حزب مردم بلوچستان  Balochistan People’s Party  بلوچستانءِ اُستمانءِ گــَل

Baloch`s cry for Justice!!!

20-07-2007 ; BalochUnity YahooGroup

In respect of The whole world-community!!!!

Balochs were forcibly pushed to the wall....by denying their civil and human rights. Enemies of Balochs were succeeded to put war on Balochs, beginning .......from the drama of two Parliamentary Committee, to the sudden attack on Dera-Bugti, on the eve of Eid-uz-zuha in 2006, after the meeting of two high profile figures of U.S. establishment with General Musharaf.

Balochs are looser at home and in abroad as, " they failed to convince to the world community that they are not........ extrimists. Pakistani Establishment with their carpet bombardment, attacks on civilians, kidnapping their children, arresting and killing
Baloch young’s, displacing hundreds of thousands of Balochs from their ancestral lands.....proudly declares that they are fighting against........ extremism.

Balochs are really looser, at home & abroad, as nobody pay heeds to their sufferings. The
members in UNHRC are those countries, who are the worst violators of Human Rights.

There are "Private companies" in United States which campaign and lobby for Darfur, but such is not the case for Balochistan. Such lobby companies` fees are not too high.

How one should put a serious demand before United Nations as not any member of General Assembly of U.N. seems ready to act on behalf of Balochs? On the other side, Pakistani Army made a battle-field by attacking Balochs. The young Balochs have sought refuge in the mountains. Enemy chases them and find an excuse to bleed the "innocent civilians". After their shameful attacks on nomads of Balochistan, they proudly boast that.....they are fighting against terrorism & extremisms, for the purpose to gain more financial & diplomatic benefits, proving themselves being the so-called partners to fight against terrorism....a new world order !!!

Can somebody suggest, how to approach & convince U.S. establishment and the whole world community.....? That Balochs are being oppressed by Pakistani Army. Balochs are on the run to save their lives and honours and Balochs are seeking refuge in the mountains and Balochs are using their right of self-defence. A defence to their life, property and honours?????? Balochs are not extremists but the Pakistani Army is using their terrorism to weaken the secular forces in this part of the world to pave the way for Taliban?

It`s need of the hour to attract the western media about the abuses of Pakistani Military regime to-wards Balochs. It is utmost important to convince the U.S. State Department, European Union and the whole world community that secular Balochs are being terrorized by Pakistani Army. It`s high time to persuade the foreign countries to help Balochs in this critical time as Balochs are not terrorists, not fundamentalists, not Taliban/al-quida and not.....Extremists.

Does there exists the law of Jungle in the whole world? Why not the neighbouring countries persuade Pakistani Army to start a dialogue with Baloch leaders? Why not U.S. establishment not make initiative to conciliate between Balochs and Pakistani Army? Why not United States seek support and help of Balochs to turn the tables of Iranian Fascist regime?

Friends of Balochs,
Afghan-section.

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Who is running Balochistan?

22.09.2007 ; http://www.balochunity.org/

By Buthaina Al Balushia

During my study I was taught that the three "Ws" are essential in person's life. The three "Ws" are; (1) What, (2) Who, and (3) Where. I would also like to add another letter and that is "H" which refers to "How".

First of all I knew nothing about my real motherland (Balochistan) due to having no touches and proper contacts with the great people of Balochistan. I most of the time asked myself that am I belong to Balochistan? What should be my role toward my mother land as a Baloch lady living outside Balochistan? What value does Balochistan have in the entire world? What kind of relations are there between Balochistan and it's neighboring countries? Why Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan and Iran? What do the people of Balochistan want? Such quires were annoying me a lot because I could not find proper answers at the beginning.

Now I have another question in my mind that, who is running Balochistan and how? Is Balochistan being run by Capitalists, religionists, parliamentary politicians, and NGOs groups? All of them are produced by Pakistani factories. Since Balochistan belongs to Baloch people it should then be run by them. This is what justice said. Also, if educated and professionals Baloch available in their own country it can be a great opportunity that how systematically it should be run by them.

The Pakistani propagandists stress that Balochs are yet not matured, educated, professionals, skilled, and trustable. On what basis such judgments put on Baloch nation? However, I found completely the opposite that what Pakistani propagandists state against us.

I found -where I live in- that Baloch nation is fittest people to run their own country Balochistan. I found many professionals Baloch in many fields such as Engineering, Medical, Banking, Teaching, Public Relations, Literature, Journalism, Airlines and many others.

Despite all, why still Pakistan and Iran are governing on us? Paradoxically, if they want us to be their slaves, should it be accepted by us? I think it should not. We should not be slaves any more. If Baloch women like, Shakar Bibi, Fatima, Karima and Somari can bravely challenge the state of Pakistan that they are prepared to die rather than being the slaves, then what stops us to capture our Freedom.

Today, not only the Youth of Baloch nation is struggling to get the freedom and run Balochistan but also great daughters of Balochistan struggling side by side.

Buthaina Al Balushia

Khaleej Al Arab
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Iran executes more Arabs

The west is obsessed with Tehran's nuclear programme, but doesn't give a damn about human rights abuses.

By Peter Tatchell ; 23-09-2007 ; http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk

The Islamic Republic of Iran has executed three more Arab political prisoners, just days after a visit from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour. In further defiance of the UN and international law, four more Arabs face imminent execution.

