the Blair Doctrine, he might have been able to put forward a polished and reasonable worldview in the debate.
There are plenty of things wrong with Blair's speech. He believes the Saudis are reformers, that the Palestinian Arabs want peace and that the issue isn't Islam as a religion. But he is also surprisingly honest about Egypt, Syria and Libya; and about the links between Islamic power and violence.
And the Blair Doctrine's shift from democracy to religious freedom could fundamentally change our relationship with the Muslim world.


003 04/24/2014 Syriac Gazetter Preserves Endangered Middle East Christian Cultures
Key moments in the development and interaction of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other religions are being preserved through Syriaca.org, an international collaboration edited by scholars at Vanderbilt and Princeton universities.
The Syriac Gazetteer, an online geographical dictionary, is the first in a series of reference works launched by Syriaca.org to document and save ancient and medieval Middle Eastern cultural heritage now threatened by civil war and political instability.
The Syriac language is a dialect of Aramaic once used widely throughout the Middle East and Asia. Syriac was an important language in the spread of Christianity, according to David A. Michelson, assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Vanderbilt and general editor of Syriaca.org. Jesus and many early Christians spoke a related dialect of Aramaic, and the Gospels were translated into Syriac at a very early moment in the history of Christianity. In the Middle Ages, Syriac-speaking communities could be found in what today would be Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, Central Asia, Mongolia and China.
The Syriac Gazetteer contains descriptions of more than 2,400 places relevant to the study of Syriac. These entries, written in English, Arabic and Syriac, range from ancient centers of Syriac culture such as Edessa, located in what is modern-day Turkey, to Piscataway, N.J., where Syriac scholarship is still being produced by heritage communities.
Michelson uses the term "Syriac heritage communities" to refer to a number of different contemporary Aramaic minority populations who have connections to the historical Syriac cultures of the Middle East. These communities include ethnic and religious populations who identify variously as Syriac, Assyrian, Aramean, Maronite, St. Thomas Christians, Chaldean Catholic, Antiochian Orthodox, Syro-Malabar Catholic, the Church of the East, and a number of other groups.
"Although Syriac heritage communities have survived through the years as minority enclaves in the Middle East and Asia, these communities and their religious and cultural heritage remain relatively unknown in the West," Michelson said. "The study of Syriac has received little attention until now, but scholars are beginning to realize these sources hold immense value for increasing our understanding of the historical relationships among Jews, Christians and Muslims."
David A. Michelson, assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Vanderbilt University and general editor of Syriaca.org.Researchers estimate that more than 10,000 manuscripts or manuscript fragments written in Syriac survive today around the globe. For much of the 20th century, Syria and Iraq were home to some of the largest Syriac communities in the region, but they have experienced significant displacement and destruction of their cultural heritage during the past decade.
"The current civil war in Syria has had a devastating toll on all segments of the Syrian population," Michelson said. "Many in Syria's minority communities have been forced to evacuate their homes in fear for their lives." Michelson described the situation as also perilous in Iraq. "Minority communities have become particularly easy targets for violence," he said. "These communities have increasingly turned to emigration in the face of these threats. With such disruption and migration, there is a real risk that minority communities will not be able to maintain their unique cultural identities."
Syriaca.org's online tools serve a broad audience interested in the Syriac cultural heritage, including researchers and students in Middle Eastern studies, classics, medieval history, religious studies, biblical studies and linguistics. In addition, the online portal is available for use by Syriac heritage communities and the public. All resources of Syriaca.org are published in a free and open format using Creative Commons licenses.
Thomas A. Carlson, a postdoctoral research associate in medieval Middle East history at Princeton University, co-edits The Syriac Gazetteer with Michelson. Peter R. L. Brown, the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Emeritus at Princeton chairs the editorial committee for Syriaca.org. Technical design of the project was completed by Winona Salesky, independent consultant, and Thomas Elliott, senior research scholar, New York University.
Vanderbilt Divinity students who have worked on Syriaca.org include Anthony Davis, Dan Greeson and Tucker Hannah, all second-year students pursuing a master of theological studies. Other participating students are Erin Minta Johnson, in her first year in the same master's programs, while Justin Arnwine is a first-year master's student in the Graduate Department of Religion.
The Syriac Gazetteer is funded as part of the "International Balzan Prize awarded to Peter Brown by the Fondazione Internazionale Balzan. Michelson was selected as a junior scholar to co-direct the project as a part of the award terms. The National Endowment for the Humanities and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have also provided funding for Syriaca.org.
Interested individuals can explore The Syriac Gazetteer by browsing the interactive map. Readers can also search for specific types of places such as churches or topography.


004 04/24/2014 Why Persecution of Egypt's Christians Is Not Over
Egypt's Christians are hoping they'll be better protected from violence when the country elects a new president next month.
But that may be wishful thinking.
CBN News Contributing Analyst Raymond Ibrahim says while attacks have subsided since the Muslim Brotherhood left power, persecution of the country's Christian minority is likely to continue.
Longing for Harmony
Islamic extremists often attack Egyptian churches during Christian holidays, but not this year.
Easter services like the one led by Pope Tawadros at Cairo's Saint Mark's Cathedral proceeded without incident. Perhaps the tight security provided by police served as a deterrent to would-be terrorists.
Members of one Coptic Christian family, the Abdullahs, said they felt safer this Easter than they did last year when the Muslim Brotherhood controlled the government.
Anwar Abdullah said he wants peace and stability to return to his country.
"I hope that people here become loving to one another again, like in the old days, when people used to visit each other and were friendlier," he said.
That's the desire of most Egyptians who want to live in peace with their neighbors, free from attack.
More Violence Ahead?
With only a month to go before Egyptians elect a new president, former Army Chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is favored to win.
He led the effort to remove former President Mohammed Morsi from power and declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
But if he is elected president, can he protect Christians? Ibrahim says believers may still experience violence.
"There's a mob mentality; it's been there for quite a while, and no matter who is in charge of the government - the Muslim Brotherhood, the military, el-Sisi, and so forth - you have the mob that's easily provoked," Ibrahim explained.
