Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, Islamist leader of the opposition faction which recently signed a peace deal with the Somali transitional government in Djibouti, arrived, for the first time in nearly two years, in central Somalitown of Jawhar amid tight security by Islamist fighters, opposition spokesman said Saturday.
The opposition leader along with a seven-member delegation arrived to meet with opposition figures inside Somalia and "explain to the Somali people the agreement reached" between the government and the opposition coalition known as the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS), Ahmed Abdulahi, ARS' Secretary for Information said. "We will be staying inside the country as long as it takes to meet all the relevant people in Somalia," Abdullahi told Xinhua by phone from Jawhar, the provincial capital of Middle Shabelle region, 90 km north of the capital Mogadishu.
Thousands of cheering residents gathered along the roads leading from the airport to the city to give a rapturous welcome to Ahmed, who left the Horn of Africa country in early 2007 after his movement, the Islamic Courts Union, was driven out of power by allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces in December 2006. The Islamist opposition leader, considered as moderate, ...
by whom?
... is expected to visit a number of other places in south and central Somalia where his faction is in control.
Sheik Ahmed's moderate faction of the ARS, now based in Djibouti, late last month signed a ceasefire agreement and a power sharing deal after a number of other previous deals failed to stop the violence in the war-ravaged country.
Under the agreement both the transitional government and the ARS called upon their supporters and the Somali population "to adhere and support this cessation of armed confrontation in the interest of the Somalia". The agreement also stipulates the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from specific areas in the capital Mogadishu and a central Somali town before their full withdrawal from Somalia. They have also agreed on "the early establishment of a Somali Unity Government".
Other Somali insurgent groups, including the hard-line Al-Shabaab Islamist movement, oppose the agreement with the transitional government vowing they will continue to fight as long as the Ethiopian troops are in Somalia.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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Should we wait for a confirmation per the 48-Hour Rule? After all, although MSNBC quotes the Associated Press quoting the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan quoting an unnamed Saudi official, it's still a single source. Personally, I can't decide whether to be shocked or appalled. Hattip Lucianne.com.
This is pretty likely to be true. We know that the 9/11 attacks weren't the first airplane-based attacks planned by Al Qaeda, nor the last.
And the Saudis knew damned well that if there were such an attack again, the Kingdom was going to be host to a lot of uniformed Americans. The links between the Wahabists and senior Saudi royals were very public by then ...
At the very least we would have separated the Saudis from their oil. We would have had a mutual defense treaty with the new Arab Shi'a 'Republic of Eastern Arabia', a 50 km wide strip of sand on the Persian Gulf.
Saudi Arabia foiled a 2003 terror plot by militants who planned to hijack a plane and blow it up over a densely populated American city, a Saudi official said Sunday. The official said the plan, first reported Sunday in government-guided Al-Watan newspaper, was for the attackers to transit through the U.S. to another destination so they could avoid applying for hard-to-get American visas required for Saudis. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the militants were preparing to execute the alleged plot when it was halted. Wait a minute -- alleged? If it's only alleged, what are they making a fuss about? The 48-Hour Rule only works for actualities like Israel bouncing rubble at the Syrian nuclear facility or the Fort Dix plot, not alleged events. We've got a world-changing election coming up in two days, we don't have the energy for alleging!!!!
The Saudi official said the alleged hijacking plan was one of 160 terror plots the kingdom announced last month that it had foiled. At the time, authorities provided no details about any of the alleged plots and it was unclear why Saudi authorities never publicly revealed the 2003 plan previously. The official would not provide more details about the alleged plot such as what city was targeted and whether any arrests were made.
Last month, Interior Minister Prince Nayef announced that authorities had indicted 991 suspected militants on charges they participated in terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia over the last five years. Nayef said they have been responsible for more than 30 attacks in the kingdom since May 2003 that killed 164 people, including 74 security officials, and wounded hundreds. Another 160 attacks were foiled, the ministry said at the time. The official said the countries that would have been targeted in any of the 160 attacks were notified through official channels at the time the plots were uncovered. "Call the American embassy and invite George for tea on Wednesday, Ahmed-Bob. We must go through official channels."