There have been no protests from Britain, the EU or the UN. The UN's silence comes on top of the truly appalling vote by UN Human Rights Council to abandon its monitoring of human rights abuses in Iran.

The only thing the west seems to care about is Iran's nuclear programme. Human rights abuses do not concern Washington, London or Brussels. Nor do they concern President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Both men have warmly embraced the tyrant of Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Arab League, the supposed defender of Arab peoples worldwide, is equally indifferent. It has refused to protest to Iran about the persecution of ethnic Arabs in the south-west of the country - the oil-rich region Tehran calls Khuzestan, but which the indigenous Arab peoples call al-Ahwaz.

While condemning Israel for abusing the Palestinian people, Arab states are silent about the abuse of fellow Arabs by the Iranian regime. The anti-imperialist left is also mute. Why the double standards? Palestinian Arabs get the support of progressives and radicals everywhere; Iranian Arabs get no support at all. They swing from nooses in public squares like cattle hanging in an abattoir. Does anyone care?

Ahwazi Arabs accuse Tehran of Persian chauvinism, racism and ethnic cleansing, as I previously revealed in Tribune. The response to that article from some Islamists, left-wingers and anti-war activists was to denounce me as racist and anti-Muslim. But how can it be Islamophobic or racist to defend Arab Muslims against Tehran's persecution?

Amnesty International has also expressed concern about the bloody repression and economic exploitation of Iran's Arab minority, as has Dr Karim Abdian of the Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation (AHRO). I recently interviewed Dr Abdian for my Talking With Tatchell TV programme, which you can watch here.

The execution of three Arabs last week is the latest in a series of barbaric hangings, designed to terrorise the Arab population into submission. Ten other Arabs are known to have been executed since December last year. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have condemned their trials as unjust and unfair.

In January this year, three UN special rapporteurs also voiced concerns about the way the trials were conducted. Their concerns confirm criticisms by one of Iran's leading human rights advocates, Emad Baghi. In a letter to the chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, he argued that the trials of Ahwazi Arabs were flawed, the charges baseless, and that the sentencing was based on a spurious interpretation of law.

The men hanged last week were Abdulreza Nawaseri, Mohammad Ali Sawari and Jafar Sawari. Charged with bombing the Zergan oilfields in 2005, they were executed secretly in prison using Tehran's sadistic slow strangulation method, deliberately designed to prolong the suffering of the victims.

The men denied all the charges during a summary one-day trial in which they were deprived of adequate legal representation and denied the opportunity to call witnesses in their defence. Their lawyers were not allowed to meet them and were not given time to read their files. When they subsequently complained about the conduct of the trial, five of the seven lawyers (all Arabs) were arrested and summoned to court on allegations that they had threatened national security.

Abdulreza Nawaseri, aged 32, was arrested in 2000 and sentenced to 35 years in prison. He was in jail at the time of the Zergan bombings and therefore could not have committed the attacks, which further suggests that these men were framed on false charges.

Brothers Mohammad Ali Sawari and Jafar Sawari had been in prison since 2005. They were initially accused of promoting Sunni Islam, which is a heinous crime in the sectarian Shia state of Iran. These charges were later supplemented with charges of bombing the Zergan oilfields. No evidence was produced to back up the charges.

Mohammad Ali, a 37-year-old teacher, was an English literature graduate. Some reports claim he was also accused of translating George Orwell's book, Animal Farm, into Arabic, with the aim of sparking an uprising. According to his family, there was no allegation of bombings in his file.

The men's execution prompted spontaneous anti-government demonstrations in Ahwaz. Security forces fired on the crowds. Reports suggest that one person was killed and 20 others wounded.

At least six more Arab political prisoners are facing imminent execution. Four of them are in Karoun prison. These prisoners include Hamzah Sawari, 20 years old, who is accused of giving unauthorised religious instruction in a local mosque, instigating worshippers against the state and displaying the Ahwazi flag in 2005. The other men scheduled to hang with him are Zamel Bawi, Abdulemam Zaeri and Nazem Boryhi. The charges against them have not been made public.

Two more Arabs, who were illegally handed over to Tehran by Syria, are also expected to be hanged. The UN High Commission for Refugees reports that the men were recognised refugees and therefore protected under international and Syrian law from removal to a country such as Iran where they could be at risk of torture and execution.

According to Daniel Brett, chair of the British Ahwazi Friendship Society:

The Iranian government is not only executing innocent men, it is killing or jailing entire families in its attempt to terrorise the Ahwazi Arab people. We know that the entire family of Ahwazi psychologist Dr Awdeh Afrawi have been executed, murdered or imprisoned; Dr Afrawi himself is currently dying in prison, being deliberately denied the medication he needs to survive.

The Nasseri and Bawi tribes appear to be key targets, due to the fact that their lands are oil-rich and members of these tribes have been heavily involved in opposition to the government's land confiscation programme and its forced displacement of Arabs.

Contrary to Tehran's propaganda, most Arab movements in al-Ahwaz are not violent separatists. They primarily want non-discrimination, cultural rights, social justice and regional self-government - not independence.

