Pakistan and terrorism

• S P Seth

Apart from those who have enriched themselves by mostly foul means, the bulk of the people are either living from hand to mouth or just getting by with no hope about what tomorrow will bring

Sometimes it takes a horrible tragedy for a country to be galvanised into recognising a real threat. Will the Peshawar killings of innocent children by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) be such an event? One would hope so if all the revulsion this has created among many people in Pakistan is anything to go by. However, it belies belief that the country’s leadership, both at the political and military levels, did not know it already. In a sense, they created the monster, both the Afghan and Pakistani versions, though there is some satisfaction that even the Afghan Taliban have not endorsed their Pakistani counterparts’ dastardly act of killing children. Projecting a new determination to go after the TTP, Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif has said that the government will not make any distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban and will eliminate terrorism in Pakistan.

Though it has been generally known that the government and the military establishment were selectively supporting and using militant/terrorist groups for political and strategic reasons — the ‘good’ ones — this is probably the first implied public admission from the PM of Pakistan. This is what created militancy of all kinds, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, which have now come to haunt and threaten the Pakistani state. Will it be possible to destroy intricate linkages that state instrumentalities fostered and nurtured over the decades? One will have to be an eternal optimist to believe this.

Nawaz Sharif also believes that the government and military are now united in their resolve to eliminate the TTP, apparently referring to a new united front, even endorsing military courts to try the terrorists. It is true that there is now an increased awareness of the need for a united front but to present it as a reality is a bit overdrawn. For decades now, the military has been either directly or indirectly (sometimes brazenly and at other times less visibly) driving the country’s political power. And to imagine now that the government and military will be as one is hard to believe. The military-government disharmony is now entrenched into Pakistani governance and it cannot just vanish because of the horrible tragedy of the school killings. There is no real tradition in Pakistan of civilian supremacy over its military establishment. It is rather the other way around.

A very important point missing in this equation about the government-military relationship is this: where do the Pakistani people fit in? They seem to be missing in this calculus. It would appear that, by and large, people are against extremism/militancy/terrorism. This is borne out by the recent protests against school killings, as well as from the relatively poor showing electorally by religious political groups and parties. However, the people are also disenchanted and frustrated by the system as it operates today, which is that, by and large, nothing seems to be working for the people. They are the victims of a highly corrupt, self-seeking and self-perpetuating system, with the political/business elite and the military competing with each other to get the most out of it. In the process, the fractious establishment that governs the country does not have much time and energy to put people’s interests and welfare at the centre of governance. Hence, even though people, by and large, are against terrorists, their alternative choice of what goes for governance in the country is not terribly tempting. This would explain that despite all the violence wreaked on the country by the Pakistani Taliban over many years now, Pakistan lacks a people’s movement/mobilisation against such widespread violence threatening its very existence.

A normal state system thrives on two basic tenets: economic and physical security of the people. And both are sorely lacking. At the economic level, apart from those who have enriched themselves by mostly foul means, the bulk of the people are either living from hand to mouth or just getting by with no hope about what tomorrow will bring. It is not that anyone expects Pakistan to create a welfare society but it would have been quite feasible to create a sense of hope among its people through a well-devised programme of economic development to tap its human resources like, for instance, building infrastructure projects and the like. At the same time, it would certainly have been possible to allocate more money to health and education to build Pakistan’s human capital, if necessary, by diverting a bit of the country’s budget from defence. The state must foster a sense that the country is moving forward.

Pakistan, on the other hand, fostered a sense that the country was in a constant state of threat from within and outside. The creation of Bangladesh was a singular example of failure to manage internal contradictions. A shared religion, Islam, was supposed to override linguistic, cultural and regional differences, which simply proved grossly inadequate. The same is happening in some of Pakistan’s other regions, particularly in Balochistan where the primacy of a shared religion is simply not working to create national cohesion. At the same time, the Taliban and other militant groups are at war with the state because it is not considered sufficiently Islamic. In other words, a failure to recognise the diversity of factors other than religion (Islam) as a cohesive national philosophy has simply aggravated tensions and contradictions.

