Syria’s Assad says his agreement to give up chemical arsenal is unconditional

18 September, 2013 By Hannah Allam — McClatchy

WASHINGTON — Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday that he is committed to relinquishing Syria’s chemical arsenal without conditions and as quickly as possible in a Fox News Channel interview that is the latest installment in a charm offensive intended to counter portrayals of him as a bloodthirsty dictator.

Responding to questions for an hour, Assad appeared as a mild-mannered bureaucrat explaining in fluent English why he’s waging an unfortunate but necessary war against al Qaida extremists, the same ones who fought U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He bristled at calling the rebel forces fighting to topple him as “opposition” and claimed that 80 to 90 percent are al Qaida-linked terrorists. He played down the high death toll of the war, claiming that most of those killed were terrorists.

“Opposition doesn’t mean to carry weapons and kill people, innocents, and to destroy schools, destroy infrastructure,” Assad said. Later in the segment, he added, “This is war. You don’t have clean war.”

He didn’t dispute U.N. findings that sarin gas was used in a deadly Aug. 21 attack, but he blamed it on the rebel forces, which he said are made up of jihadists who’ve streamed into Syria from more than 80 countries. He derided sarin as a “kitchen gas,” saying it can be made at home, and blamed its use on fighters that are “supported by governments,” a veiled reference to Persian Gulf rebel financiers such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The wide-ranging interview was conducted by the network’s senior foreign affairs correspondent, Greg Palkot, and former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, who’s a commentator for the network and has met Assad on previous occasions. Last week, Assad granted an interview to Charlie Rose of CBS and PBS, but canceled an interview he’d arranged with George Stephanopoulos of ABC.

Analysts say the strategy behind Assad’s media blitz goes beyond simply avoiding a U.S. strike in retaliation for deadly chemical attacks. The broader mission is to convince the West that no matter how brutal his regime appears to outsiders, the alternative is worse.

At every opportunity, Assad drove home the fact that the rebel movement is dominated by Islamist militants who’ve carried out beheadings, car bombings and other terrorist acts the regime knows will strike a chord with an American audience. Assad, as he did in the earlier CBS interview, pointedly mentioned an incident where a rebel leader was captured on video cutting an organ from a dead Syrian soldier’s body and taking a bite from it.

At another point in the Fox interview, Assad referred to the United States as “the greatest country in the world.”

“He’s saying, ‘I’m Westernized, I’m quiet spoken, I’m not screaming jihad, and I’m the devil you can work with,’” said Lawrence Pintak, dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University and a former CBS News correspondent in the Middle East. “And that’s what American foreign policy has been about for decades – working with the devil you can to keep out the ones you don’t want.”

Pintak, who’s interviewed the late Saddam Hussein, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and several other dictators, said Assad’s understated persona and background as an eye doctor who was educated in England are benefits to his media campaign. His clean-shaven, business-suited image makes for a stark juxtaposition with bearded, gun-toting rebels waving the black flag of militant Islamists.

“It’s public diplomacy at its best,” Pintak said. “It’s fascinating to watch someone who operates in a completely controlled media environment being so deft at managing his own image in the West.”
…more

Hezbollah urges Bahrain to end crackdown on Shia Majority
September 20, 2013 – JafriaNews

JNN 20 Sept 2013 Beirut : Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has urged Bahraini government to immediately end public crackdown.

“Over the past one and half year, Bahraini officials have assaulted the majority of people and crossed the red lines,” the Islamic Movement said in a statement released on Thursday.

Bahraini security forces razed Mosques, insulted the sanctities and detained men and women including the elderlies, it was said in part of the statement, according to Al-Alam news channel.

According to Hezbollah, the monarchy also plans to invalidate the nationality of some Bahraini citizens and had shut down the Shura Council.

“Bahraini people are paying the price only for demanding a greater voice by holding free and fair election and seeking their own legitimate and rights,” the statement read.

The Islamic Movement has condemned such policies adopted by the regime who violates basic rights of the people, calling on the ruling Al Khalifa family to give in to the legitimate demands of the oppositions and stop the cruelties which continued since one and half year ago.

Hezbollah also blasted the international community’s silence against the atrocity of those who claim to favor international justice, saying that the Bahraini government deserves harsher reaction than just condemnation.

So, the use of political force on Bahraini government is the least, at the juncture in order for the regime to respect the dignity and the human rights of the nation, the statement added.

The statement by Hezbollah comes as the monarchy has refused so far to ease political pressures on people and giving back the rights they stood for since the beginning of the uprising some two years ago.

At least 80 people have been killed since Arab Spring-inspired protests erupted in Bahrain in early 2011, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.

Earlier this month, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights has issued condemnation for these continued attacks on the families of political dissidents and their children. …more

Kissinger and Chile: In an Age of Vigilantes, There Is Cause for Optimism
19 September, 2013 – By John Pilger – Truthout

The most important anniversary of the year was the 40th anniversary of September 11, 1973 – the crushing of the democratic government of Chile by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, then US secretary of state. The National Security Archive in Washington has posted new documents that reveal much about Kissinger’s role in an atrocity that cost thousands of lives.

