[Bangla Daily Star] Taliban Death Eaters in Afghanistan are bribing starving children as young as eight years old to plant deadly roadside booby traps, be decoys in ambushes and even act as jacket wallahs.
Despite the Islamic fundamentalists' claim they have no children in their ranks, faceless myrmidons have been actively recruiting orphaned and homeless young boys and training them to use guns, IEDs and boom jackets.
In return, they ply the desperate youngsters with sweets and chocolate, an investigation for Channel 4′s Dispatches programme has learned.
Afghan orphan Neaz told how he was just eight when he was promised a handful of coins by Taliban fighters to convert him to their cause.
The boy had been tending his father's flock of sheep when coalition forces bombed his village.
"The Taliban were hiding in our house when a helicopter came and bombed us," he said.
"My father was hit in his heart and his head, he was torn apart. My mother was hit in the chest and died. I have no one," he added.
Taliban bribe orphans to plant bombsIn the immediate aftermath of the raid, Neaz was kidnapped by Taliban leaders and taken to a nearby town and shown how to use guns and make IEDs.
They plied him with sweets and he was initially delighted when they said they planned to bring him an extra-special gift -- a boom jacket packed with bullets and grenades.
"They made me try it on. The grenades went all around my body and then they offered me the coins [50 Afghanis -- about 60p]," he said.
"They told me to blow myself up at a checkpoint. I asked what I'd do with the money if I had to blow myself up. But they kept encouraging me, telling me that if I did it I would go to heaven."
He finally escaped and walked nine miles to turn himself in at a cop shoppe. Now aged ten, Neaz lives in an orphanage in Lashkar Gah.
Film-maker Najibullah Quraishi said: "Thousands of children are being recruited and taught to make bombs or become suicide bombers. It is common for 13-year-olds to carry guns."
Najibullah was given unprecedented access to a £500,000 British-built prison in Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... , where the cells each hold 20 boys.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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Unexploded ordnance left behind by Nato troops as they leave Afghanistan is killing and injuring a rising number of civilians, a UN demining group said Sunday. Mohammad Sediq Rashid, director of the Mine Action Coordination Centre, told AFP that the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) must fully clean up military bases and firing ranges being vacated ahead of a final withdrawal due next year.
A total of 53 Afghan civilians, mostly children, have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance found in or around ISAF bases and firing ranges since 2008, he said.
The 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, signed by most ISAF contributing nations, requires militaries to remove all unexploded ordnance from areas they vacate.
All ordnance, including those left by Soviet troops and Mujahideen, caused 363 civilian casualties in 2012 compared to more than 240 between January and June 2013: a rise from an average of 30 a month to 40 a month so far this year, Rashid said.
"We believe if this problem is not sorted out, the casualty rate is very highly likely to increase because there are many people looking for unexploded ordnance to be sold as scrap metal," he told AFP.
"I think the main reason (for this increase) is these firing ranges," he said. "The evidence suggests there is a problem, this job is not being done properly," he added. He said weaponry left behind included unexploded mortars and grenades.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Why that's terrible. My heart goes out to all those...those...yeah.
#2
"We believe if this problem is not sorted out, the casualty rate is very highly likely to increase because there are many people looking for unexploded ordnance to be sold as scrap metal," he told AFP.
The problem will peak, and then begin a gradual decline in roughly 10 to 15 years. Have you considered the use of shorter, much lighter children trained to use grappling hooks on 15 meter ropes may help reduce the risk.
#3
Yes. NAto ordnance. Talibans and Soviet orcnace was sagfe and ever exploded. Also neither Soviets nor Taliban would have ver even thinked of using mines.
MOGADISHU -- The UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritreas new annual report to the UN Security Council portrays a harrowing picture of security institutions in Mogadishu, where senior government officials are allegedly working in cohorts with Al Shabaab militants, further destabilizing Mogadishus fragile security, Garowe Online reports.
Bet you're surprised by that...
