An affordable price is probably the major benefit persuading people to buy drugs at www.americanbestpills.com. The cost of medications in Canadian drugstores is considerably lower than anywhere else simply because the medications here are oriented on international customers. In many cases, you will be able to cut your costs to a great extent and probably even save up a big fortune on your prescription drugs. What's more, pharmacies of Canada offer free-of-charge shipping, which is a convenient addition to all other benefits on offer. Cheap price is especially appealing to those users who are tight on a budget
Service Quality and Reputation
Although some believe that buying online is buying a pig in the poke, it is not. Canadian online pharmacies are excellent sources of information and are open for discussions. There one can read tons of users' feedback, where they share their experience of using a particular pharmacy, say what they like or do not like about the drugs and/or service. Reputable online pharmacy canadianrxon.com take this feedback into consideration and rely on it as a kind of expert advice, which helps them constantly improve they service and ensure that their clients buy safe and effective drugs. Last, but not least is their striving to attract professional doctors. As a result, users can directly contact a qualified doctor and ask whatever questions they have about a particular drug. Most likely, a doctor will ask several questions about the condition, for which the drug is going to be used. Based on this information, he or she will advise to use or not to use this medication.
The Grey Zone: Giulio Meotti writes on the April 4, 2016 Gatestone Institute website about the disturbingly high support among young European Muslims for suicide bombings and the Islamic State’s pursuit of establishing a new Caliphate. Mr. Meotti writes that “among young European Muslims, support for suicide bombings range from 22 percent in Germany, to 29 percent in Spain, 35 percent in Britain, and 42 percent in France,” according to a recent PEW Research poll. “In Britain, one in five Muslims have sympathy for the Caliphate; and, today, more British Muslims join ISIS than the British Army. In the Netherlands,” the PEW Research poll showed that “80 percent of the Dutch Turks see “nothing wrong,” in ISIS.” And, according to a ComRes report, commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 27 percent of British Muslims have sympathy for the terrorists who attacked the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris. An ICM poll, released by Newsweek, revealed that 16 percent of French Muslims support ISIS; and, the number rises to 27 percent among those aged 18-24. In dozens of French schools, the “minute of silence,” was interrupted by Muslim pupils who protested it,” Mr. Meotti wrote.
”How deep is ISIS’s popularity in Belgium?,” Mr. Meotti asks. “Very deep,” he warns. “The most accurate study is a report from The Voices From the Blogs, which highlights the high degree of pro-ISIS sympathy in Belgium. The report monitored and analyzed more than two million Arabic messages around the world via Twitter, FaceBook, and blogs regarding ISIS’s actions in the Middle East.”
“The most enthusiastic comments about ISIS come from Qatar at 47 percent, then Pakistan at 35 percent, third overall was Belgium — where 31 percent of the tweets in Arabic on the Islamic State are positive — more than Libya (24%), Oman (25%), Jordan (19%), Saudi Arabia (20%), and Iraq (20%).”
Overall, some 42 million people in the Arab world sympathize with the Islamic State, according to polling data examined by The Gatestone Institute.
As Mr. Meotti notes, “even if these polls and surveys must be taken with some caution, they all indicate a deep, and vibrant “gray zone,” which is feeding the Islamic Jihad in Europe and the Middle East. We are talking about millions of Muslims who show sympathy, understanding, and affinity with the ideology and goals of the Islamic State.”
The shockingly high support for the Islamic State among the youth of Europe is a foreboding sign. As eminent British historian Max Hastings recently wrote, the influx of millions of Muslim migrants into Britain and the rest of Europe, may fundamentally alter the character and culture of Europe — and, not necessarily for the better. While Mr. Hastings appreciates and understands that Britain and the rest of Europe and the West need to accept a large number of these displaced refugees as new citizens — he has this recent warning in London’s The Daily Mail Online: “If any significant fraction of the hundreds of millions suffering hardship, persecution and famine in Africa and the Middle East succeed in transferring themselves to Europe, I fear that our civilization will be transformed in ways most of us cannot endorse, nor even find tolerable.”
“How many [more] Muslims will this ISIS virus be able to infect in the vast European “gray zone?” Mr. Meotti asks. “The answer will determine our future,” he adds.
