Wednesday, September 7, 2016

How bodyguard of Prabha’s daughter surfaced in Malaysia

2016-09-07

The appearance of the Tiger woman soldier in Malaysia who was in charge of the security of Dwaraka, Velupillai Prabhakaran's daughter during the end of the war in Vellamulliwaikkal was a surprise to the Tamil community living in Malaysia as well. It was a mystery at that time how, after Dwaraka died, she went to Malaysia. There are a large number of Tamil Tiger leaders who surrendered to the Army and later went abroad, subsequent to Prabhakaran being destroyed on information received from Karuna Amman.

The media, then, had reported that these persons had paid large sums of money and fled to foreign countries. Many of them fled to Malaysia. There are also a large number of Tiger leaders who went to Europe from Malaysia later. KP came to Malaysia to meet the Tamil Tiger leaders who fled to Malaysia from the North. There, KP was taken into custody. However, the leaders who fled to Malaysia are still among the living. When you consider the protests that targeted Mahinda Rajapaksa recently during his visit to Malaysia, the power of the Tiger leaders who live in Malaysia is quite apparent.

However, it is a dilemma has to how the Rajapaksa Government which managed to capture KP could not halt the fleeing of Tiger leaders who surrendered to the Army. At that time although it was said that Tiger leaders fled the Army camps with the assistance of Karuna Amman, recently Minister of Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera said that the then top officials of the Ministry of Defence helped Tiger leaders to flee from Army custody. This is not a statement that can be considered of insignificant value. Mangala said that the Tiger leaders had paid large sums of money to the top officials of the Ministry of Defence.

Karuna Amman

Mangala is someone who has connections with the Tamil Tiger Diaspora as well as the Global Tamil Forum in London. Therefore, there is more of a chance that such information could fall into the hands of Mangala. The Rajapaksa Government did not take a census regarding the Tiger leaders who died in the war. The name of the leader of the LTTE spy service Pottu Amman was included in the list of names of Interpol for a long time after the war ended because the government had not taken a census in connection with the LTTE leaders who died in the war.

Karuna Amman knows very well about the LTTE leadership structure prior to 2004. KP has a lot of information about the LTTE leader structure after 2004. Similarly, the LTTE leaders who handed themselves over to the Army would have made confessions about it. If the Rajapaksa Government had taken into consideration all this data and at that time itself taken a census of those who died in the war, they would have been able to find out information on the Tiger leaders who had thus fled the country. They did not engage in such a thing. Although the bodies of Prabhakaran, his two sons and those of several LTTE leaders were discovered by the Army, the Army obtained information on the fate of many other leaders of the LTTE through the LTTE leaders who were taken into custody by the Army.

It is not difficult to confirm whether this information is correct and to create a final picture of the fate that befell the structure of the LTTE leadership. However, the government did not do that either. The government possesses only a story, about Pottu Amman as well. That is that, once Pottu's son was shot and killed, he became mentally unstable, unable to bear the sorrow of that incident and that later he committed suicide. There is a story also that as the LTTE did not want his body to be taken by the Army, Prabhakaran burnt it. A LTTE leader who surrendered to the Army had stated that, Pottu Amman who was shot during the war had fled to the jungle and because of the way he was limping due to the injury to his leg he thought that Pottu Amman would have died. It is not possible to believe that Pottu Amman could have fled. However, his secret spy network was in operation across the entire country. They did not live in the North-East but in Southern areas including Colombo. No one knows how many of them were taken into custody by the Army or how many fled abroad and how many are still living in Sri Lanka even as of today.m

Anti-Muslim sentiment foils Sri Lanka’s bid to tap into global halal market

BY MUNZA MUSHTAQ on SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 in ASIA TIMES NEWS & FEATURES, SOUTH ASIA

COLOMBO – Sri Lanka is unable to take advantage of the ever expanding trillion dollar global halal market because of its failure to address the anti-Muslim and anti-halal sentiments being spread by racial Buddhist groups.

First, the Muslim community in the island nation is suffering discrimination, according to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

Second, although Sri Lanka wants to tap into the $2.3 trillion worth halal market along with other Asian countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and South Korea, hard-core Buddhist groups like the Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force) are running a campaign against the move.

Fearing a backlash, some companies who were eyeing the halal market have suspended their plans.

“Certain manufacturers don’t want to get involved in the halal fiasco and will do without the certification,” Ali Fatharally, chief executive officer of the Halal Accreditation Council (HAC) in Sri Lanka, said to Asia Times.

