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“Don’t interact, don’t talk, they are not humans” – Gitmo guard’s basic orders

23 May
Detainees participate in an early morning prayer session at Camp IV at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base (Reuters / Deborah Gembara)

Detainees participate in an early morning prayer session at Camp IV at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base (Reuters / Deborah Gembara)

One of the methods used to extract information from Muslim inmates in Guantanamo was to apply sexual interrogation techniques, Terry Holdbrooks, former guard at the camp has told RT.

Such a degradation methods, the former US soldier said, were used on innocent men. Holdbrooks, who wrote a book about GITMO prisoners, claims that it is the inmates’ religious perseverance in the face of pain and humiliation made him convinced that US was not fighting for the right cause.

Follow RT’s day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike.

RT: What did you experience at the detention camp that changed you?

Terry Holdbrooks: To be honest with you I would not even know where to begin with that. Initially seeing religion practiced the way that the detainees practice Islam is a really life changing experience in itself. I have not really seen any kind of any serious devotion, the faith like that growing up in the US.

The torture and information extraction methods that we used certainly created a great deal of doubt and questions in my mind to whether or not this was my America. But when I thought about what we were doing there and how we go about doing it, it did not seem like the America I signed up to defend. It did not seem like the America I grew up in, I grew to believe in. And that in itself was a very disillusioning experience. There was a great deal of personal growth that took there as well.

RT: Could you describe the relationship between the guards and detainees at Guantanamo back when you were serving (and how has it changed since then)?

TH: I suppose that if we’re going to take a stroll down the memory lane, Brandon Neely was there first. He was there when it was camp x-ray. It was essentially dog cages, nothing more. It was dog kennels, I suppose you can say. When I was there camp Delta was in full swing. Delta housed about 612 men that would be the general population of the camps.

RT: Were you given any orders as how to treat the inmates?

TH: Our interaction with the detainees was such that we were told not to talk to them, not to treat them as humans, to not engage in conversation with them whatsoever. And the army sort of made a mistake by allowing somebody who is inclined to sociology and to studying people by leaving me with individuals from all over the world unsupervised for eight hours. I was very low in rank so I was delegated all the work, while those who were higher in rank were sitting in the air-conditioned shacks, nurturing their hangovers. So the instructions I was given were simple – don’t interact, don’t talk, they are not humans.

RT: There have been reports of torture and other human rights violations happening at the prison camp. Could you tell us what you saw?

TH: We can begin with experiences I had the pleasure of having. Myself, Eric Sarr and another Guantanamo guard were involved in this. Eric was a linguist and he was working with an interrogator.

We took the detainee into interrogation and throughout the interrogation the interrogator took off her clothing. She essentially gave the detainee a lap dance, tried to arouse him and then let him believe that he had menstrual blood on him. We then took the detainee back to his cell and were told that he was not allowed to have shower privileges nor fresh water for days. The idea behind this being that if he could not clean himself he would not be able to pray, if he could not pray, he could not practice Islam. Essentially it was an idea to break him down spiritually.

Omar Khadr and a number of other detainees, I remember hearing just few moments ago Shaker Aamer, they were privileged to something we called the frequent flyer program, where we would essentially move them every two hours. Whether we were moving them from camp Delta to camp Echo or moving them from Bravo block to Charlie block, be it a little move or a big move, the idea is that every two hours they would be moved and they would not be able to sleep. This was essentially to wear down their psyche and make them more probable to give out their information during interrogation. 

But what has questioned me ever since I first saw it, it seemed that most of these men were innocent and as numbers are starting to show, we’ve sent over 600 of them home, so they must have been innocent; if we knew that we were purchasing men that were innocent, why were we trying to interrogate innocent men? What were we hoping to get from them?

Some of the tactics I saw practiced in Guantanamo, I just want to never want to relive again and then a great deal of regret takes place and then I did not take the most productive use of some years after Guantanamo. I tried to drown away some of those memories and that is something you cannot do. You have to confront it.

Source

Undercover: Police Officer Connected to “NATO 5″ Case Still Spying on Protest in Chicago

22 May
The first time "Danny" (far right) officially ran as a CAM medic: March 18, 2012 at a protest to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war.

The first time “Danny” (far right) officially ran as a CAM medic: March 18, 2012 at a protest to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war.

By Steve Horn and Chris Geovanis

On March 27, Chicago teachers and their supporters – including parents, students and community residents - rallied against the largest mass public school closure in US history. News of the mobilization sparked huge public interest before the demonstration – including from an undercover police officer calling himself “Danny Edwards.”

The day before the big rally, “Danny” reached out in individual emails to fellow volunteer street medics he had met a year earlier after he took a 20-hour training with Chicago’s local street medic collective, Chicago Action Medical (CAM). CAM’s volunteer emergency medical technicians (EMTs), nurses, doctors and trained street medics provide emergency medical treatment at local protests.

His aim in reaching out: to learn more about the next day’s plans.

“Danny” – who admitted to us on May 6 that he is, in fact, a Chicago police officer – could have saved himself the trouble and his department the expense. After all, organizers had already coordinated directly with top CPD brass about their plans for the next day and widely promoted their intent to stage nonviolent civil disobedience.

After the CTU rally, “Danny” also tried to recruit at least one CAM volunteer street medic via email on April 30, the day before a May 1, 2013, immigrants’ rights march, to pair up with him as a partner. There were no takers, so he showed up alone at the rally sporting marked medic regalia.

His latest undercover sortie as a fake volunteer street medic bookends a hectic year for him.

The Paper Trail

“Danny” was a fixture at CAM events beginning in early March 2012, when he participated in a 20-hour introductory training for new street medics – a training he described in an email to CAM volunteer street medic Scott Mechanic as “great.”

May 1, 2012: "Danny Edwards" - posing with fellow Chicago Action Medical volunteers at their health care booth in Union Park, where street medics were volunteering to provide first aid and emergency health care for participants at the annual May Day rally and march. "Danny" - the only medic not smiling - is standing in front of the CAM banner.

May 1, 2012: “Danny Edwards” – posing with fellow Chicago Action Medical volunteers at their health care booth in Union Park, where street medics were volunteering to provide first aid and emergency health care for participants at the annual May Day rally and march. “Danny” – the only medic not smiling – is standing in front of the CAM banner.

The email address “Danny” used in that correspondence, which he did not sign by name, was pegged to the name of a Chicago police officer cited months later in court documents involved in undercover work around the NATO protests.

Less than half an hour after sending that initial email, “Danny” sent the first in a flurry of emails to Mechanic from a different email address, writing “let me know what going on so i can get involved (sic).”

“Danny’s” March 2012 foray into spying on CAM aligns with the date prosecutors say the Chicago Police Department (CPD) posted two other undercover agents who went by the street names “Mo” and “Nadia” on a 90-day temporary duty undercover assignment to Field Intelligence Team 7150. That team was tasked with infiltrating Occupy and anarchist groups in the run-up to the NATO Summit, according to court documents filed by Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez in April 2013.

Those two officers, “Mo” and “Nadia,” are also purported linchpins in the criminal cases against five activists known as the “NATO 5,” three of whom are scheduled to go to trial on NATO-related domestic terrorism charges this September.

The NATO prosecutors’ October 2012 Answer to Discovery lists this same police officer among the CPD officers, detectives and other police officials who may be called to testify in this fall’s upcoming trial. He is also mentioned in the NATO defendants’ February 25, 2013, Motion to Compel Discovery as “a CPD undercover officer related to this investigation.”

Busy Year for “Danny” – and Early Red Flags

Five days after he inadvertently emailed Scott Mechanic under his given name and scrambled to cover his tracks, “Danny” acted for the first time as a CAM street medic at a small permitted peace march on Chicago’s north side. The March 18, 2012 event was organized to mark the anniversary of the launch of the Iraq War in March 2003.

May 1, 2013: "Danny Edwards," undercover Chicago police officer, at a May Day rally for immigrant rights in Chicago's Union Park.

May 1, 2013: “Danny Edwards,” undercover Chicago police officer, at a May Day rally for immigrant rights in Chicago’s Union Park.

“Danny” ran again as a marked CAM street medic on April 7, 2012 at Occupy Chicago’s “Occupy Spring” event, also emailing Mechanic on April 26, 2012 about bringing a “friend” to an upcoming health workshop. On May 1, 2012, he volunteered as a marked CAM street medic at a May Day rally and march, where his refusal to follow CAM operational guidelines – reportedly abandoning his street medic partner to make a b-line for a group of young protesters wearing black clothes – began to raise real alarms with fellow street medics.

After “Danny’s” behavior on May Day, a number of veteran CAM volunteers – including Mechanic – moved immediately to isolate him from new and less experienced street medics, to monitor his behavior closely and to broadly urge the practice of good security culture.

But without a smoking gun, they were unwilling to expose him publicly. The chill from veteran street medics didn’t discourage “Danny” from continuing to reach out and show up to actions.

On May 11, a week and a half later and as local organizers were scrambling to find housing for out-of-town protesters traveling in for the demonstrations, he emailed Mechanic directly for information about housing that other groups or collectives might be offering. “I have a group of friends in need and I wanted some direction,”he wrote.

On May 20, 2012, at a large protest against the NATO Summit, CAM street medics demanded that he remove his medic markings after he again ignored CAM street operations protocols by deserting his partner to sprint after a group of protesters clad in black clothes.

“Danny” sent emails to individual members of CAM’s listserv – but almost never to the larger listserv – strategically for the next year, seeking information about upcoming demonstrations and meetings. The off-list queries continued to raise red flags with CAM members he contacted, some of whom had never met him and did not know who he was.

When we asked “Danny” at the 2013 May Day rally to confirm his name and identity as a CPD officer, he insisted he was “Danny Edwards” and claimed to be a friend of a local activist.

That’s not how the activist described “Danny” to CAM volunteers at a street medic training before the NATO protests last spring. At that training, he told CAM members that “Danny” had recently befriended him, and he raised concerns there about “Danny’s” interest in topics ranging from Molotov cocktails to property damage.

“NATO 5″ Connection

According to court documents released in the months after the NATO Summit protests, “Danny” is one of the undercover officers at the heart of the “NATO 5” criminal cases. He’s mentioned in the pre-NATO Summit pre-emptive raid search warrant documents as “Undercover Officer C,” and is also cited by his given name in court documents for one of the NATO defendants, Sebastian “Sabi” Senakiewicz, as a potential trial witness.

We tried to question “Danny” about his undercover activities on May 6 at a house that had a sheet of paper with his given name and phone number taped to the front door. While he admitted he was, in fact, the named police officer he’d denied being just five days earlier, he declined to answer our questions.

“Danny’s” post-NATO activities raise a key question: Why keep an undercover officer in play as a volunteer street medic in a nonviolent health-care project almost a year after the NATO protests that ostensibly put him into motion as a police spy in the first place?

It’s virtually impossible to say from the official record. That’s because the CPD and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez have fought tooth and nail in court for almost a year to prevent defense attorneys in the remaining NATO cases from learning more about the scope and character of police spying on political activity leading up to last year’s NATO Summit.

At a “NATO 3” status hearing on May 14, 2013, prosecutors again opposed disclosing information about the wider scope of police spying on Chicago’s activist groups (as they have before in official court filings) in the months leading up to the NATO Summit. Defense attorneys rebutted in open court – as they did in writing earlier in their April 30, 2013, “Reply to the State’s Response to Defendants’ Motion to Compel” – that this information remains directly relevant to the NATO cases because it would broaden the context of the arrests of the NATO 3 and the CPD’s pre-NATO spying efforts targeting the activist community.

Broader Context

Police spying in recent years has targeted peace groups, environmentalists and the Occupy movement, a focus on protest as a potential flashpoint of “terrorism” that sometimes has disastrous consequences. By way of example, in Boston, local police focused their attention on the political activism of local residents at the same time they missed the threat posed by the Boston Marathon bombers.

And law enforcement has also demonstrated a disturbing pattern of working undercover to create crime to prosecute crime. Notable cases like the “Cleveland 4” fit into a pattern that journalist Arun Gupta has described as law enforcement’s “war of entrapment against the Occupy movement.”

Law enforcement infiltration in Chicago in the run-up to the 2012 NATO Summit unfolded most publicly with the use of at least two undercover cops who went by the names “Mo” and “Nadia.”