In some sense, the creation of Pakistan has tended to embody the politics of an undivided India, thus externalising some of the contradictions that marked the subcontinent’s politics. In other words, a Hindu-majority India became perceived as a bigger threat when the subcontinent became two independent states. What was seen earlier as an internal Hindu-Muslim divide fostered under British rule became an international issue between India and Pakistan. This had the unfortunate effect of focusing much of the new state’s energies on preparing to face that ‘threat’, as well as managing to keep Afghanistan in its strategic orbit. Not surprisingly then that the country’s military establishment became the dominant element of national politics and discourse. To cut a long story short, this excessive focus on security vitiated Pakistan’s body politic, which created all sorts of issues including the rise of the Taliban and other militant groups.

Therefore, any plan of action simply focusing on the TTP and other terrorist groups, laudable and necessary as it is, must be combined with an integrated national blueprint and strategy to lift the people out of their economic misery and create a sense of hope that Pakistan is finally heading towards a brighter future.

Pakistan - Extremists everywhere

The peaceful vigil held at Liberty Roundabout in Lahore on January 4 to commemorate Late Governor Salmaan Taseer’s assassination four years ago was ransacked by hooligans reportedly belonging to “banned organisations”. These violent and uncouth miscreants tore placards away from the vigil attendees and beat a number of them with their batons. They were rabid with hate, representing everything Salmaan Taseer was against: extremism, hate and oppression. If anything, all they managed to do was further harden the resolve of all those of sane mind to beat back the monster of fundamentalism and militancy. So far, the police and government officials are claiming that 35 suspects have been arrested. If that is the case, no time should be wasted in bringing to book all those who displayed their animosity towards a peaceful commemoration; after all, their faces have been caught on camera so nabbing them should not take too much time. If this does not happen, only one question can be asked of the Punjab government: if this country is unable to handle a few baton-wielding vandals who went all out to disrupt a commemoration event, how on earth does it propose to beat back the terrorists who slaughter our children, civilians and law enforcement personnel with high grade weapons and the will to die for their cause? The National Action Plan (NAP) has been pushed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif upon the provinces for implementation and this is really a very first, small step in showing the people that the provincial governments, especially in Punjab, mean to do their bit as far as the NAP is concerned. Given the track record of this government, in which the province of Punjab has witnessed the mushrooming growth of groups like the Tehreek-e-Tahafuz-e-Khatm-e-Nabuwat and others, we wait with bated breath to see what will be done, especially when it comes to dealing with all those who dare step in and disrupt so violently what are nothing but peaceful demonstrations.

There is no point in having a countrywide action plan if we cannot clean up such filth. The police were present at the vigil and they failed to lift a finger. Women and media persons were wantonly attacked by the miscreants right in the heart of urban Lahore. How was this allowed to happen? Without the will and determination of the provincial and federal governments to weed out the very entrails of this monster of terrorism and its supporters, there is no point in making loud declarations of having a plan in hand. Target all shades of extremists, from the ones that tear up placards and beat peaceful citizens to the ones that kill our children, and maybe then there will be some sort of hope.

Pakistan hangs two more men convicted of terror offences

Nine people have been executed since capital punishment moratorium was lifted after last month’s Taliban school massacre.


Pakistan has hanged two men sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court, taking the number of executions to nine since the country lifted a moratorium on capital punishment after last month’s Taliban school massacre.

The convicts, Ghulam Shabbir and Ahmed Ali, were reportedly members of banned sectarian militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The two were sentenced to death in 2002 – Shabbir for killing a senior police official and his driver, and Ali for killing three people. They were hanged in the southern city of Multan early on Wednesday.

Pakistan last month lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty in terror cases following the Taliban’s massacre at an army-run school in the city of Peshawar. The attack on 16 December left 150 people dead, the vast majority of them children.

Pakistani officials have said they plan to hang 500 convicts in the coming weeks, drawing protest from international human rights campaigners.

The country’s parliament on Tuesday approved the setting up of military courts to hear terrorism-related cases in a bid to speed up hearings. The country’s notoriously slow civil court procedures often delays justice for years.

On Tuesday, authorities halted the death sentence of Shafqat Hussain, who was convicted of murdering a seven-year-old boy in 2004 when he was just 15, after an outcry from rights groups.

