[Newsweek]. Deep in Libya’s Sahara Desert, in the sun-baked town of Sabha, a ragtag group of gunmen loyal to one of the country’s two rival militias agreed to show Timothy Michetti their most prized weapons. Michetti, an experienced investigator for a London-based company that tracks the sources of small arms in conflict zones, traveled there on a hunch this past August. Local fighters, he reckoned, might have some of the shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles that disappeared when rebels ousted Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011.
In the sweltering heat, the gunmen unveiled a small arsenal: four Russian-made SA-7 missiles and two later models of the SA-16 variety. The heat-seeking missiles are capable of shooting down a civilian airplane.
The fighters said they acquired the weapons from nomadic smugglers on their way to illicit weapons bazaars in neighboring Chad. But after comparing the missiles’ serial numbers to those in his company’s database, Michetti confirmed his hunch: These had been Qaddafi’s arms.
The missiles had no grip stocks or launchers, which rendered them unusable, but that wasn’t much of a relief. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of working Libyan shoulder-held missiles remain unaccounted for, U.S. and United Nations officials say. And some have probably fallen into the hands of Islamic State militants, U.S. intelligence sources tell Newsweek. They add that as ISIS continues to exploit Libya’s four-year civil war between two main rival factions, the group is likely to use these weapons as it fights to widen its strategic foothold in Libya to include the country's oil fields. There’s some evidence the group already has.
No one has downed a passenger plane using stolen Libyan missiles, known in military parlance as manpads or man-portable air defense systems, yet the likelihood that ISIS now has these weapons in Libya means the group or its affiliates could be well-equipped to strike at civilian aircraft in Africa or Europe, U.S. officials say. "These missiles are very portable and easily smuggled," says a senior State Department official who leads a special U.S. team tasked to secure the Libyan missiles. "All it takes is for one to get through."
Despite the dangers these Libyan missiles pose, the Obama administration has effectively stopped trying to locate and destroy them, State Department officials tell Newsweek . The primary reason: It’s too dangerous to go looking for them in Libya.
It’s unclear how many missiles remain at large. According to both U.S. and U.N. officials, Qaddafi accumulated an estimated 20,000 shoulder-held manpads during his four decades in power. Yet these officials stress that attrition, poor maintenance and the NATO bombing campaign during the 2011 revolution reduced that number by the time the dictator was overthrown. Not long after Qaddafi’s fall, President Barack Obama dispatched the special U.S. team to Libya, which located and destroyed roughly 5,000 missiles. But the team leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security issue, acknowledges he has no idea how many manpads are missing. "There’s a large number still there in Libya, where some of the larger militia groups still maintain the stocks that they originally took control of back in 2011," he says. Others are in the hands of Libya’s smaller militant groups, and arms traffickers have smuggled some out of the country to feed the conflicts in Syria, the Sinai, Nigeria and Mali. "We might never know where they went," the team leader adds.
On September 11, 2012, the manpads team suffered a major setback. Islamic militants attacked a secret CIA station in Benghazi, killing four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The loss of the CIA post, which had been tracking the whereabouts of Qaddafi’s looted weapons, eliminated one of the team’s critical sources of intelligence. The team pulled out of Libya less than two years later, when the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli closed down as security in the country deteriorated.
"Because it’s an active conflict zone, the U.S. team has no ability to go into Libya to locate and secure manpads," says another team member. "Frankly," he adds, "we have no leverage in the middle of a conflict to ask people to give up weapons."
These days, team members work from a State Department annex in Washington, helping other governments in North Africa and the Sahel secure their weapons stocks. In an odd turn of events, the State Department has turned to several European-based private groups to carry out one of its other longstanding missions in Libya--locating and destroying mines left over from World War II.
Some observers suggest the administration gradually shifted its attention from finding the missing manpads to the war in Syria and the nuclear deal with Iran. "There was a huge flurry about the missiles right after the fall of Qaddafi," recalls Rachel Stohl, an expert on small arms at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. "Then it was quiet for about two years. When we began seeing evidence that the missiles were showing up in Mali and other countries, the buzz returned. But since then, it’s fallen off the radar because of other, higher priority issues. And that’s troubling. These weapons can cause catastrophic damage to a civilian or military aircraft, killing hundreds of people."