Both were regular fixtures at a spring 2012 encampment to try to prevent the closure of the Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic on Chicago’s south side, one of six public mental health clinics slated for closure by city officials and hardly a flashpoint of “potential terrorist activity.” They also showed up at one point at an independent media center organized to cover the NATO protests and at numerous other documented locales in the two and a half months before the NATO Summit.

“Red Squad” 2.0 Rolling Back into Town?

Ongoing police spying a year after the NATO meeting by “Danny” – and potentially others – raises a real alarm among activists, including CAM street medics, whose national community traces its origins to the Medical Presence Project of the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR).

MCHR was first formed in 1964 to provide medical assistance to the civil rights movement. Its Chicago-based volunteers, who also provided medical aid at protests organized by peace projects and student groups opposed to the Vietnam War, were among thousands of civilians spied on by the CPD’s notorious Red Squad.

“The CPD’s decision to plant an undercover police spy in Chicago Action Medical is outrageous, but sadly, comes as no surprise,” said CAM street medic Dick Reilly in an interview. “The CPD has a long and sordid history of surveillance and infiltration of labor, peace and social justice groups dating back to the 1886 railroading of the Haymarket defendants – efforts that led to the creation of Chicago’s infamous Red Squad. Over a hundred years later, the cops are clearly still at it.”

For Reilly, CAM’s ongoing infiltration threatens core freedoms that range from the privacy rights of the people they treat to police officials’ ongoing assault on dissent in the city.

“When the CPD targets a volunteer medical project like CAM – which seeks to provide basic first aid to people exercising their democratic rights and whose primary principle is to ‘do no harm’ – it underscores the lengths to which they’ll go to criminalize dissent, suppress resistance and pander to the agenda of the political and economic elites they actually serve and protect,” Reilly said.

The Chicago Red Squad’s abuses of basic constitutional rights were so egregious -targets included the Parent-Teachers’ Association and the League of Women Voters – that a federal court slapped the city with a consent decree in 1982 that expressly barred politically motivated police spying unless police could show at least some evidence of criminal intent on the part of the targets of their spying.

The city was finally able to win relief from the consent decree in January 2001, after arguing for years constitutional protections thwarted its ability to investigate gangs and “terrorism.”

The consent decree’s demise hasn’t kept the CPD out of hot water for spying on political projects, either, beginning as early as 2002. Were the old consent decree still in place, CAM members believe “Danny’s” undercover spying on their work over the past year would have been illegal.

McCarthy’s Spy-Ops Background at NYPD, Newark PD

Just before he was sworn in as Chicago’s new mayor in May of 2011, Rahm Emanuel – a former US Congressman and chief of staff for President Obama – announced the appointment of new police superintendent Garry McCarthy. Three months later, McCarthy created an intelligence-gathering unit tasked to perform “counter-terrorism” work in preparation for the May 2012 NATO meetings.

A career New York cop, McCarthy is no stranger to the use of systematic police spying.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has a contentious track record in this arena, prompting the implementation of New York’s own version of Chicago’s Red Squad consent decree – the Handschu Decree - while McCarthy was climbing up the NYPD’s ranks to a senior command position.

It wasn’t long after he formally assumed the mantle of CPD superintendent in 2011 that McCarthy drew fire for allowing the latest iteration of New York’s police spy ring to operate in Newark, NJ, where he had served as police chief before taking the position as CPD’s top dog.

McCarthy also served as an NYPD commander when the police set up spy rings before the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City and during “CIA on the Hudson,” the joint NYPD/CIA project that was set up and run by former CIA Deputy Director for Operations David Cohen to “map the human terrain” of New York City‘s Islamic community.

Targeting Street Medics

Volunteer street medics have historically been an attractive target for undercovers.

CAM street medic Scott Mechanic met “Anna,” before she was outed as a police infiltrator, an FBI informant who used her position as a street medic to befriend and entrap environmental activists. One of those activists, Eric McDavid, is serving a 20-year sentence in a case built around Anna’s testimony and her reported entrapment activities.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Mechanic was also a street medic volunteer at New Orleans’ Common Ground Collective, where he and dozens of other volunteer health-care providers ran into Brandon Darby, an agent provocateur and FBI informant at the heart of another entrapment case, this one against David McKay and Bradley Crowder.

“These kinds of informants and undercover police represent a real threat to activists, in no small part because they’re committed to manufacturing crime where none exists to terrorize the public and justify their abuses of our right to dissent,” said Mechanic. “This Chicago cop’s infiltration of our group raises real questions about police intrusion into protesters’ medical histories – and it’s a truly despicable example of exploiting people’s caregivers as part of the national campaign to criminalize dissent.”

Convergence of the War on Drugs, War on Terrorism

As a Chicago cop, the CPD officer who infiltrated CAM has worked on narcotics and gang cases, including as an undercover officer.

Given the growing conflation of the “War on Drugs” with the “War on Terrorism,” which is increasingly married to a War on Dissent, it’s not surprising that the Chicago police officer who infiltrated CAM would segue into COINTELPRO-style undercover work. By the 1990′s, the CPD was listing dissidents by alleged political affiliation in their gang database, in tandem with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s claim that the Red Squad Consent Decree shackled cops’ ability to investigate both gangs and “terrorism.”

Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, points to the delayed notice search warrants enabled by Section 213 of the USA PATRIOT Act - presented to the public as a counter-terrorism tool – as a key example of the War on Drugs’ convergence with the War on Terrorism.

“Both the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism have long represented cash cows for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, from the FBI all the way down to local police departments,” Buttar said in an interview. “Beyond the serial corruption of agencies pimping public fears to inflate their budgets, many particular powers claimed as necessary for one ‘war’ are actually used more in the other.”

The Chicago Police Department did not respond to our phone calls or emails about this story.

Source

Syria Rebels Threaten to Wipe Out Shiite, Alawite Towns

21 May
The Syrian uprising began with peaceful protests that evolved into a civil war after the government began attacking the demonstrators. Photographer: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

The Syrian uprising began with peaceful protests that evolved into a civil war after the government began attacking the demonstrators. Photographer: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

By Dana El Baltaji

Communities inhabited by Shiite Muslims and President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority will be “wiped off the map” if the strategic city of Al-Qusair in central Syria falls to government troops, rebel forces said.

“We don’t want this to happen, but it will be a reality imposed on everyone,” Colonel Abdel-Hamid Zakaria, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army in Turkey, told Al-Arabiya television yesterday. “It’s going to be an open, sectarian, bloody war to the end.”

Fighter planes and heavy artillery pounded the city today, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mail. It said two people were killed during clashes between rebels and government troops backed by Hezbollah fighters, bringing the death toll from clashes at Al-Qusair in the last three days to more than 90.

Al-Qusair is close to the highway linking Damascus to the coast and has been a conduit for weapons from Lebanon to the rebels. The government offensive began with attacks on villages on the city’s outskirts last month.

Bassam al-Dada, a political adviser to the Free Syrian Army, said from Istanbul yesterday that Assad’s forces were still at the outskirts of the city. “Our people are still fighting inside and very strongly, but it’s not an easy situation,” he said.

‘Major Setback’

“Failure to hold the town would be a major setback for opposition forces, impacting their ability to maintain clear lines of supply between safe havens in Lebanon and combat units in Syria,” said David Hartwell, senior Middle East analyst at IHS Jane’s.

The conflict in Syria, which began in March 2011, is increasingly dividing the country and the surrounding region along religious lines.

The Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Shiite-led Iran have been key allies of the Assad government, whose upper ranks come from the Alawite sect, derived from Shiite Islam. Leaders of the rebel army and political opposition are mostly Sunni, and they are backed by key Sunni powers including Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Salman Bin Abdul Aziz is in Turkey to meet President Abdullah Gul and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu today, according to Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency. The trip comes days after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met U.S. President Barack Obama.

Emergency Meeting

The Arab League will hold an emergency meeting today to discuss Syria at the request of Qatar, Egypt’s state-run Middle East News Agency reported. Talks will focus on Al-Qusair and the participation of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the fighting, the agency cited an unidentified league official as saying. Hezbollah is backed by Iran and is classified as a terrorist group by Israel and the U.S.

Hezbollah’s open involvement in the Syrian crisis is worrying because it pits the militia against Sunni extremist groups, according to Hartwell.

“While it may suit states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and even the United States to see this type of sectarian conflict develop as a means of retarding the regional influence of Iran (via Hezbollah) and al-Qaeda, the results in terms of long-term regional instability could be dramatic,” Hartwell said in an e-mailed note.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is returning to the Middle East this week and is seeking to promote peace talks. Syrian opposition leaders, due to meet May 23 in Istanbul to choose a new leader, have rejected attendance at any peace conference that includes Assad or his inner circle.

The Syrian uprising began with peaceful protests that evolved into a civil war after the government began attacking the demonstrators. Radical Islamists, some with ties to al-Qaeda, have since joined the fight against Assad.

Source

Red lines and other double standards

20 May

Flag-Pins-Israel-North-Korea

By Stephen Gowans

According to the White House, Israel has the right to defend itself (1). I would argue that it doesn’t. Based on the theft of another people’s land and denial of their right to return to the homes from which they fled or were driven, Israel no more than any other thief has the right to defend itself.

Judging by its indulgent attitude to Israeli aggressions, Washington claims that Israel has the right to defend itself in any way it pleases: by unprovoked airstrikes across international borders; by meting out collective punishment; by carrying out extrajudicial assassinations; by invasions and occupations; and through other outrages against international law, sovereignty and humanity. In fact, by doing what the United States, itself, regularly does.

The White House says that the most recent Israeli aggression, airstrikes carried out over the last few days against Syrian military facilities, were intended to stop a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran to the Lebanese resistance organization, Hezbollah. Striking a dissenting note, The New York Times reported that, “Some American officials are unsure whether the new shipment was intended for use by Hezbollah or by the Assad government.” (2) Which means the airstrikes may have nothing to do with Israel “defending itself” and everything to do with Tel Aviv helping Syria’s Sunni rebels in what is, in large measure, a sectarian war, inflamed by outside interference, against an Alawi-dominated state that has (from Washington’s perspective) the wrong attitude to US free enterprise and (from Israel’s) the wrong attitude to the dispossession of the Palestinians. Or it may be that the missiles were intended for the Syrian military, but the Israelis struck as a precaution, in case the missiles were indeed destined for Hezbollah.

While indulging Israel for its aggressions, Washington denies North Korea the right to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles for self-defense, for the obvious reason that North Korea’s self-defense is self-defense against the United States. Likewise, the threat posed to Israel of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles in Hezbollah’s hands is that they bolster the resistance organization’s ability to defend both itself, and its benefactor, Iran, from Israeli attack. It’s no secret that Israel has been threatening war on Iran for some time on grounds that Iran’s civilian nuclear energy industry may, at some point, provide Tehran with the capability of developing what Israel already has in abundance: nuclear weapons.

What’s more, if Israel has the right to defend itself, why not Syria? It’s not as if the Assad government’s actions, in defense of secular pan-Arabism, have come anywhere close to matching the level of barbarity regularly visited by the Zionist regime on its opponents in defense of its settler ideology, or in helping to promote the imperial interests of its American benefactor and sponsor.

Earlier, the White House declared that Syria’s use of chemical weapons against terrorist insurgents would be a red line whose crossing would trigger a strong US response, presumably direct US military intervention in Syria’s civil war. Recent claims by Israel, Britain and one US intelligence agency of evidence that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against rebel forces—evidence the White House says is inconclusive—touched off a controversy over whether the Obama administration had blundered in setting a red line, and whether failure to act on even weak evidence undermines US credibility.

Lost in the polemic is the telling reality that Washington has set no red line for the insurgents’ use of the same weapons.

And that can’t be because there are no grounds to believe rebel forces would use deadly gas against Syrian loyalists. The UN independent commission of inquiry on Syria says there are strong, concrete suspicions that the rebels have used sarin gas (but has no evidence the Syrian government has deployed chemical weapons against the rebels.) (3)

Okay, let’s assume that the UN’s strong and concrete suspicions do reflect the rebels’ actual use of sarin gas against loyalist forces.

