Obama Still Pledges More with Iran

Posted on August 18, 2015August 18, 2015 by Denise Simon

This video was released two weeks after the Iran Nuclear Deal (JPOA) was announced.

Click here to see the White House in action.

Add to Obama’s To-Do List: Regime Change in Iran

President Obama has been thinking a lot recently about his post-presidency. According to a detailed dispatch in the New York Times, he has been meeting with notable authors and business leaders over late-night dinners and discussing what he will do next.

High on his post-presidential to-do list should be regime change for Iran. No, Barack Obama should not press his successor to invade Iran and set up an occupation government. But the president should use his time after office to nurture and support Iran’s democratic opposition in its struggle against Iran’s dictator.

For now, the president should hear from some people who disagree with him. The White House “vision committee” should invite Iranian dissidents who recently signed an open letter opposing the Iran deal. They would have interesting comments over late-night cocktails with the commander-in-chief. Obama’s aides could send for Gene Sharp, the leading theorist of nonviolent conflict, and Michael Ledeen, the conservative historian who has spent the last 20 years trying to foment political warfare against the regime.

As an elder statesman, Obama should busy himself with the fate of that regime’s political prisoners the way Jimmy Carter has taken up the cause of Palestinian statehood. Obama’s legacy in foreign policy depends not on the success of the nuclear deal in the short term, but on the success of Iran’s democracy movement in the long term.

Obama can’t acknowledge this publicly for the remainder of his presidency. He still needs to make sure Iran’s hardliners live up to their end of the bargain, and he can’t afford to provoke Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And even if his nuclear deal were not tying his hands while he’s in office, history would be. U.S. government programs to support Iranian civil society have not had much success.

George W. Bush authorized U.S. government grants to support Iran’s democratic opposition, but in some cases the receipt of this support endangered Iranians brave enough to accept it. Also many Iranians still remember the role the U.S. played in the 1953 coup that unseated Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. U.S. government programs to support Iranian democracy unfortunately are interpreted as an official pursuit of regime change. That’s why Obama can be especially helpful once he is out of office — by supporting the Iranian opposition as a private citizen, allied with other private citizens to shame Iran’s government to treat its people better.

Ultimately it’s up to Iranians to rise up against a government that suppresses them. But like any “people power” movement, those activists struggling inside the country need solidarity and support from the outside. Former President Obama would be an ideal person to raise private money and awareness for Iranians who seek the same freedoms we take for granted in the West. Who knows better the dynamics necessary to helping build a coalition for political change? He was, after all, a community organizer.

There are a few doses of self-interest here too. For Obama, a plan to champion Iranian democracy after he leaves office is good politics now, to get his nuclear deal. He could privately assure doubtful Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer that he would devote his energies during the 10 to 15 years ahead to changing the nature of Iran’s regime.

And once he has that deal, it’s in Obama’s interest to ensure that it succeeds, which can only happen if Iran’s current rulers fall. As Obama himself told NPR in April, after 15 years Iran’s breakout time to produce enough fissile material for a bomb would decrease from around a year to a matter of a few weeks. If in 2030, Iran is ruled by reactionaries as belligerent as today’s reactionaries, Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative will have only given the regime more time to perfect the means by which it can blackmail the rest of the world. Obama needs to worry today about who will replace Khamenei and his ilk down the road.

Fortunately there are many Iranians who don’t want to live under an Islamic police state. Obama can start with the leaders of Iran’s Green movement, like Mir Hossein Mousavi, who took to the streets in 2009 and accused Khamenei of stealing Mousavi’s electoral victory. Mousavi, like the current regime has opposed sanctions and supported the nuclear program. But Mousavi and others in the opposition are better long-term partners because they also challenge the unaccountable power of the ayatollah. Remember that the international sanctions that are to be dismantled in exchange for more nuclear transparency were imposed because Iran’s leaders went forward with a nuclear program condemned by the rest of the world. That kind of defiance is much harder to pull off when leaders have to face an electorate suffering under the resulting sanctions.

Obama would say he is already working with Iranian reformers, like President Hassan Rouhani. But Mousavi remains under house arrest and state executions have gone through the roof, despite Rouhani’s initial promises to free political prisoners.

