Free Republic

The Bashar al-Assad rule in Syria has come under heavy fire from people who believe that the regime must quit over its atrocities. But any attempt by the US-led West to impose a replacement will backfire soon India’s oil-rich western neighbourhood, extending from the Arabian Sea to the Bosporus, is engulfed in conflicts arising from sectarian and civilisational rivalries, aggravated by the meddling of external powers. With an arsenal of over 100 nuclear weapons, Pakistan is today witnessing a period of internal strife, largely arising from the pernicious role of its military establishment and tensions across its disputed borders with...

SNIPPET: "Indonesian anti-terror police, Densus 88 secure a terror suspect's house during a raid in Mojosongo, Solo in Central Java. Indonesian police have arrested 11 members of an Islamic group allegedly planning attacks on American diplomatic missions, a spokesman says." SNIPPET: "The group had planned to hit the US embassy and a US consulate, as well as a building near the Australian embassy in the capital Jakarta that houses the office of American mining giant Freeport-McMoran, police said. Police said they were from a new outfit called HASMI, the Sunni Movement for Indonesian Society, and explosives and a bomb-making manual...

A Bahraini court has sentenced a man to two years in prison for making insulting comments about one of the Prophet Mohammad's wives... Aisha, a revered figure for Sunni Muslims, in comments online. "The accused entered a website and made comments that were so morally filthy and depraved that the tongue could not pronounce them, and they slandered Aisha ... Underlying tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Muslim countries are often ignited by such issues concerning figures from early Islam and the different interpretations of Sunnis and Shi'ites over the historical events of that period. Such slander cases have become...

Last week's publicized defection of the Tlass family marked a potential turning point for Syria's al Assad regime. The Tlass family formed the main pillar of Sunni support for the minority Alawite regime. The patriarch of the family, former Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, had a strategic, brotherly bond with late Syrian President Hafez al Assad. cut But blood still runs thick in clan politics, and as Sunni blood was spilling into Syria's streets in the current uprising, the Tlass family likely felt growing pressure to side with its fellow Sunnis. Perhaps more critical, the Tlass family assessed it was time...

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...