The obvious question (unasked as far as I can tell by the mass media) is where did the rebels’ chemical weapons come from? Were they captured from the Syrian military, or procured through a supplier of the rebels’ other weapons—Saudi Arabia, Qatar or a NATO state?

And does the United States plan to act on the UN’s strong and concrete suspicions?

The answer to the first question is uncertain. As to the second, the US might intervene to secure the rebels’ chemical weapons if the weapons have been captured from the Syrian army by jihadists acting independently of US control, but it would likely be done quietly, to avoid raising embarrassing questions about the rebellion putting dangerous weapons into the hands of Islamists who might use them later against US targets (including, if the Assad government falls, a US-client regime in Damascus.)

On the other hand, if the weapons have been used by US-controlled opposition factions, an intervention won’t occur, unless the weapons were used without US approval. If so, measures—again quiet ones—will likely to be taken to curb their use, or to use them only at Washington’s direction.

Another possibility is that Washington colluded in the weapons’ use.

Clearly, Washington’s chemical weapons standards are contigent and not absolute. The red line against the Syrian defense forces provides Washington with a pretext for direct and open military intervention against Damascus when and if intervention is feasible. Since no intervention against the rebel forces is desired—on the contrary, only intervention on their behalf is on the agenda—a rebel red line is unnecessary, and restrictive. It’s not the use of chemical weapons that Washington opposes, but their use by a government fighting for survival against US predations. Anyone else can use chemical weapons with impunity so long as it’s done in the service of US foreign policy goals.

Finally, we might ask whether the country that has the greatest store of weapons of mass destruction, is the world’s largest manufacturer of them, and has been the most ardent user of them, would act to stop their use by rebel forces it has backed against a pan-Arab nationalist regime it has for decades sought to overthrow? Again, subject to the condition the rebels were under US control, not likely.

The United States professed opposition to weapons of mass destruction is entirely one-sided. It is applied selectively to governments and organizations that it, itself, or its proxies, are opposed to, typically because they have the wrong attitude to US free enterprise, or the wrong attitude to their proxies’ plunder of the land, natural resources and markets of other people.

1. Sam Dagher, Nour Malas and Joshua Mitnick, “Strikes in Syria raise alarm”, The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2013.
2. Anne Barnard, Michael R. Gordon and Jodi Rudoren, “Israel targeted Iranian missiles in Syria attack”, The New York Times, May 4, 2013.
3. “Syrian rebels may have used Sarin” Reuters, May 5, 2013: “UN: ‘Strong suspicions’ that Syrian rebels have used sarin nerve gas,” Euronews, May 6, 2013.

Rebels film execution of 11 Syrian soldiers, as Obama continues anti-Assad rhetoric

18 May
An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on May 16, 2013 by user @dirtytrainers

An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on May 16, 2013 by user @dirtytrainers

As a new video is published showing fighters of the Al Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front in Syria executing 11 men they say are Bashar Assad’s soldiers, Obama talks to Turkey’s Erdogan, renewing threats of action against the Syrian government.

The video, which was posted on YouTube on Thursday, is believed to have been filmed in the eastern Deir-al Zor province and appears to date from some time in 2012, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group with a network of activists in Syria.

The footage shows the commander, his face obscured in a black balaclava, shooting each prisoner in the back of the head as they kneel blindfolded lined up in the sand.

The Islamic militants shout “God is great” each time a man is shot. In some cases the executioner comes back and fires more bullets to make sure they are dead. The Al Nusra Front, which is thought to be behind the footage, has links to Al-Qaeda, and itself has ended up on America’s terrorism list in December 2012.

Rami Abderrahman, the head of the Observatory, told Reuters that the Al Nusra Front has been releasing several videos of their gruesome operations.

The Observatory said that such videos have become increasingly common in Syria’s bloody civil war, which has now claimed 80,000 lives, according to latest UN estimates.

The Nusra video is the second to appear online in the last two days to show executions by fighters who claim links to al-Qaeda.

An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on May 16, 2013 by user @dirtytrainers

An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on May 16, 2013 by user @dirtytrainers

It comes after horrific footage was released on Sunday of a Syrian rebel commander apparently eating one of the lungs of a dead government fighter. Time magazine said they had first seen the footage in April and identified the man as Khaled al-Hamad. Hamad admitted to the magazine that he had mutilated the corpse of the soldier as an act of revenge for allegedly defiling a naked woman and her daughter.

The footage was swiftly condemned by the Syrian opposition.

Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch told the Guardian that it is “not enough for Syria’s opposition to condemn such behavior or blame it on violence by the government. The opposition forces need to act firmly to stop such abuses.”

But Hamad, who is also known as Abu Sakkar, has also received support amongst the more hardline rebels in Syria. Sakkar’s supporters often make portraits of him with the inscription “We Love You”.

Obama repeats warnings of a ‘military option’

The controversy comes as a joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minster, Tayyip Erdogan, and President Obama was held Thursday. Obama said that the US reserves the right to resort to diplomatic and military options if there is conclusive proof that Assad has used chemical weapons.

“There are a whole range of options that the United States is already engaged in…  And I reserve the options of taking additional steps, both diplomatic and military, because those chemical weapons inside of Syria also threaten our security over the long term as well as our allies and friends and neighbors.”

US President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan hold a joint press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, May 16, 2013. (AFP Photo / Saul Loeb)

US President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan hold a joint press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, May 16, 2013. (AFP Photo / Saul Loeb)

Erdogan, for his part, added that “ending this bloody process in Syria and meeting the legitimate demands of the people by establishing a new government are two areas where we are in full agreement with the US. We also agree that we have to prevent Syria from becoming an area for terrorist organizations. We also agree that chemical weapons should not be used.”

But Aleksandr Lukashevich, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said Monday that the accusation that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons could be a sign that public opinion is being prepared for the possibility of military intervention in Syria.

“A lot of reasoning appeared in a number of Arab and other international mass media regarding the use of chemical weapons in the standoff between the government forces and the opposition guerrillas,” he warned.

Speaking to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV channel Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow will make no “backstage” agreements on Syria in exchange for Western concessions on missile defense or any other disputed issues.

“This is not serious. I think that those who try suggest that indulge in wishful thinking,” Lavrov said in an interview with Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV channel.

“Everyone knows well that Russia’s stance on a whole range of crucial issues is not opportunistic,” the Russian top diplomat emphasized.

On Wednesday, the UN passed resolution 6a, which has condemned Assad’s regime for re-escalating the Syrian conflict. The document was passed with a vote of 107 to 12, and with 59 abstaining.

The support was far lower than a resolution last august, which condemned Assad for cracking down on dissent. The decline in support is seen as a sign of growing unease at increasing extremism among Syria’s fractious rebels.

Russia voted against this year’s resolution, saying it was “counterproductive and irresponsible” to promote a one-sided resolution when Moscow and Washington are trying to get the Syrian government and opposition to agree to negotiations.

At a meeting in Geneva last year the major world powers reached a degree of consent between the positions of Russia and the West who do not often see eye to eye on Syria. They agreed that any future government in Syria could include members of the current regime as well as opposition groups. There was also no specific demand that Assad must step down – something the West has insisted on – and instead an agreement pushed by Russia and China that the future makeup of any Syrian government would be decided by the Syrian people. A follow-up meeting on the conference has been agreed by Lavrov and US State Secretary John Kerry; it is reported to be preliminary scheduled for June.

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“Rapid descent into sectarian violence”: Video shows Syrian rebel biting into soldier’s heart

16 May
Pose to camera with extracted heart and liver, a chorus of unseen rebels chanting jaded ‘Allahu akbar’ praise.

Pose to camera with extracted heart and liver, a chorus of unseen rebels chanting jaded ‘Allahu akbar’ praise.

A disturbing video which shows a Syrian rebel commander cutting the heart out of a soldier and biting into it shows that the country’s civil war has rapidly descended into sectarian violence and revenge killings, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.

According to the New York-based organization, the video shows the founder of the rebel Farouq Brigade Abu Sakkar cutting into the torso of a dead soldier. The footage has sparked outrage among both the opposition and supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

While the man who is allegedly Sakkar is cutting open the soldier’s liver, the person filming says, “God Bless you, Abu Sakkar, you look like you are drawing [carving] a heart of love on him.”

After he cuts out the corpse’s liver and heart, he is filmed holding the organs in his hands and speaks into the camera: “I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog.” Off-screen cheers shouting “Allahu akbar (God is great)” can be heard in the background.

RT presents three screenshots of the video, but refrains from actually publishing it for obvious reasons.

Syrian rebel warlord Abu Sakkar, founder of the Farouq Brigade, cutting out the vital organs of a dead soldier.

Syrian rebel warlord Abu Sakkar, founder of the Farouq Brigade, cutting out the vital organs of a dead soldier.

At the end of the video – the content of which cannot be independently verified – the man is filmed putting the corpse’s heart into his mouth, as if taking a bite out of it.

Human Rights Watch emergencies director Peter Bouckaert says that he had seen an original, unedited copy of the video and that Sakkar’s identity had been confirmed by rebel sources in Homs. He said that Sakkar had been seen in other videos wearing the same black jacket which he is wearing in the last video clip, and with the same rings on his fingers.

Bouchaert said that in the edited version of the film, Sakkar tells his men to “slaughter the Alawites and take their hearts out to eat them,” before biting into the heart.

“The mutilation of the bodies of enemies is a war crime. But the even more serious issue is the very rapid descent into sectarian rhetoric and violence,” Bouckaert said.

It’s not the first time Sakkar has made an appearance in violent videos. Previous footage showed him firing rockets at Lebanese Shia villages on the Syrian border and posing with the body of a soldier purportedly from the Lebanese Shia militant Hezbollah group, which is helping Assad’s forces.

The Syrian uprising against Assad is led by the majority Sunni Muslims. Assad, whose family has ruled for over 40 years, draws most of his support from his own Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam. 

The Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011, has resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 people, according to UN estimates.

Sakkar pretends to bite of the extracted viscera.

Sakkar pretends to bite of the extracted viscera.

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Ronald Reagan: Accessory to Genocide – Ex-Guatemalan Dictator Rios Montt Guilty of Mayan Genocide

14 May
Efrain Rios Montt - Reagan

Image: Rios Montt with Ronald Reagan

By Robert Parry

More than any recent U.S. president, Ronald Reagan has been lavished with honors, including his name attached to Washington’s National Airport. But the conviction of Reagan’s old ally, ex-Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt, for genocide means “Ronnie” must face history’s judgment as an accessory to the crime.

The conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide against Mayan villagers in the 1980s has a special meaning for Americans who idolize Ronald Reagan. It means that their hero was an accessory to one of the most grievous crimes that can be committed against humanity.

The courage of the Guatemalan people and the integrity of their legal system to exact some accountability on a still-influential political figure also put U.S. democracy to shame. For decades now, Americans have tolerated human rights crimes by U.S. presidents who face little or no accountability. Usually, the history isn’t even compiled honestly.

By contrast, a Guatemalan court on Friday found  Rios Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced the 86-year-old ex-dictator to 80 years in prison. After the ruling, when Rios Montt rose and tried to walk out of the courtroom, Judge Yasmin Barrios shouted at him to stay put and then had security officers take him into custody.

Yet, while Guatemalans demonstrate the strength to face a dark chapter of their history, the American people remain mostly oblivious to Reagan’s central role in tens of thousands of political murders across Central America in the 1980s, including some 100,000 dead in Guatemala slaughtered by Rios Montt and other military dictators.

Indeed, Ronald Reagan – by aiding, abetting, encouraging and covering up widespread human rights crimes in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua as well as Guatemala – bears greater responsibility for Central America’s horrors than does Rios Montt in his bloody 17-month rule. Reagan supported Guatemala’s brutal repression both before and after Rios Montt held power, as well as during.

Despite that history, more honors have been bestowed on Reagan than any recent president. Americans have allowed the naming of scores of government facilities in Reagan’s honor, including Washington National Airport where Reagan’s name elbowed aside that of George Washington, who led the War of Independence, oversaw the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and served as the nation’s first president.

So, as America’s former reputation as a beacon for human rights becomes a bad joke to the rest of the world, it is unthinkable within the U.S. political/media structure that Reagan would get posthumously criticized for the barbarity that he promoted. No one of importance would dare suggest that his name be stripped from National Airport and his statue removed from near the airport entrance.