The truth is, Iran’s opposition needs all the help it can get. The hope from the deal’s proponents is that increased investment and integration into the world economy will open up enough political space for a democratic opposition to thrive someday. But the odds are against them. Before much money trickles down to Iran’s middle class, much more will go to the revolutionary guard commanders who oppress them.

The regime sees the threat coming. On his official website on Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei wrote: “We will permit neither American economic influence, nor political influence, nor cultural influence.”

He has good reason to be worried. A decade ago in Washington, I met the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the cleric who led the original Islamic revolution in 1979. Back then the grandson, Hossein Khomeini, was an outspoken opponent of the Iranian regime. He told me that he couldn’t imagine a scenario where Iran’s rulers gave up power in the face of overwhelming nonviolent resistance, the way Slobodan Milosevic ultimately was forced to give up the Serbian presidency in 2000 after Serbians rose up without violence against him. Khomeini told me that when Iran’s people rebelled, the current leaders would pay with their lives.

Someone like Obama, who understands nonviolent conflict more than his predecessors, could help avoid such a bloodbath in Iran. He owes as much to the Iranian people. He owes as much to the American people. And ultimately, Obama owes as much to his own legacy.

Amnesty director’s links to global network of Islamists

Posted on August 18, 2015August 18, 2015 by Denise Simon

Amnesty International courtesy of financial support from George Soros:

In part from Discover the Networks:

During the Cold War, however, AI focused scant attention on the human rights abuses committed by the Soviet Union and its satellites via the Warsaw Pact. Only in 1975, fully 13 years after its formation, did the organization finally release a report — “Prisoners of Conscience in the USSR” — documenting the plight of political prisoners behind the Iron Curtain. In its own defense, AI maintained that its work was complicated by the lack of access to prisoners in the Communist world, and by the possibility that its activism might trigger retaliation against political prisoners by the ruling authorities.

The consequences of this approach were evident in AI’s assessment of human rights in Communist Cuba, where throughout the 1970s the organization underestimated the number of political prisoners while offering only mild criticism of the Castro regime’s persecution of political opponents. An AI annual report for 1976, for instance, noted that the “persistence of fear, real or imaginary, was primarily responsible for the early excesses in the treatment of political prisoners.” This cautiously diplomatic approach to the Castro dictatorship did not prevent AI from being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. In his acceptance lecture, Mumtaz Soysal, a little-known professor from Turkey, hailed what he called AI’s mission “to spotlight the victims in every society where imprisonment results from political or religious belief …”

A grossly disproportionate share of Amnesty International’s criticism is reserved for the United States. In the 1980s AI joined leftist non-governmental organizations like the Church World Service and Americas Watch in vocally opposing the Reagan administration’s support for the Contra resistance movement against Nicaragua’s Communist dictatorship.

In recent years, AI has emerged as a vocal critic of the U.S.-led war on terror, opposing especially the American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. AI’s University of Oklahoma chapter endorsed a May 1, 2003 document titled “10 Reasons Environmentalists Oppose an Attack on Iraq,” which was published by Environmentalists Against War.

AI has also condemned the U.S.-operated detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In March 2005, Amnesty International-USA’s then-Executive Director William Schulz alleged that the United States had become “a leading purveyor and practitioner” of torture and urged that senior American officials — including President Bush, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet, and high-ranking officers at Guantanamo Bay — face prosecution by other governments for violations of the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture. On May 25, 2005, Schulz announced that his organization “calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal.” “The apparent high-level architects of torture,” he added, “should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riveria because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.” Schulz’s remarks were echoed in May of 2005 by Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan, who charged that “Guantanamo [Bay] has become the gulag of our times…”

An expose by a British paper has revealed that a senior Amnesty international official has links with Hamas and a wider secret global Islamist network, once again raising questions about the NGO’s alleged “impartiality.”

The report by The Times revealed that Amnesty’s director of faith and human rights, Yasmin Hussein, is linked to a British “aid agency” which helps finance Hamas, and held a private meeting with a senior Muslim Brotherhood official at his house in Egypt.

What’s more, Hussein’s husband Wael Musabbeh was named in documents released by the United Arab Emirates after a 2013 trial which saw 60 UAE citizens accused of conspiracy and sedition, over a plot to overthrow the government. While Musabbeh was not himself a defendant in that case, he and his wife were both directors of a Bradford-based charity “said by the authorities to be part of a complex financial and ideological network in which the UK and Ireland served as important hubs, linking the (Muslim) Brotherhood to its group in UAE,” the paper said.