HAC has given accreditation to several top export-oriented companies who want to cater to the halal market and are conscious of its great growth potential. Halal is related not just to meat and beverages but also everything from medicines to cosmetics. The industry is growing fast along with the global Muslim population.

Halal, which means ‘permissible’ in Arabic, is any object or action which is permissible to use or engage in, according to Islamic Shariah law. It is one of five Ahkam (provisions) — fard (compulsory),mustahabb (recommended), halal (allowed), makruh (disliked), and haram (forbidden) — that define the morality of human action in Islam.

Within one year after its formation, HAC had granted accreditation to at least 140 companies after a grueling process to ensure that local restaurants as well as products ranging from consumer goods to poultry are halal compliant and fit for consumption by Muslims across the world, Fatharally said.

Since 2013, especially during the rule of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka has been witnessing campaigns against Muslim women too for their traditional dress code and for following halal dietary guidelines.

Bodu Bala Sena’s (BBS) general secretary, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, a Buddhist monk, said such lifestyles are attempts by Muslims to implement Sharia in Sri Lanka which is a Buddhist country. The BBS even demanded the removal of halal logo which appeared on certain food products.

With Maithripala Sirisena being elected President and a new government led by Ranil Wickremesinghe taking over last year, there was a let-up in anti-Muslim campaigns. However in mid-June this year, BBS threatened to start riots against Muslims similar to the one they staged in 2014 in Buddhist-dominated areas of Aluthgama and Beruwela that left three people killed and scores injured and displaced.

Hilmy Ahamed, vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka (MCSL), said that although extremist monks laid low after the regime change in January last year, some groups have renewed their hate campaign against Muslims.

“Complaints made at various police stations have not been inquired into. Bodu Bala Sena’s Ven. Gnanasara made a public statement in Mahiyanganaya that he will repeat the Aluthgama destruction. Despite several complaints and video evidence, no action has been taken by the police or government machinery,” Ahamed told Asia Times.

CERD said despite the new government’s commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights in Sri Lanka, discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities, in particular against the Muslim community, is continuing.

Jose Francisco Cali Tzay, member of the CERD and Country Rapporteur for Sri Lanka, has urged the Sri Lankan Government to look into the issue.

“It is important to take lessons from the past in order to avert such incidents,” he said referring to Aluthgama and Beruwela during a discussion in Geneva.

Even though President Sirisena and the Muslim community’s representatives held talks recently, the administration has failed to tackle hate campaigns against Muslims and their beliefs.

“There is an urgent need to address these issues at the earliest,” Ahamed said.

Munza Mushtaq is a journalist based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is the former news editor of two leading Sri Lankan newspapers; The Nation and the Sunday Leader. She writes extensively on Sri Lankan current affairs with special focus on politics, human rights and business issues. She is currently the Colombo-based correspondent for International News Services, the Los Angeles Times and the Nikkei Asian Review.

SriLankan Airlines: Arrival At Crunch Time

By Sarath de Alwis –September 7, 2016

Sarath de Alwis

Ten expressions of interest (EOIs) have been received for SriLankan Airlines, which will be whittled down in the coming months before the Government begins official talks to enter in to a public –private partnership with an international company, a top official said, but a debt sharing agreement appears unlikely. ~ News Report Daily FT 7th September 2016

Most Air Lines lose money. The state owned beasts among them lose more. Quite apart from its accumulated losses of nearly Rupees 107 Billion there is something else that is wrong with Sri Lankan Airlines. Successive regimes have resorted to offer a seat on the Board of the National Carrier to a very special type of people. They come from the entitlement class. Those selected are the Cognoscenti drawn from the corporate world who have access to the sanctum sanctorum of, to follow the genesis in order, Ward Place, St Sebastian in Hulftsdorp, Rosmead Palce and Fifth Avenue.

There was an implicit aura of glamour associated with the particular assignment. The ability to fly to distant places after a board meeting or a game of golf is an exotic experience not to mention the fun of eating out of season fruit and washing it down with Champaign – that Charles Dickens described as elegant extras of life.

President Premadasa put his son in law on the board. President Rajapaksa made his brother in law the Chairman. President Chandrika Kumaratunga before she took the sensible decision to hand over the management to Emirates air lines, chose a family confidante who was clever and crafty to convert the pull and prestige of her mother Mrs. Sirmavo Bandaranaike among nonaligned tea drinking Arabs, in to a ‘Hotsy Totsy fortune, acquiring in the process, the reputation of a business genius.

