Customs destroy seized bird nests destined for soup

by Amal Jayasinghe-October 18, 2016

AFP Oct 18 :

Custom officers on Tuesday destroyed 45 kilos of rare bird nests considered a delicacy in China and have a street value of nearly half a million dollars.

The officers burnt the pile of swallow nests recovered from passengers at the BIA and parcels intended for overseas delivery over the past four years.

"We destroyed this stock to demonstrate our commitment to protect endangered species," customs spokesman Dharmasena Kahandawa told AFP. 

"There may be a street value of up to $10,000 for a kilo of birds’ nests, but for us it has no value at all because this is an illegal trade."

Another 40 kilograms of feathers from exotic birds and other animal parts used in Chinese medicine were also destroyed on Tuesday, together with the edible nests, at a Colombo cemetery’s crematorium.

The nests are the main ingredient in bird’s nest soup, considered a delicacy in China and other Asian countries. But removing, owning or exporting birds is outlawed under Sri Lanka’s strict flora and fauna regulations. 

The cup-shaped collections of twigs are held together by dried swiftlet saliva, which is made into a gelatinous soup credited in China with everything from alleviating asthma to arresting the ageing process.

In January Sri Lankan customs officers publicly destroyed the country’s biggest ever illegal ivory haul — more than 350 tusks weighing about 1.5 tons — in what officials said was an attempt to show poachers that the island would not tolerate the illegal trade.(AFP)

Sri Lanka In US – Tel Aviv – New Delhi Axis

By Latheef Farook –October 18, 2016

Latheef Farook

Sri Lanka’s abstention from voting on UNESCO resolution on Israeli atrocities on Masjid Al Aqsa: Insults island’s Muslims and Muslims worldwide

On Thursday 13 October 2016 Sri Lanka, once a strong defender of brutalised Palestinian rights, abstained from voting on UNESCO resolution which deprecated Israeli violations in and around the al-Haram al-Sharif, Masjid Al Aqsa, compound in the occupied Old City of Jerusalem al-Quds.

This shocking U Turn in the island’s once proud and respected neutral foreign policy, insults the island’s Muslims and around 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide who always stood by the island especially during times of adversity though successive governments and the mainstream media failed to recognise or appreciate.

Sri Lanka’s abstention in favour of Israeli atrocities demonstrated the bankruptcy of the crisis ridden Yahapalanaya government’s short sighted foreign policy of blindly aligning with US and thereby being indifferent to all US led European Israeli war crimes on Muslims worldwide.

What was further shocking is that in its drive to please US and Israel, the government has dismissed the Muslim community’s unstinted support which played a decisive role in bringing UNP government to power after losing more than two dozen elections.

In its resolution UNESCO, (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has strongly condemned “the escalating Israeli aggression, its illegal measures and called on “Israel, the occupying power, to respect the historic status quo and to immediately stop these measures.”

The resolution also criticized the “continuous storming of Haram al-Sharif by the Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces. “The resolution ignored Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, used only Muslim names for the Jerusalem Old City holy sites and was harshly critical of Israel for what it termed “provocative abuses that violate the sanctity and integrity” of the area.

The resolution starts by affirming the “importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions,” but then goes on to accuse Israel — which it consistently calls “the occupying power” — of a long list of wrongdoings. The text “firmly deplores the continuous storming” of the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram AL Sharif — Muslim names for the Temple Mount compound and the mosque located there — “by Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces.”

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Adhil Bakeer Markar’s death not suspicious: Scotland Yard

Oct 18, 2016

The Scotland Yard is treating the death of Adhil Bakeer Markar, son of Imthiaz Bakeer Markar, as unexplained but not suspicious, the London Evening Standard reported.

Adhil, a member of one of Sri Lanka’s most prominent political families was found dead in his room at a London university shortly after going to bed complaining of a fever.

Friends who became worried when Adhil Bakeer Markar failed to answer phone calls battered down the door of his London School of Economics dorm to find him lying unconscious. They tried to resuscitate him but he was pronounced dead at the scene from a suspected heart attack.

Scotland Yard is treating the death, just before 1pm last Wednesday, as unexplained but not suspicious.

Mr Bakeer Marker, 25, had been tipped as a future head of his nation. He was studying for masters in politics after winning a prestigious Chevening scholarship, designed to give future leaders from around the Commonwealth the chance to study in Britain.

Adhil’s brother said he sent a message to relatives saying he had a slight fever.