Amnesty International director alleged to have links to Muslim Brotherhood & radical Islamists

Amnesty’s director of faith and human rights, Yasmin Hussein.

A senior Amnesty International official has been found to have private links with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and revolutionary Islamists accused of plotting a coup in an Arab state.

Amnesty’s director of faith and human rights, Yasmin Hussein, stayed overnight at the residence of a Muslim Brotherhood advisor during an official visit to Egypt in direct contravention of Amnesty guidelines.

Her husband was also named as an alleged Islamist in documents relating to a 2013 sedition trial in the United Arab Emirates.

Hussein, who was until recently the charity’s director of international advocacy and among its leading voices at the UN, denies being an Islamist and has said she is “vehemently opposed” to raising money for “any organization that supports terrorism.”

An investigation published by The Times claimed that Hussein, 51, held a private meeting with a Muslim Brotherhood government official during an Amnesty mission to Egypt in 2012.

After the private meeting with Adly al-Qazzaz, a ministerial education adviser, Hussein had dinner with his family and stayed overnight in their home.

Amnesty International was not informed of the visit, despite instructing its staff to declare any links that may generate a real or perceived conflict of interest with its independence and impartiality.

An Amnesty employee told The Times that the charity had strict rules on overseas trips, adding: “For an Amnesty delegate to accept an invitation to stay at the residence of a government official is a serious breach of protocol.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is considered a terrorist organization in Bahrain, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The transnational Sunni Islamist organization has been illegal in Egypt since 2013, when the Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown by the military in a coup d’état which has since led to a violent crackdown on the group.

According to The Times, Adly al-Qazzaz’s family was well connected within the party. His son, Khaled al-Qazzaz, was the Brotherhood’s presidential secretary for foreign affairs. His daughter was the official spokeswoman for the group in the UK.

Both Adly al-Qazzaz and his son were arrested and detained following the military coup in 2013, but the father has since been released.

Hussein said she did not know about the Muslim Brotherhood positions held by members of the family and that she met with al-Qazzaz to speak about “the synergies between human rights and educational planning.”

Amnesty said that, with the exception of the overnight stay, it “found no evidence to suggest any inappropriate links between Ms Hussein and the al-Qazzaz family.”

In a separate incident, Hussein’s husband was identified in documents released after a criminal trial of Islamists accused of plotting a coup in the United Arab Emirates.

Wael Musabbeh was one of several alleged British Islamists, none of whom were charged, named in documents relating to a 2013 trial that ended with the jailing of more than 60 Emirati citizens for conspiracy and sedition.

Amnesty, which challenged the fairness of the trial at the time, said it was unaware of the connection because it did not realize Musabbeh was Hussein’s husband.

Musabbeh is also a director and trustee of Human Relief Foundation, a global Islamic charity banned in Israel for its alleged connecting to groups which finance Hamas.

The charity said Hussein denied being a supporter of the Brotherhood and has told Amnesty “any connections are purely circumstantial.” It said it did not believe any of her alleged connections with Islamists represented a conflict of interest.

It added: “Amnesty International does, however, take very seriously any allegations that would call into question our impartiality and is therefore investigating the issues raised.”

The charity has also come under fire for a separate incident in which an employee defended the organization’s links with CAGE, an advocacy group which campaigns for victims of the “war on terror,” but which has been accused of acting as apologists for jihadists.

The Amnesty employee voiced sympathy for those whose “only crime is to be soft on Islamic militants.”

CAGE was condemned by Prime Minister David Cameron in February for suggesting the UK-born Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) executioner “Jihadi John” was turned into a brutal killer after coming into contact with UK intelligence services.

An Amnesty spokeswoman said the charity “believes that staff should feel free to discuss and debate issues and other topics which impact the organization.”

“[Amnesty] campaigns and calls for states to respect, protect and fulfill their international human rights obligations, including freedom of expression, freedom of religion and women’s rights,” the spokeswoman added.