If, however, Tehran continues to rebuff moderate, mainstream Arab opinion, there is a danger that many Arabs will turn to armed struggle and wage a full-scale national liberation war with the aim of outright independence. This would turn oil-rich al-Ahwaz into another zone of violent instability, with adverse global economic consequences as a result of diminished oil production and rising oil prices.

Quite rightly, most Arabs do not support a US attack on Iran. Military intervention would strengthen the position of the hardliners in Tehran; allowing President Ahmadinejad to play the nationalist card and, using the pretext of defending the country against imperialism, to further crack down on dissent. Many Ahwazis believe the route to liberation is an internal "people power" alliance of Iranian socialists, liberals, democrats, students, trade unionists and minority nationalities.

I have supported the Iranian people's struggle for democracy and human rights for four decades - first against the western-backed imperial fascist Shah and, since 1979, against the clerical fascism of the ayatollahs. Some anti-war leftists refuse to condemn the Tehran dictatorship and refuse to support the Iranian resistance; arguing that to do so would play into the hands of the US neocons and militarists. I disagree. Opposing imperialism and defending human rights are complementary, not contradictory.

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Iran-Hamas Relations: The Growing Threat of a Radical Religious Coalition

By Meyrav Wurmser, 19th September 2007 ; The Henry Jackson Society 2007

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

- The coup launched by Hamas against the Palestinian Authority in Gaza in May 2007 more than a year after the organization won the Palestinian elections, was a monumental event, not just for the Palestinians, but for the Middle East as a whole.

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, the proud sponsor of Hizballah who launched a successful war against Israel in Lebanon during the previous summer, was once again signaling, through the actions of its Palestinian client, that it has taken on the behavior of a regional hegemon.

- Indeed, Iran’s rhetoric and actions in the past few years made clear that its leadership views itself as the leader of a bloc of Third World nations that actively oppose the West and wishes to harm its interests, in Iraq and elsewhere, in every way conceivable way.

- One central aspect of Iran’s hegemonic ambitions is its growing alliance with Hamas. This relationship dates back to December 1990, when Hamas’ leaders were invited by the Iranian government for the first known time on an official visit for a conference on the Palestinian uprising.

- The ties between the two grow much closer and more intimate, however, only after August 2005, when Iran held elections bringing Ahmadinejad to power. In January 2006 Hamas was swept into power in elections held in the Palestinian territories.
This paper analyzes the implications of the close radical religious coalition between Iran and Hamas to the West and its allies.

Hamas’ Goals and Pan-Islamic Agenda

Hamas is committed to basic principles from which it has not deviated even when it joined forces with the Palestinian Authority to form a joint short-lived, democratically elected government in 2006. The key principles of the Hamas government included:

• Adherence to its charter, which maintains that jihad is the only means by which the entire territory of Palestine – including Israel proper - should be liberated.
• Refusal to recognize Israel’s existence under any circumstances – even if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders.
• No negotiations with Israel. Hamas acknowledges the possibility for negotiations only if Israel withdraws to the 1967 border and if Palestinian refugees are offered the right of return to Israel proper and their full property is restored. The Israeli government states that such a fulfillment of the right of return is tantamount to the destruction of the state of Israel as a Jewish state.
• Utilizing all forms of “resistance” namely violence and terrorism including the use of suicide bombings against civilians as the primary means to achieve Hamas’ political objectives.
• The founding of an Islamic state ruled in accordance with Sharia (Islamic law) in which democracy is eliminated.

Hamas is not simply a Palestinian liberation movement. It is more than anything else a pan-Islamic movement that like its mother organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, views itself as part of a global Islamist movement. Hamas traces its link to the Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al Banna and his son-in-law, the Egyptian Said Ramadan, who in the 1940s had direct authority over the activities of the Brotherhood activities in Palestine. This connection continues to this day. Hamas lacks an authoritative religious leadership; it continues to depend on non-Palestinian religious personalities residing abroad to issue rulings of Islamic law. One of them is Yusuf al Qaradawi, an Egyptian residing in Qatar. Qaradawi is the purveyor of the Islamic rulings permitting Hamas to carry out suicide bombings.

Hamas’s pan-Islamic worldview extends beyond its contacts with other pan-Islamic movements. Hamas not only seeks money from the greater Muslim world for its operations, but also its covenant calls on Muslim countries surrounding Israel to “open their borders to Jihad fighters from among the Arab and Islamic people.” Although the organization has not been able to recruit foreign Islamic jihad fighters to its cause, Palestinian have played a considerable role in the global jihad. This was the case, for example, with Abdallah Azzam who taught in Saudi Arabia and was an associate of Osama bin Laden.

In this and in other ways, Hamas is not simply a local Palestinian movement, but rather aspires to become a driver of radicalized Islam, despite the fact that even at present its activities are limited to Palestine. The organization draws from both the Palestinian struggle and the rising wave of Islamic radicalism globally. For this reason, it is not a bridge too far for Hamas to accept Iranian patronage, ideological guidance, and support.

The Iran-Hamas Relationship: Looking for the Money Trail

The relationship between Iran and Hamas went through three stages. In the first stage, in the late 1980s, the relations were marginal. During this period Iran’s attention was focused on rallying Shiite support in the Gulf, encouraging and sustaining international terror and building up Hizballah—its Shiite arm in Lebanon. During this period Hamas, a Sunni organization, had little to do with Iran, which showed clear sectarian preference for its Shiite clients. Hamas was also antagonized by Iran’s support for its Palestinian radical Islamist rival, Islamic Jihad, which Hamas viewed as a chief competitor for support in the Palestinian street.