"And then behind the mob you have the Islamic clerics, specifically the Salafis who incite the mob," he said.
And the government may be unable to stop them.
A Disturbing Trend
Ibrahim said attacks against Christians and their churches usually happen on Fridays, the Islamic day of prayer. That's when enraged militants cast their wrath on non-Muslims.
Ibrahim told CBN News the story of recent Christian murder victim Mary George Sameh.
"It's a very unfortunate, though increasingly typical story. Mary George was a young, 20-something Coptic woman," he began.
"During a Friday - I think it was two or three weeks ago - she was parking at a church, and according to one eye witness, her cross identified her, the cross in the rear view mirror of her car," he continued.
"Her car was rampaged, attacked; she was pulled out, beaten, tortured, and killed," he said. "And, of course, she was there doing a very Christian thing: bringing medicine to an elderly Christian woman who was in need of it."
US Assistance
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has agreed to help the Egyptian government combat Islamic terrorism in the Sinai.
The Pentagon said it will resume delivery of 10 Apache helicopters to the Egyptian military. The shipments were halted last year after the army removed the Muslim Brotherhood from power.
Also, President Barack Obama has yet to appoint a new U.S. ambassador to Egypt. The position has been vacant since Ann Patterson left the job nearly eight months ago. Egyptians said she was too close to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Secretary of State John Kerry has recommended the position be filled by Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria.


005 04/24/2014 Elections in Kirkuk: The Kurdish Fight for the Arab Vote
KIRKUK, Kurdistan Region -- In the run up to this month's parliamentary and provincial elections, Kurdish parties in Kirkuk are reaching out to the city's Arab and Turkmen population, recruiting them as candidates and printing multilingual campaign posters.
Aso Mamand, head of the local bureau of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) believes that his list has already won the trust of all ethnic groups through public services.
"The leader of the PUK list will win many votes from the Arab, Turkmen, and the Assyrian-Chaldean groups of Kirkuk due to the social services he brought to their neighborhoods," Mamand told Rudaw.
Najmaldin Karim, the current governor of Kirkuk and senior PUK member is the head of his parties list for the provincial elections.
Observers believe that Kurdish parties are targeting Kirkuk's ethnic groups because they failed to form a united list of their own.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the PUK are the two major parties in Kirkuk. But despite running on a joint list in most previous Iraqi elections, they decided to run separately in the April 30 polls due to political disagreements.
Both parties are now vying for Kirkuk's more than 841,000 eligible voters.
"Unfortunately we could not create one united Kurdish list of candidates," says Mamand. "However, we are not going to base our expectations on the results of the 2010 elections and we do expect to win more seats this time around."
Meanwhile representatives of smaller parties in Kirkuk think that the KDP-PUK split aside, the two parties are likely to lose many voters due to their poor political record in the multiethnic province.
"The PUK and the KDP have bored the people of Kirkuk with their election campaigns," says Suad Ghazi, the Communist Party candidate for the Iraqi parliament. "They have monopolized six Kurdish seats among themselves and would not allow that number to increase if it is not in their own interest."
Winning the votes of non-Kurdish groups isn't going to be easy. The Kurds have strong Arab groups to contend with, among them the Arabic Coalition of Muhammad al-Tamimi, Iraq's current Minister of Education, who said recently that he has "allocated one billion Iraqi Dinars for the election campaign,"
Al-Tamimi said that Kurdish candidates do not stand a chance among Arab voters who are determined to keep Kirkuk as an Iraqi city.
"We will increase our votes though our slogans, especially when we tell the Arabs that Kirkuk is an Iraqi city," he said. "This will ruin the dreams of those who claim that the Arab voters will vote for the non-Arabic lists."
Despite Kirkuk's large Kurdish population the province's Arab candidates present a formidable force. In 2010 they won more than 211,000, giving them six seats in parliament.
"We will protect the unity in Kirkuk this time despite the various threats facing us, especially the lives of our candidates," Abd al-Rahman Murshid al-Assi, leader of the Arab Front in Kirkuk told Rudaw.
Al-Assi said that so far there have been four assassination attempts against Arab candidates in Kirkuk.
According to Arshad Salihi, the leader of the Turkmen Front, Turkmen voters are more vulnerable to the Kurdish campaign than their Arab neighbors.
"The candidates of the Kurdish groups are visiting the Turkmen neighborhoods and promise to bring social services in return for their votes," said Salihi. "We believe our votes are in danger this time."


006 04/24/2014 Iraqi Kurds Reach Agreement on New Government
Leaders in Iraq's Kurdistan Region have finally reached an agreement on the new government around seven months after the elections. Officials from the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party will work with the anti-corruption Change Movement. Observers say the Change Movement has two problematic ministries among its share. In the Finance Ministry the party is facing challenges in solving budget disputes with Baghdad. In the Peshmarga Military Ministry the party has to unify Kurdistan's politically controlled military.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan was relegated to third place in the election after years of sharing government power. Patriotic Union members reject claims that they're struggling to accept the government agreements. The political tension comes as the Patriotic Union claims that Iraq's President Talabani will return to Kurdistan very soon. Talabani has apparently been hospitalized in Germany after suffering a stroke almost a year and a half ago. Some critics say that announcing Kurdistan's new regional government just days before Iraq's national elections is a campaign tactic. Meanwhile others are content that party leaders have finally reached agreements seven months after voters went to the polls.


007 04/24/2014 UN Chief: Syria War Threatens Lebanon's Stability
(AP) -- The U.N. secretary-general is warning that the 3-year-old conflict in Syria poses a serious threat to the stability of neighboring Lebanon, as thousands of refugees stream into the small country and weapons and fighters are transferred out.
Ban Ki-moon's latest report to the U.N. Security Council, circulated Thursday, says the involvement of Lebanese groups in the Syrian fighting "has had a devastating impact on security," including several terrorist attacks in Lebanon "by groups claiming that they are acting in response to Hezbollah's fighting in Syria."
Lebanon, with its own history of a 15-year civil war, has a fragile sectarian mix that supports both sides in the Syrian conflict.