Despite the moratorium, which began in 2008, courts continued to issue death sentences, and Amnesty International estimates there are about 8,000 people on death row in Pakistan.

The UN, EU, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Pakistan to reimpose its moratorium on the death penalty. Rights campaigners say Pakistan overuses its anti-terror laws and courts to prosecute ordinary crimes.

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An Aging Europe’s Decline

Arthur C. Brooks

“I’VE fallen and I can’t get up.”

These words, shouted by an elderly woman, were made famous in a medical alert device ad in the 1990s. In 2015, they might be Europe’s catchphrase.

As the United States economy slowly recovers, analysts across the political spectrum see little to cheer them from Europe. The optimists see the region’s economy growing by just 1 percent in 2015; many others fear that a triple-dip recession is in the offing. Germany is widely viewed as a healthy country whose prosperity helps compensate for Europe’s weakness, yet over the past two quarters for which we have data, it has experienced no net growth at all.Predictions of decade-long deflation, low productivity and high unemployment are becoming conventional wisdom.

What does the Continent need? Most economists and pundits focus on monetary and fiscal policy, as well as labor-market reform. Get the policy levers and economic incentives right, and the Continent might escape the vortex of decline, right?

Probably not. As important as good economic policies are, they will not fix Europe’s core problems, which are demographic, not economic. This was the point made in a speech to the European Parliament in November by none other than Pope Francis. As the pontiff put it, “In many quarters we encounter a general impression of weariness and aging, of a Europe which is now a ‘grandmother,’ no longer fertile and vibrant.”

But wait, it gets worse: Grandma Europe is not merely growing old. She is also getting dotty. She is, as the pope sadly explained in an earlier speech to a conference of bishops, “weary with disorientation.”

Some readers might regret the pope’s use of language — we love our grandmothers, weary with disorientation or not. But as my American Enterprise Institute colleague Nicholas Eberstadt shows in his research, the pope’s analysis is fundamentally sound.

Start with age. According to the United States Census Bureau’s International Database, nearly one in five Western Europeans was 65 years old or older in 2014. This is hard enough to endure, given the countries’ early retirement ages and pay-as-you-go pension systems. But by 2030, this will have risen to one in four. If history is any guide, aging electorates will direct larger and larger portions of gross domestic product to retirement benefits — and invest less in opportunity for future generations.

Next, look at fertility. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the last time the countries of the European Union were reproducing at replacement levels (that is, slightly more than two children per woman) was the mid-1970s. In 2014, the average number of children per woman was about 1.6. That’s up a hair from the nadir in 2001, but has been falling again for more than half a decade. Imagine a world where many people have no sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts or uncles. That’s where Europe is heading in the coming decades. On the bright side, at least there will be fewer Christmas presents to buy.

There are some exceptions. France has risen to exactly two children per woman in 2012, from 1.95 in 1980, an increase largely attributed to a system of government payments to parents, not a change in the culture of family life. Is there anything more dystopian than the notion that population decline can be slowed only when states bribe their citizens to reproduce?

Finally, consider employment. Last September, the United States’ labor force participation rate — the percentage of adults who are either working or looking for work — reached a 36-year low of just 62.7 percent.

Yet as bad as that is, the United States looks decent compared with most of Europe. Our friends across the Atlantic like to say that we live to work, while they work to live. That might be compelling if more of them were actually working. According to the most recent data available from the World Bank, the labor force participation rate in the European Union in 2013 was 57.5 percent. In France it was 55.9 percent. In Italy, just 49.1 percent.

One bright spot might seem to be immigration. In 2012, the median age of the national population in the European Union was 41.9 years, while the median age of foreigners living in the union was 34.7. So, are Europeans pleased that there will be new arrivals to work and pay taxes when the locals retire?

Not exactly. Anti-immigrant sentiment is surging across the Continent. Nativist movements performed alarmingly well in European Parliament elections last year. Europe is less like a grandmother knitting placidly in the window and more like an angry grandfather, shaking his rake and yelling at outsiders to get off his lawn.

None of this should give Americans cause for schadenfreude. At a purely practical level, a European market in further decline will suppress American growth. But more important, European deterioration will dissipate the vast good the Continent can do in spreading the values of democracy and freedom around the world.