The UN investigators found that the Somali government officials in Mogadishu use Al Shabaab agents, adding that the Monitoring Group has received information relating to the infiltration of Al-Shabaab networks into the National Intelligence and Security Agency of Somalia, according to the UN report, issued to the UN Security Council in New York earlier this month.
Continuing, the UN reports raises particular concern regarding the role of former director of NISA, Mr. Ahmed Moalim Fiqi nominated by former TFG President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and the report says that Mr. Fiqi who resigned in March 2013 as director of NISA enjoys a close relationship with Al Shabaab.
Senior TFG officials have voiced concerns that Fiqi used Al-Shabaab agents to target political opponents within the government. One senior security official that worked with Fiqi informed the Monitoring Group that several Al-Shabaab suspects he arrested claimed to be working as agents for Fiqi, the UN report states.
Al Shabaabs infiltration in Mogadishu was partly aided by former TFG President Sharif Sheikh Ahmeds unexplained decision to release more than 200 Al Shabaab prisoners in Mogadishu, in August 2012. By September 12, 2012, two of the suicide bombers involved in the attack on the Jazira Hotel in Mogadishu on 12 September 2012, when President Hassan Sheikh was addressing his first press conference as President, were former prisoners who had been released in August, the report notes.
Moreover, the report condemns the role of a certain Mr. Artan Abdi Ibrahim (Artan Bidar), a known security consultant in Mogadishu who has provided private security protection for Government officials but who has been also identified by senior security officials as an agent for Al-Shabaab, the report says.
The report accuses Mr. Artan Bidar of engaging in contract killings and that he is under investigation since 2012 by security services for the alleged assassination of at least several individuals in Mogadishu. Continuing, the report notes, In addition to independently providing assassins for contract killings, Artan Bidar coordinates with Al-Shabaab hit squads through family connections with Ali Dheere, the spokesman for Al Shabaab militants, with whom Artan Bidar shares clan affiliation.
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07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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[Al Ahram] Egypt's Salafist El-Nour Party has criticised the Muslim Brotherhood's calls for deposed president Mohamed Morsi's reinstatement, saying it would be "impossible" for him to rule amid the fierce opposition he faces.
"If Morsi is back, how will he lead the country with the sharp opposition he faces from the military, the police, the intelligence, the judiciary and a broad sector of the people?" the party said in a statement released late Friday.
The party criticised the continuous protests against the new interim government, saying they carry a high potential of breaking into violence.
The Egyptian army deposed Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, 3 July amid mass nationwide protests against him and Brotherhood rule. The next day, head of High Constitutional Court Adly Mansour was sworn in as interim president.
Morsi supporters, led by the Brotherhood, have been staging marches and sit-ins across Cairo and other governorates against what they say was a "military coup" against the country's first democratically-elected head of state. Violence has erupted several times between the former president's supporters and those against him or security forces, leaving scores dead and hundreds injured.
El-Nour Party, who chose a neutral stance in the lead-up of the 30 June protests that ousted Morsi, detailed in its latest statement its view on the current political strife.
It said that it chose to politically "participate" with the country's new leadership, rather than oppose it, because otherwise Islamist forces would "disappear" from the scene.
It asserted that it should not withdraw in order to keep its views and interests, which are part of the Islamist current, present in the political arena.
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07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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[Iran Press TV] Paleostinians in the Israeli-blockaded Gazoo Strip are in need of basic supplies as neighboring Egypt's military destroys most cross-border tunnels, Press TV reports.
Since the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian military has reportedly destroyed about 90 percent of the tunnels connecting Egypt and Gazoo, hindering the Gazooks from bringing in most of their basic goods like construction materials, food, and fuel.
In this regard, Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,front manSami Abu Zuhri ...a senior spokesman for Hamas. Zuhri gained notoriety in 2006 when he dropped his money belt containing somewhere between 640,000 and 900,000 euros, which was confiscated by Paleostinian security and customs officials at a routine border crossing from Egypt to Gaza. The news brought competing Hamas and Fatah forces to the crossing checkpoint for an epic face-making and hollering contest... told Press TV that the Paleostinian resistance movement has tried to negotiate an alternative for the tunnels with the Egyptian officials, but to no avail.