For weeks, Farid Bouamran, a Dutch-Moroccan immigrant who has lived 30 years in Amsterdam, watched as his son Achraf became increasingly radicalized, tuning in to videos and Twitter accounts online. Within two months, Achraf had traded in his jeans for a dishdasha, or robe, grown a beard, and begun spending time online with Belgian youth his father once called “men with long Arabic names: Abou this and Abou that.”
Panicked, Bouamran took every measure he could think of to intervene: he brought Achraf to his own mosque to hear the imam speak of a peaceful Islam. He canceled his son’s Internet account, forbid him to see his radical Muslim friends, and even followed him when he went out at night.
It was no use. Just after Christmas 2013, Farid Bouamran sat in his living room with officers from Dutch intelligence agency AIVD and told them he believed Achraf was about to leave for Syria to join in the jihad. Please, he begged them. Take his passport. Stop him.
Not to worry, the officers assured him, he won’t get past our borders.
But he did get past, flying out of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport the next night to Turkey, and from there, making his way to the Islamic State.
A year later, disillusioned by the realities of the life he found there, Achraf determined to return home. But en route to the Netherlands in January 2015, a U.S. missile attack on Raqqa took his life. He was 17 years old. More on the post is here.
FNC: A Christian saint’s bones have reportedly been unearthed amid the rubble of an ancient Syrian monastery destroyed by Islamic State.
Mar Elian monastery appears ravaged after heavy fighting between Syrian Army and the Islamic State group in Qaryatain, Syria, Monday, April 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Natalia Sancha)
Much of the fifth-century St. Elian, or Mar Elian, monastery in the town of Qaryatain has been reduced to stones by ISIS. Qaryatain was recaptured by Syrian government forces Sunday.
Channel Four News journalist Lindsey Hilsum reports that the bones of saints were clearly visible among the wreckage of the monastery, a once-cherished pilgrimage site.
The bones are thought to be those of St. Elian, also known as St. Julian of Emesa, which is the ancient name for the Syrian city of Homs. St. Elian was martyred in 284 A.D. after his refusal to renounce Christianity.
The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported that ISIS destroyed the monastery in August 2015. “They pulled it down using bulldozers claiming that ‘the monastery is worshiped beside Allah,’ SOHR said in a statement released Aug. 20 2015.
Militants also trashed an ancient church next to the Assyrian Christian monastery, and desecrated a nearby cemetery, breaking the crosses and smashing name plates.
Midway between the ancient city of Palmyra and the Syrian capital, Damascus, Qaryatain was once home to a sizeable Christian population. Before IS took it over last August, it had a mixed population of around 40,000 Sunni Muslims and Christians, as well as thousands of internally displaced people who had fled from the nearby city of Homs.
As it came under militant attack, many of the Christians fled. More than 200 residents, mostly Christians, were abducted by the extremists, including a Syrian priest, the Rev. Jack Murad, who was held by the extremists for three months.
During the eight months that Qaryatain was under IS control, some Christians were released and others were made to sign pledges to pay a tax imposed on non-Muslims. Some have simply vanished.
Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra from ISIS last month, ending their reign of terror at the UNESCO World Heritage site. Palmyra, located about 150 miles northeast of Damascus, dates back to the second millennium B.C. The city was one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world and has been home to Arabic, Aramaic, and Greco-Roman culture.
ISIS took control of Palmyra last year and subsequently demolished some of its best-known monuments, such as the Temple of Ba’al. The jihadists, who beheaded the city’s former antiquities chief, also used Palmyra’s ancient amphitheater for public executions.
Lots of questions to be asked here but let’s start with: What was the tip that started this investigation? The next question is: Who investigated the school to give it a license or accreditation or did it have one? The last question: What happened to the 1000 foreign nationals?
Oh wait, here is an update…this was an FBI sting operation. The Feds actually created the school for the sting operation. My bad, I should have known.
Twenty-one brokers, recruiters and employers from across the United States who allegedly conspired with more than 1,000 foreign nationals to fraudulently maintain student visas and obtain foreign worker visas through a “pay to stay” New Jersey college were arrested this morning by federal agents, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman for the District of New Jersey announced.