So what is the prescription for Europe’s ills — and the lesson for America’s future?

It is true that good monetary and fiscal policies are important. But the deeper problems in Europe will not be solved by the European Central Bank. No matter what the money supply and public spending levels, a country or continent will be in decline if it rejects the culture of family, turns its back on work, and closes itself to strivers from the outside.

Europe needs visionary leaders and a social movement to rediscover that people are assets to develop, not liabilities to manage. If it cannot or will not meet this existential challenge, a “lost decade” will look like a walk in the park for Grandma Europe.

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Obama will veto Keystone bill

Jeremy Diamond



President Barack Obama will veto the Keystone XL bill if Congress passes a measure green-lighting the oil pipeline, White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced on Tuesday.

The pipeline is currently in a final phase of review from the State Department, which has already concluded that it would have a minimal impact on the environment. But the State Department also assessed that the pipeline would create about 42,000 jobs directly and indirectly during the construction period -- but just 50 permanent jobs.

The White House reviewed the text of the bill to authorize the pipeline on Monday, Earnest said.

Obama's objection to the legislation, Earnest said, is not based on the merits of the project so much as the idea Congress was trying to take the decision out of the hands of the executive branch.

"The President has been pretty clear that he does not think that circumventing a well-established process for evaluating these projects is the right thing for Congress to do," Earnest said.

Previously, Obama had not said if he would veto another bill to authorize the pipeline, but suggested his position hadn't changed since he threatened to during the 113th Congress.

Newly minted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made a vote on the Keystone XL pipeline project a priority for the new Congress. The bill has some bipartisan support, but environmentalists and progressives have heavily lobbied the White House to oppose the pipeline.

Democrats sought to delay progress on the bill by insisting the Senate vote to confirm committee members of the new Congress before proceeding with the pipeline legislation. Republicans are miffed Democrats objected over this technicality, but insist it won't have much practical impact on the bill. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee still plans to meet Thursday to vote to send it to the floor. The delay means a final Senate vote probably won't happen until sometime around the State of the Union address, which is the following Tuesday, January 20th.

The House is expected is to pass its Keystone bill on Friday.

Keystone XL pipeline debate: What do I need to know?

House Speaker John Boehner's office quickly released a statement on Tuesday calling Obama out for opposing the pipeline, a decision Boehner painted as another sign Obama is "hopelessly out of touch" with Americans.

"His answer is no to more American infrastructure, no to more American energy and no to more American jobs," Boehner said. "Fringe extremists in the President's party are the only ones who oppose Keystone, but the President has chosen to side with them instead of the American people and the government's own scientific evidence that this project is safe for the environment."

A bill to authorize the pipeline failed in the last weeks of the Democratic-led Senate last year, but a new Republican majority ensured the vote could reach a 60-vote filibuster proof majority. Supporters of the pipeline would need to whip 67 votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto.

Sens. John Hoeven, R-North Dakota, and Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, introduced legislation to greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline on Tuesday, just hours before Earnest announced the President's commitment to veto any legislation.

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Bahrain forces attack people protesting Shia cleric’s arrest

Security forces in Bahrain have attacked demonstrators protesting the detention of Sheikh Ali Salman, the head of the country’s main opposition bloc.

On Tuesday, troops used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters, causing a number of injuries.

Demonstrators had gathered outside the house of Sheikh Salman, who leads the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, in Bilad al-Qadeem, a suburb of the Bahraini capital, Manama.

Similar clashes have taken place over the past days.

Bahraini forces detained Salman on December 28, two days after he was re-elected as the party’s leader.

He was remanded in custody on Monday for two more weeks, pending an investigation into charges, including seeking to change the regime by force.

Prosecutor Nayef Mahmud has said that Salman had confessed during questioning to having "contacted regimes and political groups abroad with whom he discussed Bahraini internal affairs."

"The prosecution has ordered his continued detention for 15 days pending investigations," he added in a statement.

Since mid-February 2011, thousands of protesters have held numerous rallies in the streets of Bahrain, calling for the Al Khalifa royal family to relinquish power.

The European Union has warned that Sheikh Salman’s arrest will worsen Bahrain’s already fragile political and security situation.

