“…dictatorships cannot remain forever if fully dependent on outside support. The people will eventually bring it down.”

Bahrainis will soon topple foreign-backed Al Khalifa monarchy: Saeed Shahabi
19 February, 2013 – ABNA

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) – In the background of this the second anniversary of the uprising and continuing revolution that has shaken Bahrain to the core passed this week on 14th February celebrated with mass demonstrations both inside Bahrain and in other countries in solidarity with the People’s demands for democracy and freedom against the ruling dictatorship of the al-Khalifas. Some opposition have entered dialogue with the regime excluding its leadership, while the youth in particular are intent on regime change rather than reform.

An interview with Dr. Saeed Shahabi, a Bahraini exile in London and leader of the Bahrain Freedom Movement about the past and future of Bahrain. Dr. Shahabi has been convicted in absentia, of terrorism, by the al-Khalifa judiciary and sentenced to life in prison.

Q: I’d like you to firstly clear something up because the Bahraini regime accuses you of being quote, “a London-based terror master mind who glorifies acts of terror and sabotage, subverts national security, fuels sectarianism and drives wedges between the nation”. Your response to that?

Shehabi: Is there a tyrant in the world who would not accuse his opponents of such lies. But nobody listens to that. The regime knows that I am not that sort of person and that’s why it has called me many times; sent many people to ask me to go back; he (the king) asked me to meet, the dictator – I met him twice.

So if these attributes really are true why should he sit with a terrorist a mastermind and so on?

Q: Getting back to the week’s events, the protests that have been taking place to commemorate the anniversary and we’re hearing also that a 16 year old boy was killed, heavy security presence… What have you made of this week’s events?

Shehabi: On the 14th of February as we know it was the anniversary of the revolution – two years after the 14th February and the people went ahead with a lot of activism; they went into demonstrations in various parts of the country; they blocked the roads; they called for a national strike… But the response of the regime has been very harsh.

We saw that thousands upon thousands of troops were stationed on that day on various roads in almost every locality. The people found it almost impossible to congregate yet they went out and a 14 year old boy, Hussein al-Jazeery, was martyred.

Q: The opposition or parts of the opposition are actually conducting talks, reconciliation talk with the regime at the moment.

What do you make of that because I know that you’re somebody that believes in regime change rather than reform?

Shehabi: If the regime was reform-able I would have called for reform of the regime. But when we have opposed it for the past 40-45 years – I have, I realized this regime couldn’t be changed and it would be folly for me to just go and ask for a repetition of something that had already been tried and failed.

Q: So you think al-Wefaq are making a mistake by talking to the regime?

Shehabi: I thought al-Wefaq would have been better advised to have stayed away and if they had joined forces on the 14th with the people. Although, they are maintaining that they will keep up the struggle and that is only a way of trying not to be blamed by the Western governments for not joining.

Q: What other route is there to national reconciliation and saving the country other than talks?

Shehabi: Well, it is also a deception to talk about Bahrain in terms of social tensions, there is no social tension except when the regime wanted it to be there.

The problem in Bahrain is between the people and the ruling family, no one else. Of course he introduced and shifted the blame on these social tensions, but in reality he knows before anyone else that there is no such a thing.
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Bahraini Political Parties Blast Al-Khalifa Regime for Torturing Activists
19 February, 2013 – FARS

TEHRAN (FNA)- Different Bahraini parties and political groups in a statement lashed out at the al-Khalifa regime for imprisoning and torturing activists, and dismissed the Manama regime’s recent accusations against protestors as baseless.

“The announcement by (Bahraini) security forces on finding a ‘terrorist cell’ is not something new and many similar announcements have been previously made which later came to be known nothing more than baseless accusations as most of the confessions had been taken under torture,” the Lebanese TV channel, al-Manar, quoted the statement as saying.

The Bahraini political groups underlined the need for holding a serious national dialogue in a bid to bring the country out of political impasse after two years and this should be done on the basis of the principle that “people are source of all powers”.

“It is now time the structure of all security apparatuses were reformed and their approaches were changed in a bid to move in line with citizens’ equal rights and respect for human rights … ,” the statement read.

Last week, hundreds of thousands of Bahraini protesters took to the streets in the capital Manama and other cities across the Persian Gulf island to mark the second anniversary of their uprising against the Al-Khalifa regime in February 2011, calling on the country’s rulers to step down.

More than 300,000 protesters poured to the streets across the tiny Persian Gulf island country on Friday in a bid to celebrate the beginning of the third year of their revolution against the al-Khalifa regime which started on February 14, 2011.

The massive population of protesters reiterated their opposition to dictatorship in the tiny Persian Gulf country, and called on the al-Khalifa regime to step down.