The present ‘yaha palana’ Prime Minister seems to have followed the precedent and offered the bounty and bonanza to buddies. Its present composition is eloquent testimony.

Except for two, the son of a former secretary to a former president, and another whose allegiance is ditto to the same President, all others are Royal College buddies of the Prime Minster. They have a common denominator. They all have abiding interests, professional or private, beyond the shores of Sri Lanka. A seat on the Board of the Air Line is ‘open sesame’ to the cave of unlimited travel just as in ‘Arabian Nights.’

The Chairman of SriLankan Airlines, in a recent interview has described his board in superlative terms. He should. They share a common distinction – their knowledge of the aviation industry is as good as the knowledge of the hotel concierge on where to eat in the city- third party received wisdom.

Today, we need on the board of the Air Line, persons who are equipped to persuade possible investors why they should put their good money in to a proposition that has gone sour. We need men who can convincingly read the future. Men who will not buy the cock and bull story that we can create a global hub in Colombo to compete with the two super connectors in Dubai and Singapore which seems to have escaped the attention of the present Brahmins presiding over the National Carrier.

Creating global Aviation Hubs requires much more than platitudes an irrelevant profundities. Top ten Aviation Hubs by region as shown by OAG the authority on aviation Intelligence has its own narrative.

By AFP-7 September 2016

Sri Lanka will scrap an airline set up by the country's strongman former president and widely seen as a vanity project, with the national carrier set to take over its routes, an official said Wednesday.

Budget carrier Mihin Lanka was founded by Mahinda Rajapakse in 2007 but operated at a huge loss.

SriLankan airlines chairman Ajith Dias said the flag carrier would cover flights to all destinations serviced by the airline, which officials said had accumulated losses of $117 million.

Budget carrier Mihin Lanka was founded by Sri Lanka's former President Mahinda Rajapakse in 2007 but operated at a huge loss ©Adek Berry (AFP/File)

"By the end of the year, there will be no Mihin Lanka and we (SriLankan airlines) will be servicing the routes they operated," Dias said in Colombo at the opening of a new call centre for the national carrier.

Mihin, which operates four Airbus aircraft to several Indian cities as well as Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Seychelles, the Maldives and Bahrain, is expected to cease flying by the end of 2016.

The former president launched Mihin to compete with SriLankan airlines, which was then part-owned and managed by Dubai's Emirates airline, amid personal disagreements with the national carrier's managers.

The Emirates deal was cancelled in 2008 after SriLankan refused to bump fare-paying business-class passengers to economy and give their seats to members of Rajapakse's family, who were returning from London.

A furious Rajapakse removed the Emirates-appointed CEO of SriLankan from his post and replaced him with his brother-in-law.

SriLankan airlines has also sunk into the red since the Emirates deal ended, with an estimated debt of $3.2 billion.

Other vanity projects launched by the former president include an international airport in his constituency in the island's south. It is widely regarded as a white elephant, with only one airline using it.

An investigation is underway into a $2.3 billion deal to buy Airbus aircraft during Rajapakse's presidency over graft allegations.

The mounting debt crisis at SriLankan has forced the government to seek international partners to inject capital and manage the airline.

‘Missing‘ businessman arrested at Haldamulla

By Norman Palihawadana-September 7, 2016, 10:03 pm

Trincomalee police have arrested businessman Mohammed Nazrin, who disappeared several days ago in the port city, while hiding at Haldamulla.

His sudden disappearance allegedly with Rs. 10 million without a trace was a real poser for the police.

His family in Bandaragama reported his disappearance last Sunday that he disappeared after he had gone to Tricomalee to attend a gold auction of a Bank the following day.

A senior police officer in Trincomalee told The Island that soon after his arrest Nazrin had admitted that he had gone underground due to his inability to settle loans amounting to Rs. 20 mn.

The officer said that investigators had first detained one of the missing businessman’s assistants who accompanied him to Trincomalee over the weekend. While he was detained the assistant received calls from the missing businessman and the police finally swooped down on the house where he was hiding at Haldamulla.

Although the businessman’s family had claimed that he carried Rs 10 mn at the time he left his home at Atalugama, Bandaragama for a gold auction at a bank in Trincomalee, at the time of his arrest he had in his possession only Rs 50,000, investigators said.