On December 30, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on the Manama regime to release the al-Wefaq leader.

Western idealism is cruelled in the Middle East

By Tom Switzer

It's been four months since President Obama set out to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or the "Daesh death cult," as Tony Abbott put it in Baghdad at the weekend.
If there's one thing we've learnt by now, it's that the underlying problem of Muslim sectarianism, which created the conditions for the rise of Iraqi terrorists, is far from solvable.
Not only could Sunni and Shia animosities break up Iraq as we've known it for nearly a century – and, in the process expunge its Christian community – but they could also lead to a showdown between a Saudi-led bloc and a rival alliance led by Iran's Ayatollahs. Do we really want to get mired in an age-old dispute about the heir to the Prophet Muhammad?
To hear the Iraq war hawks tell it, the US-led campaign of targeted air strikes will resolve this crisis. "Knock off" the fanatics, urges the Prime Minister, and the problem is fixed. It requires a great deal of something – hubris, naivety or Wilsonianism on steroids – to believe that, having spent nearly a decade of blood and treasure on creating the very failed state that gave rise to the Islamic State, we can now somehow end evil in this medieval society with bombs and drones.
We all know the Sunni jihadists that make up the Islamic State have committed the most unspeakable atrocities against Muslims and non-Muslims in Iraq and Syria, not to mention western journalists and aid workers.
Less well known are the pro-Iranian, anti-American Shia militia, with whom we are essentially aligned. According to Amnesty International, these government-backed thugs have also committed the most appalling human rights abuses against Sunni civilians, including war crimes. Moderation is in short supply in the Middle East these days.  
We are told the Islamic State will establish a caliphate, or safe haven, for terrorists to target nations, such as Australia and the US. That's a stretch. Yes, as Abbott said at the weekend, the Islamic State has "declared war against the world." But remember we are talking about a group with no navy or air force and an army the size of a standard US Army division of 20,000 troops (although that number has doubled since US air strikes began).
Over time, the Islamic State's wicked ways will repel Sunni moderates in towns such as Mosul and Fallujah, who tolerate the Sunni zealots for now – but only because they fear ethnic cleansing or permanent displacement by Shia death squads.
The Islamic State is confined to largely poor Sunni areas of eastern Syria and northern and central Iraq. It is no match for the Iranian-backed Shia south. And any threat to Australia and the US is better handled with tough anti-terror laws and homeland security than endless wars in the Persian Gulf.  
It is also important to recognise why the jihadists promote footage of carefully choreographed beheadings of Western hostages: they want to draw America and her allies deeper into Iraq. After all, foreign intervention helps them recruit disillusioned Sunnis as well as depraved souls from the West to a holy war against "infidels." Are we taking their bait? 
We are told that peaceful coexistence among Iraqis is now likely under the "inclusive" Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Tell that to Ehab al-Maliki. The acclaimed (Shia) poet has received death threats for appearing on state television to promote a spirit of national identity that transcends the differences between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurd.
No one is crying for Iraq; but plenty cry for their own sects: the Shia in the south, the Sunni in the west and the Kurds in the north.
We are told the mission is succeeding, because it is inflicting heavy damage on the Islamic State and regaining territory around dams and oil refineries. But it is also reinforcing the potent Sunni Arab narrative that we are in cahoots with the Shia regime in Baghdad. 
To the extent such attitudes prevail and Sunnis feel their loss of power and influence is absolute in the post-Saddam Hussein era, many will continue to fight till death. This profound alienation of the Sunni minority is the root cause of the rise of Sunni extremism.
The problem can be traced to what the US conservative columnist George Will has called the "ruinous grandiosity" of George W. Bush's "freedom agenda." When we "liberated" Iraq in 2003, we didn't just topple a brutal dictatorship that kept a lid on simmering ethnic and religious tensions. We also overturned the sectarian imbalance that had been in place for generations.
Under the Ottomans, British, Hashemites and Baathists, the minority Sunnis more or less ruled the joint. The invasion ended their hold on power and presaged the rise of the majority Shia who overtly champion a sectarian identity.
The result: a Sunni insurgency that fought against the US-led occupiers has morphed into an unaccountable mix of Sunni militia groups (including Islamic State terrorists) that are fighting a plethora of Shia militia groups (including Hezbollah-type terrorists).
One senior US official who understood this problem from the outset was Christopher Hill, a former ambassador to Iraq. Writing in Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy, Hill says: "The failure of neoconservatives and their fellow travellers to explain what they were trying to accomplish in Iraq remains one of the most disgraceful performances by a foreign policy class in America."
The war's architects "never understood sectarianism," instead assuming that "a majority-ruled Iraq, which necessarily involves Shia leadership," would become "an inspiration to the Sunni-dominated Arab Middle East."
The failure to understand Iraq's sectarianism helps explain today's mess. It also explains why we won't be able to resolve the crisis in Mesopotamia.