The defendants (see chart below) were arrested in New Jersey and Washingtonby special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and charged in 14 complaints with conspiracy to commit visa fraud, conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit and other offenses. All the defendants, with the exception of Yanjun Lin aka Aimee Lin, 25, of Flushing, New York, will appear today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven C. Mannion of the District of New Jersey in Newark, New Jersey, federal court. Lin will appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen L. Strombom in the Western District of Washington federal court.
“‘Pay to Stay’ schemes not only damage our perception of legitimate student and foreign worker visa programs, they also pose a very real threat to national security,” U.S. Attorney Fishman said. “Today’s arrests, which were made possible by the great undercover work of our law enforcement partners, stopped 21 brokers, recruiters and employers across multiple states who recklessly exploited our immigration system for financial gain.”
“While the United States fully supports international education, we will vigorously investigate those who seek to exploit the U.S. immigration system,” said Director Sarah R. Saldaña for ICE. “As a result of this operation, HSI special agents have successfully identified and closed a gap in the student visa system and have arrested 21 individuals alleged to be amongst the system’s most egregious violators.”
“Individuals engaged in schemes that would undermine the remarkable educational opportunities afforded to international students represent an affront to those who play by the rules,” said Special Agent in Charge Terence S. Opiola for ICE Homeland Security Investigations. “These unscrupulous individuals undermine the integrity of the immigration system. Our special agents are committed to addressing, identifying fraud in order to better protect the system as a whole.”
According to the complaints unsealed today and statements made in court:
The defendants, many of whom operated recruiting companies for purported international students, were arrested for their involvement in an alleged scheme to enroll foreign nationals as students in the University of Northern New Jersey, a purported for-profit college located in Cranford, New Jersey (UNNJ). Unbeknownst to the defendants and the foreign nationals they conspired with, however, the UNNJ was created in September 2013 by HSI federal agents.
Through the UNNJ, undercover HSI agents investigated criminal activities associated with the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), including, but not limited to, student visa fraud and the harboring of aliens for profit. The UNNJ was not staffed with instructors or educators, had no curriculum and conducted no actual classes or education activities. The UNNJ operated solely as a storefront location with small offices staffed by federal agents posing as school administrators.
UNNJ represented itself as a school that, among other things, was authorized to issue a document known as a “Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant (F-1) Student Status – for Academic and Language Students,” commonly referred to as a Form I-20. This document, which certifies that a foreign national has been accepted to a school and would be a full-time student, typically enables legitimate foreign students to obtain an F-1 student visa. The F-1 student visa allows a foreign student to enter and/or remain in the United States while the student makes normal progress toward the completion of a full course of study in an SEVP accredited institution.
During the investigation, HSI special agents identified hundreds of foreign nationals, primarily from China and India, who previously entered the U.S. on F-1 non-immigrant student visas to attend other SEVP- accredited schools. Through various recruiting companies and business entities located in New Jersey, California, Illinois, New York and Virginia, the defendants then enabled approximately 1,076 of these foreign individuals – all of whom were willing participants in the scheme – to fraudulently maintain their nonimmigrant status in the U.S. on the false pretense that they continued to participate in full courses of study at the UNNJ.
Acting as recruiters, the defendants solicited the involvement of UNNJ administrators to participate in the scheme. During the course of their dealings with undercover agents, the defendants fully acknowledged that none of their foreign national clients would attend any actual courses, earn actual credits, or make academic progress toward an actual degree in a particular field of study. Rather, the defendants facilitated the enrollment of their foreign national clients in UNNJ to fraudulently maintain student visa status, in exchange for kickbacks, or “commissions.” The defendants also facilitated the creation of hundreds of false student records, including transcripts, attendance records and diplomas, which were purchased by their foreign national conspirators for the purpose of deceiving immigration authorities.
In other instances, the defendants used UNNJ to fraudulently obtain work authorization and work visas for hundreds of their clients. By obtaining this authorization, a number of defendants were able to outsource their foreign national clients as full-time employees with numerous U.S.-based corporations, also in exchange for commission fees. Other defendants devised phony IT projects that were purportedly to occur at the school. These defendants then created and caused to be created false contracts, employment verification letters, transcripts and other documents. The defendants then paid the undercover agents thousands of dollars to put the school’s letterhead on the sham documents, to sign the documents as school administrators and to otherwise go along with the scheme.