"Egyptians authorities decided to shut down all the tunnels, now there are few working. We have been negotiating an alternative with the Egyptian side. We asked them to allow the goods to enter through the Rafah crossing." Abu Zuhri said, adding, "The tunnels are a main source of life to Gazooks.
Mohsen Abu Ramadan, a political analyst, also stated that Egypt's decision signals "an upcoming catastrophe" if the two sides fail to find an alternative.
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07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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Egypt's Central Bank (CBE) received a Saudi deposit worth $2 billion on Sunday, Al-Ahram's Arabic website reported.
It'll be gone by next Tuesday...
The five-year, interest-free deposit is part of $12 billion in aid that has been pledged by the oil-rich Gulf states of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
CBE received $3 billion in aid from the UAE on Thursday, pledged after the military ousted president Mohamed Morsi in early July.
Due to the influx of Gulf money, CBE governor announced on Thursday that foreign reserves had exceeded $20 billion, compared to $14.9 billion in June.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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The Telecommunications Authority (TRA) said on Sunday that it had successfully thwarted Egypt-originated attempts by cyber-hackers to damage some government websites on Friday. The TRA said its Computer Emergency Response Team (aeCERT) succeeded in neutralising the danger and repairing the limited damage caused by the attack.
Mohammed Nasser Al Ghanim, Director-General of TRA, said the authority had from the beginning, worked on protecting the targeted sites and at the same time, worked hard on tracing the source of danger. TRA contacted the relevant Egyptian authorities in order to coordinate the efforts of the two countries on this matter.
We agreed to provide the Egyptian authorities with a list of IP addresses from which the cyber-infiltration attempts originated, Al Ghanim added, expressing hopes that measures will be taken to stop further attempts and to identify the perpetrators.
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07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] A leader of Bangladesh Chhatra League ... the student wing of the Bangla Awami League ... , who openly brandished firearms during a clash at Rajshahi University (RU) on October 2 last year, has been made general secretary of the university's BCL unit.
There were also allegations of murder and robbery against SM Towhid Al Hossain Tuhin, former organising secretary of RU unit of BCL, party and police sources said.
The decision to appoint Tuhin as its general secretary and Mizanur Rahman Rana as the president of BCL RU unit was taken at the party's council meeting in RU campus on Saturday.
Awami League leader Mohammad Nasim and former mayor of Rajshahi Khairuzzaman Liton, however, said no one from BCL with a background of gun-toting, snatching and murder allegations would become a leader of its RU unit.
Nasim and Liton were addressing the council meeting before it picked Tuhin as the general secretary of BCL, the student wing of Awami League.
On October 2, Tuhin, then a third-year student of finance and banking department, was caught on camera by photojournalists while he was shooting from his gun during the clash between BCL and Shibir men.
The Daily Star published a photo in its October 3 issue showing how Tuhin was holding an iron rod and also aiming a pistol at his rivals.
It also ran two reports on Tuhin titled "Gun-toting BCL man sues others" on October 4 and "Gun-toting BCL men roam free at RU" on October 5 last year.
Tuhin was also accused of killing Abdullah Al Hasan Sohel, joint convener of BCL's Sher-e-Bangla Hall unit, during a factional clash at RU campus on July 15, 2012.
Boalia police filed a charge-sheet against Tuhin and two other youths in connection with their alleged involvement in a robbery on April 19, 2012.
According to the charge-sheet, Tuhin committed a robbery at a house at Padma residential area in the city.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] Jamaat leader Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed had made an audacious comment in 2007 that there were no war criminals in Bangladesh and last week the Al-Badr leader was convicted and condemned for crimes against humanity he committed during the Liberation War.
Chowdhury Mueen Uddin, who was allegedly a little down in the pecking order from Mojaheed at Al-Badr in 1971, has now made a similarly audacious comment.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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For a map, click here. For a map of Chihuahua state
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
The new commander of the Mexican 42nd Military Zone said last week that the Mexican Army will permanently be deployed to the sierras to fight drug trafficking and cultivation, according to Mexican news accounts.