"But George plays tennis at the Club on Wednesdays, effendi, then gets schnozzled drinking their special tea to replace lost fluids."
"Try Thursday afternoon, then. Friday there's a special sermon at the Kill All The Infidels mosque; I don't want to chance missing it."
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, has pursued an aggressive campaign against militants since May 2003, Yes, I'd heard that, too,
when they first began their strikes in the kingdom. Subsequent attacks targeted oil installations, government buildings and other compounds. There have been no major attacks since February 2006, when suicide bombers tried but failed to attack an oil facility at the Abqaiq oil complex, the world's largest oil processing facility, in eastern Saudi Arabia.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with former Saudi inmates of Guantanamo Bay as he toured a de-radicalization facility on Sunday. Saudi officials claim their efforts at rehabilitating extremists using months of reasoned argument against radical Islam have a success rate of 80 to 90 percent: Only 35 people out of 3,200 in the program have been re-arrested for security offenses.
Brown told reporters after the trip that the center showed the Saudis "are committed to tackling extremists who poison young people with the evil ideology of terror."
"I was glad to have had the opportunity to witness how they are seeking to challenge the attitude of young people who would be vulnerable to being brought under the spell of extreme groups," he added.
An official at the center, Dr. Abdel Rahman Hadlaq, said when the men are released, they are given jobs and other support key to breaking their links with radicals. "If we don't support them, someone else will support them," he said.
Brown spoke with six men at the facility near the capital Riyadh and shook hands with two inmates who had each spent six years at Guantanamo Bay for alleged links to al-Qaida.
Preventing young British Muslims, particularly those with family ties to Pakistan, from embracing violent extremism has become a key priority for Britain's security services since four British men killed 52 commuters in suicide bomb attacks on London's transport network in 2005. Jonathan Evans, head of Britain's domestic spy agency MI5, has said his officers are monitoring around 2,000 potential terrorists in the U.K., who are planning around 30 potential attacks at any given time.
The Saudi inmates are kept in secure compounds with facilities such as gyms and swimming pools while imams give them lessons on moderate Islam.
They have moderate Islam in Saudi Arabia? Who knew?
The Riyadh facility is staffed by 100 clerics, 50 social workers and 30 other specialists.
Juma al-Dossary, 35, who has been at the facility for six months after six years at Guantanamo, said "they have convinced us logically."
Al-Dossary said the had been in the "wrong place at the wrong time" and fell in with extremists. He is now married, about to become a father and planning a career in computing.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
De-radicalization? How about just shooting them? No recidivism that way.
Pakistan's Defence Minister has held talks with the new United States commander for the region, General David Petraeus. Chaudry Ahmad Muktar used the meeting to call for an end to US missile strikes on Pakistani soil.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari says continued US missile strikes on targets in Pakistan are counterproductive and detrimental to the war on terror.
Pakistan's Government is warning of outrage and anti-US sentiment if the raids continue.
Mr Muktar is calling on the US to respect Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity. He delivered the warning during the meeting with General Petraeus in the capital, Islamabad.
The US has conducted continued raids on insurgent targets in Pakistan's north-west border region. Last week more than 20 people were killed in two suspected missile strikes. But the US says the raids are necessary to protect its forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.
#1
If Pakistan does nothing against those people, then their insistence that we end these strikes amounts to Pakistan giving them official protection. That then makes the government of Pakistan an accessory to their crimes in a very public way. I wonder why they would want to take that path unless what Patraeus is being told in private is completely different from what Pakistan is telling the public, which is fairly likely.
#5
Mojo,
IF Pakistan's outrage is real (and not just internal cover) it may be because they don't want us pushing the wacko's any further away from the border and towards I'bad.
Tehreek-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Maulvi Omar has said the TTP or any of its affiliate organisations is not under the influence of Al Qaeda, Geo News reported on Sunday. Omar told the news channel that TTP had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. He said the TTP was sincere in peace talks with the government, adding that any effort to resolve the disputes in the Tribal Areas by force would prove to be fruitless.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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Someone in Pak-land has some sense? As tu3031 would say, "Johnson! Stop the presses!"
In case you missed this remark yesterday...