It’s unclear why no Libyan combatants have used the looted missiles to target a civilian airliner. "That's the million-dollar question," says Matthew Schroeder, a researcher for the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, another organization that traces the source of weapons. Some analysts note that many of the country’s armed groups have no military training and don’t know how to operate the missiles. More important, they add, the men who control Libya’s two biggest militias and aspire to lead the country aren’t interested in downing a civilian plane, which would likely halt flights in and out of country. Libya’s criminal gangs don’t want the airports closed because they depend on them for smuggling. And with missiles fetching as much as $12,000 on the black market, the militias prefer to sell them when they need cash, notes Savannah de Tessières, a member of a U.N. panel that is also investigating the whereabouts of the looted weapons.
In Egypt, however, anti-government militants haven’t shown such restraint. In January 2014, Islamic fighters belonging to a group called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis used what Egyptian and Israeli officials say was a looted Libyan shoulder-held missile to shoot down an Egyptian military helicopter in the Sinai, killing five soldiers. Later that year, the group pledged its obedience to ISIS. This past November, ISIS’s Egyptian affiliate took credit for planting a bomb aboard a Russian passenger jet, killing all 224 passengers and crew. The attack marked the affiliate’s shift to ISIS’s indiscriminate killing of civilians.
U.S., European and Arab officials now fear the Libyan civil war may lead to ISIS missile attacks against civilian planes in North and West Africa, as well as in Europe. The chaos in Libya has allowed ISIS to carve out a 150-mile enclave along the country’s central Mediterranean coast, with the city of Sirte at its center. The Pentagon says the group has as many as 6,500 fighters in the country, but other intelligence sources say the group’s ranks are swelling rapidly, putting the number of ISIS combatants in Libya at 10,000.
U.S. intelligence officials say the group’s growing presence in Libya is part of a larger strategic plan. As ISIS loses territory and oil revenue to coalition forces in Syria and Iraq, its leaders view Libya as a redoubt it can fall back on, a new source of oil money and a base from which it can spread its influence across North and sub-Saharan Africa. From Libya, these sources say, ISIS can also piggyback on the refugee flow north across the Mediterranean to strike at Europe.
As part of that strategy, ISIS has targeted Libya’s oil installations. One goal, says Patrick Skinner, a former CIA officer and now a principal at the Soufan Group, a security and intelligence consultancy, is to torpedo a power-sharing agreement between the country’s two main factions. How to split the country’s oil revenues is a contentious part of the negotiations. "If ISIS can cripple the country’s oil industry," he says, "there’s a lot less incentive for the factions to form a government."
Another aim is to replenish its coffers. In recent weeks, ISIS fighters took control of two strategic towns near Sirte, giving the group an unobstructed path to Libya’s oil fields in the south. As long there is no unity government, Skinner says, there is little chance the two main militias will be able to stop the ISIS advance. "They have momentum, which is one thing you never want a terrorist group to have," he says. "They’re all in."
For more than a month, Obama has been under pressure from his military and national security aides to launch a major bombing campaign in Libya against ISIS. So far, he’s resisted, opting instead to conduct targeted airstrikes on the group’s commanders and one of its training camps along the Tunisian border. There are reports, however, that a multinational force, made up of troops from Italy, Britain, France and Spain, is poised to take on ISIS in Libya, with the U.S. providing special operations troops, as well as logistical and air support, among other things. But the Americans and the Europeans won’t agree to the operation until Libya’s rival factions form a unity government.
In the meantime, some of the more unsettling predictions about ISIS in Libya may prove prescient. In February, ISIS said it shot down a Libyan government MiG-23 fighter jet west of Benghazi as it bombed an unaffiliated Islamist militia. The group released a video of the attack, which the internationally recognized government in Tobruk confirmed. After analyzing the video, U.S. intelligence officials say it appears ISIS used a missile to bring down the aircraft. ISIS claims it has downed two other Libyan warplanes with missiles since January, but the government insists both crashed because of "technical problems."
If the next plane is a civilian airliner, that excuse may not fly.
[CNN] British police are preparing for "enormous and spectacular" potential attacks on the UK as ISIS moves into its "next natural phase," Britannia's senior counterterrorism officer said Monday.
Mark Rowley, assistant commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, said that in the wake of the Gay Paree terror attacks, ISIS had moved on from a "narrow focus on police and military as symbols of the state, to something much broader."