JVP, TNA condemn Malaysian incident

By Skandha Gunasekara-2016-09-07

The protesters in Malaysia who carried out a demonstration, during the International Conference of... ... Asian Political Parties, against former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, did not represent the voice of the People in the North of Sri Lanka, Chief Opposition Whip Anura Kumara Dissanayake asserted in Parliament yesterday.

The JVP Leader remarked that this was clear by the way the people of the North rejected the demands of the Tamil Diaspora and refused to boycott the last election.

He added that those involved in the protest were not Sri Lankans, "If the voice of the people of the North were in concurrence with that of the Diaspora and other extremists, we would be facing a bigger problem. As such, this Parliament, as a whole, should categorically condemn this incident."
Furthermore, the Chief Opposition Whip charged that Malaysian authorities had failed to provide adequate security to those representing Sri Lanka.
"Malaysian authorities should have taken steps to provide additional security, especially since the days leading up to this incident showed clear signs of unrest."

Meanwhile, Leader of the TNA, R Samapanthan too condemned the attack on the Lankan High Commissioner to Malaysia.
"I too condemn this dastardly act. We should demand maximum action against those responsible. Our country is on the path to reconciliation. We should not let these incidents harm the process of reconciliation."

SL High Commissioner and assistant get thrashed in Malaysia when trying to bootlick and pamper corrupt brutal MR !

(Lanka-e-News- 05.Sep.2016, 7.30PM) Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Malaysia , Ibrahim Ansar had been a victim of an assault launched yesterday (04) by a group of Tamil protestors living in that country. He is now being medically treated. His assistant Majintha Jayasinghe too who was with him was also attacked but not to the extent to necessitate medical treatment.

The attack has been launched in the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur Airport when they were returning after sending off a group of Sri Lankan ministers and MPs. The attackers had been lying in wait from morning until the arrival of Mahinda Rajapakse.

Notorious Kurunegala district M.P. Mahinda Rajapakse in order to boycott the 65 th convention of the SLFP left for Malaysia on the 1 st of September supposedly to attend a conference of Asian political parties. The Tamil Diaspora living there had been angered over the arrival of Mahinda Rajapakse. These groups which were staging their protests at various places had vented their venom and anger on the High Commissioner because the latter gave a dinner to the corrupt ,cruel and despotic Mahinda Rajapakse .

These protests were staged when Ansar arrived at the Airport this morning to pick up minister Rishard Badurdeen who was arriving in Malaysia . Though the protestors were there the Malaysian security divisions had not been informed. Meanwhile , during noon, again Minister Daya Gamage and his wife ,minister Ms. Anoma Gamage ,opposition M.P. Dinesh Gunawardena , his son (recently married) , and daughter in law provincial council member Samanmali Sakalasuriya who were on a tour of Malaysia were taken to the Airport . While returning after dropping them , Ansar and Majintha have fallen victim to the attack of the protestors.

The protestors have thought it was Mahinda Rajapakse who was dropped .No matter what, Ansar failing to inform the Malaysian security divisions despite being aware of the impending protests is a serious lapse on the part of Ansar – he had invited trouble voluntarily !

It is worthy of note that Ansar and Majintha were two low bred stooges of MaRa in the foreign ministry during the Rajapakse regime. They were the henchmen of Sajin Vaas Gunawardena the notorious crook . After acquiring two super luxury buses for the foreign ministry , these two stooges gave these buses for the pleasure trips of Mahinda Rajapakse and his family. With the advent of the new government this came to light . It was Majintha who was primarily responsible for this. Even though these two scoundrels should be in prison for their criminal activities , the government of good governance did not take action against them on the assumption that it would be interpreted as revenge .

A Sri Lankan in Malaysia speaking to Lanka e news said , what the pro good governance masses of SL should do , was done by the pro good governance Malaysians.

In the social media tremendous opposition was mounted against the photographs taken with Mahinda Rajapakse during the dinner yesterday night hosted at the official residence of Ansar . The photographs depicted Anoma Gamage couple who are ministers of the consensual government posing with Mahinda at the dinner party of Ansar.

It is well to recall , during the nefarious decade of the Rajapakses , it was Mahinda Rajapakse who requisitioned a sugar factory worth about Rs. 120 million belonging to Daya Gamage without paying any compensation. Minister Daya Gamage speaking to Lanka e news in connection with the photograph said, Mahinda Rajapakse is a politico who comes running and hugs when he sees a photograph is going to be taken in order to include himself in it ,and this photograph was taken in such a situation. As the dinner was meant for the businessmen who had arrived in Malaysia to attend a conference for businessmen , and since Daya Gamage too was invited , he attended it, he added.