Yezidi survivors say they cannot forgive Arab complicity in ISIS atrocities

http://rudaw.net/




By Hemin Abdulla 

Yezidi women baking bread on Mount Shingal.

SHARAFADIN, Kurdistan Region – Rasho and Salim, survivors of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) unmitigated violence against the Yezidis, are the two faces of a community struggling with the aftermath: one regards all Arabs as enemies fit to die, and the other sees them as fellow victims.

As Kurdish Peshmerga forces fight to clean up remaining ISIS fighters from Shingal and the surrounding Yezidi areas the jihadis captured in an assault last August, many Yezidis cannot forget how their own Arab neighbors had turned against them and sided with the militants.

Anti-Arab sentiments are so deep rooted among Yezidis that most of their religious men refuse even to wear the Arab headbands, or “agals,” that used to be part of their traditional costume.

Rasho and Salim have both returned to see if their homes still stand in Sinune, a Yezidi Kurdish town near the Syrian border that the Peshmerga recaptured from ISIS just a few days ago.

“If I see an Arab right now, I will kill him,” says Rasho, a 20-year-old in the Kurdish Yezidi town of Sinune near the Syrian border who has joined the Peshmerga forces and sports a beret in the style of the late Argentinian revolutionary, Che Guevara. 

Whenever he sees Arabic writing on the walls of Sinune he turns away in anger: “I used to have so many Arab friends, but they betrayed us.”

For Salim, who works as a laborer and lives in a camp near Duhok, all Arabs “are not the same.”

He adds: “I still have Arab friends. Just like us, they have left their hometown and now they are sheltered in Erbil. They call me regularly and ask about my situation. As a matter of fact, during the Eid they called me.” 

The village of Hardan, just a 10-minute car ride from Sinune, used to be populated by Arabs, Turkomen and Yezidi Kurds.

Although there has been no fighting there for several days, plumes of smoke are still seen rising from the village. One villager, Rashid, whispers that the smoke is from Arab homes being secretly burned in revenge.

“Some Kurds, without the knowledge of the Peshmerga, go and set those houses on fire,” he explains, confiding that he agrees with the practice.

He and others in Hardan testify that, before the arrival of ISIS, the Arab residents closed the villages gates to prevent anyone from escaping. As a result, ISIS captured and massacred 500 Yezidi Kurds. 

The brotherhood that once existed among the Yezidi and Arab residents is gone forever, one villager says: “There is no brotherhood after betrayal. They insulted our honor; they are no longer our brothers.” 

Tensions seethe in villages like Awinat, where many Arabs have remained put in their homes, despite efforts by some Yezidis to force them out – which has been prevented by the Peshmerga.

“I saw Arabs with my own eyes when they tied our children to the trees, cut off their legs and executed them,” says Ageed, a Yezidi Kurd who has joined the Syrian-Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that have joined forces with the Peshmerga in the fight against ISIS.

He says that the Arabs should pay for what they did, and he is more than willing to fight them out of the village.

“The price is that they should leave us, we don’t want them to live among us,” says Ageed, who tries to convince a Peshmerga commander for permission to enter one of the Arab villages. 

But the commander warns: “We have orders from the president of the Kurdistan Region that no one should attack them.” 

In the village of Sharafadin Sheikh Ismael Bahri, guardian of the second most important shrine for Yezidis after Lalish, shares the anti-Arab sentiments of much of his community.

In his guesthouse, the photos on display show him with an agal on his head, though he says he no longer wears one.