Azam said: “He sent a message to his niece saying he had a slight fever, but he will be ok, god willing, and asked if she was having fun with the new cousin. My other brother’s wife had just given birth the day before.”
In his final Facebook post last week he said he had achieved his childhood dream of playing cricket at Lord’s, in trials for the university team.

Dr Rayes Musthafa, a paediatrician and family friend, said he was at work in the Harley Street Clinic when he was asked to check on Mr Bakeer Markar by concerned relatives.

He found the popular student’s friends and a lecturer in the room at Sidney Webb Halls in Great Dover Street, Southwark.

He said: “I saw his body on the floor. His roommates had put him on the ground to perform CPR but it had failed. It was very shocking to everyone. Nobody expects a 25-year-old to die as suddenly as that.

“He had earlier complained of a slight fever and said he was going to take paracetamol. It wasn’t a big thing, his death was so sudden. I broke the news to his family on speakerphone from his room, they are devastated. Nobody knows how he died but they think it’s a heart attack.”

Mr Musthafa said he had been “very active and dynamic. He wasn’t a politician yet but was growing into one, many spoke of him as a future leader of Sri Lanka. He was humble, down-to-earth. He had posted a message to his family’s WhatsApp group asking to come home, it was his last message”.

In 2013, Mr Bakeer Markar — whose late grandfather was speaker of parliament — delivered a passionate speech at the UN urging the island’s youth to build bridges between their communities and “heal the scars” of civil war.

LSE’s government department has set up a blog page where friends can leave memories and messages of sympathy. Youth charity IVolunteer and the LSE Islamic Society, which the student had been active in, paid tribute to him.

Damith Senanyake, a former classmate in Colombo, wrote: “It is a tragedy that we lost this great man so soon.”

- http://www.dailymirror.lk -

Health OR Wealth ? Changing tunes on the Glyphosate ban

The banned chemical Glyphosate made headlines recently as Minister of Plantation Industries Navin Dissanayake ruffled a few feathers addressing the Annual General Meeting of the Planters’ Association of Ceylon held last month. The Minister said the government was likely to allow importing 800,000 litres of the banned weed killer Glyphosate essential for tea plantations over the next few months. “I am sure, maybe in two or three months I can have a formula in place” the Minister was quoted as saying.   

2016-10-19

The Minister had also noted that discussions with the Head of State was underway to negotiate the import of Glyphosate for the ailing tea industry, which would however be in violation of President Maithripala Sirisena’s plans for a toxin-free nation.   

Health OR Wealth Changing tunes on the Glyphosate ban.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Victims of Israeli attack on Gaza flotilla fear legal case will be dropped

Concern legal process being ‘politically hijacked’ after deal to restore diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey

 The Turkish ship Mavi Marmara leaving Sarayburnu port in Istanbul in May 2010. Photograph: Reuters

Harriet Sherwood-Tuesday 18 October 2016

A landmark case due to be heard by the high court in Istanbul over alleged crimes committed by Israel during the 2010 aid flotilla to Gaza could be dropped as a result of a bilateral agreement signed in June.

The Turkish court is expected to hold a hearing on Wednesday aimed at holding four Israeli generals to account for the alleged assault and unlawful detention of more than 700 activists. They were aboard a fleet of boats attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza in May 2010. The case against the generals is due to be heard in absentia.

However, the activists fear the judge will dismiss the case following a deal reached between Israel and Turkey in the summer to restore diplomatic relations, which broke off following the violent interception of the flotilla.

Under the deal, Israel agreed to make an ex gratia payment of $20m (£16m) toTurkey to compensate the families of 10 activists who were killed by Israeli forces aboard the flotilla’s lead ship, the Mavi Marmara.

The agreement specified that the two countries “do not attribute legal or other liability to the other side or its agents, and agree that this understanding will not be construed as an admittance of or the placing of criminal or civil liability on any side or its agents”.

The deal constituted “full release from any liability of Israel, its agents and citizens with respect to any and all claims, civil or criminal, that have been or will be filed against them in Turkey, direct or indirect, by the Republic of Turkey or Turkish real and legal persons, in relation to the flotilla incident”.

Israeli forces stormed the Mavi Marmara and five other ships in May 2010 to prevent them reaching Gaza, killing 10 people and injuring many more. The incident triggered international condemnation and a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel.

The flotilla had set sail from Turkey, and nine of the 10 dead activists were Turkish. Its cargo included medical supplies, construction materials and paper for Gaza schools. Israel warned it would prevent the ships breaking its blockade on Gaza.

A United Nations investigation later backed Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza as legal but said its military assault on the flotilla was “excessive and unreasonable”.