Sunni Muslims in Lebanon tend to support Syrian rebels. Lebanese Shiites tend to support the Syrian regime. The powerful Shiite Hezbollah group has sent fighters to support the regime's forces, and the U.N. chief again called on that to stop.
Ban's report also highlighted the growing humanitarian problem as Lebanon, "the smallest and most vulnerable of Syria's neighbors," hosts the most of its refugees.
Earlier this month, the U.N. refugee agency marked a grim milestone: the one-millionth refugee to register in Lebanon, a country of just 4.5 million.
The agency has said it is registering an average of more than one refugee a minute there.
The country is "facing significant humanitarian and socio-economic challenges as a consequence," Ban's new report said.
The U.N. chief also noted the almost-daily "cross-border shooting, shelling and rocket attacks" from Syria into Lebanon, which killed at least 12 people in the past half-year. All were in the border town of Arsal, which was hit by multiple rockets on Jan. 17 and by at least 20 missiles on March 3 and 16 during raids by the Syrian Air force.
Ban called for "full respect" for Lebanon's sovereignty, including from Israel, whose continued overflights of Lebanese territory he described as "deplorable."


008 04/24/2014 Turkish Genocide Scholar Visits Assyrian, Armenian Genocide Memorials in Yerevan
Assyrians at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia.Yerevan (AINA) -- Today, on the 99th anniversary of the Turkish Genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, Assyrians of Armenia visited the Armenian Genocide monument in Tsitsernakaberd and paid tribute to the memory of the victims. They laid a wreath at the memorial and placed flowers near the eternal flame of the victims.
Dr. Eran Gunduz, the Turkish representative from the German Association for the Recognition of the Genocide visited the Assyrian genocide monument in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. He laid flowers at the monument and honored the memory of the Assyrian people with a minute of silence. Dr. Gunduz said he planned in advance that today after visiting the Armenian genocide memorial complex he would pay respects to the Assyrian victims who were subjected to genocide in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
"I hope one of these days the Republic of Turkey will recognize this historical injustice and will accept its guilt," he said.
The Turkish genocide of Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians occurred between 1915 and 1918, and claimed the lives of 750,000 Assyrians (75%), 1.5 million Armenians and 500,000 Pontic Greeks. It was a genocide designed to exterminate Christians and it nearly succeeded. Today Turkey is 99% Muslim. In the 1820s 40% of its population was non-Muslim, mostly Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks and some Jews. In 1915 the non-Muslim population had declined to 19%. In 1918 it had declined to less than 1% directly as a result of the genocide.
The Assyrian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia.
That the genocide occurred is beyond dispute. The evidence comes from multiple sources. The genocide was recorded by Arnold Toynbee, famed British historian, as well as countless American and German missionaries. Toynbee's document runs for more than 600 pages and is entitled, "Arnold Toynbee Papers and Documents on the Treatment of Armenians and Assyrian Christians by the Turks, 1915-1916, in the Ottoman Empire and North-West Persia." The national archives of the British, French and American states contain a large collection of documents related to the genocide. The Diplomatic French archives, for example, included 45 volumes on the Assyrian question from 1915 to 1940.
Assyrians at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia.


009 04/24/2014 She Survived the Turkish Genocide, But Lost Her Assyrian Identity
(AINA) -- In 1974, at the height of the Kurdish insurrection in north Iraq, a woman knocked on the door of a house in the Assyrian quarter of Kirkuk. The owner of the house, Michael, opened the door and saw an elderly Kurdish woman. According to Michael, he was so shaken and disturbed by this encounter that immediately afterward he sat in his living room and sobbed for two hours.
The following is a transcript that Michael wrote after this incident occurred. He kept it for thirteen years, never telling anyone about it. In 1985 he immigrated to Chicago. In 1986 he gave the transcript to Delilah, who had immigrated to Chicago in 1984. When asked by Delilah why he had not told her in 1973, he said at the time he wished to spare her the pain of remembering the genocide, which had claimed the life of his own father, and which this incident had triggered so many painful memories in him. But now his perspective had changed, and he felt that Delilah and her family had a right to know, and such accounts should be made available to all, so that the genocide would never be forgotten.
Delilah died in 1986. Michael died in 1987.
The Turkish genocide of Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians occurred between 1915 and 1918, and claimed the lives of 750,000 Assyrians (75%), 1.5 million Armenians and 500,000 Pontic Greeks. It was a genocide designed to exterminate Christians and it nearly succeeded. Today Turkey is 99% Muslim. In the 1820s 40% of its population was non-Muslim, mostly Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks and some Jews. In 1915 the non-Muslim population had declined to 19%. In 1918 it had declined to less than 1% directly as a result of the genocide.
That the genocide occurred is beyond dispute. The evidence comes from multiple sources. The genocide was recorded by Arnold Toynbee, famed British historian, as well as countless American and German missionaries. Toynbee's document runs for more than 600 pages and is entitled, "Arnold Toynbee Papers and Documents on the Treatment of Armenians and Assyrian Christians by the Turks, 1915-1916, in the Ottoman Empire and North-West Persia." The national archives of the British, French and American states contain a large collection of documents related to the genocide. The Diplomatic French archives, for example, included 45 volumes on the Assyrian question from 1915 to 1940.
There is also the testimony of thousands of Assyrian, Greek and Armenian survivors. The following is one such testimony.
The names in the following transcript have been Anglicized. The transcript was translated from Assyrian by AINA.
Michael opens the door after hearing a knock.
"Your neighbor sent me here," she said in Kurdish and broken Assyrian.
"May I help you?"
"Yes. I am looking for my family. I told your Arab neighbor I am an Assyrian; he sent me here."
"What is your name?"
"My Kurdish name is Neurez. My Assyrian name is Susan [Shooshan]."
"Are you Kurdish or Assyrian?"
"I am an Assyrian. I was born in Turkey in 1903. I am from the village of Ishtazin. My father was John David [Youkhana Dawid]."
"I am Michael."
"My mother, father and two brothers were killed by a Kurd in 1915. He spared my life and forced me to marry him. I want to find my family. I had two uncles on my father's side, and an uncle and an aunt on my mother's side."