But the evidence is overwhelming that the 40th president of the United States was guilty as an accessory to genocide and a wide range of other war crimes, including torture, rape, terrorism and narcotics trafficking. [See Robert Parry's Lost History.]

Green Light to Genocide

Regarding Guatemala, the documentary evidence is clear that Reagan and his top aides gave a green light to the extermination campaign against the Mayan Ixil population in the highlands even before Rios Montt came to power. Despite receiving U.S. intelligence reports revealing these atrocities, the Reagan administration also pressed ahead in an extraordinary effort to arrange military equipment, including helicopters, to make the slaughter more efficient.

“In the tortured logic of military planning documents conceived under Mr. Ríos Montt’s 17-month rule during 1982 and 1983, the entire Mayan Ixil population was a military target, children included,” the New York Times reported from Rios Montt’s trial last month. “Officers wrote that the leftist guerrillas fighting the government had succeeded in indoctrinating the impoverished Ixils and reached ‘100 percent support.’”

So, everyone was targeted in these scorched-earth campaigns that eradicated more than 600 Indian villages in the Guatemalan highlands. But documents from this period indicate that these counterinsurgency strategies predated Rios Montt. And, they received the blessing of the Reagan administration shortly after Reagan took power in 1981.

A document that I discovered in the archives of the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, revealed that Reagan and his national security team in 1981 agreed to supply military aid to Guatemala’s dictators so they could pursue the goal of exterminating not only “Marxist guerrillas” but people associated with their “civilian support mechanisms.”

This supportive attitude took shape in spring 1981 as President Reagan sought to relax human-rights restrictions on military aid to Guatemala that had been imposed by President Jimmy Carter and the Democratic-controlled Congress in the late 1970s. As part of that easing, Reagan’s State Department “advised our Central American embassies that it has been studying ways to restore a closer, cooperative relationship with Guatemala,” said a White House “Situation Room Checklist” dated April 8, 1981.

The document added: “State believes a number of changes have occurred which could make Guatemalan leaders more receptive to a new U.S. initiative: the Guatemalans view the new administration as more sympathetic to their problems [and] they are less suspect of the U.S. role in El Salvador,” where the Reagan administration was expanding military aid to another right-wing regime infamous for slaughtering its political opponents, including Catholic clergy.

“State has concluded that any attempt to reestablish a dialogue [with Guatemala] would require some initial, condition-free demonstration of our goodwill. However, this could not include military sales which would provoke serious U.S. public and congressional criticism. State will undertake a series of confidence building measures, free of preconditions, which minimize potential conflict with existing legislation.”

In other words, the Reagan administration was hoping that the U.S. government could get back in the good graces of the Guatemalan dictators, not that the dictators should change their ways to qualify for U.S. government help.

Soliciting the Generals

The “checklist” added that the State Department “has also decided that the administration should engage the Guatemalan government at the highest level in a dialogue on our bilateral relations and the initiatives we can take together to improve them. Secretary [of State Alexander] Haig has designated [retired] General Vernon Walters as his personal emissary to initiate this process with President [Fernando Romeo] Lucas [Garcia].

“If Lucas is prepared to give assurances that he will take steps to halt government involvement in the indiscriminate killing of political opponents and to foster a climate conducive to a viable electoral process, the U.S. will be prepared to approve some military sales immediately.”

But the operative word in that paragraph was “indiscriminate.” The Reagan administration expressed no problem with killing civilians if they were considered supporters of the guerrillas who had been fighting against the country’s ruling oligarchs and generals since the 1950s when the CIA organized the overthrow of Guatemala’s reformist President Jacobo Arbenz.

The distinction was spelled out in “Talking Points” for Walters to deliver in a face-to-face meeting with General Lucas. As edited inside the White House in April 1981, the “Talking Points” read: “The President and Secretary Haig have designated me [Walters] as [their] personal emissary to discuss bilateral relations on an urgent basis.

“Both the President and the Secretary recognize that your country is engaged in a war with Marxist guerrillas. We are deeply concerned about externally supported Marxist subversion in Guatemala and other countries in the region. As you are aware, we have already taken steps to assist Honduras and El Salvador resist this aggression.

“The Secretary has sent me here to see if we can work out a way to provide material assistance to your government. … We have minimized negative public statements by US officials on the situation in Guatemala. … We have arranged for the Commerce Department to take steps that will permit the sale of $3 million worth of military trucks and Jeeps to the Guatemalan army. …

“With your concurrence, we propose to provide you and any officers you might designate an intelligence briefing on regional developments from our perspective. Our desire, however, is to go substantially beyond the steps I have just outlined. We wish to reestablish our traditional military supply and training relationship as soon as possible.

“As we are both aware, this has not yet been feasible because of our internal political and legal constraints relating to the use by some elements of your security forces of deliberate and indiscriminate killing of persons not involved with the guerrilla forces or their civilian support mechanisms. I am not referring here to the regrettable but inevitable death of innocents though error in combat situations, but to what appears to us a calculated use of terror to immobilize non politicized people or potential opponents. …

“If you could give me your assurance that you will take steps to halt official involvement in the killing of persons not involved with the guerrilla forces or their civilian support mechanism … we would be in a much stronger position to defend successfully with the Congress a decision to begin to resume our military supply relationship with your government.”

In other words, though the “talking points” were framed as an appeal to reduce the “indiscriminate” slaughter of “non politicized people,” they embraced scorched-earth tactics against people involved with the guerrillas and “their civilian support mechanisms.” The way that played out in Guatemala – as in nearby El Salvador – was the massacring of peasants in regions considered sympathetic to leftist insurgents.

Reporting the Truth

U.S. intelligence officers in the region also kept the Reagan administration abreast of the expanding slaughter. For instance, according to one “secret” cable from April 1981 — and declassified in the 1990s — the CIA was confirming Guatemalan government massacres even as Reagan was moving to loosen the military aid ban.

On April 17, 1981, a CIA cable described an army massacre at Cocob, near Nebaj in the Ixil Indian territory, because the population was believed to support leftist guerrillas. A CIA source reported that “the social population appeared to fully support the guerrillas” and “the soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved.”

The CIA cable added that “the Guatemalan authorities admitted that ‘many civilians’ were killed in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants.” [Many of the Guatemalan documents declassified in the 1990s can be found at the National Security Archive’s Web site.]

Despite these atrocities, Reagan dispatched Walters in May 1981 to tell the Guatemalan leaders that the new U.S. administration wanted to lift the human rights embargoes on military equipment that Carter and Congress had imposed.

According to a State Department cable on Oct. 5, 1981, when Guatemalan leaders met again with Walters, they left no doubt about their plans. The cable said Gen. Lucas “made clear that his government will continue as before — that the repression will continue. He reiterated his belief that the repression is working and that the guerrilla threat will be successfully routed.”

Human rights groups saw the same picture, albeit from a less sympathetic angle. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission released a report on Oct. 15, 1981, blaming the Guatemalan government for “thousands of illegal executions.” [Washington Post, Oct. 16, 1981]

But the Reagan administration was set on whitewashing the horrific scene. A State Department “white paper,” released in December 1981, blamed the violence on leftist “extremist groups” and their “terrorist methods” prompted and supported by Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Fully Onboard

What the documents from the Reagan Library make clear is that the administration was not simply struggling ineffectively to rein in these massacres – as the U.S. press corps typically reported – but was fully onboard with the slaughter of people who were part of the guerrillas’ “civilian support mechanisms.”

U.S. intelligence agencies continued to pick up evidence of these government-sponsored massacres. One CIA report in February 1982 described an army sweep through the so-called Ixil Triangle in central El Quiche province.

“The commanding officers of the units involved have been instructed to destroy all towns and villages which are cooperating with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor [the EGP] and eliminate all sources of resistance,” the report said. “Since the operation began, several villages have been burned to the ground, and a large number of guerrillas and collaborators have been killed.”

The CIA report explained the army’s modus operandi: “When an army patrol meets resistance and takes fire from a town or village, it is assumed that the entire town is hostile and it is subsequently destroyed.” When the army encountered an empty village, it was “assumed to have been supporting the EGP, and it is destroyed. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of refugees in the hills with no homes to return to. …

“The army high command is highly pleased with the initial results of the sweep operation, and believes that it will be successful in destroying the major EGP support area and will be able to drive the EGP out of the Ixil Triangle. … The well documented belief by the army that the entire Ixil Indian population is pro-EGP has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike.”

The reality was so grotesque that it prompted protests even from some staunch anticommunists inside the Reagan administration. On Feb. 2, 1982, Richard Childress, one of Reagan’s national security aides, wrote a “secret” memo to his colleagues summing up this reality on the ground:

“As we move ahead on our approach to Latin America, we need to consciously address the unique problems posed by Guatemala. Possessed of some of the worst human rights records in the region, … it presents a policy dilemma for us. The abysmal human rights record makes it, in its present form, unworthy of USG [U.S. government] support. …

“Beset by a continuous insurgency for at least 15 years, the current leadership is completely committed to a ruthless and unyielding program of suppression. Hardly a soldier could be found that has not killed a ‘guerrilla.’”

Rios Montt’s Arrival

But Reagan was unmoved. He continued to insist on expanding U.S. support for these brutal campaigns, while his administration sought to cover up the facts and deflect criticism. Reagan’s team insisted  that Gen. Efrain Rios Montt’s overthrow of Gen. Lucas in March 1982 represented a sunny new day in Guatemala.

An avowed fundamentalist Christian, Rios Montt impressed Official Washington where the Reagan administration immediately revved up its propaganda machinery to hype the new dictator’s “born-again” status as proof of his deep respect for human life. Reagan hailed Rios Montt as “a man of great personal integrity.”

By July 1982, however, Rios Montt had begun a new scorched-earth campaign called his “rifles and beans” policy. The slogan meant that pacified Indians would get “beans,” while all others could expect to be the target of army “rifles.” In October, Rios Montt secretly gave carte blanche to the feared “Archivos” intelligence unit to expand “death squad” operations in the cities. Based at the Presidential Palace, the “Archivos” masterminded many of Guatemala’s most notorious assassinations.

The U.S. embassy was soon hearing more accounts of the army conducting Indian massacres, but ideologically driven U.S. diplomats fed the Reagan administration the propaganda spin that would be best for their careers. On Oct. 22, 1982, embassy staff dismissed the massacre reports as a communist-inspired “disinformation campaign.”

Reagan personally joined this P.R. spin seeking to discredit human rights investigators and others who were reporting accurately about massacres that the administration knew were true. On Dec. 4, 1982, after meeting with Rios Montt, Reagan hailed the general as “totally dedicated to democracy” and added that Rios Montt’s government had been “getting a bum rap” on human rights. Reagan discounted the mounting reports of hundreds of Mayan villages being eradicated.

In February 1983, however, a secret CIA cable noted a rise in “suspect right-wing violence” with kidnappings of students and teachers. Bodies of victims were appearing in ditches and gullies. CIA sources traced these political murders to Rios Montt’s order to the “Archivos” in October to “apprehend, hold, interrogate and dispose of suspected guerrillas as they saw fit.”

Despite these facts on the ground, the annual State Department human rights survey praised the supposedly improved human rights situation in Guatemala. “The overall conduct of the armed forces had improved by late in the year” 1982, the report stated.

Indiscriminate Murder

A different picture — far closer to the secret information held by the U.S. government — was coming from independent human rights investigators. On March 17, 1983, Americas Watch condemned the Guatemalan army for human rights atrocities against the Indian population.

New York attorney Stephen L. Kass said these findings included proof that the government carried out “virtually indiscriminate murder of men, women and children of any farm regarded by the army as possibly supportive of guerrilla insurgents.”

Rural women suspected of guerrilla sympathies were raped before execution, Kass said, adding that children were “thrown into burning homes. They are thrown in the air and speared with bayonets. We heard many, many stories of children being picked up by the ankles and swung against poles so their heads are destroyed.” [AP, March 17, 1983]

Publicly, senior Reagan officials continued to put on a happy face. In June 1983, special envoy Richard B. Stone praised “positive changes” in Rios Montt’s government, and Rios Montt pressed the United States for 10 UH-1H helicopters and six naval patrol boats, all the better to hunt guerrillas and their sympathizers.

