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It took just two weeks for the International Criminal Court to begin investigating Gaddafi, his sons and commanders over allegations their security forces had attacked peaceful demonstrators. More than six weeks into Syria's unrest, Assad's security forces are gunning down their own people in their hundreds and the west still has not moved beyond words of condemnation. Last month the ICC prosecutor said he was examining claims 300 civilians had been killed in Tripoli, 257 in Benghazi and 124 in Zawiya. There are now reliable reports of around 400 civilians being killed by Syrian security forces. And yet so far...

Bourguiba Square in Tunis, Tahrir Square in Cairo, Azadi Square in Tehran -- and now Pearl Square in Manama, capital of Bahrain. For the last four days, thousands of protesters, encouraged by other popular uprisings in the Middle East, have been demonstrating against what they call "the despotic rule of minority over majority." On Monday, police killed two protesters and injured 11 others. At least 50 were arrested. The sudden explosion has surprised many observers. Bahrain, the smallest of the 21 Arab states, is often deemed a success story -- the only Persian Gulf Arab state to have made its...

The WikiLeaks dump of State Depart ment cables confirmed what practi cally every foreign-policy analyst not named Stephen Walt already knew: that Israel is hardly the only Middle Eastern country worried about Iran's nuclear ambitions. From Cairo to Riyadh to Abu Dhabi, Sunni Arab leaders have repeatedly singled out Iran as the greatest threat to regional stability -- in private. But they refuse to speak out publicly, telling US diplomats that they'd face a tremendous domestic blowback if they were seen as siding with the West against a Muslim country. Yet this is a dilemma of their own making. Even...

... Petraeus attributed this turning point [in stabilizing Iraq] to the increased numbers of coalition and Iraqi forces, part of the surge declared by President George W. Bush in January 2007, but he gave equal credit to the predominantly Sunni popular movement known as the Sons of Iraq (SOI). ... What motivated these Sunni tribesmen to sign loyalty oaths to fight for an Iraqi government with whom they had only recently battled viciously? What were U.S. officers thinking when they provided military training and money for arms and equipment to men who, more often than not, had been their enemies...

Members of United States-allied Awakening Councils have quit or been dismissed from their positions in significant numbers in recent months, prey to an intensive recruitment campaign by the Sunni insurgency, according to government officials, current and former members of the Awakening and insurgents. Although there are no firm figures, security and political officials say hundreds of the well-disciplined fighters — many of whom have gained extensive knowledge about the American military — appear to have rejoined Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Beyond that, officials say that even many of the Awakening fighters still on the Iraqi government payroll, possibly thousands of...

The Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah has expanded operations in Iraq. Officials said Hizbullah Brigades have been operating in several areas of Baghdad. They said the group's campaign was meant to exploit tension between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Officials said Iran has increased support to Hizbullah in an effort to undermine the Iraqi government and security forces in the wake of elections on March 7. They said the elections have raised tension between Shi'ite factions, particularly the ruling party led by Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and his rival, former Prime Minister Iyad Alawi. Al Maliki has demanded a recount of the vote. "There...

The war against Iranian supported, Shia tribesmen, in northern Yemen, continues. Many of the key rebels have retreated to their fortified villages in the mountains. The Yemeni air force is bombing these villages, and the Shia rebels are complaining about civilian casualties. That's usually a sign that they are losing, and striving to make their use of human shields as effective as possible. The Saudi Air Force is heavily patrolling, and bombing the Yemen border region, hitting rebels (and non-hostile smugglers) caught crossing the semi-desert frontier region. Yemen has had its differences with Saudi Arabia in the past, particularly over...

Saudi Arabian troops and aircraft are now enforcing a ten kilometer deep "kill zone" on the Yemen side of their Yemen border. This is the first combat operation for Saudi forces since 1991 (during the liberation of Kuwait.) This is in support of a four month war between rebel Shia tribesmen and the Yemeni armed forces. Since November 5th, Saudi fighter bombers have flown over a hundred sorties against rebel targets just across the border. Hundreds of smart bombs and missiles have been used. Saudi artillery has fired hundreds of shells at the rebels, and Saudi helicopters and infantry now...

FBI agents hoping to break up an alleged interstate crime ring dealing in arson, fraud and possibly stolen vehicles, ended up in a gunfight at a Detroit-area warehouse, after which a suspect lay dead. The FBI sought to arrest Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a.k.a. Christopher Thomas, 53, who a criminal complaint said was the imam of a radical fundamentalist Sunni group called Masjid Al-Haqq that seeks to establish a sovereign Islamic state inside the United States... Abdullah and 10 others were charged today in a criminal complaint with conspiracy and theft of interstate shipments, mail fraud to obtain the proceeds of...