According to a news account which appeared last week in Norte Digital news website, General de Brigada Ricardo Diaz Palacio attended a drug incinerating ceremony in Cuauhtemoc municipality, attended also by Chihuahua state governor Cesar Duarte Jaquez.
According to reports, General Diaz Palacio took over command of the Mexican 42nd Military Zone July 1st, which is a normal date for command shuffling in the Mexican Army, after having been commander of the 29th Military Zone in Minatitlan, Veracruz beginning in 2011, just before he received his second star. He had been intelligence chief in the Matamoros army garrison in Tamaulipas before being assigned to the 29th Military Zone As a Brigadier General he was also chief of operations for the Mexican Army general staff in 2008.
General Diaz Palacio takes over command of the 42nd Military from General General Miguel Andrade Cisneros, who was appointed as commander last December.
The July 1st date in this context means that new appointments to military regions and zones are the first appointments under the new Secretaria de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA), so actions taken by the army after this date will could set the tone for the army for the rest of the term of newly inaugurated president Enrique Pena.
General Diaz Palacio's remarks about a permanent army deployment mirror remarks made by other army commanders, including the statement that the Mexican Army "works alone" and in coordination with state and local security forces. The remarks about permanent army deployments seem to reverse a campaign promise made by President Pena about the military being sent to the barracks as a measure to reduce violence.
Indeed in remarks he made while he was in Mexico City on SEDENA's general staff in 2008, he discounted the charge long made by the Mexican left that the presence of the army in a region increases violence in the region
Violence in southern Chihuahua state, part of Mexico's Triangulo Dorada or Golden Triangle has seen a sharp increase since the end of spring. One of the worst problems in Guadalupe y Calvo municipality has been that of criminal groups forming road blocks, especially between Guadalupe y Calvo municipal seat and Parral de Hidalgo. At least two ambushes involving armed criminals against civilians have taken place in just the last 45 days along that stretch of road.
According to a news account which appeared last week in El Diario de Juarez, at least four roadblocks have been reported by armed groups on the road between the two municipalities, specifically near Mesa de San Rafael, despite an increase in the numbers of federal security forces in the region. Criminal groups at those blocks are allowing only the elderly, women and children through, which indicates those groups may be using the roadblock for recruiting purposes for men.
The fear of roadblocks in the area is so acute, according to a separate news account which appeared in El Diario de Juarez, an air service had been established between the two points for passengers only. Also bus drivers are refusing to take on any male passengers because of recruiting efforts in the region.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com
Federal prosecutors in the US have charged the fugitive militant leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar over the Algerian gas plant attack in January that killed more than 30 people, including Americans and Britons.
Oh boy. Lawfare. Eric Holder's gonna git our man, is he?
The charges, which are being filed in New York, include conspiring to support al-Qaida, using a weapon of mass destruction, discharging a firearm and using and carrying an explosive. Additional charges of conspiring to take hostages and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence carry a maximum penalty of death.
Why don't we just drone-zap him and be done with it?
Authorities said a $5m reward was being offered for information leading to the arrest of Belmokhtar, who's also been known as "the one-eyed sheikh" since he lost an eye in combat. Belmokhtar left al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the north African offshoot of the terrorist group, and formed his own spinoff.
He is accused of participating in the 16 January attack on a western-owned gas processing facility in a remote part of eastern Algeria near the border with Libya. After a four-day standoff the Algerian army moved in and killed 29 attackers and captured three others. At least 37 hostages, including one Algerian worker, died in the battle. Three Americans and scores of Algerian and foreign nationals were killed.
Belmokhtar "unleashed a reign of terror years ago, in furtherance of his self-proclaimed goal of waging bloody jihad against the west", US attorney Preet Bharara said in a release. "His efforts culminated in a five-day siege that left dozens dead."
The court papers said Belmokhtar appeared in an online video the day after the siege ended, claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of al-Qaida.