The second stage began with the invasion of Iraq in 1991. As a result of Iraq’s weakened standing following the first Gulf War, Iran started to view itself as a budding regional hegemon and a prospective leader of the Third World. Its ties to Hamas grew substantially stronger after October 1992, when a Hamas delegation led by Dr. Musa Abu Marzuk was invited to Teheran for meetings with key Iranian figures, including the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Rouhallah Khomeini. Unconfirmed reports claim that as a result of this meeting, Iran promised to provide Hamas with an annual $30 million subsidy as well as weapons and advanced military training at revolutionary guard facilities in Iran, Lebanon, and Sudan. Indicative of the deepening relationship, Hamas opened an office in Teheran in 1993 and announced that Iran and Hamas share an “identical view in the strategic outlook toward the Palestinian cause in its Islamic dimension.” The new era of a warmer Hamas-Iran relationship followed a change in Iranian self-perception from what Hillel Frisch called, “a religious Bolshevik revolution” into a “Stalinization of Iranian politics.” In the Stalinization period, Iran started to view itself as a radicalized state power and began its search for like-minded clients in the region. Yet even in this period, Iran stilled viewed Hamas as a relatively minor regional player since it enjoyed only 14-18 percent support within the Palestinian population. Moreover, Hamas looked weak to Iran after its expulsion from Jordan in 1999 and following its division into two branches in the West Bank and Damascus. Because of these limitations on Hamas’ power during this period (1992-2000), Iran chose to invest in Hezballah, which was strengthening its position in Lebanon. Iran continued to support Hamas during this period, but only to a degree.

The third stage of the Iranian-Hamas relationship transformed the loose financial and military arrangements into a full-blown alliance. This stage followed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Palestinian violence since 2000, Arafat’s death in 2004, and Hamas’ electoral victory in January 2006. These events, and particularly Hamas’ rise to power, demonstrated to Iran that Hamas could become a more useful partner in helping Teheran realize its quest for regional hegemony. The new Hamas government which soon after coming to power found itself almost completely isolated internationally, gravitated toward Iran because both regimes shared an ideological Islamist Weltanschauung and because Tehran offered a lifeline to the Hamas’ leadership which was otherwise cut-off from other means of support. In December 2006, Palestinian Prime Minster Ismail Haniyeh stated publicly that “Iran constituted ‘stategic depth’ for the Palestinians,” the first time any declaration of support for Iran had been made openly by Hamas’ leadership. Hamas’s ties to Iran during this period have become so close that the intelligence chief of the rival PA government speculated that Iran masterminded and commended the Hamas’s coup against the Palestinian Authority in June 2007 and its violent takeover of Gaza. According to some analysts, Iran purposely fostered the relationship in order that the “final word” on matters regarding Israel would be Teheran’s, akin already to its relationship with Hezballah vis-à-vis Lebanon.

Following the Money Trail: Iranian Financial Support to Hamas

The central way in which Iran exercises its influence over Hamas is through the transfer of funds to its leadership. Iran is Hamas’s main backer, but is not its only source of support. Other, less generous, financial backers include the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. Hamas also collects funds in the form of contribution or levies from its supporters. It purportedly imposes a religious tax (zakat) of 2.5 percent on the wages of its members in the territories, sometimes threatening violence upon failure to comply.

Teheran, however, remain Hamas’s central source of revenue. As mentioned previously, since 1993 Hamas has received an annual subsidy of approximately $30 million in addition to military training from Iran. Reports indicate that since then Iranian funding to the organization has increased significantly. In January 1995, in a testimony before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, the outgoing Director of the Central Intellligence Committee, James Woolsey, said that Iran provided more than $100 million to Hamas without giving a time period over which those funds have been provided. The relationship became gradually stronger over the next decade and in February 2006 Farhat Assad, Hamas’s spokesman in the West Bank, announced that Iran told Hamas’s leader, Khaled Mashaal that Iran “was prepared to cover the entire deficit in the Palestinian budget, and [to do so] continuously”

Iranian financial support to Hamas substantially increased after the organization’s elections victory in August 2005. Immediately following the elections the group’s Syria-based leader, Khaled Mashaal, visited Iran and re-affirmed the ideological affinity between Hamas and its Persian mentor and their joint agenda of advancing radical Islam. “Just as Islamic Iran defends the rights of the Palestinians,” he said, “we defend the rights of Islamic Iran. We are part of a united front against the enemies of Islam.” The financial expression of the close relationship soon followed. In the same month Iran pledged aid to the new Hamas-led Palestinian government and by November claimed that it has already given $120 million. During a visit by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to Tehran in December 2006, Iran decided to boost its ties to Hamas and pledged $250 million in aid as compensation for the Western boycott. Unlike previous grants this transfer of money was to continue on a regular basis to cover various PA expanses. The Iranian funding was designated in part to pay wages for civil servants and members of the security forces affiliated with Hamas, as well as to construct camps for the security forces and to compensate Palestinian families that lost their homes as a result of Israeli military operations. Saudi Arabia also promised assistance to the Palestinian Authority but demanded that Hamas accept the Arab peace initiative and, increasingly, that it severs itself from the Iranian influence – a relationship that elicits great concern among Arab countries.