In the case due to be heard in Istanbul this week, 740 activists from 37 countries – including a number from the UK – are being represented. The court has heard testimony over the past 18 months, and the judge is now due to decide how to proceed.

Alexandra Lort Phillips, a British activist who testified in earlier court hearings in Istanbul, said: “The attack on the ships of the flotilla was a shocking event … The actions of Israel were illegal, plain and simple.”

She said the legal process was now at risk of being “politically hijacked”, adding: “It is deeply upsetting. The legal process should not fall victim to power politics.”

Ahsan Shamruk, another British activist, said he was shot in the head and stomach and left to die in the lethal military assault on the flotilla. “I am still suffering from nightmares and many sleepless nights. I have permanent ear nerve damage and my eyesight has drastically deteriorated. Those responsible must be held to account for this criminal act.”

The deal between Israel and Turkey was not enforceable as a matter of international law and under the European convention on human rights, said Rodney Dixon, a British QC who is part of the survivors’ legal team.

“It would be unlawful for the Turkish court to terminate the criminal case and deprive the victims of justice and their ‘day in court’ on account of an ‘agreement’ made by two states,” he said.

“The victims and the families of the deceased were not consulted nor involved at all in these dealings that directly impinge on their fundamental rights.”

Last week, an Israeli government minister visited Turkey for the first time since 2010 in a sign of restored diplomatic relations.

The anguish and anger on Gaza’s walls

“Besieged Childhood,” a mural co-created by Belal Khaled, on a Gaza City tower.Abed Zagout

Belal Khaled-Abed Zagout--Belal Khaled at work on the “Besieged Childhood” mural in November 2015.Mohammed TalateneAPA images

Sarah Algherbawi-18 October 2016

Twenty meters high and 15 meters wide, the mural on a wall of a 12-floor building in Gaza City is unmissable.

The artwork, “Besieged Childhood,” has garnered renown for its creators. It depicts a child wearing a keffiyehscarf, a melancholy expression on her face, her hands wrapped around two bars, like those of a prison cell.

Its location, on the Zafir 9 Tower in an upmarket area of Gaza City, is deliberate. During Israel’s 2014 assault, fighter jets destroyed one of Zafir 9’s sister towers, Zafir 4, in a bombing denounced as a war crime by Amnesty International.

No one was killed, though more than a dozen were injured and the homes of more than 40 families weredestroyed. More than 200 residents were left homeless in what Amnesty described as an operation with “no military justification.”

“Besieged Childhood,” painted in 2015, references this wanton destruction, said one of its four creators, Belal Khaled, 25.

“Zafir Tower bears witness to criminal Israeli acts during wars that targeted a [highly populated] residential tower. The mural is a way for us to communicate this reality to the world outside Gaza,” he explained.

Over the last decade, Gaza has been subjected to enormous destruction.

Three overwhelming Israeli military offensives and a decade-old blockade on goods and people entering and leaving, preventing any kind of recovery, have left thousands dead, tens of thousands injured and homeless, caused widespread psychological trauma and damaged infrastructure so completely that the United Nations has warned the coastal strip may be uninhabitable by 2020.

In this devastation, media coverage has had little ameliorating effect and it is no surprise that a frustrated populace is turning to other means to voice their frustration, anger and pain.

Writing on the wall

It was from a desire to convey Gaza’s suffering that the “Besieged Childhood” mural was born, and it was also a “message,” said Khaled, that artists will not be silenced.

“Gaza may be besieged, but it has artists who are capable of absorbing what is happening in Palestine and conveying this to the outside world in different, creative ways,” said Khaled.

Khaled graduated from Al-Aqsa University’s art college and lives in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza. He started out as an artist 10 years ago in photography and sculpture, but he soon moved on to calligraphy art and murals.

Graffiti is a well-worn and time-honored path for a Palestinian artist, originating in the years before the first Palestinian revolt against British rule in 1936.

Perhaps the most famous of what could be called “revolutionary graffiti” was what one Palestinian wrote on the walls of his Acre prison cell in black coal, moments before his execution by the British mandatory government in 1936:

To my brother Yusuf:
Look after our mother.
To my sister: Do not grieve.
For the homeland I sacrifice my blood,
And this for your eyes,
O Palestine.

While the identity of the prisoner is unclear, most believe the poem was written by Awad Nabulsi of Nablus. His verses later became a revolutionary song, “From Acre Prison,” which has been passed down from generation to generation.

Some of these cell-wall writings still exist, according to Emad Qassem, 61, who said he was arrested in 1978 and accused of taking part in an attack on three soldiers on patrol in Beach camp in Gaza City, where he lives.