Sufis, Iranian police clash in holy city: report Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - IranMania.com LONDON, February 14 (IranMania) - Clashes broke out Monday between members of the Sufi sect and Iranian police in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Qom, the semi-official Fars news agency and websites reported. Fars said some 50 Sufis demonstrated against the closure of their place of worship in Qom. "There was some violence," it said, without elaborating. The website Baztab, which is close to the conservative camp in Iran, said the security forces used tear gas to break up the protest after local authorities decided...

A member of an extremist Sunni group has confessed to the 2006 rape and murder of prominent Iraqi TV reporter Atwar Bahjat, whose brutal death at the height of the sectarian violence shocked even battle-scarred Iraqis. The confession was made in a videotape broadcast at a press conference today. Suspect Yasser al-Takhi described how he and three others abducted and killed Bahjat and her two-man crew, Adnan Abdullah and Khaled Mohsen, in the central Iraqi town of Samarra. His two brothers also confessed to killing Abdullah and Mohsen. Bahjat, who worked for the Arabiya TV network, had gone to Samarra...

Not that it’s important enough for mainstream media to highlight, but that elusive thing known as Iraqi political reconciliation (remember when its absence was a sign of the apocalypse?) may be upon us:

Dennis Ross, Special Advisor on Iran for the Secretary of State, has a book coming out next month that inconveniently takes issue with the Obama Administration’s thesis of “linkage.” “Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East,” Ross writes in a chapter titled “The Mother of All Myths,” “one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away.” Meanwhile, the Obama Administration – which Ross currently works for – is pressuring Israel in part because...

TRIPOLI // Abu Ahmad looks around his deserted machine shop in the impoverished Tripoli neighbourhood of Beb al Tibani and blames last summer’s sectarian violence between the Sunni and Allawite sects for the poor business. “A year later and we have seen our business fall almost 90 per cent because of the fighting last summer,” he said. “We see those incidents as a mistake and so do many of the Allawite up the mountain, for they lost their jobs as well.” Abu Ahmad admits that he is no innocent victim of last year’s fighting, which killed dozens of people in...

BAGHDAD (AFP) – Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on all Iraqis on Saturday to unite aboard what he called a "love boat" in a stirring appeal for reconciliation in the war-torn nation. "The security in Iraq has settled down at a level that allowed the leaders of the tribes to come from everywhere," Maliki told a conference of Sunni and Shiite tribal figures in the capital. "National reconciliation has become a principle that we depend on ... I invite everyone to stay in the boat of national reconciliation, the boat of fraternity, love, justice and equality that will lead us...

The Strongest Tribe is, quite simply, the best one-volume treatment of the Iraq War we have — and it's the best we are likely to get. West, a retired Marine infantry officer and former assistant secretary of Defense under President Reagan, has written several highly regarded accounts of military history, Not the least of which is The Village, a book widely regarded as the classic on the Vietnamese counterinsurgency. But while West is a clear thinker and a compelling narrator, what puts him above other authors is that he's still a Marine grunt at heart. West remains a legend among...

The bizarre story behind the construction of Boston's most controversial building

BAGHDAD – Iraq's largest Sunni party said Saturday that it has suspended official contacts with American military personnel and civilians after the killing of a man near Fallujah. The Iraqi Islamic Party accused the raid of having a "hidden political motive" in an indication of rising tensions in Anbar province ahead of provincial elections, due to be held by the end of January. The U.S. military said U.S.-backed Iraqi soldiers arrested a wanted insurgent leader suspected of training roadside bomb cells in an operation Friday that killed an armed man who opened fire on the troops. The IIP alleged that...

As violence in Iraq recedes, neighboring states are pondering how to deal with an unwieldy country that could re-emerge as a key player along with Saudi Arabia and Iran in one of the world's most strategic regions. The role of regional power broker may seem far-fetched for Iraq _ a devastated land best known for car bombs, death squads and suicide attackers. Still, countries of the Middle East cannot ignore the potential role of a resurgent Iraq, a nation of 28 million people, bordering Iran to the east, Syria and Jordan to the west and sitting on one of the...

Democracy: Lawmakers in Iraq reached a crucial milestone this week by approving provincial elections. This is more evidence for the "reconciliation" that Barack Obama claims not to see.Good news is no news these days, especially when it comes from Iraq. So you might have missed the story about the political breakthrough in the Iraqi parliament, which approved legislation to hold a new round of provincial elections early next year. The bill — which awaits approval by a three-person presidential council — is important because it sets up the first provincial vote in four years and because the voting promises to...

