Irandaily | No. 4415 | Middle East

Font Size

News Cut

Move Panel

UAE Arrests Muslim Brotherhood Members

More than 10 active members of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood arrested in the UAE.
UAE authorities have uncovered an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood cell and arrested its members who were active in the country, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Citing unnamed sources, the daily Al Khaleej reported,”more than 10 people have been arrested” describing them as “the leadership” of the Egyptian Islamist group in the UAE.
The sources told the newspaper that the cell’s activities were being monitored and investigated for years.
“The investigation confirmed that (the suspects) ran the group’s activities on the UAE soil with a defined organizational structure. The members held secret meetings in different areas of the UAE through their so-called ‘administrative offices’ and were recruiting Egyptians residing in the UAE to join the [Muslim Brotherhood] group,” the sources told Al Khaleej.
The members of the cell, the sources added, had established commercial firms to support their activities in the UAE and were illegally channeling significant amounts to the mother group in Egypt.
They said that the investigations revealed that the leaders and members of the group “were involved in collecting confidential military information about the UAE military.”
“The investigation also revealed strong ties between this group and the leaders of the secret organization”, in reference to dozens of UAE Islamists, affiliated with the banned Al Islah Society, who are currently in detention and under investigation on charges of jeopardizing national security.
“There was a regular coordination between the two groups and they held secret meetings. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood group in the UAE also conducted training sessions for the [UAE members currently in detention] on holding elections and means to overthrow regimes in the Arab states,” the sources explained.
They added that the investigation is expected to uncover “serious plots against the national security of the UAE,” stressing that the list may include “hundreds” of names involved in the Muslim Brotherhood network. “Some of those names have already been put on the list of travel ban [and they] will be summoned for questioning.”

West Bank Vehicle Torched In ‘Price Tag’ Attack

Suspected Jewish extremists have torched a vehicle in a West Bank village and scrawled racist graffiti on a nearby wall, Palestinians and Israelis said Tuesday.
The pickup truck was totally destroyed, and a tractor belonging to the same owner was damaged by flames in the incident at Beit Ummar village, north of the city Al-Khalil.
The slogans “Price tag,” “A good Arab is a dead Arab” and “Today in property, tomorrow -- lives” as well as “Revenge from Yitzhar” were spray-painted on a nearby wall.
Yitzhar is a West Bank settlement known for its hardline residents and frequent confrontations with Palestinian neighbors.
Price tag is a euphemism for revenge hate crimes by Israeli extremists.
Initially carried out in retaliation for Israeli moves to dismantle unauthorized settler outposts, the attacks tend to target Palestinian property. The perpetrators are rarely caught.
Police said on Tuesday they had launched an investigation into the Beit Ummar incident. An army spokesman said it “considered the incident severe”.
In the northern West Bank, meanwhile, Palestinians from Qusra and settlers from the nearby Esh Kodesh outpost threw stones at each other on Tuesday.
Palestinian security sources said about 20 settlers arrived at Qusra and threw stones at the residents’ homes. They left after the villagers confronted them.
Residents said the same stone-throwers also damaged dozens of their olive trees. Confrontations broke out again, before the army stepped in to disperse them.
The Esh Kodesh settlers said they had attempted to block Palestinians from ploughing fields to which both sides claim ownership, and that border police intervened to halt clashes.
The army had informed the settlers the Palestinians would be allowed to plough fields adjacent to Esh Kodesh for three days, prompting the residents to “block them with their bodies,” they said in a statement.
“This is not the first instance of (Palestinians) taking over land,” said the statement. “This is a preparation for a third Intifada, and the security forces better prepare well for it.”