"You see a terrorist group that has big ambitions for enormous and spectacular attacks, not just the types that we've seen foiled to date," he said, citing as another example the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/08/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Preparing = special units, to protect Muslims from backlash, are formed and ready?
[Rudaw] Germany has expanded its military training for Kurdish Peshmerga forces battling the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) to more specialized skills, including intelligence gathering, enemy monitoring and stealth. A group of 28 Kurdish officers on Monday concluded their trip to Munster North Training Area, one of Germany’s well-known military training centers. More than 15 German trainers provided both practical and theoretical crash courses for 10 hours a day to the first Kurdish forces who traveled to Munster, a town closely associated with military services and home to the German Army's largest garrison.
"We have learnt how to gather intelligence, observe the enemy on the ground using special techniques and how to cover up and hide ourselves when necessary during the battles," Kamal Faqyiani, one of the Kurdish officers who attended the 16-day course, told Rudaw.
"The skills are very effective, especially in urban warfare," said Faqyiani who called the program "successful" and "unique" for the Peshmerga, who are more used to guerrilla warfare in the mountainous Kurdish regions of the Middle East.
Germany is among countries arming the Kurdish forces directly, providing military supplies and training.
"There are seven foreign countries very active on training Peshmerga. One of them is Germany," said Jabar Yawar, chief of staff and front man for the Kurdistan Region’s ministry of Peshmerga.
The United States, Canada, UK, Germany and Italia all have military advisors and trainers in the Kurdistan Region.
More than 90 German soldiers have been stationed in the Kurdistan Region to train Peshmerga forces in military tactics.
According to Yawar the Peshmerga forces have been given various military courses by German trainers since ISIS overran huge parts of Iraq in June 2014. These including instruction on how to use and repair advanced modern weapons delivered by Germany and training on anti-tank weapons.
In mid-2015 a group of Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers finished two weeks of training on anti-tank weapons in Hammelburg in southern Germany. Kurdish authorities at the time praised the effectiveness of Milan anti-tank missiles provided by Germany in their fight against ISIS.
"There have been courses that took place in the Kurdistan Region and there are ones that German trainers decide to hold in their native country considering the type of the program," Yawar explained on Monday.
Faqyiani said the Kurdish officers plan to hold special training courses for the Peshmerga forces in Kurdistan and share what they have learnt during the program.
Yawar said that, without learning how to be a good fighter, even having advanced weapons might not be a big help.
"Attending good training program is as effective as having a good gun," he said.
The European Union and Turkey have agreed on principles of a plan which stipulates that Ankara will take back all illegal migrants who have arrived from Turkey to Greece, including the acceleration of visa liberalization, additional funding and new safe areas in Syria, European Council President Donald Tusk said Tuesday.
How much did the EU pay, and how much of that goes into Yippy's pockets?
"We agreed to work on the basis of the following principles: the return of all new…migrants crossing from Turkey into the Greek islands, the acceleration of the implementation of the visa liberalization roadmap, the speeding-up of…three billion euros and additional funding for the refugee facility for Syrians, the preparation for the opening of new chapters in the accession negotiations, the possibility of establishing in Syria areas which will be more safe and, finally, to resettle Syrian refugees on a one-for-one basis," Tusk said at a press conference following the EU-Turkey summit.
On Monday, the Turkey-EU summit on migration took place in Brussels. The summit focused on stemming migration flows into the European Union. During the event, the sides discussed cooperation on migration, focusing on a speedy implementation of the EU-Turkey action plan approved in November.
"The days of irregular migration to Europe are over," Tusk said, adding that the Balkan route used by migrant to reach Europe, was due to stop its existence.
"That surgeon is awfully sturdy,
And isn't his knife kinda dirty?"
"What, Turks can't do favors
For nice Christian neighbors...
Like danegelding Europe?" "Sure, Erdy!"
#6
See also DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > BALKAN MIGRATION ROUTE NO LONGER EXISTS | [Independent.UK] REFUGEES CRISIS: FEARS OF VIOLENCE IN BORDER CAMPS AS "BALKAN ROUTE" INTO EUROPE CLOSED | THE INDEPENDENT.UK.
Slovenia PM Miro Cerar.
Slovenia, and now Serbia, repor close or cordon off the routes(s) going through their countries.
versus
* FARS NEWS > TURKEY'S GOAL OF JOINING EU "POSES [new = another?] EXISTENTIAL PROBLEM FOR THE WEST".