Since Guatemala lacked the U.S. Foreign Military Sales credits or the cash to buy the helicopters, Reagan’s national security team looked for unconventional ways to arrange the delivery of the equipment that would give the Guatemalan army greater access to mountainous areas where guerrillas and their civilian supporters were hiding.

On Aug. 1, 1983, National Security Council aides Oliver North and Alfonso Sapia-Bosch reported to National Security Advisor William P. Clark that his deputy Robert “Bud” McFarlane was planning to exploit his Israeli channels to secure the helicopters for Guatemala. [For more on McFarlanes's Israeli channels, see Consortiumnews.com's "How Neocons Messed Up the Mideast."]

“With regard to the loan of ten helicopters, it is [our] understanding that Bud will take this up with the Israelis,” wrote North and Sapia-Bosch. “There are expectations that they would be forthcoming. Another possibility is to have an exercise with the Guatemalans. We would then use US mechanics and Guatemalan parts to bring their helicopters up to snuff.”

Hunting Children

What it meant to provide these upgrades to the Guatemalan killing machine was clarified during the trial of Rios Montt with much of the testimony coming from survivors who, as children, escaped to mountain forests as their families and other Mayan villagers were butchered.

As the New York Times reported, “Pedro Chávez Brito told the court that he was only six or seven years old when soldiers killed his mother. He hid in the chicken coop with his older sister, her newborn and his younger brother, but soldiers found them and dragged them out, forcing them back into their house and setting it on fire.

“Mr. Chávez says he was the only one to escape. ‘I got under a tree trunk and I was like an animal,’ Mr. Chávez told the court. ‘After eight days I went to live in the mountains. In the mountain we ate only roots and grass.’”

The Times reported that “prosecution witnesses said the military considered Ixil civilians, including children, as legitimate targets. … Jacinto Lupamac Gómez said he was eight when soldiers killed his parents and older siblings and hustled him and his two younger brothers into a helicopter. Like some of the children whose lives were spared, they were adopted by Spanish-speaking families and forgot how to speak Ixil.”

Elena de Paz Santiago, now 42, “testified that she was 12 when she and her mother were taken by soldiers to an army base and raped. The soldiers let her go, but she never saw her mother again,” the Times reported.

Even by Guatemalan standards, Rios Montt’s vengeful Christian fundamentalism had hurtled out of control. On Aug. 8, 1983, another coup overthrew Rios Montt and brought Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores to power.

Despite the power shift, Guatemalan security forces continued to murder with impunity, finally going so far that even the U.S. Embassy objected. When three Guatemalans working for the U.S. Agency for International Development were slain in November 1983, U.S. Ambassador Frederic Chapin suspected that “Archivos” hit squads were sending a message to the United States to back off even mild pressure for human rights.

In late November, in a brief show of displeasure, the administration postponed the sale of $2 million in helicopter spare parts. The next month, however, Reagan sent the spare parts anyway. In 1984, Reagan succeeded, too, in pressuring Congress to approve $300,000 in military training for the Guatemalan army.

By mid-1984, Chapin, who had grown bitter about the army’s stubborn brutality, was gone, replaced by a far-right political appointee named Alberto Piedra, who favored increased military assistance to Guatemala. In January 1985, Americas Watch issued a report observing that Reagan’s State Department “is apparently more concerned with improving Guatemala’s image than in improving its human rights.”

Reagan’s Dark Side

Despite his outwardly congenial style, Reagan – as revealed in the documentary record – was a cold and ruthless anticommunist who endorsed whatever “death squad” strategies were deployed against leftists in Central America. As Walters’s “Talking Points” demonstrate, Reagan and his team accepted the idea of liquidating not only armed guerrillas but civilians who were judged sympathetic to left-wing causes – people who were deemed part of the guerrillas’ “civilian support mechanisms.”

Across Central America in the 1980s, the death toll was staggering — an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the Contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political “disappearances” in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during the resurgence of political violence in Guatemala. The one consistent element in these slaughters was the overarching Cold War rationalization emanating from Ronald Reagan’s White House.

It was not until 1999, a decade after Ronald Reagan left office, that the shocking scope of the atrocities in Guatemala was comprehensively detailed by a truth commission that drew heavily on U.S. government documents declassified by President Bill Clinton. On Feb. 25, 1999, the Historical Clarification Commission estimated that the 34-year civil war had claimed the lives of some 200,000 people with the most savage bloodletting occurring in the 1980s. The panel estimated that the army was responsible for 93 percent of the killings and leftist guerrillas for three percent. Four percent were listed as unresolved.

The report documented that in the 1980s, the army committed 626 massacres against Mayan villages. “The massacres that eliminated entire Mayan villages … are neither perfidious allegations nor figments of the imagination, but an authentic chapter in Guatemala’s history,” the commission concluded. The army “completely exterminated Mayan communities, destroyed their livestock and crops,” the report said. In the northern highlands, the report termed the slaughter “genocide.” [Washington Post, Feb. 26, 1999]

Besides carrying out murder and “disappearances,” the army routinely engaged in torture and rape. “The rape of women, during torture or before being murdered, was a common practice” by the military and paramilitary forces, the report found. The report added that the “government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some [of these] state operations.” The report concluded that the U.S. government also gave money and training to a Guatemalan military that committed “acts of genocide” against the Mayans. [NYT, Feb. 26, 1999]

During a visit to Central America, on March 10, 1999, President Clinton apologized for the past U.S. support of right-wing regimes in Guatemala dating back to 1954. “For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake,” Clinton said.

Despite the damning documentary evidence and now the shocking judgment of genocide against Rios Montt, there has been no interest in Washington to hold any U.S. official accountable, not even a thought that the cornucopia of honors bestowed on Ronald Reagan should cease or be rescinded.

It remains unlikely that the genocide conviction of Rios Montt will change the warm and fuzzy glow that surrounds Ronald Reagan in the eyes of many Americans. The story of the Guatemalan butchery and the Reagan administration’s complicity has long since been relegated to the great American memory hole.

But Americans of conscience will have to reconcile what it means when a country sees nothing wrong in honoring a man who made genocide happen.

Source

Mali under indefinite occupation

13 May

french-army-soldiers-destroyer-a_0

France Parliament Votes to Extend Combat Mission While UN Security Council Readies a Policing Force

by Roger Annis

France’s National Assembly and Senate have voted to extend the country’s military intervention in Mali. A resolution passed both houses of parliament on April 22. Not a single vote was cast in opposition. Three days later, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 2100, creating a policing mission beginning July 1, 2013. The mission is called by its French acronym MINUSMA. Its projected size is 11,200 soldiers and 1,440 police.

France invaded the north of Mali with fighter aircraft and 4,000 soldiers on January 11. The Mali government and its French benefactor lost control of the area in 2012 to Tuareg and other national groups fighting for autonomy and independence.

Rightist Islamist forces that oppose the sovereignty aspirations of the national minorities then briefly rose to military dominance in the region. It is their presence that served as the key pretext for the France intervention and now for a foreign, military and police occupation of undeclared duration.

Presently, there are some 6,000 soldiers from African countries serving in a “peacekeeping” role in the south of Mali, while French soldiers are engaged in combat with Islamists in the north. Also, what’s called a military training mission by the European Union has some 200 soldiers on the ground and hundreds more providing supplies and equipment.

The United States is a key backer of the French intervention. It has significantly boosted its military presence in West Africa during the past decade and recently opened a drone airbase in neighbouring Niger.

France Discusses Intervention

The vote in France’s National Assembly and Senate were required by Article 35-3 of the French Constitution, a revision from July 2008 arising from the long war in Afghanistan. French parliamentarians debated the Mali intervention on January 16 but no vote was taken.

The first and only other time Article 35-3 has been invoked was in September of 2008 when legislators got around to approving France’s Afghan intervention that began in 2001.

In the National Assembly debate, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called the Mali intervention a political and military success. Minister of Defence Jean-Yves Le Drian declared, “All of Mali’s territory has been liberated” and the threat to Mali’s security has been “very strongly reduced.”

National Assembly deputies from the Left Front electoral coalition abstained in the vote. Jean-Jacques Candelier explained, “We want our [France's] contribution to be made solely through the military force to be created under the umbrella of the UN.” He also argued that French aid should be reoriented in favour of local development.

François Asensi, spokesperson for Front in the Assembly, said the problem with the resolution presented by the government is its proposal for a French combat force that will be outside the control of the UN (Security Council).

He also expressed concern that the precise goals of the intervention are unclear. “When will we say that out troops will have fulfilled their mission? What are the precise objectives of our military presence?…” “We do not accept a lengthy and permanent presence of France in Mali,” he said. But he concluded, “It goes without saying that we cannot vote against the presence of French troops in Mali, but we will abstain.”

An April 23 statement by the French Communist Party, an important constituent of the Left Front, voiced similar concerns about the government resolution, including that France risks being drawn into a quagmire with “regional repercussions.”

A party member writing on the party’s website termed the decision to abstain in the National Assembly vote as “not very communist… Communists should OPPOSE military interventions that lead to imperialist wars…”

A member and correspondent with the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) has written a harsh assessment of the April 22 vote, in particular of the decision of the Left Front to abstain. The writer says there are abundant reasons to oppose the French intervention: “Four months of military intervention at a cost of 200-million euros; no political solution in sight; no handover to Mali foreseen; and the power of France’s influence, as [Foreign Minister] Laurent Fabius has said, is strengthened.” The article continues, “This shameful vote allows for a lengthy military presence in Mali that will become a full-fledged territorial occupation in the interests of France and the other big powers supporting it.”

The International Plan for Mali

The France/U.S./UN plan for Mali will see MINUSMA relegated to a policing (“peacekeeping”) role. The force will stay out of combat because a large part of its ranks will come from African countries that are deemed to lack necessary training and resolve.

Meanwhile, a separate French force of up to 1,000 soldiers will be dedicated to combat operations and will operate outside of any United Nations endorsement and control.

Soldiers from Chad are the only African forces that have been fighting with French soldiers in the north, but that country has recently ended its combat role. Chad has suffered unacceptably high casualties and it says it is not equipped to fight the lengthy, counter-insurgency war that may be taking shape in Mali.[1]

Chad’s own political foundations are shaky and were likely a factor in its Mali decision. In March, the Union des forces de la résistance announced it was calling off a two-year ceasefire with the authoritarian government of Idriss Déby, due to the government’s failure to engage in promised political dialogue.

In early May, the Déby regime arrested some leading critics, including legislature member Saleh Makki of the Coordination des partis pour la défense de la Constitution. Déby has ruled Chad since 1990.

Blunt Assessment of Foreign Military “Training”

In an April 23 interview published in Le Monde, Colonel Bruno Heluin of the French army provided a remarkably blunt assessment of the Mali army. He is assigned to the European military training mission. For now, the foreign plan for Mali assigns a very secondary role to the country’s army.

Mali was a founding member of the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership that was created by the United States in 2005. The Partnership provides money, weapons and training to its 11 member-countries in West Africa and it conducts annual military exercises directed by the U.S., Europe and Canada. Three of those exercises have taken place on Mali soil.

Notwithstanding all these years of training and equipping, Heluin says the 20,000-member Mali army lives “day to day.” It lacks any training infrastructure, is under-financed and under-equipped, and it is plagued with corruption.

He says much of the military training provided by the U.S. in recent years went to Tuareg-led army forces in the north. Many of these ended up joining the rebellion against the central government in 2011/12.

Army leader Captain Amadou Sanogo was trained in the U.S. He led the overthrow of Mali’s elected government in March 2012 and today he retains key influence and power over the country. The army is presently recruiting 4,000 young people between the ages of 17 to 19.

When asked about the support promised earlier this year at an international conference in Ethiopia to train and provision the Mali army, Heluin said not a penny has been received. The military contingents from the neighbouring African countries present in Mali have received eight million euros ($11-million).

Mali’s army is stained with having overthrown a national government. Hence, the wariness of the large foreign powers to be seen engaging with it. Hence also the rush to get some kind of elected government back into office.

Security Council Resolution 2100 calls for the holding of a national election as quickly as possible, preferably by July. This is one of the similarities to the Security Council occupation regime in Haiti, soon to enter its tenth year.