Police in Iraq say at least one person has been killed in a truck bomb attack on the home of a Sunni tribal leader known for opposing al-Qaeda extremists. The attack in al-Qaiyara, south of Mosul, left about 20 people injured, including the presumed target, Sheikh Abdul Razaq al-Waqaa. Several houses were destroyed in the powerful blast. In other violence blamed on Sunni militants, at least six were killed in the eastern province of Diyala. The dead included a member of a US-backed Sunni militia who was manning a checkpoint. Troops launched an offensive to re-establish control over the Diyala...

Iran, Friend of the Sunni Terrorists (Surprise!) [Michael Ledeen] I guess I've been saying and writing this for more than seven years, but it's always nice to have support, especially when, as in this case, it comes from the general manager of al Arabiya TV, and a columnist in several publications in the Middle East. That is to say, not a neocon. Abdul Rahman al-Rashed states quite categorically: ...Iran, an extremist theocratic Shiite regime with Ahmadinejad at its helm, is orchestrating and funding the activities of extremist Sunnis in the region. The paradox is most striking in the case of...

For two and a half days, Hussein al-Haj Obaid lay on the floor of a darkened warehouse in west Beirut, blindfolded and terrified. Militiamen loyal to Hezbollah had kidnapped him at a checkpoint after killing his nephew right in front of him. Throughout those awful days, as his kidnappers kicked and punched him, applied electrical shocks to his genitals.... ******************* Those feelings are being echoed throughout Lebanon. After almost a week of street battles that left scores dead and threatened to push the country into open war, long-simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions here have sharply worsened, in an ominous echo of the...

Al-Qaeda has reportedly called on its operatives to go to Lebanon and defend what it called the Sunni community of the country. The report came while some Arab media outlets described the current clashes in Lebanon as a fight between Sunni and Shia communities. In an interviews with Sunni clerics with links to Saad Hariri's pro-government bloc, Al-Arabiya TV network described the ongoing clashes as a sectarian strife. Sheikh Ali al-Jozo, Mufti of the Jebel region, who is well known for his harsh stance against Hezbollah told the TV network that the clashes are a battle between Lebanon's Shia and...

A crackdown on leading clerics and politicians from Kuwait's Shiite minority has stoked sectarian tensions in the oil-rich Gulf state, raising questions about its aim and timing, analysts say. Claims that Shiite activists who took part in a controversial rally in February are seeking to topple the regime "amount to a sectarian campaign by the security agencies ... against prominent figures of the Shiite community," a group of leading Shiite clerics said in a statement. "If you're a Shiite in Kuwait, you have to swear five times a day after each prayer that you hate Iran and love Israel" in...

Was Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King on the mark last week when he asserted Islamic terrorists would rejoice if Sen. Barack Obama becomes the next U.S. president? As a journalist and author who has conducted dozens of on-the-record interviews with Muslim terrorists, including with some of the most notorious Palestinian terror leaders, and who has documented many of those interviews in a recently released, 210-page book, "Schmoozing with Terrorists," I can answer the above question with a resounding "yes." Terrorists worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election victory not so much because of the senator's middle name –...

I had to look up the word "conniption." I wasn't sure how to spell it, but I'm sure that the likes of Code Pink, MoveOn, and other far left anti-war groups had a collective conniption fit last week. One of their poster boys, John Murtha, quit toeing their line. Surely what followed were the same fits of rage I've seen them have before. In September at a Washington D.C. rally as Senator Joe Lieberman began to address a group of pro-mission vets and Gold Star Families, several members of the anti-war groups charged toward the stage with seemingly unrestricted fury,...

Question: If success in Iraq isn't reported, does that mean it's not news? Last month saw the trickle of positive news from Iraq turn into a flood. Our troops, our allies and the people of Iraq are winning the war against fanatical jihadists murderers. By any measure. But curiously, the American media, the same media that gave 24/7 coverage of Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and the "quagmire" in Iraq, has suddenly gone silent. Here's a sampling of the astonishing good news out of Iraq in just this last week. News our American media either overlooked or relegated to a couple paragraphs...

BAGHDAD, Nov 27 (KUNA) -- Leading Shiite cleric in Iraq Ali Sistani Tuesday banned the killing of Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, and urged the Shiites to protect their brother Sunnis. Sistani bans the Iraqi blood in general the blood of Sunnis in particular. His announcement came during a meeting with a delegation from Sunni clerics from southern and northern Iraq. The clerics are visiting Najaf to participate in the first national conference for Ulemaa of Shiites and Sunnis. Sistani called on the Shiites to protect their Sunni brothers, according to Sheikh Khaled Al-Mulla, head of the authority of Ulemaa of...