TOM CRUISE, EMILY, 2014's "EDGE OF TOMORROW" etc. etc. etc. ...
[WASHINGTONPOST] Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Edward Livingstone ... wrote 104 emails that she sent using her private server while secretary of state that the government has since said contain classified information, according to a new Washington Post analysis of Clinton’s publicly released correspondence.
The finding is the first accounting of the Democratic presidential front-runner’s personal role in placing information now considered sensitive into insecure email during her State Department tenure. Clinton’s authorship of dozens of emails now considered classified could complicate her efforts to argue that she never put government secrets at risk.
In roughly three-quarters of those cases, officials have determined that material Clinton herself wrote in the body of email messages is classified. Clinton sometimes initiated the conversations but more often replied to aides or other officials with brief reactions to ongoing discussions.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/08/2016 00:00 ||
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[NATION.PK] Taking the level of cooperation with India to a new level, Pakistain’s National Security Adviser (NSA) Nasir Khan Janjua has conveyed to his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval that 10 gunnies have sneaked into Gujarat ...where rioting seems to be a traditional passtime... state.
India has reportedly placed Gujrat on high alert yesterday after receiving this information and four National Security Guard (NSG) teams were deployed across the state.
Security observers believe that the information sent by Pakistain has dramatically raised the level of cooperation between the two countries but it remains to be seen whether the two neighbours build on this.
Although there was no official account of this news in Pakistain, Indian media reports claimed Pakistain had intercepted communication suggesting 10 snuffies have entered the Indian state. They said the information was passed on by the central government to the state authorities on Saturday.
The Pakistain’s NSA reportedly informed that these are fidayeen from the Lashkar-e-Taiba ...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI... and Jaish-e Muhammed cadres. The warning from Pakistain comes after five abandoned Pak boats found in the past three months in Kutch.
An abandoned boat was found by a BSF patrolling team off Koteshwar coast in Kutch on Friday. Another suspicious boat has been found near Porbandar on Sunday and two foreign nationals have been locked away Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! in this regard.
Important monuments and pilgrimage centers in Gujrat like Somnath temple, Dwarka Temple, Akashardham, power plants, defence, dams like Sardar Sarovar Dam and security establishments have also been put on alert.
"The state government received serious information from central government yesterday (Saturday) that gunnies have entered Gujarat... Till now, we have not found any suspicious person. However, some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them... whatever information is received by us is serious and we are taking all necessary steps about it," Gujarat Minister of State for Home Rajni Patel said.
"There are continuous combing operations and several checkposts have been set up. We are searching for suspects involved in different activities," Gujarat Director General of Police PC Thakur told the media in Ahmedabad. He added that three NSG squads are deployed in Ahmedabad and one in Somnath.
In a notification issued by the Gujarat home department and seen by AFP, all top police chiefs were asked to return to duty immediately and report any suspicious activity. TV footage showed coppers frisking visitors outside hotels, cinemas and malls.
A massive security operation has been launched and raids were conducted by a police team, led by South Kutch Superintendent of Police Makrand Chauhan, early Sunday morning in Varnora village of Bhuj taluka in Kutch district bordering Pakistain. The Kutch police also raided Noorani Mahel Hotel and Muslim Jamat Khana in Bhuj.
Delhi was also put on high alert and security was beefed up at vital installations, important buildings and crowded places after police received information about a potential terror strike.
In Pathankot district of Indian Punjab, Western Army Commander Lt-Gen KJ Singh told news hounds, "There are security-related problems today (Sunday). You know, Maha Shivratri is coming. There are inputs which are disturbing but notwithstanding that extra care has been taken."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/08/2016 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Somebody not paying their protection money?
Kidding aside, I wonder if saner heads are prevailing. If so, I hope that they live through it.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
03/08/2016 9:32 Comments ||
Top||
[Rudaw] Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday that members of his Shiite militia were secretly sent to Iraq in order to participate in efforts to fight the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) group there.
He stressed that they had operated in Iraq under local command and were not interfering in Iraq's internal affairs.
Nasrallah, according to Daily Star Leb, made these remarks while on a visit to Ansar, a town in south Leb where there is a commemoration for a Hezbollah field commander named Ali Ahmad Fayyad who was killed in northern Syria last month.
Generalized mayhem, crappy food, prospect of an early violent death. You just can't please some people, I guess. And all the European comfort women have gone home...