Iran’s support of Hamas at this period was not limited only to financial aid for domestic purposes. Hamas’ interior minister Said Sayyam visited Iran and Syrian in October 2006 where he received generous pledges of financial and military aid to improve the operational level of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz a-Din al-Kassam brigade. The commander of Hamas’ security force, Jamal Isma’il Daud Abdallah, also known as Abu Ubaida Al-Jarrah, has stated that Iran would train Palestinian operatives in its police training camps.

Following Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza in June 2007, when Hamas had lost nearly all of its sources of support, Iranian funds continued to infiltrate into Gaza despite international attempts to isolate the regime. Hamas and Iran simply found new and unique ways to transfer the money. A glimpse into the new methods employed by Hamas and Iran presently was provided by Hamas hard-liner, Mahmoud Zahar, who was quoted in June as telling a German news magazine that he had personally carried $42 million in cash from Iran across the Gaza-Egypt border.

Iran’s Clients and Strategy in the Levant

The strengthening of the alliance with Hamas is a key part of a larger Iranian strategy in the Levant. Since entering the Stalinist phase of its revolution, Iran employed a strategy of acquiring powerful regional clients through which it could carry its strategic and political goal of seeding Islamic revolution in Sunni Arab countries. This strategy is intended to engender the necessary conditions for the emergence of a modern super power caliphate to spearhead a holy jihad against the West, most notably the U.S. and Israel. Iran seeks clients with whom it shares an ideological outlook. Hamas fits this description since it does not seek an Islamic Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza only, but rather seeks to create an Islamic state to replace Israel and take over territories more broadly in much of the Levant. Likewise, Iran’s client Hezballah, operating in Lebanon, is not driven by local considerations alone but chiefly by the strategic ambitions of its primary state sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran’s regional clients, most notably Hezballah and Hamas, allow Iran to foment conflict in the region through proxy means. The prime example for this strategy has been the Israel-Hezballah war waged in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Hamas’ kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and its rockets assaults against southern Israel in June 2006 triggered in part Hizballah’s kidnapping of two IDF soldiers in northern Israel followed by rocket attacks from southern Lebanon in July which brought about the second Lebanon war. In many ways this war, in which the IDF’s performance was lackluster across the board, can be described as the First Israeli-Iranian war.

Iran has also been able to use its clients to destabilize regional governments. Even after the Cedar revolution in March 2005 that forced Syrian forces out of Lebanon, Lebanon still had to address the destabilizing effects of the Hezballah’s military presence in south. The second Israeli-Lebanese war weakened the Lebanese government and threatened the democratic rule in the country. Likewise, Hamas’ electoral victory in the Palestinian territories so destabilized Palestinian politics that it eventually led to a Hamas coup against the PA and its hostile takeover of Gaza in June 2007.

In both of these cases, Iran used its clients to carry out a strategy of destabilizing the Levant. Lebanon is still threatened by Hezballah as is Israel’s northern border. Despite the heavy losses that the organization suffered during the war, reports indicate that it is rebuilding and rearming rapidly and will soon be able to pose an even greater threat to Israel than previously thought. Hamas, through its growing base in Gaza, not only continues to threaten the PA in the West Bank, but also now threatens to destabilize Egypt, which has a significant population sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, Jordan, where there is a large Palestinian population as well as sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood, and Israel, which now finds itself outflanked and wedged between Hezballah in the north and Hamas in the south.

More recently Iran has also employed a Sunni proxy group – Fatah al Islam – in Lebanon to further its strategy of weakening the Lebanese government. Fatah al Islam is a pro-Syrian Palestinian Islamist group that, according to Lebanese and Israeli officials, is supported and directed by Syria and Iran and has ties to al Qaeda. On May 20, 2007 violence broke out between Fatah al Islam and the Lebanese government after investigations into a bank robbery ended in a standoff between the Lebanese Armed Forces and Fatah al Islam in a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli. Iran timed its attack to coincide with the Lebanese government's petition to the U.N. Security Council to establish an international tribunal to prosecute the suspected killers of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, assassinated on February 14, 2005. But the Fatah al Islam attack failed to intimidate the government of Lebanon into withdrawing its request and allowing Syria, Iran’s closest strategic ally, to evade international scrutiny. Despite the bloodshed, the Security Council voted on May 30, 2007 to establish a tribunal. Iran employs it clients as a part of a greater effort to seek regional domination both in Arab Shiites and Arab Sunni communities that it hopes to penetrate and incite. Various Sunni Arab regimes fear Iran’s growing influence among the various Shiite communities of the Middle East and that a radical Shiite crescent could emerge and topple moderate Arab states. King Abdallah II of Jordan first sounded the alarm in December 2004 when he spoke about a rising Shiite crescent that would overwhelm the Sunni Arab world. This crescent would encompass Iran, the newly empowered Shiite majority in Iraq, Syria whose ruling Alawite minority elite are recognized as Shiite by some Shiite clerics and finally Lebanon whose Shiite population is growing and where Hezballah’s influence is becoming more pervasive. Echoing Abdallah’s concerns, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stated in April 2006 that “the Shiites are always loyal to Iran and not to the countries in which they live.”