The al-Khalifa regime’s security forces killed two protesters during popular protests on Thursday. …more

About Those Black Sites
17 February, 2013 – NYT

A valuable new report issued this month by the Open Society Justice Initiative documents the extent of the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of extraordinary rendition — the practice of abducting suspected terrorists and transferring them to countries with reputations for torturing prisoners during interrogations.

Reporting by The Times and other news media has long established that the C.I.A. operated a secret detention program with “black site” prisons outside the United States. In December, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved a highly critical, classified report on this program that has not been released. Committee members invoked its findings without revealing any useful new information at the recent confirmation hearing for John Brennan, the Obama administration’s top counterterrorism official, who was named to head the C.I.A. But the committee chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, has said that the black sites and coercive techniques were “terrible mistakes.”

According to the Open Society report, 54 countries participated in this program, including many where the rule of law is weak or nonexistent, like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Malaysia and Somalia. More surprising and alarming is the collusion of leading democracies. Belgium, Finland and Denmark, among others, allowed their airports and airspace to be used for flights associated with C.I.A. rendition operations. Britain, Italy, Germany and Australia helped interrogate one or more suspects and either allowed or actively aided in their transfers.

The report also contains information about the identities and treatment of 136 suspects who were subjected to C.I.A. detention or rendition. There may be many more individuals caught in this program, but the total number remains unknown. There has been no accountability for the program’s violations of American or international law. President Obama refused to investigate Bush administration officials who bear responsibility for authorizing human rights abuses. He ordered an end to President George W. Bush’s torture policies and the closing of C.I.A. detention facilities, but the Open Society report said Mr. Obama did not repudiate rendition and suggested that some activities could be continuing, including a secret prison in Somalia run with C.I.A. involvement. …more

Supreme Leader Meets with Reformists, Journalists on Bail
20 February, 2013 – POMED

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei held a meeting with three reformist figures ahead of Iran’s presidential elections in June. This is the first meeting between the Ayatollah and reformists since June 2009 when protests broke out following the last presidential election. The meeting included MP Majid Ansari, Iran’s former Minister of Industry Issac Jahangiri, and former Interior Minister Abdul Wahid Mousavi Lari. In a statement following the meeting, Ansari said “It was a good meeting; we met with the leader and spoke about the general issues of the country.” Al-Monitor reports that “The meeting with the supreme leader comes at the time when political circles are actively preparing a platform for elections, and drawing a map for candidates, whether they are from the ruling conservative or reformist movements.” The paper also notes that sources believe the talks are designed to show an improving political situation in Iran “in order to ensure the largest participation possible in the elections.” Abbas Abdi, a well-known reformist, praised the meeting and called on higher ranking reformists to engage with the government in a similar fashion.

Also in Iran, a prosecutor announced yesterday that Javad Deliri, a journalist recently arrested in a crackdown against foreign media, would be released on bail. He is the third journalist to be released on bail in the past week, joining Fatemeh Sagharchi and Motahareh Sahfii. The three released journalists will return to court for a trial on a date still to be determined. Of the 16 originally arrested, 13 are still in jail. …source

Villager with overcome with grief after Security Murdered Ali Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Jaziri

Scenes from a Bahraini Burial
Sharif Abdel Kouddous – 20 February, 2013 – The Nation

Ali Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Jaziri helps lower his son’s shrouded body into a grave as dozens of mourners crowd around. Many cover their noses and mouths to ward off the sting of tear gas wafting nearby. On the outskirts of the graveyard, hundreds of young men and boys armed with rocks and molotov cocktails are confronted by a phalanx of security forces in full riot gear, backed by armored cars and SUVs. The booms of firing shotguns and tear gas canisters punctuate the buzzing of a police helicopter surveilling the scene below. This is a Bahraini burial.

“I want retribution for my son,” Al-Jaziri says calmly. “We want real accountability, not like what happened with the other martyrs.”

Sixteen year-old Hussein Al-Jaziri was killed on February 14, the day marking the second anniversary of Bahrain’s 2011 uprising. Eyewitnesses told The Nation a police officer shot him twice from a distance of just three or four yards at a street corner in Daih, a village west of the capital. The claims are supported by photographs taken at the morgue showing birdshot wounds clustered tightly together on Hussein’s upper right abdomen—proof of the shooter’s close range. The Bahraini government says it has launched an investigation.

The circumstances of Hussein’s death are especially poignant. On the same date two years earlier, 21 year-old Ali Abdulhadi Mushaima suffered a strikingly similar fate in the same village, where he was fatally shot in the back by police. He would become the first martyr of Bahrain’s uprising; since then, nearly ninety people have killed in Bahrain according to local human rights groups, though some put the number at more than 120, a high toll in a population numbering just 600,000.