All of these bogus documents created the illusion that prospective foreign workers would be working at the school in some IT capacity or project. The defendants then used these fictitious documents fraudulently to obtain labor certifications issued by the U.S. Secretary of Labor and then ultimately to petition the U.S. government to obtain H1-B visas for non-immigrants. These fictitious documents were then submitted to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS). In the vast majority of circumstances, the foreign worker visas were not issued because USCIS was advised of the ongoing undercover operation.
In addition, starting today, HSI Newark is coordinating with the ICE Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit (CTCEU) and the SEVP to terminate the nonimmigrant student status for the foreign nationals associated with UNNJ, and if applicable, administratively arrest and place them into removal proceedings.
The chart below outlines the charges for each defendant. The charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and making a false statement each carry a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The charges of conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit and H1-B Visa fraud each carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and $250,000 fine.
The charges and allegations contained in the complaints are merely accusations and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the leadership of Director Saldaña; HSI Newark, under the leadership of Special Agent in Charge Opiola; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit, under the leadership of Unit Chief Robert Soria; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Fraud Detection and National Security Section, under the leadership of Associate Director Matthew Emrich; the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, under the leadership of Deputy Assistant Director Louis M. Farrell; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Vermont Service Center, Security Fraud Division, under the leadership of Associate Center Director Bradley J. Brouillette; U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Office of Fraud Prevention Programs, under the leadership of Director Josh Glazeroff; and the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, under the leadership of Timothy Gallagher in Newark, for their contributions to the investigation.
He also thanked the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC), under the leadership of Executive Director Michale S. McComis, and the New Jersey Office of Higher Education, under the leadership of Secretary of Higher Education Rochelle R. Hendricks, for their assistance. In addition, U.S. Attorney Fishman thanked the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission and the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Central District of California, Eastern District of New York, Eastern District of Virginia, Southern District of New York, Central District of Illinois, Peoria Division, and the Northern District of Georgia for their help.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Dennis C. Carletta of the U.S. Attorney’s Office National Security Unit and Sarah Devlin of the Office’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Unit.
Barack Obama used his final nuclear security summit on Friday to deliver the stark warning that “madmen” could kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people using only plutonium the size of an apple.
“The danger of a terrorist group obtaining and using a nuclear weapon is one of the greatest threats to global security,” said Obama, convening the meeting of more than 50 world leaders in Washington.
Obama argued that since the first such summit six years ago, the world has measurably reduced the risk of nuclear terrorism by taking “concrete, tangible steps”. Enough material for more than 150 nuclear weapons has been secured or removed, he said. More here.
*****
Rand: In light of the global increase in the number and lethality of terrorist attacks, it has become imperative that nations, states, and private citizens become more involved in a strategic vision to recognize, prepare for, and — if possible — prevent such events. RAND research and analysis has provided policymakers with objective guidance and recommendations to improve preparedness, international collaboration, response, and recovery to this global threat. Various summaries here.
MarineTimes: The Marine Corps is taking big steps to help prevent another attack like the one on a diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 that left four Americans dead.
The service has established about two dozen new Marine security guard detachments and beefed up 117 others as part of a multifaceted plan to protect U.S. embassies and consulates around the globe.
Twelve additional locations will get new security detachments by 2018 as the Corps boosts its number of embassy guards to counter increasing threats and attacks against diplomatic facilities.
The new detachments are be located across the continents in places like Turkey, China, Lebanon, Sierra Leone and South Africa. The locations are not confined to third-world countries where anti-American sentiment is strong; Marines are also boosting their presence in places like Italy, Laos and Mexico.
New Marine security guard detachments:
Land-based Marine crisis response units are also equipped and trained for events such as the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. No MSG detachment was present there or in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, which prompted lawmakers to better protect diplomatic personnel and facilities across the globe.
The boost is necessary, even amid a military drawdown, said Col. Rollin Brewster, the commanding officer of the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group.
“The world is a dynamic, changing place,” he said. As the Marine Corps works through what that new normal looks like, the expansion provides greater anti-terrorism measures — what he called “meaningful work that matters.”
The changes have the full backing of the Obama administration and Congress, and have been well received by diplomats and Foreign Service officers. In fact, the State Department has another 15 diplomatic posts where officials would like to add MSG detachments in coming years. This would put a Marine presence nearly 200 embassies and consulates.