Islamists in Government Roles There and Here

Posted on August 17, 2015August 17, 2015 by Denise Simon

Why Are Londoners Uncomfortable with a Muslim Mayor?

by Raheem Kassam

One-third of Londoners are said to be “uncomfortable” with the idea of a Muslim mayor, according to a new YouGov poll for LBC radio. What seems to have especially excited some is the revelation that 73 percent of UK Independence Party (UKIP) voters in London feel the same way. But can they really be blamed?

The reason some of the people are “uncomfortable” is undoubtedly going to be a level of xenophobia. But the majority, I believe, are subconsciously internalising the public performances of Muslim politicians in the United Kingdom and are rightly concerned by them.

Critics might point to the fact that UKIPers, across the board according to the poll, are less “progressive,” leading the field in discomfort for the idea of a female mayor (12 percent), a homosexual mayor (26 percent) and an ethnic minority mayor (41 percent). Well, yes, UKIP is a party of traditionalists and conservatives first and libertarians second. I don’t think anyone should try to hide from that or try to explain it away. But the discomfort about a Muslim mayor (73 percent) requires some deeper thought.

Sayeeda Hussain Warsi (left) resigned from Prime Minister David Cameron’s cabinet, calling his Israel policy “morally indefensible.” Former Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman (center) fell due to corruption charges. MEP Amjad Bashir (right) was kicked out of UKIP for “grave” financial irregularities.

Look at the shining examples we have of high profile Muslim politicians in the United Kingdom: Baroness Warsi, former Mayor Lutfur Rahman, ex-UKIPer Amjad Bashir, and of course one of the people tipped to challenge for the Labour candidacy, Labour MP Sadiq Khan.

“But wait! What about Syed Kamall? Sajid Javid? Khalid Mahmood? Rehman Chishti?” I hear you ask.

Quite. But what about Humza Yousaf, Rushanara Ali, Shabana Mahmood, and Yasmin Qureshi?

By and large, Muslim politicians in the UK tend to be far more … divisive, to be polite. There are several camps. Some, like Lutfur Rahman and Baroness Warsi, have Islamist links. Some have questionable backgrounds, such as the defence of Louis Farrakhan or Guantanamo Bay detainees (Sadiq Khan), and one let UKIP down in a big way, while being investigated for improper behaviour (Amjad Bashir).

Humza Yousaf (left), a member of the Scottish parliament, was previously media spokesman for a radical Islamist charity. Labour MPs Shabana Mahmood (center) and Yasmin Qureshi (right) are more concerned with boycotting Israel than serving their constituents.

Others engage in sectarian politics at a whim. George Galloway, though he doesn’t claim to be a Muslim (others claim he converted), divided and conquered in Bradford West and was, as a result, turfed out. Politicians like Ali, Mahmood, and Qureshi are united by their demonisation of Israel and tolerance of extremism.

And Tory-elected officials like Kamall, Javid, and Chishti are precisely why Conservative voters in London are more comfortable (39 percent against) with a Muslim mayor. One of their leading candidates is a practicing Muslim – they’d have to be.

Perhaps the argument can be made that UKIP voters are not xenophobic or anti-Muslim – although one might argue they are more likely to be anti-Islam, and that’s a discussion for another time – but rather that they have simply been paying attention.

When you couple the backgrounds of a lot of leading Muslim politicians in Britain with the more objective, black-and-white worldview that UKIP voters have, they are naturally predetermined to be more sceptical.

You might argue that UKIP voters shouldn’t see things in such a clear-cut way and shouldn’t attribute the failings of one Muslim politician to others. There are evident trends, similarities, and commonalities, but that contention would be a decent compromise approach.

Unfortunately, while there are a handful of decent Muslim politicians in Britain, I can’t help but think that the highest-profile ones have let people with my name and background down. It’s no different than UKIPers being sceptical of a Conservative mayor, or Labour being sceptical of a Tory one.

Maybe I should run for London mayor on a UKIP ticket? Or maybe not.

***

In America:

Muslims in the U.S. military

Muslim police officers

White House has approved Muslims serving in government

Government internships for Muslims on Capitol Hill

Exactly how is there a reconciliation with taking an oath?

ISIS ‘End of the World’ Manifesto Investigation

Posted on August 17, 2015August 17, 2015 by Denise Simon

ISIS ‘Mein Kampf’ Blames Israel for Global Terrorism

Experts pouring over secret Islamic State dossier found in Pakistan’s tribal badlands; Arutz Sheva gains an exclusive look.