In any event the foreign ministry in SL has in a communiqué issued by it has roundly condemned the attack . It stated as follows,

Attack on Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in Malaysia

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirms reports that Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to Malaysia had been assaulted by a group of persons at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport today, 4 September 2016.

The Government of Sri Lanka condemns this act of violence on Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in Malaysia, in the strongest terms.

The High Commissioner is receiving medical attention.

The High Commission of Sri Lanka in Kuala Lumpur is coordinating with local law enforcement authorities in Malaysia and other relevant local authorities to identify perpetrators and assist with investigations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sri Lanka is seized of the seriousness of this incident and is taking all necessary action in this regard through diplomatic channels.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka
Colombo

---------------------------
by (2016-09-05 14:17:13)

Sri Lankan couple accused of keeping a slave for eight years

September 8, 2016

A couple have been charged after allegedly keeping a woman as a slave in their home for eight years.

Kumuthini Kannan, 48, and Kandasamy Kannan, 52, from Sri Lanka, have been charged with one count of possessing a slave and one count of exercising ownership over a slave.

They allegedly kept a woman in their home in the Melbourne suburb of Mount Waverley between July 2007 and July 2015.

Defence lawyer Sam Norton said the crime ‘simply didn’t happen’ when the pair appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

‘The complainant went from saying there’s no crime to, “I’ve been held as a slave”,’ Mr Norton told the court.

‘We have a situation where her version shifts 180-degrees.’

The court heard the woman - who cannot be named for legal reasons - had a meeting with Australian Federal Police on September 24 last year, and also spoke with Border Protection officers.

She had been ‘polite but guarded’ prior to the September 24 meeting, the court heard.

She attended Box Hill Hospital on September 23, 24 and 29 and is currently in Australia on a justice visa.

A social worker will give evidence at a committal hearing next year.

‘Her health is improving,’ the prosecutor told the court.

Mr Norton said the accused deny the allegations the woman was kept as a slave.

The two co-accused will face a committal hearing on May 8 next year and are not in custody.

The maximum penalty for a slavery offence is 25 years’ imprisonment. -Agencies

Source: Daily Mail Australia

Girl getting assaulted goes viral

By Cassandra Doole-2016-09-07

A video of a young girl being grievously assaulted by the attendees at the SLFP's 65th Convention in Kurunegala, who had seen her spitting on a beggar, has gone viral on social media raising the ire of web crawlers everywhere.

Our sources said the girl had allegedly spat at a beggar near the Maligapitiya Grounds in Kurunegala, rousing the anger of onlookers at the convention who had beaten her and a male accomplice, when they responded aggressively to the crowd's censures.

The video shows Police officers intervening and dispersing the crowd. However, our source said he had not yet heard of any official complaint being made against the offending duo to the Kurunegala Police.

The incident had occurred Sunday evening on the perimeter of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party Convention.

Why Israel’s actions can be called genocide

Nora Barrows-Friedman-6 September 2016

Israel lobby groups recently reacted with outrage against the Movement for Black Lives policy platform which refers to US complicity in Israel’s “genocide” and “apartheid” against the Palestinian people.

The president of the liberal Zionist organization J Street condemned the use of the term genocide as “outrageously incorrect and deeply offensive.”

Other pro-Israel Jewish organizations claimed that using the term to describe Israel’s policies is “anti-Semitic” and libelous. By contrast, Jewish Voice for Peace offered an unqualified endorsement of the Movement for Black Lives platform.

Despite the outrage of many pro-Israel groups, there is a long history of human rights scholarship and legal analysis that supports the assertion Israel is committing genocide, according to a statement from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“Genocide can be applied to the destruction of a people or a national group as a viable group, and that can be both with their being driven from a land or the rendering of their language no longer legal, or just the destruction of their national identity,” Katherine Franke, board chair at CCR, told The Electronic Intifada.

Palestinians have claimed “that what the state of Israel has done is try to deny the very existence or presence of Palestinians in the area that was mandate Palestine before 1947,” she added.

“Nothing new”

Franke, a professor at Columbia University Law School, authored the statement in response to the “enormous, ugly backlash” against the Movement for Black Lives, which represents more than 50 Black organizations.