In declassified tapes, Kissinger is heard planning with President Richard Nixon the overthrow of President Salvador Allende. They sound like Mafiosi thugs. Kissinger warns that the “model effect” of Allende’s reformist democracy “can be insidious.” He tells CIA director Richard Helms, “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” to which Helms replies, “I am with you.” With the slaughter under way, Kissinger dismisses a warning by his senior officials of the scale of the repression. Secretly, he tells Pinochet, “You did a great service to the West.”

I have known many of Pinochet’s and Kissinger’s victims. Sara De Witt, a student at the time, showed me the place where she was beaten, assaulted and electrocuted. On a wintry day in the suburbs of Santiago, we walked through a former torture centre known as Villa Grimaldi, where hundreds like her suffered terribly and were murdered or “disappeared.”

Understanding Kissinger’s criminality is vital when trying to fathom what the US calls its “foreign policy.” Kissinger remains an influential voice in Washington, admired and consulted by Barack Obama. When Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain commit crimes with US collusion and weapons, their impunity and Obama’s hypocrisy are pure Kissinger. Syria must not have chemical weapons, but Israel can have them and use them. Iran must not have a nuclear program, but Israel can have more nuclear weapons than Britain. This is known as “realism” or realpolitik by Anglo-American academics and think-tanks that claim expertise in “counterterrorism” and “national security,” which are Orwellian terms meaning the opposite.

In recent weeks, the New Statesman has published articles by John Bew, an academic at the Kings College war studies department, which the cold warrior Laurence Freedman made famous. Bew laments the parliamentary vote that stopped David Cameron joining Obama in lawlessly attacking Syria and the hostility of most British people to bombing other nations. A note at the end of his articles says he will “take up the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations” in Washington. If this is not a black joke, it a profanity on those like Sara de Witt and Kissinger’s countless other victims, not least those who died in the holocaust of his and Nixon’s secret, illegal bombing of Cambodia.

This doctrine of “realism” was invented in the US following the second world war and sponsored by the Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) and the Council on Foreign relations. In the great universities, students were taught to regard people in terms of their usefulness or expendability: in other words, their threat to “us.” This narcissism served to justify the Cold War, its moralizing myths and cataclysmic risks and, when that was over, the “war on terror.” Such a “transatlantic consensus” often found its clearest echo in Britain, with the British elite’s enduring nostalgia for empire. Tony Blair used it to commit and justify his war crimes until his lies got the better of him. The violent death of more than 1,000 people in Iraq every month is his legacy; yet his views are still courted, and his chief collaborator, Alastair Campbell, is a jolly after-dinner speaker and the subject of obsequious interviews. All the blood, it seems, has been washed away.

Syria is the current project. Outflanked by Russia and public opinion, Obama has now embraced the “path of diplomacy.” Has he? As Russian and US negotiators arrived in Geneva on September 12, 2013, the US increased its support for the Al Qaeda-affiliated militias with weapons sent clandestinely through Turkey, Eastern Europe and the Gulf. The Godfather has no intention of deserting his proxies in Syria. Al Qaeda was all but created by the CIA’s Operation Cyclone, which armed the mujahedin in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Since then, jihadists have been used to divide Arab societies and in eliminating the threat of pan-Arab nationalism to Western “interests” and Israel’s lawless colonial expansion. This is Kissinger-style “realism.”

In 2006, I interviewed Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, who ran the CIA in Latin America in the 1980s. Here was a true “realist.” Like Kissinger and Nixon on the tapes, he spoke his mind. He referred to Salvador Allende as “whatshisname in Chile” and said “he had to go because it was in our national interests.” When I asked what gave him the right to overthrow governments, he said, “Like it or lump it, we’ll do what we like. So just get used to it, world.”

The world is no longer getting used to it. In a continent ravaged by those whom Nixon called “our bastards,” Latin American governments have defied the likes of Clarridge and implemented much of Allende’s dream of social democracy – which was Kissinger’s fear. Today, most of Latin America is independent of US foreign policy and free of its vigilantism. Poverty has been cut almost by half; children live beyond the age of 5; the elderly learn to read and write. These remarkable advances are invariably reported in bad faith in the West and ignored by the “realists.” That must never lessen their value as a source of optimism and inspiration for all of us. …source

Bahrain Opposition Defies Ban on Meeting Diplomats
20 September, 2013 – ABC News

Bahrain’s main Shiite opposition group is defying a ban by the island’s Sunni government to have direct contacts with foreign diplomats.

Al Wefaq’s secretary-general, Sheik Ali Salman, met Norwegian political affairs envoy Hakon Smedsvig on Thursday in the Bahraini capital, Manama.

Bahrain’s Western-backed monarchy earlier this month banned all diplomatic contacts by political groups unless they receive official permission. The move was sharply criticized by Western governments, including the U.S.