In Haiti, there have been two national elections since MINUSTAH was created in 2004, in 2006 and in late 2010/early 2011. Each one featured the exclusion of progressive political forces. The dust from the January 2010 earthquake had barely settled before the big powers present in the country began to press for the second of those elections, notwithstanding the catastrophic, post-earthquake state of the country (which still prevails today). It recorded the lowest voter turnout in the modern history of the western hemisphere, including by far the lowest turnout in Haiti.

Most serious commentators in Mali as well as internationally recognize that the country is nowhere near ready to hold a national election. The military situation is unstable, the army officers safely ensconced in the capital city Bamako remain in effective control, and the country is living a severe humanitarian crisis.

Humanitarian Situation

That humanitarian emergency is detailed in a series of reports published recently. An IRIN agency news report says towns in the north are in a state of “complete chaos” with no governing or social infrastructure in operation. In Timbuktu, for example, not a single international aid agency is operating.

The Guardian reports on April 29 that close to 300,000 people are internally displaced in Mali and some 125,000 people are living in refugee camps in neighbouring countries. (Mali’s population is 15.5 million.) Many are there due to ongoing drought conditions and the related, creeping desertification of the north of the country as the Sahara Desert expands inexorably southward.

Food prices are spiralling and aid needs are not being met. In March, agencies found that one in five families in the north of Mali were suffering food shortages ranging from severe to extreme. The World Food Program is seeking to deliver food to half a million people around the country.

Hector Calderon of UNICEF Mali says that this year in southern Mali, 210,000 children will suffer from life-threatening malnutrition and 450,000 will suffer a less severe but still debilitating form of malnutrition.

Northern Mali will descend to emergency levels of food insecurity in less than two months if the security situation and humanitarian access to vulnerable communities does not improve, say dire warnings from four international aid agencies – Action Against Hunger (ACF), Solidarités International, Welthungerhilfe and Oxfam.

“It is vital that we act before we reach a point of no return about the food situation,” says Philippe Conraud, Oxfam Country Director in Mali. “While international attention is focused on the UN peacekeeping mission, we risk losing sight of the current alarming humanitarian situation.”

“Many big international donors which are not present in Mali have the impression that the military intervention was a success and the situation is back to normal,” he said. “But we want to highlight the fact that this could become an emergency in a matter of months.”

A recent, troubling report on the human rights situation was authored by Human Rights Watch Director in France, Jean-Marie Fardeau.

He writes that formal mechanisms of justice are “absent” from the north of Mali. “In all the small cities, villages and encampments, notably along the Niger River, the forces that are supposed to guarantee the rule of law are absent, while undisciplined and violent elements of the Mali army have exacted serious retribution.”

Fardeau says that 20 summary executions of civilians and an equal number of disappearances have been recorded, and that more are likely to be uncovered. Mistreatment and torture of prisoners by the Mali army is also reported.

For the first time in the history of Mali, military officers, six in number, are being investigated for a human rights crime – the disappearance of five civilians in Timbuktu. Fardeau says it would be good if they could appear before a military tribunal, except that this institution has never convened.

He also notes the recent creation of a national commission for dialogue and reconciliation. He does not have much hope for its effectiveness and says a full truth and reconciliation commission is needed instead.

The serious allegations against the Mali army are a confirmation of the concern about that institution expressed by the Tuareg Mouvement national de libération de l’Azawad(MNLA) at the outset of the France intervention, including its call that the army should be prevented from reoccupying the north of the country. The concerns were ignored by France.

As the French rulers settle in for a long occupation in Mali, they face difficult political conditions at home. The Guardian recently reports that polls are showing plummeting support for the Socialist Party government of President François Hollande.

“The one-year anniversary of the French left’s return to the Elysée has been marked by disappointment on promises to cut unemployment, restore growth, contain the deficit and reverse Europe’s one-size-fits-all austerity drive. Hollande’s approval ratings have plunged to the lowest of any modern French leader…

“Hollande’s biggest problem is spiralling unemployment, a symptom of France’s economic decay and zero growth… Unemployment is at 10.6 per cent or 3.2 million people, the highest number since records began in 1996. More people are out of a job in France than at any other time…

“One unexpected event that brought a brief boost to Hollande was the military intervention in Mali – he described a visit to the capital, Bamako, as the ‘most important day of my political life’. But Henri Rey, of the Institute of Political Science in Paris, said the slight bounce did not have a lasting impact politically: ‘Mali was seen as a success, but it did not fundamentally change the equation.’”

On May 5, tens of thousands of people marched in the streets of Paris against austerity and the captains of finance.

The national rights struggle of the Tuareg and other national minorities in the north of Mali is decades old. It came to the fore again in 2011/12, prompted by the intransigence of the Mali government/military and by the upheaval in neighbouring Libya. A cascade of disastrous political fallout then followed, including the military coup of March 2012 and the France intervention.

The coup and the intervention have exposed the rotten edifice of neo-colonialism constructed in West Africa during the past 50-plus years. The peoples of the entire region are suffering deeply as a consequence. Increasingly, they are being dragged back into new forms of direct, colonial rule.

But the new colonialism will continue to be met with deep resistance. The French rulers will find no salvation in West Africa to the decline of their economy at home and the challenges to their mini-empire abroad.

Roger Annis is a writer, socialist and activist in Vancouver, Canada. He can be reached at rogerannis(at)hotmail.com.

Endnotes:

1. Fighting in the north of Mali is lessening and France has recently repatriated several hundred of its soldiers. Accordingly, the Canadian government has suspended its airlift support. The quiet that surrounded that decision led Ottawa Citizen columnist David Pugliese to ask if Canada was abandoning its French ally. But Rear Admiral Peter Ellis replied to the newspaper, “While assistance is no longer required by France on a continuous basis, Canada remains committed to supporting our allies and will still transport French equipment and troops to Mali, when needed.”

Source

Under the black flag of al-Qaeda: the Syrian city ruled by gangs of extremists

12 May

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by Richard Spencer

Islamists are tightening their grip in the power vacuum in the uprising, reports Richard Spencer.

The black flag of al-Qaeda flies high over Raqqa’s main square in front of the governor’s smart new palace, its former occupant last seen in their prison. Their fighters, clad also in black, patrol the streets, or set up positions behind sandbags.

The Islamists smashed up one of the two shops that sold alcohol. That much was pretty inevitable, the locals agreed. The other off-licence had already closed, as had the casino on the outskirts of town.

They brought in a radical cleric from Egypt to preach Friday prayers, and set up a sharia court in the city’s new sports centre with the support of other brigades. They had their fiefdom – an entire city to run only 60 miles from Nato’s border.

Then, one night, 10 men came for Nagham and Nour al-Rifaie, two teenage sisters from a well-known liberal family. They were at home with a family friend, Yusra Omran, 30, and their male cousin, 32.

Nagham, centre, with her father Hassan al-Rifaie and family friend Yusra Omran (David Rose for the Telegraph)

“All these guys came in with guns and wearing masks and with handcuffs,” said Nagham, 19, a civil engineering student. “They started searching everything and shouting.

“They were saying, ‘Put on more clothes than you are wearing, put on a headscarf.’ I just said I’m wearing clothes and I’m not putting on a headscarf’.”

The men took them to the sports centre. There the girls were charged with being alone with a man and interrogated.

“The guy with us was so mean,” Rifaie said. “He was speaking in a horrible way, as if he was disgusted to be with us.”

In Raqqa, a once conservative but by all accounts not religious city, the triumph of al-Qaeda’s Syrian arm, Jabhat al-Nusra, would seem to be complete.

The town is largely under the control of Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated to al-Qaeda (David Rose for the Telegraph)

Little known a year ago but suspected of having being founded by al-Qaeda in Iraq, they have grown in stature, leading many of the rebels’ most successful recent battles. Last month they publicly declared their loyalty to al-Qaeda’s supreme leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Their new-found power is such that it is changing international calculations over the conflict. After first being discouraged from taking action by their presence in rebel ranks, Britain now has a revised diplomatic strategy.

David Cameron put it to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on Friday and will discuss it this week with a nervous President Barack Obama in Washington.

Cameron’s officials now feel Jabhat al-Nusra has to be defeated by actively supporting the less militant rebels, including through supplying arms. Many of Jabhat’s rival militias are being marginalised in cities similar to Raqqa across the north. On Tuesday, Britain will seek to have Jabhat al-Nusra added to an official list of organisations facing sanctions at the United Nations.

Destroyed buildings near the Ahrar al-Sham Brigade Headquarters in the centre of Al Raqqa. The base was targeted by a regime airstrike last week (David Rose for the Telegraph)

In taking Raqqa two months ago al-Qaeda achieved its greatest coup in the war to date: it was the first provincial capital to fall outright to the rebels, and allowed Jabhat to assume a leadership role over a large swathe of north-eastern Syria, to the Iraqi border.

To many it is a welcome development. “Jabhat are excellent for us,” said Abdullah Mohammed, a man from the nearby village of Mansoura. “They deal with us according to Islamic rules, so there are no problems. They are honest and they run everything pretty well.”

As a police officer, Mohammed said he was in a position to know the difference between life under al-Qaeda and the Assad regime. He was in prison when the revolution broke out – he had stopped a car for jumping a red light and found to his cost it was being driven by a regime official.

He said he was in a cell with four members of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority sect, and when the protests started the guards were taken away to fight and the Alawite prisoners turned into guards.

Other locals too, particularly shopkeepers, say the all-pervasive corruption of the Assad era has vanished with the regime’s men. “I like Jabhat,” said Ahmed al-Hindy, who runs an optician’s shop. “They are better than the regime, at any rate.”

An Islamic militant in the centre of Al Raqqa (David Rose for the Telegraph)

Part of it is money. Jabhat al-Nusra has always been well-funded compared with other militias – most people assume due to wealthy backers in the Gulf, though few have been able to track down the lines of the money supply.

Now they have control of good sources of income and can pay salaries. From the city’s main flour mill, they supply the all-important bakeries, and they have seized some of them too. At night, long queues of women form to buy their daily ration under the watchful eyes of Jabhat guards.

They have also taken the oilfields in neighbouring Deir al-Zour province. Production is hardly booming, but they are able to sell enough on the local market to keep cash rolling in.

It is not all plain sailing, though. Even in Raqqa, no single militia is all-powerful, even Jabhat, and they depend on an alliance with Ahrar al-Sham, another radical Islamist group.

They also have to deal with a slew of other brigades with a variety of ideologies.

The dynamic of Jabhat’s rise is being challenged out of both envy and fear, leading to clashes.

Two senior rival militiamen have been assassinated in the past 10 days: Abu Awad of the Farouq Brigade, and, on Thursday, Abu al-Zein, the head of the Ahfad al-Rasool. In both cases the method was the same: three men in black and masks drove up to the victims’ cars, shot them, then sped off.

Some say it could be a leftover squad of Assad’s loyalists, but members of their militias point out both victims were known for supporting a civil state, not an Islamic one.

Another militia leader, Abu Deeb of the Lions of Islam, was arrested after a fight on Tuesday with Jabhat al-Nusra that brought the city to a brief standstill. Different explanations have been given, but Abdullah al-Khalil, the civilian who heads the town’s interim administration, said it was over control of the town’s largest bakery.

“After Assad falls, there will be a second revolution, against Jabhat al-Nusra,” said Amar Abu Yasser, a battalion leader with the Farouq Brigade. The Farouq was once the most famous brigade in the Syrian revolution, spreading its power from its base in Homs across the north of the country, where it still operates several of the border crossings to Turkey, including Tal Abyad, the nearest to Raqqa. But its power and influence has been severely curbed by Jabhat al-Nusra. Abu Azzam, the Farouq head at Tal Abyad, survived an assassination attempt when a bomb was placed under his car.

The flag of Jabhat al-Nusra flying over the Governer’s Palace (David Rose for the Telegraph)

“The problem is due to ideology,” said Abu Yasser, until two years ago a student of Arabic literature, now a tough, bearded warrior in fatigues and a black turban. “There is a conflict between the black flag and the revolutionary flag.” The green, white and black banner with three red stars made famous by the revolution still flies in Raqqa, but in a secondary place.