By Sara A. Carter, American Media Institute

First Publish: 8/16/2015, 8:52 PM

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Reuters

Intelligence officials are comparing a newly discovered secret Islamic State document to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” as it blames Israel for the rise of the Islamic State and crowns U.S. President Barack Obama as the “Mule of the Jews.”

Found in Pakistan’s remote tribal region by American Media Institute (AMI), the 32-page Urdu language document promotes an “end of the world” battle as a final solution. It argues that the Islamic leader should be recognized as the sole ruler of the world’s 1 billion Muslims, under a religious empire called a “caliphate.”

“It reads like the caliphate’s own Mein Kampf,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who reviewed the document. “While the world is watching videos of beheadings and crucifixions in Iraq and Syria the Islamic State is moving into North Africa the Middle East, and now we see it has a strategy in South Asia. It’s a magician’s trick, watch this hand and you’ll never see what the other is doing.”

Retired U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn and other U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the authenticity of the document based on its unique markings, specific language used to describe leaders and the writing style and religious wording that matched other Islamic State records.

Flynn said the undated document, “A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC), The Caliphate According to the Prophet,” is a campaign plan that “lays out their intent, their goals and objectives, a red flag to which we must pay attention.”

The document serves as a Nazi-like recruiting pitch that attempts to unite dozens of factions of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror. It includes a never-before-seen history of the Islamic State, details chilling future battle plans and urges al-Qaeda to join Islamic State.

Its tone is direct: “Accept the fact that this caliphate will survive and prosper until it takes over the entire world and beheads every last person that rebels against Allah. This is the bitter truth, swallow it.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal center for human rights who heads Center’s Digital Terrorism and Hate Project, compares the Islamic State threats in the document to the rise of Nazism pre-World War II.

The brutal killing of a teacher and three children at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012 by an Algerian Islamist was a major signal to the Jewish community that Europe was no longer safe and that not enough was being done to curtail the rise of anti-semitism, he said.

“It’s important to remember what our founder, Wiesenthal said, ‘it often starts with the Jews but it never ends with the Jews,” Cooper said. “As a matter fact [Islamic State] did not create anti-semitism but they are taking advantage of it, and they are building on it.”

The document advocates creating a new terrorist army in Afghanistan and Pakistan to trigger a war in India and provoke an Armageddon-like confrontation with the United States. It also details Islamic State’s plot to attack U.S. soldiers as they withdraw from Afghanistan and target America diplomats and Pakistani officials and blames the rise of jihadi organizations on the establishment of Israel.

“No sooner had the British government relinquished control of Israel, Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jews, declared the independence of the State of Israel, triggering a global migration of Jews to the Jewish State, and launching the systematic persecution of Palestinian Muslims who had to abandon their homes and migrate,” the document states.

The document discloses the history of Islamic State dating back to the early 1990s and explains why in 2011 its leader, Abu Bakr al- Bagdhadi, unleashed car bombs to avenge Osama bin Laden’s death, and boasts about the suicide rates of American soldiers.

“Urban centers across Iraq exploded with car bombs and IED’s. The losses inflicted upon Americans, apostates, and heretics were unprecedented, as were the suicide rates amongst U.S soldiers,” the document states. “This state of affairs forced Mule of the Jews, U.S President Obama to announce an exit plan.”

The battle plan to “end the world” is described in six phases (three of which have already passed) – ripping pages from al-Qaeda’s original plans to defeat the west, in a graphic illustration of how ISIS sees itself as the true heirs to Osama Bin Laden’s legacy.

Phase 1 “Awakening” 2000-2003: Islamic State calls for “a major operation against the U.S. .. to provoke a crusade against Islam.”
Phase 2 “Shock and Awe” 2004 – 2006: Islamic State will lure U.S. into multiple theatres of war, including cyber-attacks and establish charities across the Muslim and Arab world to support terrorism.
Phase 3 “Self-reliance” 2007-2010: Islamic State will create “interference” with Iraq’s neighboring states with particular focus on Syria.
Phase 4 “Reaping/extortion/receiving” 2010-2013: Islamic State will attack “U.S and Western interests” to destroy their economy and replace the dollar with silver and gold and expose Muslim governments’ relations with Israel and the U.S.
Phase 5 Declaring the Caliphate 2013-2016: Not much details offered here. The document just says, “The Caliphate According to The Prophet.”
Phase 6, Open Warfare 2017-2020: Islamic State predicts faith will clash with non-believers and “Allah will grant victory to the believers after which peace will reign on earth.”