Commandant Gen. Robert Neller recently told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the Marine Corps now has 174 embassy guard detachments in 147 countries. Of those, 44 qualify for hostile fire pay and 22 are designated as combat zones.
However, some ambassadors who have served in the most challenging locations say there’s one important step missing. They strongly recommend the Marine Corps and State Department review assignment policies and update decades-old rules of engagement to better address evolving and emerging threats.
“I would urge a rethink of detachment ROE to give an ambassador greater flexibility in how to deploy the Marines in a contingency,” said retired Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who has served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon. “Those ROEs have not changed in probably three decades. The world has.”
The embassy security plus-up
In 2013, Congress mandated that the Corps add 1,000 new Marine security guards, which essentially doubled the size of the Embassy Security Group. The move allowed the service to keep an additional 1,000 Marines at the end of its post-war drawdown.
Neller said the Corps has thus far added 603 of those 1,000 Marines. About 200 are assigned to new Marine security guard detachments, and another 274 have been sent to boost existing detachments. The remaining 130 are assigned to the Marine Security Augmentation Unit, which can dispatch teams of MSGs to embassies in distress at the direct request of an ambassador, chief of mission or regional security officer on the ground.
The Marine Corps is working closely with the State Department to stand up each new detachment, Brewster said. The State Department must meet certain diplomatic and logistics requirements prior to activating new MSG detachments.
The Embassy Security Group works with diplomatic security personnel to determine the detachment size needed at new locations. It can take up to a year to stand up new units, but normally less if existing conditions are good.
The new teams are composed of seasoned Marine security guards with at least one 12-month tour at another post. The group is encouraging Marines to extend their special duty assignments, if possible.
Sgt Maj. Juan Alvarado, the Embassy Security Group’s top enlisted Marine, recently visited the new Iraq detachment. He said the Marines there were motivated.
“They all kept saying, ‘This is what I signed up for,’” Alvarado said.
Filling the gaps
The Marine Corps’ mission to keep embassies safe expands far beyond traditional Marine security guard duty.
The Marine Security Augmentation Unit, or MSAU, stood up in July 2013 as a quick reaction force that can augment embassies at a moment’s notice.
Each squad-sized team is assigned to a region. The Virginia-based unit has been tapped for about 60 missions so far, including a call to beef up security at the U.S. Embassy in Paris in November following the series of sophisticated attacks there by members of the Islamic State group.
Embassy guards are also supported by three new land-based special-purpose Marine air-ground task forces. Each is assigned to a specific combatant command and can be tailored to respond to crises at diplomatic posts in that part of the world. They support U.S. Africa, Central and Southern commands. The units have dispatched infantrymen to patrol diplomatic compounds and have helped evacuate personnel at embassies in places like Libya and South Sudan. The crisis response forces can also augment Marine Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Teams, which are dispatched to embassies in distress.
Additionally, the Marine Corps has used infantry companies to fill security gaps in places like Iraq, Libya and Yemen. A Marine company was assigned to secure the compound when Crocker opened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the fall of the Taliban. Since they were infantrymen, he said they were not bound by “restrictive rules of engagement.”
But such scenarios are not common outside of combat zones. The typical MSG detachment has only eight Marines: one staff NCO who serves as detachment commander, and seven sergeants and below. The largest detachments have 24 Marines.
Boosting the size of detachments at high-risk embassies allows Marines to patrol the perimeter, provide internal security for the chancery, and adds one more trigger puller — should things heat up.
All of those missions have led to new training for Marines.
At the MSG schoolhouse at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, the Embassy Security Group is wrapping up the third and final phase of a 10-acre training compound. It includes barracks; a $10 million, 29,000 square-foot training facility with seven functional guard stations; an Indoor Simulated Marksmanship Trainer system; and a new group headquarters modeled after actual U.S. embassies.
Marines deploying with crisis response units also undergo nonlethal weapons training for riot situations. Grunts deployed to Europe recently spent three days at the U.S. Embassy in Portugal where they were tasked with securing a facility overrun by terrorists, active shooters and violent rioters.
The prevalence of embassy security missions is also evident at Infantry Officer Course, where lieutenants now regularly conduct long-range rescue training missions.