QAMISHLI – Dozens of militants have deserted the ranks of the Islamic State (ISIS) radical group in Syria’s northeastern Raqqa province over the past few days, local sources reported on Monday.
“A new wave of defections hit the ISIS ranks in Raqqa province,” a media source close to ISIS told ARA News in Raqqa, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The number of ISIS militants who left the group has exceeded the 200 jihadi fighters in one week, according the the informed source.
“Most of the dissidents headed to Aleppo in order to join the ranks of Syrian rebel groups, while others are expected to have crossed the border into Turkey,” he said.
ISIS has recently lost key areas to the western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria. The group has also suffered loss of strategic resources due to the continuous airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition. Last week, the SDF expelled ISIS militants from several areas in the provinces of Hasakah, Raqqa and Aleppo.
This comes amid escalating rifts within the group over power and distribution of money.
On Sunday, senior Tunisian jihadi and commander of ISIS military operations in northern Raqqa, Abu Ali al-Tunisi, was killed at the hands of fellow ISIS militants. The militants have reportedly opened fire at the car of their commander on Sunday evening, killing him and two of his escorts. “Clashes broke out among the militants after the death of al-Tunisi, until the ISIS-led Islamic Police intervened and arrested at least three of those responsible for the commander’s death,” media activist Ammar al-Hassan reported, speaking to ARA News in Raqqa.
Local members of ISIS have reportedly protested against the group’s leadership for promoting a number of foreign jihadis to senior positions. Moreover, a wave of outrage has recently spread among the militants for the decreasing salaries, that followed the group’s loss of key resources under the coalition’s strikes.
In Aleppo, over 40 ISIS militants reportedly deserted the group’s ranks with support from Syrian rebel factions. “There have been confidential contacts between opposition factions and members of ISIS over the past two months. The efforts resulted in the defection of 40 ISIS militants with support from Failaq al-Sham (main Syrian rebel group in Aleppo),” rebel spokesman Ali Jaafar told ARA News on Sunday.
Posted by: badanov ||
03/08/2016 00:00 ||
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HASAKAH – Dozens of families returned to their villages near Mount Abdulaziz in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah, after one year of forced displacement at the hands of ISIS militants.
Over 100 displaced families returned home under the protection of Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), local sources and eyewitnesses confirmed on Monday.
The YPG –leading member of the western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)– had regained control of Mount Abdulaziz in northeastern Syria after fierce clashes with ISIS militants last May. Over the past few months, the YPG and allied units from the SDF have been dismantling hundreds of land-mines and explosives that had been left by ISIS jihadis in villages and towns near the mountain.
“We have dismantled more than 250 land-mines and explosives that were planted by Daesh terrorists to prevent civilians from returning to their villages in the vicinity of Mount Abdulaziz,” YPG officer Redwan Muhammad told ARA News, using an acronym for ISIS.
“After securing the whole area, we have called on the displaced families to return home,” the Kurdish official said. “Nearly 110 families have returned to their villages and towns in Hasakah province in the past three days.”
Redwan added that the Kurdish leadership has deployed dozens of forces and installed a number of security checkpoints across the area in a bid to prevent any infiltrations by ISIS militants.
“We reassure the people that our forces will do everything to protect them against Daesh (ISIS) terrorists,” he stressed.
At least 5800 militant fighters of the Islamic State (ISIS) have been killed in clashes with the Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria during 2015.
“A total of 5875 terrorists of ISIS were killed in clashes with our forces during the year 2015,” the YPG’s leadership said in a statement.
“Our units have conducted 453 military operations against the terror group; 392 clashes took place during these operations. The documented death toll in the ranks of ISIS reached 5875 terrorists, and we have taken 38 terrorists as hostages,” the Kurdish leadership said in its annual report.
It added that the YPG units, in cooperation with the female fighters of the YPJ, have seized 204 ISIS military vehicles, 24 tanks, 26 armored vehicles and detonated 58 car bombs, beside seizing a large deal of ammunition. On the other hand, 680 Kurdish fighters lost their lives while fighting ISIS over the year 2015.
In cooperation with allied armed forces and with the support of the U.S.-led coalition’s air force, the Kurdish units have regained control of strategic towns and cities from ISIS’s fist in northern Syrian last year, including Kobane, Tel Abyad, Ain Issa, Tel Temir, Hasakah, Tel Hamis, Tel Brak, Suluk, Dahmaa, Mount Abdulaziz, army bases of ’93’ and Melabiyah, beside dozens of villages.