Nearly 6,000 Sunni Arab residents joined a security pact with American forces Wednesday in what U.S. officers described as a critical step in plugging the remaining escape routes for extremists flushed from former strongholds.The new alliance — called the single largest single volunteer mobilization since the war began — covers the "last gateway" for groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq seeking new havens in northern Iraq, U.S. military officials said.U.S. commanders have tried to build a ring around insurgents who fled military offensives launched earlier this year in the western Anbar province and later into Baghdad and surrounding areas. In...

Egypt: Activists Detained for Advocating for Shi`a Minority Human Rights Watch (press release) - Oct 6, 2007 The two men were arrested after also criticizing the prevalence of torture in Egyptian prisons. The charges equate defending Shi`ism with an attack on Islam ...http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/10/06/egypt17042.htm

As the Maliki government continues its slow pace towards legislative reform, the US has increased its efforts to bring reconciliation to Iraq, and has met with some quiet but significant success. Evolving from the surge strategy and counterinsurgency tactics of General David Petraeus, the Sunnis and Shi'ites have begun reaching out to each other as the violence continues to ebb: Aboard the 70-mile flight from Baghdad to Ramadi was a top Pentagon envoy and a leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite political party. They were paying a visit to Sunni sheiks who have joined the U.S. battle against extremists. The meeting...

KALSU, Iraq – The government of Musayyib hosted a celebration of security and economic growth at the city’s police station Oct. 8. In a move to help reduce sectarian violence in North Babil, leaders from the predominately Shia city of Musayyib came together with sheiks and representatives of the largely Sunni region of Jurf As Sukhr to share their optimism for the growth and development of the entire area. With Sunni extremists influence such from the north and west, and rogue Shia militias from the south, the region surrounding Musayyib and Jurf has been a sectarian fault line for years....

President Bush has endorsed General David Petraeus's recommendation to begin withdrawing 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by next summer. Yet the drawdown would only restore troop levels to where they were before the surge began in January 2007. In the final months of 2006, debate in Washington centered on how fast a reduction from pre-surge levels could occur. The Iraq Study Group recommended that approximately half of the 130,000 troops then in Iraq be withdrawn by early 2008. In marked contrast to that and similar proposals, President Bush is now endorsing a step that would mean a return to the...

History, as Marx famously said (by way of paraphrasing Hegel), repeats itself -- "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." A catchy concept, to say the least. And while there's definitely something to it, it's also true that sometimes history does not repeat itself. Take American wars in Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam and Iraq. President Bush, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, recently made a case -- a flawed case -- for a kind of core continuity linking these disparate conflicts. It's not that he didn't admit there are many differences among them ("There are many differences" among...

The tempting thought that it is now safe to begin withdrawing from Iraq is being dangled in front of the American people this summer. Maybe if the United States and our allies pull out, or pull over, or pull to the side, the Shiite and Sunni moderates — facing destruction — will summon the ability to defeat al-Qaida and Iran's Shiite surrogates and go on to construct a solid peace. It is more likely, however, that bloodshed of historic proportions will flow. Not hundreds of deaths a week, as now, but hundreds of thousands in a few months, and the...

From observing the Middle East for some 40 years, I can say without equivocation that no one is better than the Arabs at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It happened in 1973 when nothing separated Syria's superior armor capability from the heart of Israel but one Israeli tank. The Syrians halted their armored charge into the Jewish state because commanders believed it must be a trap. It was simply too good to be true. That heroic Israel tank commander bought enough time for air and tank reinforcements, and Israel was able to repel the Syrian invasion. It happened...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, Iraq: Iraq's top Sunni religious leader died Sunday after suffering heart attack in his hometown of Tikrit, a local official said. Sheik Jamal al-Din Abdul Karim al-Dabban, 68, was the mufti, or religious authority, for Iraq's Sunni Arab minority. He died around 6 a.m. in his home, said Ahmed Khalifa, the spokesman for Tirkit's governor. ~ snip ~

BAGHDAD - U.S. troops battled al-Qaida in west Baghdad on Thursday after Sunni residents challenged the militants and called for American help to end furious gunfire that kept students from final exams and forced people in the neighborhood to huddle indoors. Backed by helicopter gunships, American forces joined the two-day battle in the Amariyah district, according to a councilman and other residents of the Sunni district. The fight reflects a trend that U.S. and Iraqi officials have been trumpeting recently to the west in Anbar province, once considered the headquarters of the Sunni insurgency. Many Sunni tribes in the province...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday. The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon's Joint Staff. "Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back," Barbero said. The general said...