Pakistani Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani says Islamabad will not use its nuclear arsenal against the US to stop its incursions inside the country.
"We are a nuclear power but we will not demonstrate any irresponsible attitude."
"We are a nuclear power but we will not demonstrate any irresponsible attitude," he told a press conference in Islamabad on Sunday, Daily Times reported. "But we will take measures for protection of the integrity of Pakistan," Gilani added.
Gilani's remarks come after two deadly US air strikes in two Waziristan villages Friday that killed 32 people, raising tensions between Washington and Islamabad.
The incident in the lawless province is the latest in a string of attacks on Pakistani soil that have raised tensions between Islamabad and Washington.
Gilani urged the International community to stop the United States' incursions into Pakistan's tribal belt near the Afghan border. The prime minister said that he would raise the issue in a meeting with the US ambassador to Islamabad. Also last week on Wednesday, the Pakistani government had summoned the US ambassador to protest over the issue.
Gilani noted that the Afghan President Hamid Karzai would also take the matter up with the US-led NATO forces based in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has frequently protested over the US incursions into Pakistan's tribal region, with Prime Minister Gilani earlier terming the attacks as 'acts of terrorism'. President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday also strongly condemned the recent US air raid inside Pakistani territory and termed the strikes as attacks on the sovereignty and autonomy of Pakistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
A slip of the lip?
That's how green glass parking lots get made, genius.
#2
Whew! That's a relief. However, let me play Devil's Advocate and suggest that a theater nuke war might provide just the sort of urban (and political!) renewal Pakistan needs.
#6
unless they wait for o-bam admin, then a nuke against our troops will result in an apology from our DOS and a trip to the UN for hand wringing and possibly, a strongly worded letter.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
11/03/2008 14:54 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Rantburg, keyholder of the US Nuclear Arsenal.
Now there's a scary thought.
#13
Let's see...
The US has 5000+ nuclear weapons and has ICBMs.
Pakistan has 50-100 nuclear weapons and no ICBMs.
Pakistan "will not demonstrate any irresponsible attitude."
Good thinking, dude. Pretty rational for an Islamic state.
#14
Some of us have tea parties just for fun. On the other hand, I think my rabbi's brother drove nuclear submarines before he got promoted; they have all sorts of cool toys, right?
/No haven't got a tour. I haven't even met him -- he's busy these days, or so she says.
#15
Some of us ran ships that carried them. If we faced down the Soviet Union, we sure as Hell aren't going to be worried about a pack of goatherders who've gotten their butts kicked by India three times.
Those Pak boys better not let their mouths write a check their butt can't cash.
The American military is handing over control of projects in the troubled province ahead of a US-Iraqi security pact that could reduce the US footprint next year.
BALAD RUZ, Iraq - The US is actively transferring ownership of Iraq's troubled Diyala Province, using a tough-love approach to force Iraq to take on greater control ahead of any deal that would put limits on the American military next year.
From handing over irrigation projects to cutting funding in favor of a more cumbersome Iraqi payment system, the strategy amounts to the de facto first steps of withdrawal.
"Our big thing is getting Americans to stop doing things and get the Iraqi government to do them," says US Army Staff Sgt. Dave Schlicher, a civil affairs team leader who has worked in the towns along the Iran border for months.
"So eventually, when the government says: 'OK, you Americans are not leaving your [bases] anymore,' they have something," he says. "We're trying to work ourselves out of a job."
Iraqi officials said over the weekend that they expect a US response in the coming days to ongoing negotiations over a new security pact. American and Iraqi officials have been working on a deal that calls for a US pullback to bases by June 2009 and a withdrawal in 2011, but that arrangement faces growing opposition among lawmakers in Baghdad.
But even without a signed pact, US forces are increasingly enabling their counterparts both in Iraq's military and local government in anticipation of a dramatically reduced role.
What that means in Diyala is less war-fighting and more nation-building in an area that has seen some of the most brutal battles against Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
"The training wheels are off," says Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, the US Army commander for northern Iraq. For many months, he has restricted quick-fix discretionary spending by commanders in favor of Iraqi projects often channeled by the Americans, but put together and funded by Iraqis.