“As human rights lawyers, [we felt] it might be appropriate to just clarify the record that this was nothing new – that the term genocide had been applied by human rights activists, lawyers, scholars both inside law and inside other disciplines for many, many years,” she said.

Franke dismissed the claims by Israel lobby groups that using such terms to describe Israel’s policies against Palestinians is a form of anti-Jewish bigotry.

“Even the suggestion that the state of Israel may be committing a human rights violation is almost always taken in a somewhat reactionary way as a form of anti-Semitism,” she remarked.

“And of course, a criticism of a state is not the same thing as a criticism of an ethnic or religious group.”

Israel’s systematic targeting of Palestinians since 1947 has been referred to as “incremental genocide” – a termused by historian Ilan Pappe and echoed by Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer and CCR’s former president, who died earlier this year.

“It’s been going on for a long time, the killings, the incredibly awful conditions of life,” Ratner said during Israel’s assault on Gaza in July 2014, referring to the expulsions of Palestinians from hundreds of towns and villages starting in 1947.

“It’s correct and important to label it for what it is,” he added. Ratner asserted that such crimes can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Franke told The Electronic Intifada that Palestinians “are pursuing a number of avenues” through the ICC to raise international legal violations that Israel has committed against them.

For example, the ICC has been conducting preliminary examinations of possible war crimes Israel committed during the summer of 2014 in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

However, charges of genocide have not been brought to the court yet, Franke said.

Listen to the interview with Katherine Franke via the media player above. Photo by Anne Paq/ActiveStills.

You can subscribe to The Electronic Intifada podcast on iTunes (search for The Electronic Intifada). Support our iTunes podcast by rating us and leaving a review.

A No-Fly Zone Doesn’t Mean a No-War Zone

And the politicians and pundits calling for one in Syria ought to remember how toothless and ineffective the U.S. air patrols were — for 12 long years — in Iraq.

BY MICAH ZENKO-SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

Amid all the horrific imagery of Syrian civilians killed by indiscriminate Syrian and Russian airpower, U.S. politicians and policy analysts are again calling for a deeper military involvement in Syria’s civil war. The appeals have centered around one unilateral military tactic: a no-fly zone (NFZ) to be imposed over certain portions of Syria to prevent certain aircraft from flying there. I have researched and written about NFZs for 15 years, and analyzed some of the proposals that have been made forSyria, and I won’t rehearse all of my conclusions here.

I do, however, want to make readers aware of some of the complexities and trade-offs inherent in no-fly zones by re-evaluating two events involving the northern Iraqi NFZ that was imposed above the 36th parallel between April 1991 and March 2003. The Iraqi northern NFZ is particularly relevant as Syria intervention proponents routinely mention it (though never the southern Iraqi NFZ imposed below the 33rd parallel) to bolster their argument for a NFZ over portions of Syria. The shorthand recollection of the dozen-year operation is that the George H. W. Bush administration imposed a NFZ “to protect the Kurds.”

proponents never discuss. On Feb. 15, 1991, long before the first NFZ was ever enforced, President George H.W. Bush repeatedly called — via a message beamed into every Iraqi media outlet — upon “the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Leaflets were dropped upon Iraqi soldiers and civilians rallying them to “fill the streets and alleys and bring down Saddam Hussein and his aides.”

Kurdish rebels soon revolted against Iraqi troops and Baath Party officials, detaining whom they could and massacring resisters. Using helicopters, artillery, and armored ground forces, Saddam’s Republican Guards brutally counterattacked the uprising, killing 20,000 Kurds and displacing hundreds of thousands more. Despite having 500,000 U.S. troops and immense military capabilities in-theater, Bush did nothing to assist the Kurdish uprising he had called for, even refusing to provide Kurds with captured Iraqi Army military equipment — much of which was sent to the Mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan. On April 15, 1991, coalition pilots began flying patrols above the 36th parallel to protect U.S. forces and aid workers providing humanitarian assistance to displaced Kurds. Having incentivized the Kurds to take up arms, Bush turned his back on them, committing later to protect them from just one form of regime lethality.

The second important and rarely remembered event involving the northern Iraqi NFZ actually occurred 20 years ago this week. In 1995 and 1996, State Department officials struggled to broker a cease-fire between Iraq’s two main Kurdish political parties — the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In August 1996, the “tenuous peace” unraveled over disagreements about their division of oil smuggling revenues; the PUK turned to Iran for weapons, logistics, and military advisors, while the KDP appealed to Saddam to intervene on their behalf.