Iran’s outreach into Shiite community is only part of the threat that the Arab world perceives and that the West should be concerned about presently. Iran has revealed its readiness to work in conjunction with Sunni Islamists in order to further its ambitions. Iran has not limited itself to Sunni Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but has reached out to Sudan’s Sunni radical leader Hasan Turabi through its Lebanese proxy in the 1990s.

Further evidence of Iran’s willingness to cooperate with Sunni radicals when it furthers its purposes can be found in the 9-11 commission report which talks about Iran’s cooperation with al Qaeda: “Iran facillated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and… some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.” The report adds that “al Qaeda members received advice and training from Hezballah.” After U.S. forces temporary defeated the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, many in al Qaeda network obtained refuge and assistance in Iran.

Iran’s connection to radical Sunnis led it to instruct its Sunni proxy Hamas to cooperate with the Sunni al Qaeda and bring it into the West Bank. Although Hamas and al Qaeda differ in certain respects, most notably their approach to democratic participation (Hamas embraced using the democratic process to obtain political power and bolster its Islamist agenda while al Qaeda rejects any such participation) the two started cooperating in August 2005 in order to advance both organizations’ global agenda of defeating the West. Al Qaeda has been present in the Palestinian authority since at least August 2000, when Israel’s security services uncovered a terror network linked to al Qaeda and headed by Nabil Okal, a Hamas operative from Gaza who received military training in Osama bin Laden’s camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. After October 2005, the relationship between the two organizations became official and public when the Palestinian news agency Ma’an published a declaration in which al Qaeda revealed the establishment of a Gaza branch. The declaration states al Qaeda’s main goals as implementing Sharia (Islamic law), setting up a Sharia state, reviving the idea of the Caliphate in the hearts of Muslims, and working to create a world-wide Islamic caliphate.

Some of the major events in the recent history of Hamas/al Qaeda cooperation include: Hamas’ foreign minister Mahmoud al Zahar meeting in Pakistan in June 2006 with Jamaat-e-Islami leader Qazi Hussein Ahmed, who had close contacts with bin Laden during the 1990s. The jihadi wing of Jamaat-e-Islami and al Qaeda have collaborated as well as have maintained financial links. Also two days after Israel publicized the arrest of two al Qaeda operatives in Nablus, PA chairman Abbas told Al Hayat (London) in March 2006 that he received intelligence information pointing to the presence of al Qaeda operatives in the West Bank and Gaza. These operatives, Azzam Abu al Ads and Bilal Hafnawy, were indicted for enlisting recruits to carry out terror attacks for al Qaeda and planning a two-pronged terror attack with a suicide bomber and a car bomb in Jerusalem. Members of the gang who were recruited by al Qaeda’s infrastructure in Irbid, Jordan, were arrested by Israeli security forces in December 2005.

Thus it is faulty reasoning to maintain that international terrorist organizations will not cooperate with organizations whose religions and ideological backgrounds are at variance with their own. The case of Jordanian born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi underscores this point. Even as the head of al Qaeda in Iraq and slaughterer of hundreds of Iraqi Shiites, he was also a recipient of Iranian assistance after 2001.

More importantly, Iran’s cooperation with Sunni clients points to the fact that it is less interested in spreading radical Shiism per-se and more in fomenting a global, green, radical Islamist revolution. The threat in the Middle East today is not, as King Hussein asserted, the emergence of a Shiite crescent, but the rise of a radical Islamist force spearheaded by Iran that unites radical Sunnis and radical Shiites and creates a new paradigm of conflict with the West.

Conclusions

The new situation in the Middle East in which the radical Muslim world, Shiite and Sunni alike, unites under Iranian leadership to confront the West represents an enormous challenge for the Western world. During the last century the U.S. defined its foreign policy around deterring a hegemonic power and ideology from dominating the continent of Europe. The U.S. fought World War I and II and the Cold War in accordance with this premise. Today, Europe has been largely stabilized and the principal global threat stems from the present day Middle East. Iran in many ways is now replacing the former Soviet Union. Not only does it seek nuclear weapons, but it carries a radical ideology which is wishes to export. In so doing, it seeks to become the center of a new radical Islamic empire that wishes to confront the West, destroy its ideals, and eventually replace it as the world hegemon.

In this new Middle East, in which the rise of a new Islamic force threatens the West and its allies, it is really futile to speak of a peace-process or a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The key conflict in the Middle East today is no longer simply the Palestinian issue and its solution will not come from another attempted agreement. The Israeli-Palestinian dimension of Middle Eastern politics has been eclipsed by the growing struggle between Islamism versus the West. It is this conflict that will shape the future not only of the Middle East, but also of the Western alliance.

More specifically, the Iran-Hamas axis will eventually bring about more violence both to Israel and to other Western allies in the region. The writing of a Middle East plagued by instability and violence, and the threat it poses to the West, are already on the wall.

Dr. Meyrav Wurmser is the Director of the Center for Middle East Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Washington D.C.

@ The Henry Jackson Society 2007

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Middle East Volcano

By Charles Krauthammer
September 21, 2007; http://www.washingtonpost.com/

On Sept. 6, something important happened in northern Syria. Problem is, no one knows exactly what. Except for those few who were involved, and they're not saying.