"They can't keep relying on the coalition forces to prop them up," says General Hertling. "We've got to see the strength and the weaknesses of the government come to the forefront."
Those are evident in the dusty agricultural town of Balad Ruz, where the main road separates two sectarian regions: to the north, a predominantly Shiite area; to the south, a once-mixed area where the majority Sunnis forced out all Shiites.
Attacks are still common. Iraqi forces announced Oct. 19 that in Balad Ruz they had shot dead a Saudi Arabian leader of AQI, who was wearing an explosive vest.
But Balad Ruz is also a frequent stop for Schlicher and his civil affairs team. During a recent visit, he was impressed to find Mayor Mohammed Marouf al-Hussein meeting with local irrigation officials about a project to cope with years of drought. Days before, they went with Iraqi police to inspect pipes.
"This is good news," says Schlicher, as he steps into the meeting in the mayor's office. "It's Iraqis finding solutions to Iraqi problems. Six months ago, it would not be happening."
Discussion ensues about the irrigation options, the cost of a project with advanced American-made equipment, and the price paid by farmers for such help during the Saddam Hussein-era.
"We've got to stop thinking of next week, but the next year or two, because every project the [US-led] coalition has started, the government has taken over," says Schlicher.
But the provincial government has problems, and insecurity has prevented Diyala Province from spending all its $140 million budget for three years in a row.
"The things that are announced are one thing, and what happens is something else," says Mayor Hussein.
"It is amazing," agrees Schlicher, "how reality gets changed in that 1-1/2 hours it takes to drive to Baquba [the provincial capital]."
But the new reality is an effort to shift both US and Iraqi money through the Iraqi government.
Capt. Jonathan Norquist has a sheaf of project folders, the result of a lengthy process of vetting open bids for work.
"Getting this approval process without corruption is much more difficult" than using exclusively US funds as in the past, says Captain Norquist, a civil-military operations officer who has worked electrical and all local services here for a year.
"The way to make the government effective is forcing their systems to work," he says. "Throwing money around is not the right way but to make them stand up."
The fact that Norquist is nation-building and not war-fighting would have been unthinkable even last year, when the company he was last with was "rendered combat ineffective" because of the number of casualties they sustained.
A US military report says that Balad Ruz is part of the "most neglected area" in the province. A 2008 plan to dig 184 new wells in the province, for example, did not include any in this area.
It notes the need to ensure locals do "not see the insurgency as a viable means to ensuring their future prosperity." The key for US officers is to "bridge communication gaps" between levels of local government to make it "self-sustaining."
And there is another reason to get this largely agricultural area working again.
"If they are farming, they are not out with Al Qaeda in Iraq or smuggling from Iran, so it's a security issue," says Schlicher. "Slowly, this area will make the turn and decide they want to live."
A top Iraqi Kurdish leader has said the U.S. military could have bases in northern Iraq if Washington and Baghdad fail to sign the controversial security deal, a local newspaper reported Sunday.
Massud Barzani, the president of northern Iraq's regional Kurdish administration, said that his government would "welcome" such a move, the Khabat, the newspaper run by Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party, quoted him as saying. "All the attempts are going right now to sign the pact, but if the pact is not signed and if U.S. asked to keep their troops in Kurdistan, I think the parliament, the people and government of Kurdistan will welcome this warmly," he said at the Centre of Strategy and International Study in Washington.
Baghdad and Washington are currently engaged in drawn out negotiations over an arrangement that will determine the presence of American forces in Iraq beyond 2008 when the current U.N. mandate expires.
Barzani has strongly backed the controversial security deal but the signing of the pact was delayed after the Iraqi cabinet decided to seek changes in the latest draft of the agreement. The Kurdish leader is currently in Washington for a series of talks with President George W. Bush and other American officials.
Iraq expects a reply from the United States within days to its proposal for changes to the pact requiring U.S. troops to leave by the end of 2011, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Saturday.
"We expect by Tuesday or Wednesday next week to receive answers from the American side about the suggestions of amendments proposed by the Iraqi cabinet," Zebari said in a TV interview. "We are talking about a small space of time. It is not open ended, and every side is coming nearer to the moment of truth."