The document urges followers of al-Qaeda and the Taliban to join the Islamic State in overthrowing Arab governments who have relations with the U.S. and Israel, unlike al-Qaeda, which believed it was “important to weaken the U.S before launching an armed revolt in Arab states and establishing a caliphate.”

In response to the document, a senior ranking Israeli official said that in the Middle East the world faces two threats – from Islamic State and from Iran. “We need not strengthen one at the expense of the other. We need to weaken both and prevent the aggression and arming of both,” he warned.

Alistair Baskey, deputy spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council said Islamic State is being monitored “closely to see whether their emergence will have a meaningful impact on the threat environment in the region.”

The document builds on evidence that Islamic State is expanding into the region where the September 11 attacks were born. A united Taliban, backed by the hundreds of millions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenue now enjoyed by Islamic State, would be a “game-changer,” officials said.

The document warns that “preparations” for an attack in India are underway and predicts that an attack will provoke an apocalyptic confrontation with America: “Even if the U.S tries to attack with all its allies, which undoubtedly it will, the (entire global Muslim community) will be united, resulting in the final battle.”

A war in India would magnify Islamic State stature and threaten the stability of the region, said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution who served more than 30 years in the CIA. “Attacking in India is the Holy Grail of South Asian jihadists.”

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry denied the presence of Islamic State in the region, calling it only “a potential threat.”

Unlike al-Qaida, whose focus was the United States and other western nations, the document said Islamic State leaders believe that’s the wrong strategic goal. “Instead of wasting energy in a direct confrontation with the U.S., we should focus on an armed uprising in the Arab world for the establishment of the caliphate,” the document said.

The failure to target the radical Islamic ideas has given the group breathing room to spread throughout the world much like Hitler did.

“We did a lousy job predicting what Hitler was going to do in the 1920s, 1930s – honestly, we blew it,” Cooper said. “It’s hard to take seriously or believe that such hatred was real or would be possible. They made jokes about Jews, degraded Jews but nobody believed that they would be capable of what they were saying. So now, when groups, like [Islamic State] come along and say they are going to do A B and C, you have to take them for their word.”

***

This is not the first revelation when it comes to Islamic State in Pakistan, such that who in the White House, the National Security Council or at the United Nations is really taking heed from 2014?

NBC: QUETTA, Pakistan — ISIS has created a 10-man “strategic planning wing” with a master plan on how to wage war against the Pakistani military, and is trying to join forces with local militants, according to a government memo obtained by NBC News.

What is a caliphate?

“They are now planning to inflict casualties to Pakistan Army outfits who are taking part in operation Zarb-e-Azb,” says the alert, referring to the military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and other militants that was launched in June in a tribal region near the Afghan border.

Labeled “secret,” the memo was sent by the government of Balochistan, a southwestern province that borders Afghanistan, to authorities and intelligence officials across Pakistan last week. Akber Durrani, the province’s home secretary, called it “routine” and said Sunni militant group and its sympathizers do not have a stronghold there.

But the document suggests that ISIS has Pakistan in its cross-hairs, warning that the group aims to stir up sectarian unrest by dispatching the local militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi on offensives against Pakistan’s minority Shiite Muslim community, further destabilizing a country already battling Taliban and al Qaeda elements. Most Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims. Mistrust has existed between Shiites and Sunnis for around 1,400 years.

Secret letter sent by the government of Balochistan regarding ISIS activity in Pakistan. NBC News

ISIS has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq. It claims to have recruited 10,000 to 12,000 followers in tribal areas on the Afghan border, including in Hangu, which is known for hostility between Shiites and Sunnis, the memo says.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has claimed responsibility for violence against Shiites, and Sipa-e Muhammed, which has struck against Sunnis, were banned after 9/11.

Just days ago, the chief minister of Balochistan, Dr. Malik Baloch, told journalists he had no information about the presence of ISIS in the province. “However, there are fundamentalists whose approach is similar to that of ISIS,” he said.