Attacks Down But Iraq In ‘Low-Level War’

Violence in Iraq dropped in 2012, data released Tuesday showed, but insurgents proved they were still capable of mounting waves of attacks and a watchdog warned the country was still in a “low-level war”.
The warnings, which come after the first full year since American forces completed their withdrawal in December 2011, were punctuated by a series of nationwide shootings and bombings on New Year’s Eve in which 28 people were killed and nearly 100 wounded, AFP reported.
The latest violence came just days ahead of a major Shiite commemoration ceremony, and after more than a week of non-stop anti-government rallies in Sunni-majority areas where demonstrators allege targeting of their community by Iraq’s Shiite-led authorities.
A total of 144 people were killed across Iraq last month, including 40 policemen and 15 soldiers, and 360 others were wounded, according to figures compiled by AFP based on reports from security and medical officials. The monthly death toll was near 2012’s low of 136 set in October.
And data released by Iraq’s ministries of health, interior and defense said 2,174 people were killed throughout last year, sharply lower than in previous years, particularly compared to the height of the country’s brutal sectarian war from 2005 to 2008 when tens of thousands were killed.
But Britain-based monitor group Iraq Body Count put the overall death toll at 4,471, more than double the official figures, though the last three months of 2012 represented a record low.
It warned in its annual report that “the country remains in a state of low-level war ... with a ‘background’ level of everyday armed violence punctuated by occasional larger-scale attacks designed to kill many people at once.”
“2012 has been more consistent with an entrenched conflict than with any transformation in the security situation for Iraqis in the first year since the formal withdrawal of US troops,” it said.
US troops withdrew in December 2011, though a small contingent of around 150 soldiers remains as part of a bilateral agreement to help train and supply Iraq’s security forces.
Baghdad’s police and military are widely agreed to be largely able to maintain internal security, but are not expected to be fully capable of defending Iraq’s borders, airspace and waters until 2020.
In a sign insurgents were still capable of carrying out deadly nationwide attacks, a series of shootings and bombings in the north, centre, and south of the country killed 28 people and wounded 96 others on Monday. No group immediately claimed responsibility, but Sunni militants such as Al-Qaeda’s front group in Iraq regularly carry out attacks to destabilize the government and re-ignite communal conflict.
Much of Monday’s violence targeted Shiite pilgrims, ahead of Arbaeen commemoration ceremonies due this week.
In the deadliest single attack, seven people – three women, two children and two men -- were killed when three houses were blown up in the town of Mussayib, south of Baghdad, police and a medic said. Four others were wounded. The victims were apparently targeted because they were Shiites, the officials said.
Attacks on pilgrims embarking on the traditional walk to the holy shrine city of Karbala for Arbaeen commemorations also killed one person and wounded 19 others.
Arbaeen, which this year falls on Thursday, marks 40 days after the Ashura anniversary commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, one of Shiite Islam’s most revered figures, by the armies of the caliph Yazid in 680 AD.
The violence comes after anti-government protesters blocked a key highway to Syria and Jordan, amid political tensions between Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and a secular Sunni-backed party in his fragile national unity government.