“It is not wise to try to make an Islamic state here,” he went on. “There are Christians, Alawites, Druze living here. It will just be a big problem.”

He also said Jabhat al-Nusra was not as honest and righteous as it seemed. He claimed it had stripped the town’s factories and smuggled their goods, including nearly 200 tons of sugar, to Turkey for profit.

Jabhat has withdrawn into itself as tensions rise, and particularly since the declaration of obedience to al-Qaeda was issued, which confirmed its status as an internationally proscribed terrorist group. It no longer gives interviews or defends itself from such allegations, and has banned its men from talking to foreign journalists.

Those its members stop at checkpoints in the city are accused of being “foreign spies”.

Graffiti is painted on a wall by members of Civic Society, one of the more liberal youth organizations in Al Raqqa (David Rose for the Telegraph)

Some locals regarded as fanciful the idea that Farouq and other groups would ever again have the strength to rise up and throw out Jabhat. But most proclaimed defiantly that Syria would not become a radical Islamic state. “This is all just for the war,” said Khalil, the town leader, who is happy to cooperate with Jabhat as he tries to re-establish schools and keep the water running.

A former human rights lawyer once jailed by the regime, he said he could tolerate the black flags for now. “But I think the modern Islamic project will win in the end,” he added, using a phrase commonly used to refer to a civil state with a Muslim ethos, like booming Turkey next door. He added a refrain repeated now across rebel Syria: it will be harder to keep the Islamists out if the West does not come to the aid of this “modern” project.

As a follower of Abu Deeb, the arrested militia leader, put it: “This is a pact with the devil. We would rather ally with Obama than Jabhat.”

At first glance, Jabhat have tried to play safe. A small but visible minority of women go without the hijab, or headscarf. The town’s handful of Christian families have stayed put, for now; the churches are closed, but untouched. But it may have made a major strategic error with its announcement of loyalty to al-Qaeda. It did not cause a big stir in the West, where the link had been assumed, but it shocked many who had begun to tolerate Jabhat’s presence. Their main Islamist allies, Ahrar al-Sham, immediately denounced the group. “It was like a thunderbolt,” said Abu Abdullah, 40, an Ahrar al-Sham fighter outside their main base, largely abandoned after being hit by Assad missiles. “It really surprised me and is unacceptable. Our goal is just to liberate Syria. We don’t care about other countries – we don’t want to go and fight in Iraq or anywhere.”

Then there was the arrest of Nagham al-Rifaie, Nour, 18, and their cousin and friend. That was a “what the Hell?” moment, said Mohammed Shuaib, a student who has helped found a human rights discussion group, Haquna. It led a 500-strong protest to the sharia court the morning after the arrest.

But by then the girls were already free. What happened is a glimmer of hope to men like Shuaib.

On arrival at the court, the girls were told they would immediately face two judges, local worthies brought in by the ruling Islamist alliance. It was one o’clock in the morning. Rifaie was told to put a headscarf on. Again she refused. “They said to me, ‘It’s a sharia court, you can’t go in without a headscarf’. I said, ‘That’s fine by me!’ So we stood before the court with no headscarves on.” One of the judges, a teacher called Mohammed al-Omar, referred them to the charge sheet. “He said, ‘It says you were alone with a man, what do you say.’ I said, ‘It is none of their business.’

“And he said, ‘I agree’.”

The girls were freed immediately. They asked who the men who arrested them were, but no one was able to provide an answer. Whether the rest of Raqqa will escape so lightly, the girls could not say. “Things will become difficult, that’s sure,” said Rifaie, sitting in a coffee shop last week with her father, himself a human rights activist; the two girls the only women present. “The problem is with the people. Because of the regime, if someone speaks to them who has power, they just sit there. But my father has taught me to have opinions. So I cannot stop.”

Source

Former U.S.-Backed Military Dictator Efrain Rios Montt Found Guilty of Genocide in Guatemala

11 May

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Efraín Ríos Montt held to account for abuses in campaign that killed an estimated 200,000 and led to 45,000 disappearances

The former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide on Friday after a court found him guilty of crimes against humanity for his role in the slaughter of 1,771 Mayan Ixils in the 1980s. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

It is the first time a former head of state has been found guilty of genocide in their own country.

“We are convinced that the acts the Ixil suffered constitute the crime of genocide,” said Judge Yazmin Barrios, adding that Ríos Montt “had knowledge of what was happening and did nothing to stop it”.

The trial was the first time a former head of government has been held to account in Guatemala for the abuses carried out during a 36-year conflict that killed an estimated 200,000 people and led to 45,000 other “disappearances”.

The vast majority of the victims were members of indigenous groups that make up about half of the population.

The verdict was hailed by victims’ groups and human rights organisations as a step towards healing the psychological wounds from one of Latin America’s bloodiest civil wars.

His co-defendant, former intelligence chief José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, was cleared by the court.

“This is healthy for Guatemala because it helps us free our demons,” said Helen Mack, a businesswoman and prominent human rights activist whose sister, an anthropologist, was killed by the Guatemalan army in 1990.

Pascal Paradis, director of Lawyers Without Borders Canada, which has advised the victims’ lawyers throughout the case, said the fact the trial happened at all was a big achievement.

“It was quite a feat to get past the amnesty law that was passed when Guatemala signed a peace deal in 1996 to end its 36-year war. Impunity is no longer the rule,” he said.

Others said the jailing of the 86-year-old was not enough, given the suffering of the victims.

“What I want is for Ríos to feel the pain we felt,” said Elena de Paz Santiago, who was 12 when she and her mother fled a massacre in their village in 1982.

They hid in the mountains and survived by eating roots and wild plants for months, before being caught and taken to an army outpost to cook and clean for the soldiers. Her mother died while they were both being gang-raped and was later buried in a mass grave.

“He [Rios Montt] will go to jail but he will have food. We nearly starved hiding out in the mountains,” she said in an interview outside the courtroom.

The legal battle is also far from over and Ríos Montt is expected to appeal.

“We still have a long way to go,” said Edwin Canil, a legal adviser to the victims who helped build the case against Rios Montt and is himself a survivor of a massacre in 1982.

The defence team challenged the validity of the trial throughout the three weeks of hearings.

Zury Rios, the former dictator’s daughter, complained of the “legal mismanagement” of the trial by the three-judge panel and what she called the “arbitrary form” in which it was conducted.

Source

US wants 9 permanent bases in Afghanistan after 2014 ISAF withdrawal

10 May
Forward Base Honaker Miracle at Watahpur District in Kunar province. (AFP Photo / Manjunath Kiran)

Forward Base Honaker Miracle at Watahpur District in Kunar province. (AFP Photo / Manjunath Kiran)

Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed Thursday to wring concessions out of the United States in negotiations for a security pact for the country, as Washington wants to maintain nine military bases in Afghanistan after ISAF troops withdraw in 2014.

As US and other NATO troops begin to withdraw from the country by 2014, Washington is in talks with Karzai’s government to allow the US Military to retain a residual presence. The size of the force has not yet been determined, but could number between 2,500 and 12,000, according to US officials.

The stated aim of the plan is that soldiers would continue to train the Afghan army and police, and carry out attacks on Al-Qaeda militants.

“Our conditions are that the US intensify its efforts in the peace process, strengthen Afghanistan’s security forces, provide concrete support for the economy – power, roads, dams – and provide assistance in governance,” Karzai said at a ceremony at Kabul University. “When they do this, we are ready to sign [a partnership agreement].”

Previously, the US said that if 6,000 troops were kept behind in Afghanistan only the bases in Kabul and Bagram airfield would be maintained.

As the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) draws down troop deployments in Afghanistan, security in the country is still in a perilous state, with the Taliban able to operate largely with impunity.

US army soldiers march from the Forward Base Honaker Miracle at Watahpur District in Kunar province. (AFP Photo / Manjunath Kiran)

US army soldiers march from the Forward Base Honaker Miracle at Watahpur District in Kunar province. (AFP Photo / Manjunath Kiran)

While addressing a meeting of the Russian Security Council on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the ISAF has not achieved significant improvements in security and has done nothing to eliminate heroin production in the country, which is now at record levels.

“There are all grounds to believe that we may face an escalation of the situation in Afghanistan in the short term,” Putin said.

“The foreign military contingent, whose backbone is American forces, has not achieved a breakthrough in the fight against terrorist and radical groups as yet. On the contrary, their activity has been particularly increasing lately,” Putin explained.

Putin’s comments come after an embarrassing revelation earlier this week that British intelligence agency MI6 regularly provided Karzai’s government with ‘ghost money’ in order to buy influence through bribes.

The money from MI6 is a fraction of what the CIA paid to Karzai’s government, and although the exact figures have been withheld for “reason of national security” they are estimated to run in the tens of millions of dollars.

Karzai’s government is deeply unpopular with many Afghans, and is widely seen as corrupt. There was significant overlap between the corrupt Afghan political establishment and the country’s illegal heroin trade, including the president’s brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was assassinated in 2011.

A UN report released last month showed that Afghan poppy production was rapidly expanding, and that the country was expected to produce 90 percent of the world’s opium this year.

Source

Israel used depleted uranium shells in air strike

8 May
Video still of Hezbollah TV's footage claiming to show the aftermath of an alleged Israeli airstrike on a military facility near Damascus, on May 5 2013

Video still of Hezbollah TV’s footage claiming to show the aftermath of an alleged Israeli airstrike on a military facility near Damascus, on May 5 2013

Israel used “a new type of weapon”, a senior official at the Syrian military facility that came under attack from the Israeli Air Force told RT.

“When the explosion happened it felt like an earthquake,” said the source, who was present near the attack site on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday morning.

“Then a giant golden mushroom of fire appeared. This tells us that Israel used depleted uranium shells.”

Depleted uranium is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process that creates nuclear weapons, and was first used by the US in the Gulf conflict of 1991. Unlike the radioactive materials used in nuclear weapons, depleted uranium is not valued for its explosiveness, but for its toughness – it is 2.5 times as dense as steel – which allows it to penetrate heavy protection.

Countries using depleted uranium weapons insist that the material is toxic, but not dangerously radioactive, as long as it remains outside the body.

The source also claims the attack – if it managed to hit the objects it targeted – served more of a political than a military purpose.

“Several civilian factories and buildings were destroyed. The target was just an ordinary weapons warehouse. The bombing is an ultimatum to us – it had no strategic motivation.”

Western intelligence sources told the media that the strikes targeted transfers of weapons from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which is sympathetic to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The official who spoke to RT denies this.

“There was no valuable equipment at the site. It was all removed after a previous attack on the facility. The military losses from this are negligible.”

Video still of Hezbollah TV's footage claiming to show the aftermath of an alleged Israeli airstrike on a military facility near Damascus, on May 5 2013

Video still of Hezbollah TV’s footage claiming to show the aftermath of an alleged Israeli airstrike on a military facility near Damascus, on May 5 2013

Source

Israel launches second Syria airstrike in two days – reports

8 May

NEW ISRAELI F16I SUFRA FIGHTERS ARRIVE IN ISRAEL

Strong blasts hit the outskirts of Syria’s capital early on Sunday, with reports saying that they were results of Israeli airstrikes on a military research center. Other sources suggest Damascus Airport was hit.

Massive explosions have been heard near Mount Qasioun in Damascus. The area hosts the Jamraya military research center, which came under Israeli attack earlier in January and marked the first incursion by Israel into Syrian airspace in six years.

A senior US official confirmed to NBC News that Israeli Air Force bombed the military research center.

The overnight Israeli strike reportedly targeted Iranian-supplied missiles to Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, a Western intelligence source told Reuters. “In last night’s attack, as in the previous one, what was attacked were stores of Fateh-110 missiles that were in transit from Iran to Hezbollah,” the source said.

There have also been reports that the airstrikes targeted the 104th and 105th brigades of the Syrian Republican Guards, a source told RT Arabic.

A senior Israeli official confirmed to AFP that the Israeli airstrike on Syria was carried out near Damascus Airport overnight, targeting Iranian missiles destined for Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah movement.

“The attack was very close to the airport, the target was Iranian missiles which were destined for Hezbollah,” he said.

Mount Qasioun and Damascus Airport are located in different parts of the city, so if both were targets of airstrikes, this would likely require a more complex coordinated attack.