The memo recommended “strict monitoring” of militants and “extreme vigilance” to ward off any attacks.

International Red Cross is a Political Wing for Foreign Policy

Posted on August 16, 2015August 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

Red Crescent too….

Hamas Charter: Article Two: The Link between Hamas and the Association of Muslim Brothers
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era. It is characterized by a profound understanding, by precise notions and by a complete comprehensiveness of all concepts of Islam in all domains of life: views and beliefs, politics and economics, education and society, jurisprudence and rule, indoctrination and teaching, the arts and publications, the hidden and the evident, and all the other domains of life.

Article Twenty-Eight
The Zionist invasion is a mischievous one. It does not hesitate to take any road, or to pursue all despicable and repulsive means to fulfill its desires. It relies to a great extent, for its meddling and spying activities, on the clandestine organizations which it has established, such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions, and other spying associations. All those secret organizations, some which are overt, act for the interests of Zionism and under its directions, strive to demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and to wipe out Islam. It stands behind the diffusion of drugs and toxics of all kinds in order to facilitate its control and expansion. The Arab states surrounding Israel are required to open their borders to the Jihad fighters, the sons of the Arab and Islamic peoples, to enable them to play their role and to join their efforts to those of their brothers among the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The other Arab and Islamic states are required, at the very least, to facilitate the movement of the Jihad fighters from and to them. We cannot fail to remind every Muslim that when the Jews occupied Holy Jerusalem in 1967 and stood at the doorstep of the Blessed Aqsa Mosque, they shouted with joy: “Muhammad is dead, he left daughters behind.” Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. “Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep.” Read all 36 Hamas Charter Articles here.

Cant make this up! Notice how blame always included Israel.

Red Cross Offers Workshops in International Law to Hamas

NYT: GAZA CITY — A new training regimen for fighters in Hamas’s armed wing employs slide presentations and a whiteboard rather than Kalashnikov rifles and grenades. The young men wear polo shirts instead of fatigues and black masks. They do not chant anti-Israel slogans, but discuss how the Geneva Conventions governing armed conflict dovetail with Islamic principles.

The three-day workshop, conducted last month by the International Committee of the Red Cross, followed numerous human-rights reports accusing both Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, of war crimes in their devastating battle last summer, and came as the International Criminal Court prosecutor conducts a preliminary inquiry into that conflict.

It was clear during the opening session that the Red Cross would face a steep climb to convince militant Islamists that international law should govern their resistance against Israel.

“The prophet used to give orders to his army that you don’t kill any child, don’t cut any tree,” one fighter said promisingly, lending Quranic support to the principle of distinguishing between soldiers and civilians. “As long as he is not fighting me, I should not kill him.”

But a colleague soon countered, “The prophet is different than today,” and the conversation quickly shifted from Hamas’s own questionable methods to the enemy.

“They killed us, they killed our babies,” one militant insisted, speaking of the Israeli military. Of the humanitarian principles underpinning both Islam and international law, he added, “Sometimes we need to overlook these things, because the situation is different.”

The Red Cross developed its program in conjunction with Islamic scholars several years ago, but ramped it up after last summer’s deadly battle. So far this year, it has conducted six sessions for a total of 210 fighters from Hamas’s Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades and two other Gaza armed groups. Another workshop is scheduled for this week.

Skeptics may question the utility of teaching humanitarian law to a guerrilla force that the United States and the European Union classify as a terrorist organization. The Qassam Brigades fired thousands of rockets and mortars toward Israeli cities last summer; its weapons caches have been found in civilian homes and schools across Gaza, and Israel alleges that it uses Palestinian residents as human shields, purposely risking their lives to mobilize international ire against Israel.

But Red Cross leaders say they have seen an increasing commitment from Hamas leaders and linemen alike, if only because they now consider their international image a critical component of their struggle.

Mamadou Sow, who heads Red Cross operations in Gaza, said that in April he presented a critique of Hamas’s conduct during the 2014 hostilities to its top political and military leaders, and that they “welcomed it” and “indicated that they are a learning organization.” He said they also “challenged us to keep in mind the topology of the Gaza Strip,” one of the most densely populated patches on the planet.

“For the first time,” said Jacques de Maio, director of the Red Cross delegation in Israel and the Palestinian territories, “Hamas is actually, in a private, protected space, expressing a readiness to look critically at a number of things that have an impact on their level of respect for international humanitarian law.”