“The Arabs in our area betrayed us, that is why we decided to throw away our agals. Now you can rarely see a Yezidi wearing an agal, even if someone does, he is looked down upon,” Bahri explains.  

In four mass graves found in Sharafadin, many of the agals mixed in with flesh and decayed body parts are shot through with bullet holes.

Bahri calls upon the international community “to help Yezidis establish an independent Yezidi Region which would be part of the Kurdistan Region and under the supervision of the United Nations.”

He warns: “there will be no place for Arabs in that Region.”

Saudi Arabia is right to be anxious over its ideological links with ISIS

In a pre-dawn raid on Monday, militants attacked a Saudi border post from the Iraqi side of the frontier. The resulting clash left three soldiers and four militants dead, according to the Saudi government news agency.

It later emerged that one of the dead soldiers was no ordinary border guard but the commander of Saudi Arabia’s northern border forces, Brigadier General Awdah al-Balawi. This suggests that the attack, far from being random or opportunistic, had been carefully targeted and perhaps based on inside information regarding the general’s whereabouts.

The attack has been widely attributed to Islamic State, with some reports saying the rebel group has now claimed responsibility for it. This might be viewed simply as a reprisal for Saudi participation in the US-led bombing campaign against Isis, but Isis has also been seeking to extend the current conflict in Syria and Iraq into Saudi territory.

There is no doubt that Isis has both sympathisers and active supporters inside the kingdom – it claimed responsibility for shooting a Danish citizen in Riyadh last November, for example – but whether it will be able to establish a military foothold is another question. Isis tends to flourish militarily in places where central government is weak, but that is not the case in Saudi Arabia.

In military terms, the Saudi security apparatus is probably capable of suppressing Isis on its own territory, just as it did with al-Qaeda a decade or so ago, but it is in no position to confront Isis at the ideological level. The problem here is that Isis and the Saudis’ Islamic kingdom are ideologically similar, so attempts to challenge Isis on ideological grounds risk undermining the Saudi state too. As Heba Saleh and Simeon Kerr noted in the Financial Times last September:

“Some of the features of Isis ideology, such as its hatred of Shia Muslims and application of strict punishments such as limb amputations, are shared with the purist Salafi thought that defines Saudi Wahhabism. Isis has explicitly referenced early Wahhabi teachers, such as Mohammed ibn Abdulwahhab, to justify its destruction of Shia shrines and Christian churches as it cuts a swath through Iraq and Syria. Thousands of Saudi nationals have been recruited to its ranks.

“Yet, in contrast to the tacit official encouragement of more liberal voices after 9/11, any debate within Saudi Arabia over the role of its official creed in fostering the group’s extremism has been timid and largely confined to social media ...

“The Saudi authorities have been quick to condemn Isis. But, according to observers, they are anxious to avoid a potentially destabilising examination of common ideological links between the extremist group and the Saudi religious school whose support underpins the legitimacy of the royal family.”

The underlying issue, therefore, is the rival claims of king and would-be caliph. In the words of two Saudi government supporters: “To restore the ‘caliphate’, [Isis] would ultimately need to implant itself at the epicentre of Islamic life, the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina. Therefore, [Isis’s] road to the caliphate runs through the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Inconveniently for the Saudi monarchy, this challenge from the upstart caliph comes at a time of uncertainty over the royal succession. King Abdullah, now in his 90s, is in hospital – reportedly being treated for pneumonia – and his likely successor, Crown Prince Salman, is thought to be 77 and not in good health.

So far, Saudi efforts to confront Isis ideologically have mainly taken the form of denunciations from tame clerics – figures who have no prospect of influencing Isis supporters and sympathisers – but it is difficult to see what else they might do without calling their own state system into question.

The king and his princes have dug a hole for themselves by harnessing religion in the pursuit of power. Religious credentials bolstered their claim to legitimacy and helped them assert their authority. For a long time, those credentials served them well, but now they are becoming a liability and it may be too late to unfasten the harness.

http://www.abna.ir/english/cultural//archive/2015/01/06/663112/story.html

Takfiri ISIL militants SELLS OVER 5,000 IZADI WOMEN, GIRLS AS SLAVES

http://www.shiitenews.org/

Iraqi Minister of Human Rights Mohammed Mahdi Ameen al-Bayati says the Takfiri ISIL militants have sold more than 5,000 women and girls from Iraq’s Izadi Kurdish minority in their slave markets.