U.S. embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh said Washington was considering the Iraqi proposals and would respond shortly.
Both countries appear to be moving quickly in a last-ditch scramble to save the pact, which was hammered out over months of intensive negotiations but hit a snag in October when Baghdad demanded changes just days after announcing a final text.
Iraqi officials have said their proposed amendments would tighten the language demanding a pullout in three years, clarify circumstances under which U.S. troops could be tried in Iraqi courts, and ban U.S. attacks on Iraq's neighbors from its soil.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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Israel on Sunday decided to cut off all funding for unsanctioned settlement outposts in the Occupied West Bank in response to an escalation of settler attacks on its security forces. The decision would apply to the more than 100 so-called "wildcat" colonies barred under Israeli law, but not to the more than 120 illegal settlements.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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#4
Hurry, change the settlements, towns and village names. Forget those nasty British colonialists. Forget that bugger Andries Pretorius. We'll just call it Tshwane!
Worth keeping in mind that Al Qaeda sprang from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which has provided its most rabid theorists.
The relevant provision in the National Palestinian Accord drafted by Egyptian intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman enshrines the Palestinians legitimate right to resistance [euphemism for terror] for as long as the occupation is sustained, DEBKAfiles Middle East sources disclose.
The draft was drawn up as part of the Mubarak governments effort to broker the reconciliation of the Palestinian Hamas and Fatah. Egypt backed the most radical Palestinian line to make the draft palatable to Hamas. Israeli security sources say it is the most anti-Israeli document penned in many years.
In another step to make the running with Palestinian extremists, the four-page text endorses the 1948 refugees return to their places before they were uprooted. This demand has been internationally accepted as a prescription for Israels destruction.
Suleiman moreover omitted the conventional proposition that a Palestinian state must spring from a peace accord with Israel. In fact, Israel is not mentioned at all, as through it has no existence in any diplomatic or regional context.
Ignoring the radical winds blowing from Egypt, Israeli president Shimon Peres and defense minister Ehud Barak persist in clinging to the moderate camp led by the Mubarak regime as a valued go-between with the Palestinians. They are both now actively promoting the Saudi peace plan backed by Egypt and adopted at the Arab League 2002 summit.
When he visited Mubarak at Sharm el-Sheikh on Oct. 23, Peres faced a blank wall when he offered fresh Israeli diplomatic initiatives. His appeal for help in releasing the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit was equally snubbed. The Egyptian leader made it clear that patching up the quarrel among warring Palestinian factions was his sole concern, and so Peres came away from the encounter empty-handed.
Barak has also found it convenient to forget that Israel agreed last June to an informal six-month truce with Hamas after Cairo pledged every possible effort to obtain the soldiers quick release. Since then, the Egyptians have not lifted a finger.
Family members and friends of the Bali bombers are trying to get a final visit with the three men before their executions are carried out.
After driving from his home village overnight, Ali Fauzy, the younger brother of bombers Mukhlas and Amrozi, prayed at the main mosque in the town of Cilacap this morning. Asked if he still held hope his brother could escape the firing squad, Ali Fauzi said: "No, my mother has asked me to come here to bring back her son's bodies."
Personally I'd toss them into unmarked graves, or well out to sea for the sharks, rather than let their funerals become a rallying point.
Lawyers now want authorities to grant them permission to witness the executions.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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#6
I always thought the best death sentence for Islamoterrorists would be to drown them in liquid lard (pig fat)then wrap them in chains and drop them in the Marianna's Trench.
Frankly, it outta be a law that if you have the death penalty carried out on you that your body is NOT given to the family.
Damascus and Baghdad are discussing ways to ease the tension between the two neighbors in the wake of last week's raid inside Syria by Iraq-based US forces, the Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. The ministry said in a statement that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem telephoned his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshyar Zebari.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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The global blacklisting system for financiers of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups is at risk of collapse, undermined by legal challenges and waning political support in many countries, according to counterterrorism officials in Europe and the United States.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/03/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Also, they all been concentrating on funding Lightbringer's election campaign.
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.
The American military is handing over control of projects in the troubled province ahead of a US-Iraqi security pact that could reduce the US footprint next year. 