Rethinking rules of engagement
Ambassadors and Foreign Service officers have lauded the plan to boost the number of Marines at embassies and consulates. But some caution that “throwing Marines at the problem” is not enough if the embassy doesn’t get the right MSGs — and if those MSGs don’t get the right rules of engagement.
Retired Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Yemen from 1997 to 2001, said officials need to take a careful look at the precarious situations diplomats sometimes find themselves in.
“I do think every U.S. Embassy should have a contingent of Marine security guards, without question,” she said. “… [But] there has to be a recognition of the limits placed on Marines. There does need to be a very careful thinking through of the rules of engagement.”
An MSG’s primary duties include access control, safeguarding classified material and emergency response. While protection of personnel is assumed, the MSGs remain limited to designated areas and have strict rules that govern engagement. Security is instead managed by nearly 800 State Department regional security officers in more than 250 posts worldwide.
In a time of need, they call on combat-equipped troops like FAST Marines to provide security. Assuming that help may not arrive on time, some feel the Marines at the embassies should be tasked with defending their fellow Americans.
Crocker, who reopened the embassy in Kabul, has seen MSGs in action on more than one occasion in his 37 years of service. When a mob breached the embassy walls in Syria in 1998, the small MSG detachment was ready. Countless hours of training enabled them to launch tear gas at precise points and quell the uprising.
“That’s just one example of what a half-dozen of America’s finest can do at maybe 2,000 miles from the nearest reinforcements,” said Crocker, who in 2012 became only the 75th civilian to be named an Honorary Marine since the Corps’ founding in 1775. “In such places, that’s all you’ve got — those Marines.”
But sometimes those Marines are not enough. Because their rules of engagement are too restrictive, Crocker opted for a Lebanese security force when he reopened the Beirut embassy in 1990.
“I needed to be sure we could fight in any way we might need to, not just to defend the chancery building but to defend on the wire,” said Crocker, who pointed out that the compound was surrounded by a heavily wired perimeter rather than a wall. “So instead of a Marine detachment, I brought in additional regional security officers who could shoot anywhere I told them to shoot.”
Maj. Clark Carpenter, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon, said Corps officials “continually” have conversations with the State Department on how to improve security. That’s “absolutely critical and something we take very seriously,” he added.
“We always want to look at ways to improve our security and keep the enemy off balance,” Carpenter said.
Bodine called Marines “a tremendous addition to every embassy,” adding that they should have been in Benghazi and could have made a significant difference there. But she still cautioned against turning embassies into something that looks like an armed camp. To do so could project hostility and adversely affect the embassy’s mission.
“There is a drive to make our embassies perfectly safe so that nothing bad ever happens to anybody. The only way to do that is to keep people inside the walls,” she said. “But embassies cannot be fortresses, and diplomats can’t be hermetically sealed in embassies and still do their job.”
Bodine now serves as director of Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Her 30-plus years in Foreign Service were spent primarily on Arabian Peninsula, including a tour as deputy chief of mission in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion and occupation in 1990-1991 (for which she received the Secretary’s Award for Valor).
While she would want no other force guarding the compound, she does feel that young Marines may not always be the best choice to face the increasingly complex threats faced at the most at-risk embassies.
“They are really good guys and I absolutely adore them, but they are really, really young,” she said. “The Marines may have to think about sending more seasoned, at least [in their] late 20s. I have quite literally on occasion entrusted my life to those 19- and 20-year-olds, but the … change in mission is going to take someone with just a little bit more time under his belt.”
All MSGs currently serve 12 months at three posts, while detachment commanders serve 18 months at two posts. Marines typically aren’t sent to the more challenging posts until their second assignment. Even then, many are not of legal drinking age back in the U.S.
Cargo containers used as courthouses. Camps flooded with sewage. A government on the verge of collapse. Why the EU refugee deal is a disaster for Greece.
FP: ATHENS — The ferries bound from the eastern Aegean Sea to Athens reach the port of Piraeus at the E2 Terminal. Immediately confronting disembarking passengers is a five-story banner proclaiming that, two-and-a-half millennia ago, the Greeks won a naval battle in the nearby straits of Salamis. Just below the banner, a concrete pier stretching several hundred meters into those straits is now the site of a tent city.