Belmokhtar was designated a foreign terrorist by the US treasury in 2003. Prosecutors said he was a key leader of al-Qaida's efforts in north Africa starting in 2008 as he led attacks that resulted in the kidnapping and murder of numerous individuals. Among the attacks, the government said, was the December 2008 kidnapping of two western diplomats working in Niger as part of a United Nations mission. The victims were held for about four months before their release in Mali.
Prosecutors say Belmokhtar in a videotaped statement in December called for fighting in Algeria and elsewhere to oppose western influence. After the attack in Algeria three hostage-takers interviewed by US law enforcement officers acknowledged Belmokhtar was an "emir" in their al-Qaida group and said they had received military training in another country prior to carrying out the attack, the US government said.
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07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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Long piece in WaPo about where the Predator flies these days. As Afghanistan winds down we're not drone-zapping as many hard boyz and number three's in Pak-land, so the Pentagon has moved assets to other regions. The article has an excellent map of current bases (which the public didn't necessarily need to know) and the usual hand-wringing.
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07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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Long hand-wringing piece at the Guardian. The new local government in Kashmir is working on the reconciliation thing, and 'militants' who didn't kill anyone or commit any crimes (that anyone can prove) are given an opportunity to come home and live peacefully. Turns out that peace makes the more militants moody. Who knew? But go see for yourselves.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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Iraqis roundly condemned the authorities on Sunday for failing to stop a wave of deadly unrest including attacks that killed dozens of people the day before.
Attacks on Sunday itself killed another 12 people, as the country struggles against a surge in violence that has plagued it since the beginning of the year. More than 530 people have been killed so far this month, and over 2,800 since January 1, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources. On Sunday, the death toll continued to mount.
In the deadliest incident, gunmen attacked a checkpoint in the Zab area of Kirkuk province in north Iraq, killing five members of an Arab unit of the peshmerga security forces, officials said. Members of the peshmerga, the security forces of Iraqs autonomous Kurdistan region, are overwhelmingly ethnic Kurds.
Gunmen also attacked a checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul, killing two police officers.
In Taji, north of Baghdad, two roadside bombs exploded near an army base, killing three people and wounding at least 10.
And a bomb exploded in the garden of a house in Besmayah, southeast of the capital, killing two people and wounding four, all from the same family.
The blasts came a day after Baghdad was hit by 12 car bombs, a roadside bomb and a shooting, while another bomb blew up south of the capital. A total of 67 people were killed. The Baghdad attacks struck as residents turned out to shop and relax in cafes after Iftar. On Sunday, Iraqis sharply criticised the authorities for failing to prevent the bloodshed.
This is a cartoon government and its security forces cannot protect themselves, let alone protect the people, one man said sadly near the site of one bombing in central Baghdad.
In Tobchi, a north Baghdad area hit in the Saturday attacks, another man resorted to sarcasm.
These car bombs come to us from Mars, because the security forces are implementing strict regulations to prevent their entry here, he said.
A third slammed the aloof attitude of the political elite, who rarely comment on the spiralling violence.
Iraqis are being protected only by God, because the politicians only care about their positions and personal interests, he said.
In the first 12 days of Ramadan, more than 340 people have been killed in Iraq violence.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
The Iranians may yet get their wish of a civil war in Iraq.
Too bad, I had a lot of high expectations the Iraqis would make it work. It is hard to undo 1000 years of hatred.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
07/22/2013 23:18 Comments ||
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[Jpost] Video shows Hezbollah commander who led the operation which resulted in the kidnapping of Goldwasser and Regev.
Desperate to remind Lebanese that Hizb'allah is their "resistance" against the Juices, now that everyone's mad they're fighting for Assad in Syria. Video at link.
Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV revealed details of the kidnapping of two IDF soldiers, which led to the 2006 Leb war. The video shows what appears to be Hezbollah forces preparing for the mission in the same place where the 2006 kidnapping took place.
Khalid Bazzi, also known as Hajj Qasim, led the operation for Hezbollah and is shown on the video to be involved in the planning of the attack in -- what the program claims -- is the site from where the attack was actually launched. He is shown standing up high in the tree observing the site of where the attack would take place, while another soldier is on the ground under him.