Terrified that sectarian Muslim bloodshed could soon engulf the region, U.S. allies and adversaries in the Middle East have stepped up joint efforts to head off a religious civil war. Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran have held intensive talks in recent days on ways to tamp down sectarian violence in Iraq and Lebanon. Over the weekend, Saudi King Abdullah issued an unusual public call for calm. Top Islamic clerics and scholars in Egypt, Qatar and Iraq also have issued statements urging Muslim unity, often blaming the United States and other outside actors of trying to divide the faithful....

Top News Story Arabs see no choice but to prep for war Amir Taheri, The New York Post reported that the Arabs are increasingly worried because Iran's new leadership under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refuses even to consider their concerns over its nuclear ambitions. During the 2005 presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad described the GCC states as "gas stations, not countries."Adnkronos International reported that there is widespread fear among Persian Gulf nations over Iran’s nuclear program in light of the fact that Iran is considered a highly seismic country and thus prone to devastating earthquakes.   What exploded in Central Iran? Fars...

A 75-year-old chief from Iraq's powerful Tamim tribe was thrown to his death from the top of a Baghdad building after gunmen kidnapped him from a funeral, a relative said today. Sheik Hamed Mohammed Suhail, a Sunni leader in a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite tribe, was seized from the funeral in Agarguff area near Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of Baghdad on Monday. "He was dragged from the funeral and taken to Shuala area in Baghdad and then thrown from the top of a building,'' his nephew, tribal leader Sheik Ali Suhail al-Tamimi, said, blaming Shi'ite militants. Shuala is...

Senator Lieberman showed the country his courage and his wisdom last year. He showed the cowards, the political opportunists and the know-nothings in the Democratic Party that there are a few people of principle who understand what was at stake in Iraq in 2003 and is even more at stake today.

Rogue TV tells Sunnis 'to eat Shias for lunch' By Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad and Colin Freeman, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:14am GMT 10/12/2006 Sporting an olive green Ba'ath Party uniform and a bushy moustache, the newsreader barks his bulletins between blasts of patriotic Saddam-era martial music. Presenters on satellite TV channel Al Zahraa call on Sunnis to act before Shias can kill them With his gleeful boasts about Iraqi insurgent strikes on US troops, his demeanour is reminiscent of "Comical Ali", the former information minister who famously boasted of victory as American tanks rolled into Baghdad. For coalition commanders...

Associated Press The slain terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi purportedly believed that Iraq's Shiite Muslims were more dangerous than U.S. forces and more evil than dictator Saddam Hussein, according to a posthumous interview published Friday on the Internet. The 33-page interview, conducted sometime before a U.S. fighter bomber killed the former al-Qaida in Iraq leader in June, could not be immediately authenticated. It was posted on a Web site known to be a clearing-house for al-Qaida material. The posting, which comes amid ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq, said the interview had been kept in al-Qaida's archive but did not explain...

CAIRO, Egypt - Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash. Saudi government officials deny that any money from their country is being sent to Iraqis fighting the government and the U.S.-led coalition. But the U.S. Iraq Study Group report said Saudis are a source of funding for Sunni Arab insurgents. Several truck drivers interviewed by The Associated Press described carrying boxes of cash from Saudi Arabia...

Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash. Saudi government officials deny that any money from their country is being sent to Iraqis fighting the government and the U.S.-led coalition. But the U.S. Iraq Study Group report said Saudis are a source of funding for Sunni Arab insurgents. Several truck drivers interviewed by The Associated Press described carrying boxes of cash from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, money...

CAIRO, Egypt - Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash. Saudi government officials deny that any money from their country is being sent to Iraqis fighting the government and the U.S.-led coalition. But the U.S. Iraq Study Group report said Saudis are a source of funding for Sunni Arab insurgents. Several truck drivers interviewed by The Associated Press described carrying boxes of cash from Saudi Arabia...

Next week, the Baker-Hamilton Commission will make its recommendations on U.S. Iraq policy, and Congress will begin hearings on defense secretary nominee and Cold War realist Robert Gates. Both events will reflect the failings of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq. But even as a grudging acceptance of reality takes hold in Washington, the architects of the war are urging that we double down on the losing bet in Iraq. Amid spiraling sectarian violence, the leading advocates of invading Iraq seem now to have centered on an explanation for how their idea has driven that country to blood-soaked disaster: deposing...