Saudi Arabia Could be Next

By Robert Fisk

Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honorable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveler to the Persian Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...”
So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the title of George Antonius’ seminal work of 1938) will continue, the demand for dignity and freedom – let us not get trammeled up here with “democracy” – will go on ravaging the pseudo-stability of the Middle East, causing as much fear in Washington as it does in the palaces of the Persian Gulf.
On the epic scale of history, that much is certain. At the incendiary core of this discontent will be the claims of a Palestinian state that does not exist and may never exist and the actions of an Israeli state which – through its constant building of colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab land – ensures that “Palestine” will remain only an Arab dream. If 2012 is anything to go by, the Palestinians themselves face the coming year with the knowledge that: 1) Neither the Americans nor the Europeans have the guts to help them, because 2) Israel will continue to act with impunity, and 3) Neither the Obamas nor the Camerons nor the Hollandes have the slightest interest in taking on the Likudist lobby, which will scream “anti-Semitism” the moment the minutest criticism is made against Israel.
Add to this the fact that Mahmoud Abbas and his utterly discredited regime in Ramallah will go on making concessions to the Israelis – if you do not believe me, read Clayton Swisher’s The Palestine Papers – even when there are no more concessions to make. Hamas and Khaled Meshaal will go on denying Israel’s right to exist – thus allowing Israel to falsely claim that it has “no one to talk to” – until the next Gaza war and the subsequent cowardly request from the West which will “urge restraint on both sides”, as if the Palestinians possess Merkava tanks, F-18s and drones. A third Intifada? Maybe. An approach to the International Court to condemn Israel for war crimes in building Jewish colonies on other people’s land? Perhaps. But so what? The Palestinians won an international court case which condemned the building of Israel’s apartheid/security wall – and absolutely nothing happened. That’s the fate of the Palestinians. They’re told by the likes of Tom Friedman to abandon violence and adopt the tactics of Gandhi; then when they do, they still lose, and Friedman remains silent. It was, after all, Gandhi who said that Western civilization “would be a good idea”.
So bad news for Palestine in 2013. Iran? Well, the Iranians understand the West much better than we understand the Iranians – a lot of them, remember, were educated in the United States. And they’ve an intriguing way of coming out on top whatever they do. George Bush (and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara) invaded Afghanistan and rid the Shia Iranians of their Sunni enemy, whom they always called the “Black Taliban”. Then Bush-Blair invaded Iraq and got rid of the Islamic Republic’s most loathsome enemy, Saddam Hussein. Thus did Iran win both the Afghan and the Iraqi war – without firing a shot.
There’s no doubt that Iran would fire a shot or two if Israel/America – the two are interchangeable in Iran as in many other Middle East countries – were to attack its nuclear facilities. But Israel has no stomach for an all-out war against Iran – it would lose – and the US, having lost two Middle East wars, has no enthusiasm for losing a third. And why is America threatening Iran in the first place? It didn’t threaten India when it went nuclear. And when that most unstable and extremist state called Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons, no US threat was made to bomb its facilities. True, we’ve heard that more recently – in case the nukes “fell into the wrong hands”, as in gas which might “fall into the wrong hands” in Syria; or in Gaza, for that matter, where democracy “fell into the wrong hands” the moment Hamas won elections there in 2006.
Now that Obama has entered his drone-happy second presidency, we’re going to hear more about those wonderful unpiloted bombers which have been ripping up bad guys and civilians for more than four years. One day, one of these machines – though they fly in packs of seven or eight – will hit too many civilians or, even worse, will contrive to kill westerners or NGOs. Then Obama will be apologizing – though without the tears he expended over Newtown, Connecticut. And here’s a thought for this year. The gun lobby in the States tells us that “it’s not guns that kill – it’s people”. But apply that to drone attacks on Pakistan or Israeli bombardments of Gaza and the rubric changes. It’s the guns/bombs/rockets that kill because the Americans don’t mean to kill civilians and the Israelis don’t wish to kill civilians. It’s just “collateral damage” again, though that’s not an excuse you can provide for Hamas rockets.
So what’s left for 2013? Assad, of course. He’s already trying to win back some rebel forces to his own ruthless side – an intelligent though dangerous tactic – and the West is getting up to its knees in rebel cruelty. Yes, Assad will go. One day. He says as much. But don’t expect it to happen in the immediate future. Or Gaddafi-style. The old mantra still applies. Egypt was not Tunisia and Yemen was not Egypt and Libya was not Yemen and Syria is not Libya.
Iraq? Its own latent civil war will go on grinding up the bones of civil society while we largely ignore its agony; there are days now when more Iraqis are killed than Syrians, though you wouldn’t know it from the nightly news.
And the Persian Gulf? Arabia, where the first Arab awakening began? Where, indeed, the first Arab revolution – the advent of Islam – burst forth upon the world. There are those who say that the Persian Gulf kingdoms will remain secure for years to come. Don’t count on it. Watch Saudi Arabia. Remember what that British diplomat wrote 130 years ago. “Even in Mecca...”

In this paper
All the papers