The 1,600 inhabitants of this city share 45 toilets, shower at the homes of local volunteers, and are coached in elementary Greek as they wait in parallel lines — “Men on the left! Women and kids on the right!” — for pasta and tangerines. International photographers capture their every movement. Out of a green cargo container, volunteer nurses distribute tampons and baby formula while from the back of a van, volunteer medical specialists pick through hair for lice during their breaks from local hospitals. Plates and trays are washed in a trough connected to the Athenian sewage system. Recent fist fights between Syrians — who are, broadly speaking, from middle-class families — and Afghans — typically poor, rural men — have led to the division of the pier into twin encampments: The Afghans face the sea; the Syrians, Iraqis, and Kurds face Athens.
A Greek state that cannot even provide basic services to these refugees has now been placed, as part of a deal struck this month between the European Union and Turkey, at the center of an enormous task. In return for 6 billion euros and vague promises of visa-free travel for its citizens, Turkey will supposedly take back anyone currently attempting to enter Greece. In exchange, for every person turned away at the Greek border, a Syrian will supposedly be relocated from a Turkish camp to an EU country willing to take him or her in. The execution of this deal, however, hinges on Greece successfully processing, with breathtaking speed, each individual who arrives in the country — determining where he or she came from and whether he or she is eligible for asylum.
Eight vessels, 30 coach buses, and 4,000 new workers — including several dozen Frontex police officers and potentially 1,000 army and security staff — will eventually be dispatched from various EU countries to Greek borders to help enforce the agreement by determining their eligibility as “exchangeable” refugees. But, even prior to their arrival, the Greek government is still responsible for documenting some 10,000 incoming asylum-seekers per week.
The process began last week on Lesbos: Each morning, the roughly 1,000 refugees who continue to arrive everyday from Turkey were detained, photographed, given a numbered orange wristband, read their rights — “please be patient” — and bussed to a camp near the village of Moria. There, 60 judges operating out of makeshift courts — mostly cargo containers and tents — presided over appeals committees for any refugee who refused to leave Greece voluntarily. Arabic specialists parsed accents to determine whether Syrians have come from sufficiently dangerous swaths of their country to qualify for consideration of eventual asylum. “There are certain questions we can ask to make sure they’re telling the truth,” one of these specialists, a volunteer named Dionysia, told me in Piraeus, before departing for Lesbos. “‘What is the biggest street in Aleppo?’ ‘Which river runs through Homs?’” To the chagrin of many Greeks, Turkish observers are working within these deportation centers — at Lesbos and elsewhere — to determine if those refugees actually passed through Turkey on their way to
Greece. (Only the ones who did will be accepted back.) “How can you tell if someone without a passport has passed through Turkey?” I asked Dionysia. She shrugged.“How can you tell if someone without a passport has passed through Turkey?” I asked Dionysia. She shrugged.
Meanwhile, the government tasked with handling this mammoth organizational project teeters on the edge of collapse. The events of last summer demonstrated that a coalition of nationalists and former communists could find ways to cooperate during a fiscal crisis — namely, by invoking patriotism as a last plank against the technocrats of the EU. But virtually no common policy unites the ruling Independent Greeks-Syriza coalition when it comes to refugees. The leader of the right-wing Independent Greeks, Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, courts popularity by attacking the “imminent Islamization of Greece.” He refuses to distribute Greek army rations to refugees on the grounds that the Greek military is not a “catering service.” Syriza, a left-wing political party, takes a different stance. It came to power on a promise to dismantle all detention centers in Greece (a promise it has nevertheless broken); last week, members of its youth organization hung banners from the Acropolis calling for the opening of all national borders. The coalition nearly collapsed early this month when Syriza’s alternate immigration minister, Ioannis Mouzalas, called the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia by the name nearly every other country on earth uses — “Macedonia” — and was almost forced into resignation by Kammenos for his grievous affront to Hellenic identity. (Failos Kranidiotis, a prominent member of the opposition New Democracy party, was forced to resign when he said that Mouzalas should be hung publicly and that he himself would provide the rope.)
One of the few tactics both parties agree on is tying the treatment of refugees to the relieving of the national debt. Kammenos threatened to unleash a “wave of jihadis” on the rest of Europe if austerity measures continue unabated. But this strategy has proved mildly effective at best; Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has conceded that the Greek financial reforms will require some “flexibility” if Greece is to bear the brunt of Europe’s refugee crisis, but, so far, no changes to the bailout terms have been set.