He added, “Whether this will translate into something concrete, time will tell.”

Besides participating in the workshops, Hamas has altered its propaganda in the aftermath of the war. New talking points stress that tunnel attacks last summer targeted military positions, not civilian communities, and argue — dubiously — that rockets fly toward civilian areas because the Gaza groups lack guiding technology.

Still, Hamas leaders routinely praise attacks on Israelis, and there are widespread reports that Qassam is rebuilding tunnels to infiltrate Israeli territory.

Last week, in announcing the arrest of a Qassam fighter in July, Israel’s security service said that he had told interrogators “the organization’s fighters endanger many civilians by storing explosives in their homes, on the instructions of Hamas commanders.”

Mr. de Maio of the Red Cross acknowledged that “a big ethical, fundamental question would be, ‘Are we now shaking hands with the devil?’ ” But he said his group’s work with rogue rulers and rebels around the world had altered their modi operandi. He cited a 2011 episode in Afghanistan in which operatives painted a vehicle like an ambulance. “We engaged with the Taliban and it was a long process,” he said. Eventually commanders issued an order saying it was a mistake that should not be repeated, “and it didn’t happen again.”

The Red Cross and the Qassam Brigades let reporters from The New York Times observe the first day of the workshop in July, on the condition that neither the trainers nor the participants be named, and that no photographs be taken. Role-playing and case studies — one exercise involved an armed group firing on an invading tank from the garden of a civilian home, near a hospital — were also off limits.

Most of the men were in their 20s and wore trim beards. Their leader opened by saying, “All what we’re going to hear we can find in our religion,” urging them “to take it very seriously” and reminding them to silence their cellphones.

The seminar unfolded in a room of Al Salam Restaurant, overlooking the beachfront where four young cousins were killed by Israeli missiles in 2014, a seminal episode that prompted one of the loudest international outcries of the war. Israeli military investigators later classified the attack as a tragic mistake.

During five hours of conversation, the fighters did not reflect on their own questionable activities or debate any situations they faced regarding risk to civilians while operating in Gaza’s urban landscape. Instead, they repeatedly turned the focus to Israel.

“You are dealing with an enemy that there’s not any difference between soldier and civilian,” insisted one fighter in a plaid shirt.

“Israelis violated everything,” another declared. “You say this also to the Jews?”

Yes, the Red Cross officials said, they conduct similar sessions with the Israeli military. This prompted more outrage. “You equalize the victim and the criminal,” one fighter said accusingly. “All of you, until now, you did not denounce the crimes of the Zionists.”

Others challenged Red Cross war efforts — providing water to refugee camps, repairing downed power lines, restoring cellular service, arranging with Israel to evacuate the wounded from bombarded areas.

“What was your role when the massacre in Rafah happened?” one fighter wanted to know, referring to Black Friday, when Qassam fighters took the remains of a slain Israeli soldier after a tunnel battle, prompting an Israeli assault that killed as many as 200 civilians. “We were besieged inside the hospital — why didn’t the I.C.R.C. help us?”

The trainer allowed, “The whole environment was very complicated, we couldn’t deal with everything and every place — you can’t have a war without victims.”

The Qassam coordinator, who gave only his nom de guerre, Abu Mahmoud, refused to let participants be interviewed about their experience or to engage in any substantive discussion of the group’s methods. “We did not commit war crimes as much as the Israelis did,” he said, adding that “civilian casualties happen because we are not an organized army.”

As for the International Criminal Court inquiry into both sides, he said with a shrug: “It will not affect us. We are, eventually, victims and they are occupiers, so there is no comparison.”

A 23-year-old Qassam member who participated in a similar workshop in May 2014, was permitted to speak only with Abu Mahmoud monitoring. He said that he had “signed a paper saying I should not kill civilians” upon joining Qassam four years ago, and that last summer, “the rules and teachings of this training made me fight within limits.”

Pressed for examples, the fighter recalled one instance in which “some of my colleagues wanted to have a military task inside a school, but we prevented this from happening.”

“We explained the consequences of such actions,” he said. “What will happen in the I.C.C. against us, and the international community. We don’t want to have a weakness point, and that the occupation will use it against us.”