This week, authorities detained a top Al Wefaq official on allegations of inciting violence. In return, the group announced a boycott of reconciliation talks with the government.

The strategic Gulf nation has been gripped by unrest since an uprising launched in early 2011 by majority seeking a greater political voice.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf said in a statement that in the last two years the Bahraini government and oppositions groups have been involved in important dialogue but that recent developments have hindered the process.

“The Government of Bahrain has recently issued decrees restricting the rights and abilities of political groups to assemble, associate, and express themselves freely, including by regulating their communications with foreign governments and international organizations,” the statement said. …more

Bahrain: Senior Doctor Facing Trial on September 23 on Charges of Insulting the King
20 September, 2013 – Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights

Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji – Ophthalmologist – facing trial on September 23, 2013 on charges of insulting the king.

Dr. Al-Samahiji been summoned by the Criminal Investigation on Wednesday, September 18.

On September 19, he was questioned by the public prosecutor and criminal investigations. He was released later.

The Public Prosecution accused him of delivered a public speech on September 1, 2013.

The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights demands:

1-Guarantee freedom of opinion and expression.
2-Dropping the charges relating to freedom of expression.

Background:

April 2011: Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji was arrested after the authorities suppressed Bahraini protesters in the Pearl Roundabout.

September 29, 2011: The court sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment.

June 14, 2012: Court of Appeal reduced the verdict against him to one year imprisonment.

October 1, 2012: The Court of Cassation upheld the previous court’s conviction and sentence against him.

April 23, 2013: The Bahraini authorities released him after serving a one-year imprisonment. …more

Turkey shuts Syria crossing following raid by militants
20 September, 2013 – Arab News

ANKARA/BEIRUT: Turkey closed a border crossing to Syria after an Al-Qaeda-linked group stormed a nearby town and expelled opposition fighters from an Arab and Western-backed unit, officials said on Thursday.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Wednesday killed at least five members of the Northern Storm Brigade, a rebel unit that controls the border, highlighting the deep opposition divisions.

The confrontation in the town of Azaz was one of the most serious clashes between the Al-Qaeda affiliate, made up mostly of foreign fighters, and the more ideologically moderate home-grown rebels trying to topple President Bashar Assad.
Their struggle, however, is less about ideology and more about a fight for territory, resources and the spoils of war — with armed ISIL fighters positioned to defend the town and a nearby rebel brigade trying to broker a cease-fire.

A Turkish official told Reuters the Oncupinar border gate — about 5 km (3 miles) from Azaz and opposite the Syrian Bab Al-Salameh gate — had been closed for “security reasons.”

“There is still confusion about what is happening on the Syrian side. All humanitarian assistance that normally goes through the gate has ceased,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Crossings such as Azaz have been a lifeline for rebel-held territories in Syria’s north, allowing in humanitarian aid, building materials and food as well as giving refugees a route out of Syria.

While Turkey says it normally operates an open door policy, from time to time it temporarily closes its border crossings following clashes near the frontier.

The crossing fell into opposition hands last year when rebels launched an offensive to take the northern business hub of Aleppo.

Ankara has been one of the strongest backers of the rebels in the 2-1/2-year uprising against Assad. While it denies arming them, fighters including militants have been able to cross its volatile border into Syria.

At the same time, many activists and Kurdish forces accuse Turkey of allowing radical groups to go through its territory to launch attacks on its other foe — Kurdish militias, who are now operating on the frontier in northeastern Syria. Turkey denies those charges.

Syrian activists said the fighting in Azaz had subsided by Thursday and there were no rebel preparations under way to take the town back from ISIL by force.

ISIL fighters were now spread throughout Azaz and had positioned snipers on rooftops, activists said.

Northern Storm fighters were stationed at the border crossing, where they were joined by fighters from the powerful Tawheed Brigade who came from Aleppo to try to broker a truce. Tawheed has a large presence in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, about 30 km south of Azaz.

“Reinforcements from the Tawheed Brigade were sent to impose a cease-fire on the two sides,” said Abu Obeida, a Tawheed spokesman. “There is still no cease-fire yet … There are negotiations under way.”

The clashes were a stark illustration of the relative strength of the Al-Qaeda-linked fighters compared to Syria’s larger but less experienced moderate forces. It also highlights the divisions that have plagued the opposition.

Both dilemmas have left Western powers hesitant to supply the rebels with advanced weapons.

ISIL declared an offensive last week against two other rebel factions, accusing them of attacking its forces and suggesting they may have collaborated with the government.

“What is worrying are the clashes themselves,” a second Turkish official said, referring to rebel infighting generally.

“What we want is to see the various coalition groups put their house in order and focus on the struggle with the regime, because that is the real issue — the violence inflicted by the regime on the Syrian people.”

An activist from Azaz who identified himself as Mohamed Al-Azizi said he expected more violence before the confrontation was over.
“These people are very dangerous for Syria,” he said via Skype, referring to the ISIL fighters. “They say they’re Islamists but they have nothing to do with religion.” …source