There are reports of gunfire shots heard in outskirts of Damascus, apparently indicating that some rebel groups tried to seize the opportunity and went into offensive amid the commotion caused by the airstrikes. However, no major breakthroughs on their part were reported.

The rebel offensive however may give the Syrian government grounds to further accuse Israel of supporting the Syrian armed opposition by saying they had foreknowledge of the Israeli airstrikes and were prepared to move out.

Syria’s Ministry of Health did not confirm if there were any deaths or injuries.

RT has managed to speak to local journalist Abdallah Mawazini, for a report on the latest developments.

“When the explosion happened in Damascus, all the houses were shaken. There was dust everywhere. Right now we’re receiving more information about the attack, which targeted the Jamraya military research center,” he told RT. “Everyone woke up, most of the people ran downstairs – to make sure they are safe. Now we are getting more information. The sound of the explosion was heard everywhere in Damascus. People are scared.”

Rumors fly as official info remains scarce

While no official casualty number has been made public, rumors on Syrian social media say that at least 300 soldiers stationed at Mount Qasioun have been killed and hundreds of others injured, Mawazini said. Many Syrians are calling for retaliation as the possibility of a full-scale war with Israel is speculated upon.

During the attack, one Israeli jet was reportedly shot down by Syria’s Air Force, according to Hezbollah’s Manar TV channel, citing security sources in Damascus. Two Israeli pilots of the downed IDF jet have been taken to a military area in Damascus under Assad’s control, according to reports in Lebanese and Syrian media.

War spillover into region feared

There has been no immediate official comment from Israel. “We don’t respond to this kind of report,” an Israeli military spokeswoman told Reuters.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the security cabinet on Thursday night to approve the airstrike, a source told Reuters.

Israeli military has called up several thousand reservists earlier this week for what it called a “surprise” military exercise on its border with Lebanon, AP reported.

Earlier this week, the IDF deployed two Iron Dome batteries near the cities of Haifa and Safed in northern Israel, amid tensions along the border in that area.

Video footage uploaded onto the Internet showed a massive ball of fire rising into the sky. RT could not immediately verify the authenticity of the videos.

“Until we get a clear picture of what exactly was targeted it’s difficult to speculate why the targeting took place. I’d say that the US gave Israel the green light for the previous attack in past months and reportedly gave them an OK to launch future strikes. So this probably isn’t something that happens on the spur of the moment,” news editor at antiwar.com Jason Ditz told RT.

“Of course, Syria is unlikely, being in the middle of a civil war, to launch much of retaliation against Israel directly, but at the same time this probably undermines some of the more Islamist factions in the Syrian rebels especially with reports that they are benefiting from these airstrikes,” he added.

In the meantime Netanyahu is leaving on Sunday afternoon for a five-day trip to China that will focus on economic ties and regional issues such as Iran, Syria and Egypt. His departure however was delayed by two hours to make room for a security cabinet meeting, according to Haaretz newspaper.

Airstrikes escalating

The Israeli Air Force conducted an airstrike on Syrian territory on Friday, reportedly targeting a shipment of advanced missiles. Unnamed US officials claimed that the missiles had been en-route from Iran to Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Among the varying descriptions of the actual rockets, Fateh 110s have come up, which are advanced enough to strike Tel Aviv from southern Lebanon and, therefore perceived as a threat by Israel.

On Saturday, before Sunday’s overnight strike, US President Barack Obama stated that Israel has the right to defend against the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah.

“I’ll let the Israeli government confirm or deny whatever strikes that they’ve taken,” Obama said in an interview with the Spanish-language network Telemundo.

Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon earlier told journalists that any alleged delivery of Syrian weapons to Hezbollah would be considered a “red line.” Ya’alon then said Israel would not permit “sophisticated weapons” to fall into the hands of “Hezbollah or other rogue elements.”

Obama has also said in the past that the crossing of a ‘red line’ would warrant further action from outside. This was in relation to the possibility that Assad forces may have used chemical weapons against Syrians – a claim that is still being investigated, with no evidence so far.

Nonetheless, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced on Thursday that the US may now consider arming the Syrian opposition – something the US has shied away from openly doing in the two years since the start of the Syrian uprising.

Asked directly if the administration was reconsidering its position on that option, Hagel said “yes”.“Arming the rebels — that’s an option,” he said. “We must continue to look at options.”

The conflict in Syria has entered its third year. According to UN estimates, at least 70,000 people have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011.

Source

“Israel trying to drag US into Syrian conflict”

8 May

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Israel’s reported second air strike on Syria in two days targeted a facility just outside the capital. But there was no escalation toward Israel to justify the attack – and Tel Aviv is only trying to drag the US into the conflict.

That’s the view of journalist and Middle East expert Ali Rizk, who told RT he believes the actions are Israel’s attempt to influence US Middle East policy.

RT: This isn’t just an isolated incident but a series of air offensives above a foreign territory. Why has Israel been so persistent despite the fact that such military action is a clear violation of international law?

Ali Rizk: I think you have to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Remember that all of the furor and havoc about chemical weapons? Who was the one that made this first announcement…it was Itai Brun, the military intelligence Israeli official who made the announcement about Syria using chemical weapons from the very beginning, after President Obama had said time and again, “that is the red line.”

That didn’t succeed thus far in dragging the US to war against Syria so now I think we had two incidents.

There was a reported Israeli strike on a convoy and now we have indeed an Israeli strike on Jamraya. So I think we have a classical example of what we might call Israel trying to manipulate US policy in the Middle East, trying to drag Obama yet again into another confrontation.

I think that is the case which we have right now, once again. So Israel is going to continue with these practices until it drags the US into conflict.

Why? The reason being that the Syrian army has made military advancements very recently. It seems that Bashar Assad militarily has gained the upper hand so Israel realizes Assad won’t be going unless there’s outside intervention. So Israel is trying to drag the US by saying “If you don’t go in, then we shall wreak havoc. We shall go ahead with our own military escalation.”

RT: We’ve heard from commentators from Israel that the strikes are a balanced reaction. Do you agree?

AR: Balanced reaction to what? It’s in Israel’s interests for this to happen. Has there been any escalation against Israel for Israel to react? Has there been any military action, has Israel been attacked by any side, whether it be Hezbollah or Syria? Has Israel been attacked by any side whatsoever? Israel has not been attacked.

So we hear this talk about game-changing weapons. But that doesn’t give the right or justification for such escalation…I have to emphasize, the clear message if anyone had any doubts I think now it has become clear: Israel wants Bashar Assad to fall. That is Israel’s choice. Netanyahu himself has said time and again: “Syria is the linchpin between Iran and Hezbollah.”

RT: The Assad government, which has been portrayed as warring tyrant by many countries, has now become the victim of a powerful war machine. Could Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran weigh in if Syria did go to war with Israel?  

AR: That’s the big question. The Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah made it clear and provides an answer to this question. In a speech last Thursday, he said that Syria’s real friends – meaning Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia – won’t allow Syria to fall into the hands of the US, Israel, or Al-Qaeda affiliates…

I think what you have now is that Iran and Hezbollah now have a new significant ally of real significant weight which is Russia, which is continuing to the Middle East scene once again. So I think that if we do have escalation, Iran will intervene, Hezbollah will intervene, and I think also we might speak about a Russian intervention or some kind of a Russia role because Russia clearly has been very much present and there saying “I am here and I have a significant say.”

Source

North Korea removes missiles from launch sites

7 May
This undated picture released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 6, 2013 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (R) inspecting the newly built Turf Institute of the Bioengineering Branch under the State Academy of Sciences in suburban Pyongyang (AFP Photo / KSNA)

This undated picture released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 6, 2013 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (R) inspecting the newly built Turf Institute of the Bioengineering Branch under the State Academy of Sciences in suburban Pyongyang (AFP Photo / KSNA)

In a sudden de-escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula, Pyongyang has removed two of its ballistic missile units from their launching positions, US officials confirmed.

Two Musudan missiles, capable of hitting targets 2,500 miles away, were withdrawn from a launch site in the eastern part of the country and moved to a storage facility, several US officials who chose to remain anonymous told the media.

The US, which considers Korean missile program as a threat to its national security in parts of the Pacific Ocean, has confirmed that the weapons have now been relocated, a defense official told AFP.

The news comes soon after Seoul and Washington kicked-off on Monday a five-day anti-submarine drill in the Yellow Sea with the presence of nuclear-powered forces, military officials told Yonhap news agency.

The US mobilized a nuclear-powered Los Angeles-class submarine, Aegis destroyers and maritime surveillance aircrafts to join South Korean destroyers, submarines and maritime aircrafts. A 7,000-ton Nimitz-class nuclear powered super carrier is expected to join the training.

The latest set of drills follow the completion of the two-month-long Foal Eagle exercise, which caused the recent escalation of tension between the North and South, as Pyongyang repeatedly threatened to unleash its missiles on the South and its allies.

North Korea warned against the anti-submarine exercises on Saturday, calling for an end to “hostile acts and military provocations” while threatening closure of the Kaesong complex, the only joint industrial zone and the only communication channel between two Koreas.

The Southwestern Front Command of the Korean People’s Army stated its readiness to respond if any projectiles fall on its territory during the manoeuvres. If this happens Pyongyang has warned that it could strike five South Korean islands in the disputed border area.

Musudan-class missiles (AFP Photo / Ed Jones)

Musudan-class missiles (AFP Photo / Ed Jones)

Until last month, the industrial zone employed more than 53,000 North Korean workers and hundreds of South Korean managers. The factory gradually began halting operations amid the escalations of hostility followed by the withdrawal of North Koreans working for the 123 South Korean firms in Kaesong park.

South Korean officials criticized their neighbor on Monday for linking defense maneuvers to joint projects.

“It is inappropriate that the North is demanding the cancellation of South Korea-US joint drills by linking it with the Kaesong Industrial Complex,” S. Korean defense ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said in a briefing.

“As long as the North maintains its hostile stance, the joint drills will continue,” Kim said.

The developments come as South Korean President Park Geun-hye began a six-day official trip to the US on Sunday, where he plans to focus on the North Korean missile program.

There are concerns that US provocation with the ongoing show of force on the peninsula will push the North to strike, such as the two attacks on an island in 2010 which killed 50 South Koreans.

The recent joint military exercises have seen the US display its air superiority with the display of  nuclear capable B-52 and B-2 bombers. It is also increasing its military presence in the region by sending F-22 stealth fighter jets to South Korea from Japan.

Washington has also announced the deployment of a missile defense system to be sent to Guam to defend against ballistic missile launches on its interests in the Pacific.

Figures released by the US Department of Defense in March show that over 37,000 US soldiers are stationed on the Korean Peninsula, which is some 9,000 more personal than allowed by the 2008 agreement.

Last month, the United Stated announcement it was abandoning a key part of its Eastern European missile defense plan shifting the focus to perceived threats from North Korea.

The restructuring of the program will see $1 billion shifted to add some 14 new interceptors to the 26 existing ones in Alaska designed to counter potential North Korean missiles.

On a cyber-front, hackers allegedly broken into at least two of North Korea’s government-run online sites; while on the weapons site, US chemical weapons experts returned to South Korea in early April for the first time in eight years.

The American navy has also moved a sea-based X-band radar platform closer to North Korea from Hawaii to track possible missile launches.

In addition, nuclear-powered US warships routinely dock in South Korea as part of joint exercises aimed at enhancing naval cooperation between two states.

All of the US military build-up has been accompanied by loaded anti-Pyongyang rhetoric from Washington.

On Tuesday, President Obama made it clear that that North Korea cannot result to nuclear provocations to create international crises.

“The days when North Korea could create a crisis and elicit concessions, those days are over,” Obama said.

Last month, US Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel stated that “North Korea has been with its bellicose rhetoric, with its actions, skating very close to a dangerous line.”

Hagel also stressed “that country is unpredictable, if that is the reality that we’re dealing with, and it is, you prepare for every contingency.”

Since the beginning of the two-month joint military exercise between Seoul and Washington in February, the North has issued a number of alarming threats against the South and the United States, including a threat to conduct another nuclear test and a ballistic missile launch.

The escalation of threats from the North also followed introduction of stricter UN sanctions against Pyongyang following the completion of its third underground nuclear test in February.

Source

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