The video also showed live video of the attack with Hezbollah faceless myrmidons jumping out from trees and bushes to attack an approaching IDF vehicle. The footage of the attack appears to be from previously released material.
Bazzi was killed by an Israeli air strike during the war.
On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah bully boyz attacked a group of Israeli soldiers in Israeli territory, killing eight and kidnapping IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser. Israel responded by attacking Hezbollah and other targets in Leb, and Hezbollah responded by firing numerous Katyusha rockets at Israeli population centers for more than 100 days.
The bodies of the two IDF soldiers were returned to Israel in an exchange in 2008 for Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar.
An article on Al-Manar's website from earlier this month stated that during the 2006 war "the Zionist entity used all its power to destroy Hezbollah, but failed in achieving the least of its goals." Israel then "pulled out defeated" and today, Hezbollah is much stronger than it was in the summer of 2006, according to the article.
The article also quotes media reports noting the recent decision by the IDF to reduce and restructure its forces.
[Jpost] Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, economy minister says tunnel closures since June had cost Gazoo around $230 million.
Paleostinians in the Gazoo Strip are reeling from another devastating blockade but this time they are blaming Egypt, the neighboring Arab power they once hoped would end their isolation, rather than their old foe Israel.
In a few weeks of digging, dynamiting and drenching, Cairo's troops have destroyed many of the smuggling tunnels that ran under the Egypt-Gazoo border and which had provided the cramped coastal enclave with commercial goods as well as weaponry.
The Islamist Hamas government, which taxes much of the traffic through the underground passages, has been hit hard by the losses. Ordinary Paleostinians, many of them dependent on UN aid handouts, have seen prices for staple goods skyrocket.
"There is a difficult humanitarian situation in Gazoo because of the Egyptian measures on the borders," said Hamas front manSami Abu Zuhri ...a senior spokesman for Hamas. Zuhri gained notoriety in 2006 when he dropped his money belt containing somewhere between 640,000 and 900,000 euros, which was confiscated by Paleostinian security and customs officials at a routine border crossing from Egypt to Gaza. The news brought competing Hamas and Fatah forces to the crossing checkpoint for an epic face-making and hollering contest... . "Most of the tunnels were demolished and the few that remain open are paralyzed."
He likened the crisis to 2007, when Israel, responding to the Hamas takeover of Gazoo in a brief civil war with Western-backed Paleostinian rivals, clamped down on the territory.
Israel still maintains a strict control of all imports into Gazoo to prevent arms reaching Hamas, which refuses to recognize the Jewish state and has often clashed with it. Under international accords, merchandise cannot be imported via Egypt.
Cairo mobilized against the tunnels after jihadi bully boyz in the Egyptian Sinai desert killed 16 of its soldiers a year ago. Egypt said some of the gunnies had slipped into Sinai from nearby Gazoo, an accusation denied by Hamas.
The tunnel crackdown has gathered pace since the Egyptian military removed Islamist President Mohamed Morsi from power this month. Morsi's short-lived rule had already disappointed Hamas, since despite their shared ideology he appeared in no rush to open the Gazoo border.
With Morsi now gone, Hamas openly despairs - not least as it has also parted ways with insurgency-hit Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Terror of Aleppo ... , who had long hosted the Paleostinian faction's foreign headquarters, and lost key funding from Damascus's ally Iran.
10 percent of GDP lost
Ala Al-Rafati, the Hamas economy minister, said tunnel closures since June had cost Gazoo around $230 million - around a tenth of the GDP of the territory, whose 1.7 million residents suffer more than 30 percent unemployment.
"The continued restrictions threaten to bring construction projects to a complete halt," he said, referring to cement that has been brought through the tunnels, along with everything from foodstuffs to electrical appliances to the occasional car.
An Egyptian official who spoke to Rooters on condition of anonymity said the anti-tunnel campaign was only for security needs: "There are elements that use these tunnels to inflict harm on Egyptian and Paleostinians on both sides of the border."
Ehud Yaari, a Middle East analyst from Israel who has studied the Sinai situation in depth, said that while Egypt had stemmed the flow of weapons into Gazoo, it was permitting a measured flow of commercial goods to prevent massive shortfalls.