A police officer was also killed in the clashes that marked the second anniversary after he was hit with a projectile that fatally injured him, according to the Interior Ministry.

The uprising that began two years ago brought thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators to Pearl Roundabout, in Bahrain’s capital city of Manama. Peaceful protests in the square lasted for a month before they were brutally crushed by the country’s monarchy, with the aid of a Saudi-led Gulf intervention force, as the United States and Europe looked the other way. The Bahraini government tore down the 300-foot monument at the heart of the square, six curved white beams, representing the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, topped with a cement pearl. Today, protesters scrawl graffiti depicting the monument on village walls as a symbol of an uprising that continues unabated.

“The spirit of the revolution after two years is the same level of force as it was in the beginning, on February 14, 2011,” says Majid Malid, chair of the Manama Municipal Council and a member of the General Secretariat of the Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the country’s largest political opposition group. Al-Wefaq has joined five other opposition groups to take part in a National Dialogue called by King Hamad bin Isa AlKhalifa. It is the first attempt at talks in eighteen months and will include the participation of government and pro-government representatives.

Opposition parties say they are pressing for major political reforms, including a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister to replace King Hamad’s uncle who has been in power for 42 years. Yet protesters have little trust in the government, especially the youth, many of whom identify with a leaderless yet respected activist group known as the February 14 Coalition.

“The National Dialogue is just a PR stunt to get over the February 14 anniversary,” says Fatima Haji, a doctor of internal medicine who was among dozens of medics arrested and tortured in 2011 after providing treatment to wounded protesters. “How can we have dialogue while they are killing people in the street?”

Since 2011, scores have been arrested and sentenced before military courts, many of them human rights advocates and political opposition figures. Reports of prisoner abuse and torture are widespread.

Under international pressure, the king commissioned an independent inquiry into the treatment of protesters in mid-2011. Last September the United Nations issued a report. But various opposition and human rights groups say the government has yet to implement any key recommendations put forward by either.

While shootings like those of Mushaima and al-Jaziri account for nearly a third of those killed since the uprising began, tear gas is the number one cause of death, according to a report released this month by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. Many residents speak of the gas as an unavoidable hazard of everyday life. “We’ve been gassed for two years now,” Haji says. “We don’t know what the long term effects are going to be.”

The US-based Physicians for Human Rights has described the Bahraini government’s policy on tear gas as unprecedented in the world, releasing a study last year that found police officers routinely fire volleys of canisters at point-blank range at crowds and into homes and vehicles. …more

French war on Mali to clinch warplane mega deal
21 February, 2013 – PressTV – By Finian Cunningham

The Rafale has spearheaded the French war on Mali and has been hailed by French President Francois Hollande for its successful air strikes against the impoverished desert African country. Four weeks after the French offensive began in Mali, Hollande flew to India last week in a bid to finalize what is reputedly the biggest military aviation deal in history, centered on the Rafale.”
France’s claim of combating terrorism in Mali does not add up. Re-conquest of this former French colony and control of rich natural resources in West Africa are some of the more plausible reasons for this criminal offensive that began on 11 January.

Yet another plausible reason is to showcase the Rafale, France’s new fighter-bomber.

The Rafale has spearheaded the French war on Mali and has been hailed by French President Francois Hollande for its successful air strikes against the impoverished desert African country. Four weeks after the French offensive began in Mali, Hollande flew to India last week in a bid to finalize what is reputedly the biggest military aviation deal in history, centered on the Rafale.

In other words, the whole war may have been staged to showcase the Rafale with the precise purpose of sealing a deal worth $12-14 billion with India and to fend off a rival tender from Britain’s state-of-the-art Typhoon.

Here’s the background.

Another week, another UN Security Council member comes to India to flog weapons of mass destruction. Just as tensions are boiling between nuclear-powered India and Pakistan over the incendiary Kashmir dispute – soldiers have been killed on both sides in cross-border firefights in recent weeks – along come the leaders of France and Britain to push multi-billion-dollar weapons sales.

Last week, it was French President Francois Hollande who led a delegation of four government ministers and some 60 industrial chiefs to India.

Arriving on 14 February and greeted by Indian Premier Manmohan Singh, French English-language broadcaster France 24 reported the importance of Hollande’s purpose in no uncertain terms: “The two-day visit will be dominated by trade issues, including a $12-billion contract for Rafale fighter jets, dubbed ‘the deal of the century’ in France.”

That deal – still to be finalized, perhaps next year – involves the sale of 126 French-made Rafale fighter-bombers and a potential follow-up of 63 more. It is reckoned to be the biggest-ever military aviation contract between two countries. The bombers are designed to deliver nuclear warheads – a feature that no doubt lends a selling edge on the Indian sub-continent.