The YPG leadership notified that these records do not include the gains of their joint operations in the ranks of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
According to the Kurdish leadership, the Turkish army has targeted 22 YPG headquarters in northern Syria in 2015, particularly in the northern countryside of Raqqa.
Posted by: badanov ||
03/08/2016 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq on Sunday accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps of using Leb as an "operations room" for its activities in Yemen, Syria and other countries.
"Our stance is clear on rejecting Hizbullah ...Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistance and purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory... 's interference and Iran's Revolutionary Guard is using Leb as an operations room for its foreign operations in Yemen, Syria and other places," Mashnouq said in an interview with Al-Arabiya television.
"We will do all we can to prevent Leb from being turned into a Persian thorn in the thigh of Arabs," the minister vowed.
"We are voicing a political, peaceful stance and we do not want a military confrontation or a sectarian strife," he underlined.
Mashnouq was speaking only hours after Hizbullah chief His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah The satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb... renewed his verbal attacks against Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... over the conflicts in Yemen, Iraq and Syria and linked Riyadh's latest measures against Leb and Hizbullah to what he called the kingdom's "failure in Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... and Syria."
Saudi Arabia has linked its measures to Leb's refusal to join the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in condemning attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran last month, and alleged Hizbullah "terrorist acts against Arab and Muslim nations."
"The entire world will realize that in Leb there are political forces that do not accept that Leb be taken hostage of foreign policies that are not in the interest of the Lebanese," Mashnouq said on Sunday.
"Arab negligence towards Leb is what made us reach this situation. The Arab confrontation decision goes back to a few weeks ago only while we have been offering deaders for the past ten years," he told the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television.
Turning to his participation at the conference of Arab interior ministers in Tunisia earlier this week, Mashnouq said he told the Arab officials there "that the Arab confrontation decision came as a surprise but the means of confrontation require preparation and readiness."
"Some ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council states expressed understanding of my stance in Tunisia and congratulated me on it and I was not told about any dismay," the minister added, referring to his rejection of a clause that described Hizbullah as "terrorist" in the meeting's closing statement.
Mashnouq had accused Hizbullah in late February of having "trained" Iran-linked turbans who have been allegedly captured in several countries across the world. "Iranian revolutionary guard terrorist cells that were captured in eight countries comprised members who were trained in Leb" at the hands of Hizbullah, Mashnouq alleged.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/08/2016 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
See MEMRI.ORG > LEBANON'S FAILURE TO SUPPORT SAUID ARABIA IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH IRAN SPARKS CRISIS BETWEEN LEBANON + [KSA +] SAUDI-LED GULF [GCC].
* GROONG > SAUDIS, TEHRAN BID TO [destabilize +] OPEN LEBANON FRONT [Leb-based/centric opposing fronts].
Will ANKARA/TURKEY + RUSSIA becom involvedas in Syria???
VERSUS
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > PAKISTAN "BREACHING OBLIGATIONS ON NUCLEAR ARMS [by failing to reduce its nuke arsenal], UN COURT TOLD.
Via the Marshall Islands.
PAKISTAN asserting its right to be a OWG Co-Superpower like BFF = FRENEMY SHIA IRAN???
* IRNA > WILL IRAN BECOME THE MIDDLE EAST'S NEXT SUPERPOWER?
"US-style", "US-par" Co-Superpower, that is.
Anti-US US OWG Globalist POTUS Obama + Globies desire Iran to be so.
ROUGHLY PAR EQUAL TO THE US, NOT INFERIOR TO THE US.
* RELATED BIGNEWSNETWORK > RUSSIAN ANALYSTS: THROUGH ITS INVOLVEMENT IN SYRIA, RUSSIA SEEKS TO CHANGE ITS GLOBAL STANDING.
Y-E-E-EUUUP - IMO see above as per IRAN.
* IRNA > IRGC COMMANDER [MGEN. Mohammad Ali Jafari]: "ENEMIES OF IRAN WILL FEAR IRAN'S ROAR".
The Persian Lion that is OWG Co-Superpower Iran.
D *** NG, I KNEW IT - DOES HERCULES/HERACLES KNOW??? "12 Labors" and all that ... ... + 1??
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.
Hillary Clinton