"What were their names?"
"My father's brothers were Zia and Tower. My mother's sister was Batishwa and her brother was Paul [Paulus]. Zia was married and had a boy and a girl, Matthew [Matay] and Delilah [Dalaleh]"
"There's a woman who lives four doors from here. Her name is Delilah and I am almost sure she is from the village of Ishtazin."
"Delilah? Uncle Zia's daughter?"
"I am not sure. Let me see if my wife knows. Will you please come in?"
"No."
Michael said he went into the house and asked his wife if Delilah was Zia's daughter, and if she was from the village of Ishtazin.
"My wife says that Delilah is Zia's daughter and they are from Ishtazin. They are most likely your relatives."
Michael reported seeing tears in Susan's eyes, and she became silent for nearly five minutes, gazing off into the distance.
"I think you are a very lucky woman. Come, let me bring you to her."
"No!" she screamed.
"But that is why you came, is it not?"
"Yes...but I can't stay, I am a Kurd now, I have children and grandchildren."
"You would not have to stay, just meet her."
"I...would not be able to leave if I met her. I...am a Muslim now."
"Where do you live?"
"Sulaymaniyah."
"You have come a long way. You should not leave without seeing if that's your family."
"No! No! I must leave now."
"No wait!"
Michael said that Susan darted off with remarkable agility, never to be seen again.


010 04/24/2014 Tony Blair Denounces Muslim Brotherhood in Speech on Islamic Terrorism
Tony Blair giving his keynote speech at Bloomberg (photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images).It is unsurprising that public opinion in the UK and elsewhere, resents the notion that we should engage with the politics of the Middle East and beyond. We have been through painful engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq. After 2008, we have had our own domestic anxieties following the financial crisis. And besides if we want to engage, people reasonably ask: where, how and to what purpose?
More recently, Ukraine has served to push the Middle East to the inside pages, with the carnage of Syria featuring somewhat, but the chaos of Libya, whose Government we intervened to change, hardly meriting a mention.
However the Middle East matters. What is presently happening there, still represents the biggest threat to global security of the early 21st C. The region, including the wider area outside its conventional boundary -- Pakistan, Afghanistan to the east and North Africa to the west -- is in turmoil with no end in sight to the upheaval and any number of potential outcomes from the mildly optimistic to catastrophe.
At the root of the crisis lies a radicalised and politicised view of Islam, an ideology that distorts and warps Islam's true message. The threat of this radical Islam is not abating. It is growing. It is spreading across the world. It is de-stabilising communities and even nations. It is undermining the possibility of peaceful co-existence in an era of globalisation. And in the face of this threat we seem curiously reluctant to acknowledge it and powerless to counter it effectively.
In this speech I will set out how we should do this, including the recognition that on this issue, whatever our other differences, we should be prepared to reach out and cooperate with the East, and in particular, Russia and China.
The statement that the Middle East 'matters', is no longer uncontested. Some say after the shale revolution, the region has declined in significance for energy supplies, at least for the USA. Others say that though they accept that it continues to be a relevant and important region, there are other more pressing problems, most particularly now with Eastern Europe facing a resurgent, nationalist Russia. For the most part, a very common sentiment is that the region may be important but it is ungovernable and therefore impossible and therefore we should let it look after itself.
I would say there are four reasons why the Middle East remains of central importance and cannot be relegated to the second order.
First and most obviously, it is still where a large part of the world's energy supplies are generated, and whatever the long term implications of the USA energy revolution, the world's dependence on the Middle East is not going to disappear any time soon. In any event, it has a determining effect on the price of oil; and thus on the stability and working of the global economy.
Secondly, it is right on the doorstep of Europe. The boundary of the EU is a short distance from the Levantine coast. Instability here affects Europe, as does instability in North Africa, in close proximity to Spain and Italy.
Third, in the centre of this maelstrom, is Israel. Its alliance with the USA, its partnership with leading countries of Europe, and the fact that it is a Western democracy, mean that its fate is never going to be a matter of indifference. Over these past years, with considerable skill, the Israelis have also built up relationships with China and with Russia. These aren't the same as their long standing Western alliances but they have significance. Were the Israelis to be pulled into a regional conflict, there is no realistic way that the world could or would want to shrug it off. For the moment, Israel has successfully stayed aloof from the storm around it. But the one thing the last few years has taught us (and them) is that we can expect the unexpected.
Finally and least obvious, is a reason we are curiously reluctant to admit, in part because the admission would throw up some very difficult policy choices. It is in the Middle East that the future of Islam will be decided. By this I mean the future of its relationship with politics. This is controversial because the world of politics is uncomfortable talking about religion; because some will say that really the problems are not religious but political; and even because -- it is true -- that the largest Muslim populations are to be found outside the region not inside it.
But I assert it nonetheless. I do so because underneath the turmoil and revolution of the past years is one very clear and unambiguous struggle: between those with a modern view of the Middle East, one of pluralistic societies and open economies, where the attitudes and patterns of globalisation are embraced; and, on the other side, those who want to impose an ideology born out of a belief that there is one proper religion and one proper view of it, and that this view should, exclusively, determine the nature of society and the political economy. We might call this latter perspective an 'Islamist' view, though one of the frustrating things about this debate is the inadequacy of the terminology and the tendency for any short hand to be capable of misinterpretation, so that you can appear to elide those who support the Islamist ideology with all Muslims.
But wherever you look -- from Iraq to Libya to Egypt to Yemen to Lebanon to Syria and then further afield to Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan -- this is the essential battle. Of course there are an array of complexities in each case, derived from tribe, tradition and territory. I would not for a moment suggest that these conflicts do not have their own individual characteristics. And the lack of economic opportunity is without doubt a prime proximate cause of the region's chaos. But there is something frankly odd about the reluctance to accept what is so utterly plain: that they have in common a struggle around the issue of the rightful place of religion, and in particular Islam, in politics.