We do know that Israel carried out an air strike. How do we know it was important? Because in Israel, where leaking is an art form, even the best-informed don't have a clue. They tell me they have never seen a better-kept secret.

Which suggests that whatever happened near Dayr az Zawr was no accidental intrusion into Syrian airspace, no dry run for an attack on Iran, no strike on some conventional target such as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base or a weapons shipment on its way to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Circumstantial evidence points to this being an attack on some nuclear facility provided by North Korea.

Three days earlier, a freighter flying the North Korean flag docked in the Syrian port city of Tartus with a shipment of "cement." Long way to go for cement. Within days, a top State Department official warned that "there may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment." Three days later, the six-party meeting on dismantling North Korea's nuclear facilities scheduled for Sept. 19 was suddenly postponed, officially by China, almost certainly at the behest of North Korea.
Apart from the usual suspects -- Syria, Iran, Libya and Russia -- only two countries registered strong protests to the Israeli strike: Turkey and North Korea. Turkey we can understand. Its military may have permitted Israel an overflight corridor without ever having told the Islamist civilian government. But North Korea? What business is this of North Korea's? Unless it was a North Korean facility being hit.

Which raises alarms for many reasons. First, it would undermine the whole North Korean disarmament process. Pyongyang might be selling its stuff to other rogue states or perhaps just temporarily hiding it abroad while permitting ostentatious inspections back home.
Second, there are ominous implications for the Middle East. Syria has long had chemical weapons -- on Monday, Jane's Defence Weekly reported on an accident that killed dozens of Syrians and Iranians loading a nerve-gas warhead onto a Syrian missile -- but Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Syria.

Tensions are already extremely high because of Iran's headlong rush to go nuclear. In fending off sanctions and possible military action, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen a radically aggressive campaign to assemble, deploy, flaunt and partially activate Iran's proxies in the Arab Middle East:

(1) Hamas launching rockets into Israeli towns and villages across the border from the Gaza Strip. Its intention is to invite an Israeli reaction, preferably a bloody and telegenic ground assault.

(2) Hezbollah heavily rearmed with Iranian rockets transshipped through Syria and preparing for the next round of fighting with Israel. The third Lebanon war, now inevitable, awaits only Tehran's order.

(3) Syria, Iran's only Arab client state, building up forces across the Golan Heights frontier with Israel. And on Wednesday, yet another anti-Syrian member of Lebanon's parliament was killed in a massive car bombing.

(4) The al-Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard training and equipping Shiite extremist militias in the use of the deadliest IEDs and rocketry against American and Iraqi troops. Iran is similarly helping the Taliban attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Why is Iran doing this? Because it has its eye on a single prize: the bomb. It needs a bit more time, knowing that once it goes nuclear, it becomes the regional superpower and Persian Gulf hegemon.

Iran's assets in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are poised and ready. Ahmadinejad's message is this: If anyone dares attack our nuclear facilities, we will fully activate our proxies, unleashing unrestrained destruction on Israel, moderate Arabs, Iraq and U.S. interests -- in addition to the usual, such as mining the Strait of Hormuz and causing an acute oil crisis and worldwide recession.

This is an extremely high-stakes game. The time window is narrow. In probably less than two years, Ahmadinejad will have the bomb.

The world is not quite ready to acquiesce. The new president of France has declared a nuclear Iran " unacceptable." The French foreign minister warned that "it is necessary to prepare for the worst" -- and "the worst, it's war, sir."

Which makes it all the more urgent that powerful sanctions be slapped on the Iranian regime. Sanctions will not stop Ahmadinejad. But there are others in the Iranian elite who might stop him and the nuclear program before the volcano explodes. These rival elites may be radical, but they are not suicidal. And they believe, with reason, that whatever damage Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic folly may inflict upon the region and the world, on Crusader and Jew, on infidel and believer, the one certain result of such an eruption is Iran's Islamic republic buried under the ash.

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Iranian Regime Increasingly Repressive and Corrupt

Washington, D.C.September 26, 2007 ; http://www.freedomhouse.org

Iran’s poor governance has worsened further in the past two years under President Ahmadinejad’s administration, according to a new report released today by Freedom House.

Countries at the Crossroads, an annual survey of government performance in 30 strategically important countries worldwide, showed a decline in the democratic character of its governance in Iran since 2005. The report found that political interference in the judicial system has intensified, cronyism has become more pervasive, and violations of civil liberties have increased.

“While the world has been outraged by the recent brutal treatment of Iranian Americans visiting family in Iran, the Iranian government’s actions have also shown an increased disregard for ordinary citizens living in the country,” said Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House. “The regime increasingly tramples individual rights and puts the state at the service of an elite, that is dominated by senior clerics and Revolutionary Guard.”
Corruption is rife in Iran, and the State Audit Court has revealed numerous cases of embezzlement from state agencies. Last year, for example, $6 billion in oil revenues was never deposited in the national treasury.