Saddam marshaled two Republican Guard divisions and three regular army divisions of some 40,000 troops, 300 tanks, and 300 artillery pieces. Starting Aug. 20, these Iraqi ground forces (with no Iraqi Air Force support) swept over the 36th parallel into Kurdish Iraq, despite repeated demands by the United States that Saddam pull back, or else “it would be a serious mistake.” The Iraqi divisions began shelling and advancing on the Kurdish capital of Erbil, killing combatants and civilians, while U.S. aircraft enforcing the NFZ circled overhead.

Though the U.S. ground attack aircraft could have easily bombed the Iraqi ground forces — having perfected “tank plinking” five years earlier — the Clinton administration chose to do nothing to protect the people of Erbil and several other Kurdish towns under attack. This was partially because the White House did not want to get involved in what it perceived as a PUK/KDP dispute, but also because the governments of Turkey and Saudi Arabia would not permit U.S. planes flying from its sovereign territory to attack Saddam’s ground forces. Instead of protecting the Kurds, the Clinton administration used Saddam’s offensive into northern Iraq to expand the southern NFZ and launch 44 cruise missiles against Saddam’s integrated air defense system.

What lessons should we take from the actual history of the Iraqi northern NFZ? First, presidents should not call for armed revolutions that the United States will abandon if things turn out badly. External powers should not attempt to steer civil war battlefield outcomes with strategic guidance, funding, or weapons without acknowledging that they are also morally responsible for what happens to those combatants that external powers enable. That would have been a valuable lesson in 1991, and it remains so 25 years later.

Second, protecting civilian populations from one form of lethality — in this case, airpower — may incentivize governments to attack adversaries with other combat arms, like artillery, armor, and infantry. This was certainly the case with Saddam’s brutal counterinsurgency in the early 1990s against Shiite insurgents and civilians in southern Iraq, which again occurred on the ground as U.S. pilots enforcing the NFZ circled overhead. As has been noted repeatedly, a NFZ cannot effectively counter ground-based lethality.

Third, every NFZ that the United States has imposed — whether in Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, or Libya — was expanded to support military and political objectives that had nothing to do with how they were initially justified. Even as early as August 1992, officials in the Bush administration were touting the Iraqi northern and southern NFZs as being intended “to deny him [Saddam] the attribute of sovereignty,” and musing hopefully: “How long do you think he could last within just four parallels?” So even if a U.S.-imposed NFZ over any part of Syria would better enable rebel forces to implement regime change, the United States could not deny that it would be directly responsible for the outcome as well as the aftermath.

Photo credit: MPI/Getty Images

'Demagogues and cheats': UN rights chief condemns Trump and Wilders

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein delivers scathing rebuke, saying he fears ‘colossal violence’ if populists continue peddling ‘half-truths, manipulations and fear’

'Atmosphere thick with hate': UN human rights chief rips into Trump and Wilders – video

Agence France-Presse-Tuesday 6 September 2016

The UN human rights chief has launched a scathing attack on populist politicians including Donald Trump and the Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, calling for action to halt “demagogues and political fantasists”.

Speaking in The Hague, Zeid Raad al-Hussein said he was a Muslim whose role was “to defend and promote the human rights of each individual, everywhere”.

“And I am angry too. Because of Mr Wilders’s lies and half-truths, manipulations and peddling of fear,” Zeid told the inauguration of the Peace, Justice and Security Foundation in The Hague.

Zeid said he worked as a peacekeeper in the Balkans for 20 years and the cruelty the saw during the conflict “flowed from this same factory of deceit, bigotry and ethnic nationalism”.

In August Wilders’s Freedom party (PVV) launched its campaign platform ahead of March elections vowing to “close mosques, Islamic schools and ban the Qur’an” if elected. Zeid called the document “grotesque”.

The PVV, which has been leading in opinion polls, also vowed to reverse the “Islamisation” of the Netherlands by closing borders, shutting asylum-seeker centres, banning immigrants from Muslim countries and stopping Muslim women wearing headscarves.

Zeid strongly criticised the PVV’s proposals and said Wilders had much in common with the US Republican presidential hopeful Trump, Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban, the French National Front leader Marine Le Pen and the leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage.

He said they had similarities to the ideology espoused by the Islamic State group.

“All seek in varying degrees to recover a past, halcyon and so pure in form, where sunlit fields are settled by peoples united by ethnicity or religion,” Zeid told prominent members of the justice community.