It is crucially important in this description not to confuse the issue of religion and politics, with the question of religiosity. Many of those totally opposed to the Islamist ideology are absolutely devout Muslims. In fact it is often the most devout who take most exception to what they regard as the distortion of their faith by those who claim to be ardent Muslims whilst acting in a manner wholly in contradiction to the proper teaching of the Koran.
Neither should this be seen in simplistic Sunni/Shia terms. Sometimes the struggle is seen in those terms and sometimes it is right to see it so. But the real battle is against both Sunni and Shia extremism where the majority of people, Sunni or Shia, who are probably perfectly content to live and let live, in the same way that nowadays most Catholics and Protestants do, are caught in a vicious and often literal crossfire between competing exclusivist views of the 'true' Islam. Where the two views align, whatever their mutual antagonism, is in the belief that those who think differently are the 'enemy' either within or without.
The reason this matters so much is that this ideology is exported around the world. The Middle East is still the epicentre of thought and theology in Islam. Those people, fortunately not a majority, in countries like, for example, Indonesia or Malaysia who espouse a strict Islamist perspective, didn't originate these ideas. They imported them.
For the last 40/50 years, there has been a steady stream of funding, proselytising, organising and promulgating coming out of the Middle East, pushing views of religion that are narrow minded and dangerous. Unfortunately we seem blind to the enormous global impact such teaching has had and is having.
Within the Middle East itself, the result has been horrible, with people often facing a choice between authoritarian Government that is at least religiously tolerant; and the risk that in throwing off the Government they don't like, they end up with a religiously intolerant quasi-theocracy.
Take a step back and analyse the world today: with the possible exception of Latin America (leaving aside Hezbollah in the tri-border area in South America), there is not a region of the world not adversely affected by Islamism and the ideology is growing. The problems of the Mid East and North Africa are obvious. But look at the terror being inflicted in countries -- Nigeria, Mali, Central African Republic, Chad and many others -- across Sub Saharan Africa. Indeed I would argue that that religious extremism is possibly the single biggest threat to their ability to overcome the massive challenges of development today.
In Central Asia, terrorist attacks are regular occurrences in Russia, whose Muslim population is now over 15%, and radical influences are stretching across the whole of the central part of Northern Asia, reaching even the Western province of Xinjiang in China.
In the Far East, there has been the important breakthrough in resolving the Mindanao dispute in the Philippines, where well over 100,000 people lost their lives in the last decade or so. But elsewhere, in Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Indonesia, there remain real inter-religious challenges and tensions. In the recent Indonesian elections, the Islamic parties received a third of the vote.
The Muslim population in Europe is now over 40m and growing. The Muslim Brotherhood and other organisations are increasingly active and they operate without much investigation or constraint. Recent controversy over schools in Birmingham (and similar allegations in France) show heightened levels of concern about Islamist penetration of our own societies.
All of this you can read about.
However for the purposes of this speech, two fascinating things stand out for me. The first is the absolutely rooted desire on the part of Western commentators to analyse these issues as disparate rather than united by common elements. They go to extraordinary lengths to say why, in every individual case, there are multiple reasons for understanding that this is not really about Islam, it is not really about religion; there are local or historic reasons which explain what is happening. There is a wish to eliminate the obvious common factor in a way that is almost wilful. Now of course as I have said, there is always a context that is unique to each situation. There will naturally be a host of local factors that play a part in creating the issue. But it is bizarre to ignore the fact the principal actors in all situations, express themselves through the medium of religious identity or that in ideological terms, there is a powerful unifying factor based on a particular world view of religion and its place in politics and society.
The second thing is that there is a deep desire to separate the political ideology represented by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood from the actions of extremists including acts of terrorism. This stems from a completely laudable sense that we must always distinguish between those who violate the law and those we simply disagree with.
But laudable though the motives are, which lead us to this distinction, if we're not careful, they also blind us to the fact that the ideology itself is nonetheless dangerous and corrosive; and cannot and should not be treated as a conventional political debate between two opposing views of how society should be governed.
It may well be the case that in particular situations, those who follow a strictly Islamist political agenda neither advocate nor approve of political violence. There are of course a variety of different views within such a broadly described position. But their overall ideology is one which inevitably creates the soil in which such extremism can take root. In many cases, it is clear that they regard themselves as part of a spectrum, with a difference of view as to how to achieve the goals of Islamism, not a difference as to what those goals are; and in certain cases, they will support the use of violence.
At this point it must again be emphasised: it is not Islam itself that gives rise to this ideology. It is an interpretation of Islam, actually a perversion of it which many Muslims abhor. There used to be such interpretations of Christianity which took us years to eradicate from our mainstream politics.
The reason that this ideology is dangerous is that its implementation is incompatible with the modern world -- politically, socially, and economically. Why? Because the way the modern world works is through connectivity. Its essential nature is pluralist. It favours the open-minded. Modern economies work through creativity and connections. Democracy cannot function except as a way of thinking as well as voting. You put your view; you may lose; you try to win next time; or you win but you accept that you may lose next time.
That is not the way that the Islamist ideology works. It is not about a competing view of how society or politics should be governed within a common space where you accept other views are equally valid. It is exclusivist in nature. The ultimate goal is not a society which someone else can change after winning an election. It is a society of a fixed polity, governed by religious doctrines that are not changeable but which are, of their essence, unchangeable.
Because the West is so completely unfamiliar with such an ideology --though actually the experience of revolutionary communism or fascism should resonate with older generations -- we can't really see the danger properly. We feel almost that if we identify it in these terms, we're being anti-Muslim, a sentiment on which the Islamists cleverly play.
Right now in the Middle East, this is the battle being waged. Of course in each country, it arises in a different form. But in each case, take out the extremist views around religion, and each conflict or challenge becomes infinitely more manageable. This is where, even though at one level the ideology coming out of Shia Iran and that of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood may seem to be different, in reality they amount to the same thing with the same effect -- the holding back of the proper political, social and economic advance of the country.
It is this factor that then can explain many of the things that presently we seem to find inexplicable in a way that fuels our desire to dis-engage from the region and beyond it.