Despite Ahmadinejad’s promise to eliminate cronyism, he was openly accused of giving numerous government positions to friends and relatives. Members of the Revolutionary Guard are gaining preferential access to state assets, apparently through their connections to Ahmadinejad’s administration. This includes multi-billion dollar contracts won without competitive bidding.
Meanwhile, the government has tightened restrictions on free expression and assembly, as evident in recent crackdowns on student and labor union leaders and on activists campaigning for women’s rights. It also continues to shut down reformist newspapers and to threaten or imprison journalists who criticize the regime.

“Increased repression is taking place against the backdrop of Ahmadinejad’s failure to deliver on his promises to curb corruption and to improve the living standards of ordinary Iranians,” said Daniel Calingaert, deputy director of programs at Freedom House. “As we can see on the internet, where there still is some room for free expression, Iranians are extremely frustrated with the regime.”

The Freedom House survey, Countries at the Crossroads, provides a comparative evaluation of government performance in four touchstone areas of democratic governance: Accountability and Public Voice, Civil Liberties, Rule of Law, and Anticorruption and Transparency. This survey examines these areas of performance in a set of 30 countries that are at a critical crossroads in determining their political future.

Freedom House, an independent nongovernmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom around the world, has been monitoring political rights and civil liberties in Iran since 1972.

Stephen Fairbanks, author of the Iran chapter of Countries at the Crossroads, is a specialist on Iranian affairs who previously served as the political analyst on Iran for the U.S. Department of State and as director of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Persian Services. He earned a Ph.D. in Iranian studies at the University of Michigan.

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Hands off the people of Iran

21 September 2007

Neither Washington nor Tehran. A war against Iran would be another disastrous neo-imperial adventure, which would strengthen the Tehran dictatorship. The overthrow of the clerical regime by the Iranian people - not US military intervention - is the best way to resolve the nuclear crisis and prevent a needless, unjustified war.

Peter Tatchell interviews Mark Fischer of Hands Off the People of Iran and Yassamine Mather of Workers Left Unity Iran.

Watch here:

http://doughty.gdbtv.com/player.php?h=28f97edb1620dd21d5c707d55cdd0f21

Peter Tatchell writes:

The Iranian regime is a neo-fascist state. It is notorious for unfair trials, detention without charge, torture, executions, media censorship, gender apartheid, bans on non-Islamist political parties, the violent suppression of peaceful protests and strikes, and the persecution of left-wingers, trade unionists, students, feminists, gay people and religious and ethnic minorities.

The case for regime change is overwhelming, but it must come from within – by and for the Iranian people themselves - not as a result of US neo-imperial diktat. Many Iranians are hoping for a non-violent Czech-style ‘people power’ democratic revolution, involving mass protests by socialists, liberals, secularists, democrats, women, students, trade unionists, religious dissenters and minority nationalities.

A democratic, progressive Iran would pose no threat to anyone. President Bush would therefore find it much harder to persuade the American public and military to go to war. He would lose the main argument he uses to incite public opinion in favour of military action – namely, that Iran is a dangerous, terroristic, fundamentalist, anti-Semitic dictatorship, which is striving to develop nuclear weapons and which poses a serious threat to international peace and security.

If Iran was no longer a fanatical religious tyranny, the case for war would evaporate. Bush would lose the battle for hearts and minds. Public opinion would desert him. US politicians and grassroots opponents of war would be empowered and strengthened.

In contrast, US military intervention would strengthen the position of the hardliners in Tehran; allowing President Ahmadinejad to play the nationalist card and portray himself as a heroic war leader. It would also give him an excuse to further crack down on dissent, using the pretext of safeguarding national security and defending the country against US imperialism. This would setback the struggle for democracy and human rights.

Moreover, a US attack on Muslim Iran would increase the sense of grievance felt by Muslims worldwide; radicalising Muslim youth, fanning the flames of fundamentalism, increasing support for Islamist parties and resulting in thousands of new recruits to the ranks of Jihadis and suicide bombers.

Tragically, the leadership of the UK and US anti-war movements are sleeping walking into making the same mistakes over Iran as they made over Iraq. They are silent about the regime’s despotism and oppression. Mirroring Bush and Brown’s indifference to human rights in Iran, they refuse to show solidarity with the Iranian peoples’ struggle for secularism, democracy, social justice, human rights and self-determination for national minorities like the Baluch, Ahwazi Arabs and Kurds.

The new campaign group, Hands Off the People of Iran, argues that both US war and Iranian tyranny should be opposed in equal measure. Neither Washington nor Tehran!

To view the programme, click on this link:

http://doughty.gdbtv.com/player.php?h=28f97edb1620dd21d5c707d55cdd0f21

Note:

Talking With Tatchell is broadcast every Friday night at 8.30pm on the internet TV channel, www.18doughtystreet.com

Previous programmes are permanently archived. Type “Tatchell” into the Search facility to access all past editions of Talking With Tatchell.

Ends

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BALOCHISTAN & ICJ - Articulating the case and educating the West  

The Security Council by a vote of 9 to none, with 2 abstentions, adopted the draft resolution recommended for adoption by the Committee of Experts and setting forth theconditions in question for Liechtenstein  Source: The question whether an applicant was a "state" withinthemeaning of Article 93 (2) 

(The author is an analyst with many years of experience of study on the developments in South Asia and also blogs at intellibriefs.com covering Geopolitics, Security & Intelligence. The views expressed by the author are his own.  He can be reached at intellibriefs@gmail.com)