"When the Egyptians felt there was a shortage of fuel in Gazoo, they allowed certain tunnels that carry fuel in to operate for a few days. They are very sensitive to the situation inside Gazoo," Yaari said - an observation the Egyptian official declined to confirm or deny.
A diplomat who monitors Gazoo agreed that the tunnel closures posed a strategic setback to Hamas's rocket arsenal, which was targeted in an aerial blitz by Israel last November.
Though Hamas has largely observed an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire since then, and kept smaller Gazoo factions to the deal as well, the diplomat, who asked not to be identified, predicted that the Islamists would redouble local production of weaponry and try to circumvent the tunnel closures.
"Longer, deeper and well-hidden tunnels could be one of those ways," he said.
Abu Zuhri said Hamas's first concern was providing for the Paleostinians' day-to-day needs.
"We are capable of creating alternatives to contend with any crisis," he said. "The ongoing closure of tunnels without making an alternative is practically strangling Gazoo."
Hamas has repeatedly but fruitlessly urged Egypt to allow goods to enter through a land corridor. Indeed, at Rafah, the sole passenger terminal on the border, Egypt was on Sunday restricting passage to compassionate cases only. Even that was an improvement on frequent periods in which Rafah was shuttered.
"We are aware of the humanitarian needs in the Gazoo Strip, and Rafah crossing opens for those who need to travel," the Egyptian official said. "We want people in Gazoo to be assured Egypt will never abandon their side and will always be a major supporter of the Paleostinian national cause."
#1
Are any of these people named Hussein? We wouldn't want anyone named Hussein to come to any grief. Abdrool maybe, but not Hussein.
All the Husseins I know wear expensive shoes and take a bath every day. True, they sometimes drive by in an armored limousine but then that is because they are very very important people. Do you own an armored limousine? No? , neither do I.
#4
Ya think that the Gazooks would have started to catch on when Egypt refused to take them back with the rest of Sinai when Israel offered it to them. Kinda like Jordan didn't want the West Bank back either.
Think that the Paleos don't bathe often enough or sumpin'?
David Cameron has admitted that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has strengthened his position in recent months as he warned that the country faced a "depressing trajectory".
In an interview on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1, the prime minister gave his clearest indication to date that Britain will not be supplying arms to the Syrian rebels despite pressing for the lifting of the EU arms embargo. Cameron insisted he was still committed to helping the Syrian opposition, but admitted its numbers included "a lot of bad guys". He also acknowledged that Assad had strengthened his position.
Seems like the PM has figured out what's going on in Syria, unlike Champ and John McCain...
The prime minister said: "I think he may be stronger than he was a few months ago, but I'd still describe the situation as a stalemate. And yes, you do have problems with part of the opposition that is extreme, that we should have nothing to do with."
But Cameron said it would be wrong to abandon the opposition although he indicated Britain would provide only non-lethal equipment.
He said: "[Having extremists in the opposition] is not a reason for just pulling up the drawbridge, putting our head in the sand to mix my metaphors and doing nothing. What we should be doing is working with international partners to help the millions of Syrians who want to have a free democratic Syria, who want to see that country have some chance of success."
Asked about arming the opposition, the prime minister said: "We're not intervening by supplying weapons, but I think we can with partners to strengthen those parts of the Syrian opposition that really do represent the Syrian people."
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07/22/2013 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Unexploded ordnance left behind by Nato troops as they leave Afghanistan is killing and injuring a rising number of civilians, a UN demining group said Sunday. Mohammad Sediq Rashid, director of the Mine Action Coordination Centre, told AFP that the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) must fully clean up military bases and firing ranges being vacated ahead of a final withdrawal due next year.
Egypt's Central Bank (CBE) received a Saudi deposit worth $2 billion on Sunday, Al-Ahram's Arabic website reported.
Federal prosecutors in the US have charged the fugitive militant leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar over the Algerian gas plant attack in January that killed more than 30 people, including Americans and Britons.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