So we look at the issue of intervention or not and seem baffled. We change the regimes in Afghanistan and in Iraq, put soldiers on the ground in order to help build the country, a process which a majority of people in both countries immediately participated in, through the elections. But that proved immensely difficult and bloody.
We change the regime in Libya through air power, we don't commit forces on the ground, again the people initially respond well, but now Libya is a mess and a mess that is de-stabilising everywhere around it, (apart from Algeria partly because Algeria already went through a conflict precisely around the issue of Islamism in which thousands lost their lives.)
In Syria, we call for the regime to change, we encourage the Opposition to rise up, but then when Iran activates Hezbollah on the side of Assad, we refrain even from air intervention to give the Opposition a chance. The result is a country in disintegration, millions displaced, a death toll approximating that of Iraq, with no end in sight and huge risks to regional stability.
The impact of this recent history, on Western opinion is a wish at all costs to stay clear of it all.
Then there has been the so-called Arab Spring. At first we jumped in to offer our support to those on the street. We are now bemused and bewildered that it hasn't turned out quite how we expected.
Even in respect of the MEPP there is an audible feeling of dismay, -- that as the world around Israel and Palestine went into revolutionary spasm, and the need for progress seemed so plain, the issue in which we have expended extraordinary energy and determination through US Secretary Kerry, still seems as intractable as ever.
Yet the explanation for all of these apparently unresolvable contradictions is staring us in the face.
It is that there is a Titanic struggle going on within the region between those who want the region to embrace the modern world -- politically, socially and economically -- and those who instead want to create a politics of religious difference and exclusivity. This is the battle. This is the distorting feature. This is what makes intervention so fraught but non- intervention equally so. This is what complicates the process of political evolution. This is what makes it so hard for democracy to take root. This is what, irrespective of the problems on the Israeli side, divides Palestinian politics and constrains their leadership.
The important point for Western opinion is that this is a struggle with two sides. So when we look at the Middle East and beyond it to Pakistan or Iran and elsewhere, it isn't just a vast unfathomable mess with no end in sight and no one worthy of our support. It is in fact a struggle in which our own strategic interests are intimately involved; where there are indeed people we should support and who, ironically, are probably in the majority if only that majority were mobilised, organised and helped.
But what is absolutely necessary is that we first liberate ourselves from our own attitude. We have to take sides. We have to stop treating each country on the basis of whatever seems to make for the easiest life for us at any one time. We have to have an approach to the region that is coherent and sees it as a whole. And above all, we have to commit. We have to engage.
Engagement and commitment are words easy to use. But they only count when they come at a cost. Alliances are forged at moments of common challenge. Partnerships are built through trials shared. There is no engagement that doesn't involve a price. There is no commitment that doesn't mean taking a risk.
In saying this, it does not mean that we have to repeat the enormous commitment of Iraq and Afghanistan. It may well be that in time people come to view the impact of those engagements differently. But there is no need, let alone appetite, to do that.
I completely understand why our people feel they have done enough, more than enough. And when they read of those we have tried to help spurning our help, criticising us, even trying to kill us, they're entitled to feel aggrieved and to say: we're out.
However, as the Afghans who braved everything to vote show us and the Iraqis who will also come out and vote despite all the threats and the inadequacy of the system they now live in, demonstrate, those who spurn our help are only part of the story. There are others whose spirit and determination stay undaunted. And I think of the Egyptians who have been through so much and yet remain with optimism; and the Palestinians who work with me and who, whatever the frustrations, still want and believe in a peaceful solution; and I look at Tunisians and Libyans and Yemenis who are trying to make it all work properly; and I realise this is not a struggle without hope. This is not a mess where everyone is as bad as each other. In other words it matters and there is a side we should be proud to take. There are people to stand beside and who will stand beside us.
But we have to be clear what that side is and why we're taking it. So what does that mean?
It means supporting the principles of religious freedom and open, rule based economies. It means helping those countries whose people wish to embrace those principles to achieve them. Where there has been revolution, we should be on the side of those who support those principles and opposed to those who would thwart them. Where there has not been revolution, we should support the steady evolution towards them.
If we apply those principles to the Middle East, it would mean the following.
Egypt. I start with Egypt not because what is happening in Syria is not more horrifying; but because on the fate of Egypt hangs the future of the region. Here we have to understand plainly what happened. The Muslim Brotherhood Government was not simply a bad Government. It was systematically taking over the traditions and institutions of the country. The revolt of 30 June 2013 was not an ordinary protest. It was the absolutely necessary rescue of a nation. We should support the new Government and help. None of this means that where there are things we disagree strongly with -- such as the death sentence on the 500 -- that we do not speak out. Plenty of Egyptians have. But it does mean that we show some sensitivity to the fact that over 400 police officers have suffered violent deaths and several hundred soldiers been killed. The next President will face extraordinary challenges. It is massively in our interests that he succeeds. We should mobilise the international community in giving Egypt and its new President as much assistance as we can so that the country gets a chance not to return to the past but to cross over to a better future.
Syria. This is an unmitigated disaster. We are now in a position where both Assad staying and the Opposition taking over seem bad options. The former is responsible for creating this situation. But the truth is that there are so many fissures and problems around elements within the Opposition that people are rightly wary now of any solution that is an outright victory for either side. Repugnant though it may seem, the only way forward is to conclude the best agreement possible even if it means in the interim President Assad stays for a period. Should even this not be acceptable to him, we should consider active measures to help the Opposition and force him to the negotiating table, including no fly zones whilst making it clear that the extremist groups should receive no support from any of the surrounding nations.
Tunisia. Here there have been genuine and positive attempts by the new Government to escape from the dilemmas of the region and to shape a new Constitution. Supporting the new Government should be an absolute priority. As the new President has rightly said for a fraction of what we're offering Ukraine -- which of course is the correct thing to do -- we could put Tunisia on its feet. We should do so. This would be a very sensible investment.
Libya. We bear a responsibility for what has happened. Their urgent need is for security sector reform. We have made some attempts to do so. But obviously the scale of the task and the complications of the militia make it very hard. But Libya is not Iraq or Afghanistan. It is not impossible to help and NATO has the capability to do so. However reluctant we are to make this commitment, we have to recognise the de-stabilising impact Libya is having at present. If it disintegrates completely, it will affect the whole of the region around it and feed the instability in Sub- Saharan Africa.