He said on Monday that the terrorist group has also displaced thousands of Iraqi families, and forced their children to carry out bombings.

Global rights organizations have also reported about Izadi women and girls being forced into slavery by the ISIL militants, saying each girl is sold for only 200 dollars.

Amnesty International has reported that Iraqi Izadi girls and women who have been sexually enslaved by the Takfiri ISIL group commit suicide or attempt to do so.

“Hundreds of Izadi women and girls have had their lives shattered by the horrors of sexual violence and sexual slavery in ISIL captivity,” Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s senior crisis response advisor, said after interviewing over 40 Izadi girls who had escaped captivity in northern Iraq.

“Many of those held as sexual slaves are children -- girls aged 14, 15, or even younger,” Rovera added.

Iraqi Minister Bayati said the ISIL militants are committing atrocities against the Christian minority groups as well.

Bayati added that his country has provided the UN Human Rights Council with evidence about the ISIL terrorist group’s crimes and called on the international community and global bodies to declare them as genocide.

ISIL terrorists are currently in control of some areas across Syria and Iraq, where they have been carrying out horrific acts of violence, including public decapitations and crucifixions, against different Iraqi and Syrian communities such as Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, and Christians.

The Iraqi army, backed by Shia fighters and Sunni tribes, has so far managed to make many gains in the fight against the ISIL extremists.

http://www.shiitenews.org/index.php/shiitenews/iraq/isil-sells-over-5-000-izadi-women-girls-as-slaves-iraq-official

Pashto Song - Naghma - Da Zwani Khoob

Afghanistan - No Cabinet Deal As Afghan President Marks 100 Days In Office

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani marked his first 100 days in office on January 6, still struggling to form a cabinet with the chief executive of his unity government, Abdullah Abdullah.

The deadlock over senior cabinet positions underlines the challenges Ghani faces under a power-sharing deal reached in September with Abdullah after a disputed election marred by fraud.

Their unity government deal was aimed at averting a civil war.

But the ongoing political deadlock over the details of that deal, including who will take key cabinet posts, threatens to fuel the Taliban insurgency after most foreign troops have withdrawn from the country and handed over security responsibilities to Afghan forces.

Ghani, a former U.S. citizen and former World Bank official, had pledged before taking office that he would implement ambitious policy changes within the first 100 days in office.

In his September 29 inaugural speech, Ghani pledged that he would stamp out corruption within the Afghan government.

He also said he would purge Afghanistan’s judiciary of corrupt judges and he called on lawmakers in the Afghan parliament to stop abusing their influence by pressuring ministers for personal favors.

Ghani also called on the Taliban and other militant groups to come to the negotiating table with Afghan officials.

But Taliban leaders rejected those calls and increased their attacks in some parts of the country, including the capital, Kabul, as most foreign combat forces were withdrawn by the end of 2014.

Of 140,000 foreign troops once in Afghanistan, about 13,000 remain under a new two-year mission called Resolute Support.

The bulk of the force for that training and support operation, about 10,800 of troops, are from the United States.

On January 4, during an interview with the CBS program 60 Minutes, Ghani said that Washington might want to "reexamine" its timetable for the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Ghani said: "Deadlines concentrate the mind but deadlines should not be dogmas."

Faced with frequent attacks by Taliban militants, Ghani also said "there should be a willingness to reexamine a deadline" if all sides have "done their best to achieve objectives."

A Pentagon spokesman, U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, said on January 5 that the U.S. "plan remains in effect and there have been no changes to the drawdown timeline” as a result of Ghani’s remarks.

Warren said the Pentagon still plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to about 5,000 by the end of 2015 and to draw down to a "normal" U.S. Embassy presence in Kabul at the end of 2016.

But many observers inside and outside Afghanistan have expressed concerns about the ability of Afghan government forces to maintain security across the country.

Analysts say President Barack Obama may eventually review the U.S. withdrawal timeline and that Ghani's statements would help explain that decision if he does so.