The new arrivals, however, continue to come ashore. At the E2 Terminal, I met Muhammad from Iraq, who arrived in Piraeus on March 21. He speaks proficient English, worked 20 years as a tailor, and left his wife and 2-year-old daughter at their home in central Baghdad to seek a stable life in Germany, where he remains determined to go. In early March, Muhammad flew to Istanbul and then crossed to Lesbos in a dinghy with 120 others. Had he left Baghdad one week earlier, he would have likely crossed the Macedonian border and may have made it to Germany by now. Had he arrived several hours later than he did, he would have been turned back at Lesbos and very likely repatriated to Iraq under the terms of the new agreement, which makes no provisions for non-Syrians (though, in theory, looks at all asylum claims on their individual merits). As I got up to leave, Muhammad removed his sneaker and gestured to a horseshoe of scars curled around his left anklebone. Next, he pulled up his right pant leg, revealing a white cast that ended just below his knee. Both were the work of an Islamic State car bomb, he told me.
The current deal does nothing to address Muhammad — or the 53,000 other asylum-seekers like him who are now stuck in Piraeus, the former Olympic arenas in Attica, the squares of Thessaloniki and Kavala, the old Athens airport, the hills around Idomeni, and elsewhere in Greece. It’s likely they will be trapped in Greece indefinitely, victims of an EU that now feels it must overcompensate for months of doing nearly nothing to address the flow of refugees. Various entities and institutions allegedly trying to help people like Muhammad have found themselves at odds with one another and their goals incompatible: Last week, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), Médecins Sans Frontières, the International Rescue Committee, Save the Children, and the Norwegian Refugee Council all announced their withdrawal from Greece in protest of the prison-like conditions of its detention centers. Greece, for its part, blames the fenced-off camps on the EU, which habitually threatens Greece’s expulsion from the Schengen zone if refugees aren’t more carefully documented. (At least three of the Brussels bombers are known to have passed through Greece.)
Responsibility for caring for the refugees, meanwhile, continues to fall on private donations from Greeks, though it’s unclear how long a citizenry whose GDP has been devastated by an output drop of one-quarter can continue to do so. The Greek right has been quick to exploit the situation. On Greece’s Independence Day last week, a mysterious group calling itself the “Sacred Band” paraded through the main boulevard of Thessaloniki crying, “Greece stands for Orthodoxy!” The conservative Greek media, meanwhile, stoked fears of Greece’s Islamization by running footage of an Egyptian girl marching in the Athens parade wearing a headscarf. (The girl had absolutely no connection to refugees; she was born in Greece.)
The most damning critique of the EU-Turkey deal — that it breaks the Geneva Conventions by turning refugees back toward conflict zones — is partially offset by another: Rarely has the EU shown the organizational capacity necessary for its implementation. It has made previous commitments to move 160,000 refugees from Greece and Italy to northern Europe by the end of 2016; only 937 have been relocated thus far. Nearly everywhere you go in Athens, you see how haphazard any potential efforts to implement the deal will be on the Greek end alone — and how, even if the deal does work, Greece will inevitably be put in the position of having to pick and choose who has a chance to move on to prosperous northern Europe and who doesn’t. Beyond the 53,000 refugees currently living in asylum camps, an estimated 500,000 “irregular migrants” have been living for years on Greek streets without any care or recognition by the country’s inefficient bureaucracy.
When Macedonia closed its border to northern Greece in early March, human smugglers in Athens reportedly threw a party in celebration of the fact that their routes were soon to become more dangerous and, thus, their rates more expensive. Aid workers I met insisted that the current EU-Turkey deal will only do more of the same. “The EU is incapable of realizing that an Afghan family that packed all its belongings into a suitcase, walked halfway across the Middle East, nearly drowned in the Aegean, and is now living in a tent will find a way of getting to Germany,” a Hellenic Red Cross worker told me. He produced a map of the Mediterranean for me on his iPhone. “All the Balkan borders with Greece are now closed.” He pointed toward the Black Sea. “Smugglers are now sneaking them to Bulgaria by boat. They have already begun buying up small hotels on the northwest Turkish coast from which they will launch their boats. When the weather gets better, that will be the next crisis point.”
al Mesbar Studies and Research Center