Yemen. Again the country is trying to make progress in circumstances that are unimaginably difficult. We are giving support to the new Government. There is a new Constitution. But again they urgently need help with security sector reform and with development.
Iran. We should continue to make it clear, as the Obama administration is rightly doing, that they have to step back from being a nuclear threshold state. The next weeks will be a crucial phase in the negotiation. But I do not favour yielding to their demands for regional influence in return for concessions on their nuclear ambitions. The Iranian Government play a deliberately de-stabilising role across the region. Our goals should not include regime change. Their people will, in the end, have to find their own way to do that. However we should at every opportunity, push back against the use of their power to support extremism.
MEPP. Since becoming Secretary of State, John Kerry has put immense effort into making the peace process work. As we speak, his efforts hang in the balance. Many people said he should not have given such priority to this issue. They are wrong. It remains absolutely core to the region and the world. Not because the Israeli / Palestinian conflict is the cause of our problems. But because solving it would be such a victory for the very forces we should support. Now it may be that after years of it being said that solving this question is the route to solving the regions' problems, we're about to enter a new phase where solving the region's problems a critical part of solving the Israeli / Palestinian issue. But the point is that John Kerry's commitment has not been in vain. He has put himself in an immensely powerful position to drive this forward by virtue of that commitment. He needs our support in doing so.
Elsewhere across the region we should be standing steadfast by our friends and allies as they try to change their own countries in the direction of reform. Whether in Jordan or the Gulf where they're promoting the values of religious tolerance and open, rule based economies, or taking on the forces of reaction in the shape of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, we should be supporting and assisting them.
Finally, we have to elevate the issue of religious extremism to the top of the agenda. All over the world the challenge of defeating this ideology requires active and sustained engagement. Consider this absurdity: that we spend billions of $ on security arrangements and on defence to protect ourselves against the consequences of an ideology that is being advocated in the formal and informal school systems and in civic institutions of the very countries with whom we have intimate security and defence relationships. Some of those countries of course wish to escape from the grip of this ideology. But often it is hard for them to do so within their own political constraints. They need to have this issue out in the open where it then becomes harder for the promotion of this ideology to happen underneath the radar. In other words they need us to make this a core part of the international dialogue in order to force the necessary change within their own societies. This struggle between what we may call the open-minded and the closed-minded is at the heart of whether the 21st C turns in the direction of peaceful co-existence or conflict between people of different cultures.
If we do not act, then we will start to see reactions against radical Islam which will then foster extremism within other faiths. Indeed we see some evidence of this already directed against Muslims in Asia particularly.
When we consider the defining challenges of our time, surely this one should be up there along with the challenge of the environment or economic instability. Add up the deaths around the world now -- and even leave out the theatre of the Middle East -- and the toll on human life is deplorable. In Nigeria recently and Pakistan alone thousands are now dying in religiously inspired conflict. And quite apart from the actual loss of life, there is the loss of life opportunities for parts of the population mired in backward thinking and reactionary attitudes especially towards girls.
On this issue also, there is a complete identity of interest between East and West. China and Russia have exactly the same desire to defeat this ideology as do the USA and Europe. Here is a subject upon which all the principal nations of the G20 could come together, could agree to act, and could find common ground to common benefit. An international programme to eradicate religious intolerance and prejudice from school systems and informal education systems and from organisations in civic society would have a huge galvanising effect in making unacceptable what is currently ignored or tolerated.
So there is an agenda here in part about the Middle East and its importance; and in part about seeing what is happening there in the context of its impact on the wider world.
This is why I work on the Middle East Peace Process; why I began my Foundation to promote inter-faith dialogue. Why I will do all I can to help governments confronting these issues.
Consider for a moment since 9/11 how our world has changed, how in a myriad of different ways from the security measures we now take for granted to the arenas of conflict that have now continued over a span of years, there is a price being paid in money, life and opportunity for millions. This is not a conventional war. It isn't a struggle between super powers or over territory. But it is real. It is fearsome in its impact. It is growing in its reach. It is a battle about belief and about modernity. It is important because the world through technology and globalisation is pushing us together across boundaries of faith and culture. Unaddressed, the likelihood of conflict increases. Engagement does not always mean military involvement. Commitment does not mean going it alone. But it does mean stirring ourselves. It does mean seeing the struggle for what it is. It does mean taking a side and sticking with it.


011 04/24/2014 Jihadists Now Control Secretive U.S. Base in Libya
A key jihadist leader and longtime member of al Qaeda has taken control of a secretive training facility set up by U.S. special operations forces on the Libyan coastline to help hunt down Islamic militants, according to local media reports, Jihadist web forums, and U.S. officials.
In the summer of 2012, American Green Berets began refurbishing a Libyan military base 27 kilometers west of Tripoli in order to hone the skills of Libya's first Western-trained special operations counter-terrorism fighters. Less than two years later, that training camp is now being used by groups with direct links to al Qaeda to foment chaos in post-Qaddafi Libya.
Last week, the Libyan press reported that the camp (named "27" for the kilometer marker on the road between Tripoli and Tunis) was now under the command of Ibrahim Ali Abu Bakr Tantoush, a veteran associate of Osama bin Laden who was first designated as part of al Qaeda's support network in 2002 by the United States and the United Nations. The report said he was heading a group of Salifist fighters from the former Libyan base.
In other words, Tantoush is now the chief of a training camp the U.S. and Libyan governments had hoped would train Libyan special operations forces to catch militants like Tantoush.
One U.S. defense official told The Daily Beast that the media report matched U.S. intelligence reporting from Libya. Another U.S. official in Washington said intelligence analysts were aware of the reports but had yet to corroborate them, however. A spokesman for Africa Command declined to comment for the story.
Tantoush himself on Tuesday evening gave an interview to Libyan television where he confirmed that he was in the country but also said he had not direct or indirect link to the camp. In the interview, Tantoush, who was indicted in 2000 for his role in the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, also claimed he has never participated in terror attacks for al Qaeda, and boasted of traveling to Libya on a fake passport.