“A past that most certainly, in reality, did not exist anywhere, ever.”

Promises to recover such a past were “fiction; its merchants are cheats. Clever cheats,” he said, accusing populist leaders of using “half-truths and oversimplification” to feed the fears of “anxious” individuals.

It was a simple formula “to make your target audience feel good by offering up what is a fantasy to them, but a horrendous injustice to others”.

“I do not equate the actions of nationalist demagogues with those of Daesh, which are monstrous and sickening,” Zeid said, using another name for Isis.

But the jihadists’ methods of communication were “similar tactics to those of the populists”, with both groups benefiting from the other to survive, he said.

“We must pull back from this trajectory,” Zeid warned, adding that there was a risk “the atmosphere will become thick with hate” which could “descend rapidly into colossal violence”.

Urging people to speak out and “draw the line”, he asked: “Are we going to continue to stand by and watch this banalisation of bigotry?”

Reacting to Zeid’s speech, Wilders in a text message to AFP said the Jordanian prince was “an utter fool”.

“Another good reason to get rid of the UN,” said the populist politician, calling again for the world to “de-Islamise”.

“Islam and freedom are incompatible whatever this Jordanian bureaucrat says,” Wilders said.

Top Saudi cleric says Iran leaders not Muslims as haj row mounts

File Photo: Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh prays at the Grand Mosque in Riyadh February 6, 2008. REUTERS/Ali Jarekji/Files

By Dahlia Nehme | MECCA-Wed Sep 7, 2016

Saudi Arabia's top religious authority said Iran's leaders were not Muslims, drawing a rebuke from Tehran in an unusually harsh exchange between the regional rivals over the running of the annual haj pilgrimage.

The war of words on the eve of the mass pilgrimage will deepen a long-running rift between the Sunni kingdom and the Shi'ite revolutionary power. They back opposing sides in Syria's civil war and a list of other conflicts across the Middle East.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message published on Monday, criticised Saudi Arabia over how it runs the haj after a crush last year killed hundreds of pilgrims. He said Saudi authorities had "murdered" some of them, describing Saudi rulers as godless and irreligious.

Responding to a question by Saudi newspaper Makkah, Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh said he was not surprised at Khamenei's comments.

"We have to understand that they are not Muslims ... Their main enemies are the followers of Sunnah (Sunnis)," Al al-Sheikh was quoted as saying, remarks republished by the Arab News.

He described Iranian leaders as sons of "magus", a reference to Zoroastrianism, the dominant belief in Persia until the Muslim Arab invasion of the region that is now Iran 13 centuries ago.

Khamenei met with the families of Iranians killed in last year's disaster on Wednesday and called for a fact-finding committee to investigate the cause of the crush.

"The evil family tree of the Saudi dynasty does not have the competence to manage the holy shrines," Khamenei said.

"BIGOTRY"

Al al-Sheikh's remarks drew an acerbic retort from Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who said they were evidence of bigotry among Saudi leaders.

"Indeed; no resemblance between Islam of Iranians & most Muslims & bigoted extremism that Wahhabi top cleric & Saudi terror masters preach," Zarif wrote on his Twitter account.

Saudi authorities normally seek to avoid public discussion of whether Shi'ites are Muslims, but implicitly recognise them as such by welcoming them to the haj, and by accepting Iranian visits to the Saudi-based Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Tensions between the two countries have been rising since Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in January following the storming of its embassy in Tehran, itself a response to the Saudi execution of dissident Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

Speaking near Mecca's Great Mosque and clad in the traditional white robe of a pilgrim, Moussa Abdi, a member of Algeria's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said the region must work to repair its ideological and political rifts.

"We are not alone in this world, and we face other political conflicts. We have to unite ... We have to get over these differences which aim at creating rifts within the Islamic world," Moussa told Reuters.

Custodian of Islam's most revered places in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia stakes its reputation on organising haj, one of the five pillars of Islam which every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to is obliged to undertake at least once.

Riyadh said 769 pilgrims were killed in the 2015 disaster, the highest haj death toll since a crush in 1990. Counts of fatalities by countries who repatriated bodies showed that more than 2,000 people may have died, more than 400 of them Iranians.

Iran blamed the 2015 disaster on organisers' incompetence. This year pilgrims from Iran will be unable to attend haj, which officially starts on Sept. 11, after talks between the two countries on arrangements broke down in May.

(Reporting by William Maclean, Sami Aboudi, Noah Browning and Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Gareth Jones)