This week, however, it was British Prime Minister David Cameron’s turn. Cameron flew to India for a three-day visit to shore up the “special relationship” with Britain’s former colony and past imperial “jewel in the crown.” It was Britain’s biggest overseas trade delegation, according to spokesmen in Downing Street. Accompanying Cameron were four government ministers, nine parliamentarians and representatives of over 100 British industries and businesses, including British Aerospace.

The latter company is particularly relevant since the main objective for Cameron was to dissuade India from finalizing the French fighter jet deal and to award the contract instead to the British-made Eurofighter Typhoon.

“PM in last-ditch bid for India fighter deal,” headlined the Financial Times, which added that Cameron was trying to snatch the contract “from under the nose of French President Francoise Hollande.”

The irony is a little hard to take of UN Security Council members engaged in a dog fight to fuel an arms race between India and Pakistan – the two states, both nuclear powers, have fought four wars since their foundation in 1947. The irony of Britain’s nefarious role is especially bitter. It was Britain’s malevolent partition of India that created the long-running dispute between newly formed India and Pakistan over the mainly Muslim territory of Kashmir. Three of the four wars fought by India and Pakistan have been over Kashmir – that is, as a result of British imperialist meddling. And now Britain is seeking to make billions of dollars from the bellicose tensions that it bequeathed to the region.

To call this a cynical business is a gross understatement. As the adage goes: war sells, war is good for business. And both France and Britain in recent years have done their utmost in pushing wars across the Middle East and North Africa, which in turn have helped push up sales of their state-of-the-art warplanes. The latest sales promo is France’s war on Mali – but more on that later. …more

Delayed by the popular uprisings in the Arab world, the first-ever summit between Russia and the Arab League is on this week in Moscow. Though Syria is on the agenda, many the questions linger.

Moscow And The Middle East – How The Arab Spring Left Russia In The Cold
By Maria Efimova and Yelena Chernenko – KOMMERSANT/Worldcrunch – 21 February, 2013

MOSCOW – The Russian-Arab Partnership Forum was born in December 2009. At the time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the General Secretary of the Arab League, Amr Musa, signed a memorandum proclaiming that Russia and the Arab world’s partnership would rise to a new level.

Just over a year later, the Arab Spring was rocking the Middle East, and the first meeting scheduled for 2011 had to be postponed. Amongst its many effects, the popular uprising would wind up complicating the relationship between Russian and the Arab world, where regime change was called for, and sometimes achieved, in places like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria.

In some cases Russia was hesitant about regime change, and downright hostile in the case of Libya and Syria. So the Partnership Forum didn’t manage to meet in 2012 either.

But now, for the first time, the meeting is taking place in the Russian capital. The invitees to this week’s summit in Moscow represent the Arab League and many of its member countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon and Libya.

Assembling such a large number of representatives was possible thanks largely to the apparent impasse in Syria. “There’s not as many contradictions as before,” explained Elena Suponina, head of the Russian Institute for the Study of Asia and the Near East. “It is clear to everyone that one side is not going to win decisively, so there has to be a political resolution.”

There were two major goals in this meeting between the Arab representatives and Russia: limiting weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East and bringing a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. But whatever Russia and the Arab countries might want, Israel and Iran will get in the way of any international conference on the first topic. And the second issue, long-hanging over the region, seems like a virtual non-starter these days.

Regardless, a resolution to the Israel-Palestine issue is on the table during the meeting in Moscow. Russia thinks that the Arab League should join the “quartet,” which now includes Russia, the U.S., the United Nations and EU. The United Nations and EU are in favor of the idea, but the United States is skeptical (largely because of Israel’s position, which maintains that the Arab League does not need to be involved).

According to Russian diplomats, the new Forum should also focus on expanding trade between Russia and the Arab world, including the creation of a Russian-Arab trade council. Since Russia has lost most of its former position in the Arab world due to the political changes, building stronger trade relationships is perhaps the key to building a better relationship.

“The plans that Russia had in relation to the Middle East were all destroyed in the past couple years,” explained Suponina. “It’s also going to be difficult to establish investment and construction projects, as well as weapons contracts, because the region is still changing.”

For example, in spite of the efforts of many Russian delegations, a multi-billion dollar weapons contract with Libya remains elusive. Tripoli has not forgotten Moscow’s support for the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. That is also why Moscow has been unable to help Russian citizens in Libya sentenced to prison for “supporting Gaddafi.”

That issue will not be among the topics discussed at the Forum’s meeting in Moscow. Libya’s foreign minister was invited, but chose to skip the meeting. As Libyan diplomatic source explained to Kommersant, “The minister is not planning on ever visiting Russia.”
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