According to one U.S. official who is read into the training program, the camp today is considered a "denied area," or a place where U.S. forces would have to fight their way in to gain access. Until now, the Western press has not reported that the base used to train Libyan special operations forces was seized by the militants those troops were supposed to find, fix and finish.
The fact that the one-time training base for Libyan counter-terrorism teams is now the domain of terrorists is a poignant reminder the United States has yet to win its war with al Qaeda, despite the successful 2011 raid that killed its founder and leader.
This is particularly true for Libya. Since the 9/11 anniversary attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, jihadist groups and al Qaeda's regional affiliates have been gaining territory throughout Libya. News that a veteran like Tantoush is now in charge of a military base only 27 kilometers from Libya's capital shows just how much the security in Libya has deteriorated.
Seth Jones, an al Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, said Libya is now a haven for many of al Qaeda's North African affiliates. "There are a number of training camps for a wide range of al Qaeda and jihadist groups that have surfaced in southwest Libya, northwest Libya in and around Tripoli and northeast Libya in and around Benghazi," he said.
Daveed Gartenstein Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, added that "We've known for some time that Jihadist groups have established training camps throughout Libya. But this is significant because of the camp's proximity to Tripoli and because rather than creating camps in remote locations they took over a base used by the Libyan government."
"I suspect they will not keep this camp for very long. It's close to Tripoli and its location is known by the Libyan government," he said.
One U.S. official who worked on the program said the U.S. Special Forces began to refurbish the base in the summer of 2012, before the 9/11 anniversary attack in Benghazi. The actual training, however, did not begin until the fall of 2012. One U.S. defense official noted the initial program at Camp 27 endeavored to train 100 Libyan special operations soldiers. But even this modest goal was never really in reach.
"The program has not achieved the outcomes that we hoped that it would and the Libyans hoped it would," said Carter Ham, the now-retired four-star general who led U.S. Africa Command when the initial training program was established. While Ham said he was not aware of the latest reports that the base was now in the hands of an al Qaeda figure, he nonetheless acknowledged that myriad challenges--from the uncertainty in the leadership of the Libyan military to security on the ground--made it difficult to sustain the special operation forces training.
"The selection process for what Libyan unit and what Libyan soldiers would participate was probably not as rigorous as we would have liked it to have been," Ham continued. "But this was a Libyan decision and they had to decide what unit and what individuals to enroll in the program."
Ham said he remembered meeting with a small group singled out by the trainers as the emerging leaders. "That was promising," he said. "It was not as widespread as we would have liked. The militia these guys came from, they did not have significant military experience and certainly not in a hierarchical organization."
Things went downhill for Camp 27 in June of 2013 when two rival militias stormed the training facility and seized the equipment therein. At the time, no U.S. personnel were on the base, according to two U.S. officials who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity. The only soldiers protecting the base were local Libyans.
Nonetheless, the base itself had a number of American weapons that wound up in the hands of the raiding militias. Those raids were first reported by Fox News. The U.S. defense official confirmed these reports and said the militias were able to seize night vision equipment, M-4 rifles, pistols, military vehicles, and ammunition.
The emergence of Tantoush is particularly troubling to American officials. He is considered one of the original members of al Qaeda's network. In 2000, he was indicted for his role in helping plan the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to his designation by the United Nations, Tantoush was the head of an al Qaeda support group based in Peshawar known as the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society. In the interview Tuesday with Libyan television, Tantoush said his work in Peshawar was entirely humanitarian.
Jones said, "Tantoush has a long history from the Peshawar days of associating with senior al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden. He has been involved in financing and facilitating al Qaeda activities and he has had a long-standing relationship with Libyan jihadist groups." Tantoush was also a senior member of al Qaeda's one-time franchise in Libya known as the Libya Islamic Fighting Group. In the 2000s, former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi largely decimated that organization, leading some of its leaders to turn on al Qaeda itself. (Tantoush was not one of those turncoats.) Nonetheless, the group was able to assist al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq by using the port city of Dernaa to funnel volunteer fighters to al Qaeda's jihad in Iraq in the last decade. Today, Dernaa is a key transit point for volunteers to join al Qaeda's holy war in Syria.
Things were not supposed to turn out this way. The training program for Libya's special operations fighters was authorized under section 1208 of the National Defense Authorization Act. 1208 programs differ from other special operations training missions because the funding is specifically for reimbursing foreign governments for assisting with counter-terrorism missions. Other special operations training missions--sometimes known as "white" programs--are meant only to build up another country's military. These programs are designed to produce combat-ready special operators to join U.S. SEALs and Delta Force teams on missions.
"This means in practice that these guys were expected to conduct missions with our guys," the U.S. defense official said. "But of course that never happened."
The raid in June was enough to effectively kill the training effort. The U.S. ambassador canceled the program in Libya until the security of U.S. personnel and equipment could be guaranteed. Those guarantees have not yet been provided. A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Tripoli did not respond to queries. One U.S. official said the Pentagon was now considering a plan to conduct the special operations training for Libyans in an eastern European country.
For now, Libya looks like it could use as much help as it can get. Since a mix of local and foreign terrorists over-ran a U.S. diplomatic post and CIA base in Benghazi in 2012, jihadist groups have won key gains throughout Libya--and used this territory to help funnel fighters across the region. "Libya in general is a major thoroughfare, the I-95 for foreign fighters into Syria from Africa," the U.S. defense official said.
In March, Gen. David Rodriguez--Ham's successor as head of U.S. Africa Command--estimated in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that a couple thousand foreign fighters had transited through northwest Africa to Syria. Rodriguez also said al Qaeda continued to coordinate activities by sharing expertise and resources throughout that region.
And now these militants have a base close to Tripoli, and an array of advanced tactical gear. "The biggest challenge we have is all the arms ammunition and explosives from Libya that continue to move throughout the region to northwest Africa," he told the committee. When asked if those arms have aided al Qaeda in Africa, Rodriguez answered, "It continues to support them throughout northwest Africa."