Qassem said he spent six months in solitary confinement in Naqab prison, studying the “drawings and scribblings” of those who came before him.

“When I entered this narrow place, I sat down and studied the walls. I spent most of my time trying to understand the murals drawn by ex-prisoners.”

Some were signed and dated all the way back to British Mandate times, he said.

Qassem joined those who had come before. With stones or coal from the floor, he drew, he said, what he had in his mind. One depicted a mourning mother, one was a freedom logo, and one was a broken chain.

“Once I drew a masked man. When the prison guard saw it, he ordered me to erase it with my tongue. I refused. I was beaten until I lost consciousness.”

The practice has continued and spread. Almost every street corner in Gaza is adorned with some kind of mural or writing. Most of it is openly political, some of it factional. Much of it tells the history of the Palestinian people’s suffering.

Art is politics

During the 2014 assault on Gaza, Khaled combined news photos of Israeli airstrikes and digital tools to create his own kind of graffiti-photography. Adding drawings to photos of bombings gave him the opportunity to infuse some meaning into the destruction.

“The photos of bomb smoke were widely spread [on social media] during the war so I tried to create something unique with them. I drew a weary old man, a woman wearing the keffiyeh, a child playing, a young man raising his hands praying to God and a heart to express Gaza’s hope to live in peace,” Khaled said.

His was a response to violence that built on the examples of artists in the first intifada. It was during those years, 1987-91, that graffiti really took off as an expression of resistance.

Palestinian factions used the medium as a means to convey news, make announcements and simply for bragging rights: competition over which faction had the best artists even began to spring up.

Hassan al-Wali, 54, lives in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza City. During the first intifada, al-Wali, then with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and his friends were some of the most active graffiti artists in the coastal strip.

He remembered his favorites, some of which still adorn the walls of Gaza’s camps. There were the Palestine map drawings, the always-popular key, a reminder of the the homes left behind by refugees during the ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias 1948. He drew assassinated cartoonist Naji Ali’s famous Handala character, the logos of the factions and many more.

“We would split into groups,” al-Wali recalled. “One to paint, one to keep watch and one for protection, should the army surprise us.”

They covered their faces and moved only in the alleys of the camp. It became, he said, a dangerous task that Israeli soldiers began taking more and more seriously. If caught, it could result in death or arrest.

“The goal of each drawing was to encourage and energize people. We wanted to spark the spirit of resistance by glorifying our fallen, remembering our prisoners and spreading awareness about the injustice and our history,” al-Wali said. “It worked. At least the Israelis began spending more and more time chasing the artists and designers.”

Finally, in an effort to turn people against the artists, the Israeli army forced the occupants of the houses with graffiti to erase the paintings that had clearly “got on their nerves.”

“Wall murals, graffiti, whatever you call it — it is the art of resistance,” said al-Wali.

Khaled agreed.

“Graffiti can spark a revolution. One phrase can energize people. One drawing can move them to demand their rights.”

Sarah Algherbawi is a freelance writer and translator from Gaza.

Kashmir: ‘Pivoting’ Toward War between India and Pakistan?

This past summer witnessed yet another people’s uprising in one of the longest running military occupations in modern times: the Indian occupation of Kashmir. The callous indifference to decades-old Indian atrocities against the people of Kashmir, including well-documented incidences of torture, disappearances, ‘encounter killings,’ rapes, and outright massacres, ought to put the international community to shame. This, after all, is a ‘conflict’ – a euphemism for a military occupation – that the UN and international law has clearly adjudicated on many decades ago, but Indian recalcitrance, Pakistani fumbling, and international criminal neglect have let the blood of Kashmiris spill uninterruptedly.

by Junaid S. Ahmed

( October 17, 2016, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) What started out in June of this year as yet another outbreak of Kashmir outrage regarding the killing of a prominent Kashmiri freedom fighter very quickly became a pretext for the Indian elite to convert the issue of oppression and occupation of Kashmir into ‘cross-border’ terrorism from its arch-rival, Pakistan. It was a convenient diversion from the root of the conflict, the military occupation, to one of Pakistan up to its old tricks, sponsoring jihadi terrorists.

What enabled the Indian establishment to ratchet up its posture was a militants’ attack on its military occupation base in Kashmir, Uri, on September 18th. Without offering any evidence, blame was placed on Pakistan and for the first time (outside of the context of war) since the partition of the Indian Subcontinent into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan, the Indians publicly declared that they had violated the Line of Control – the unofficial ceasefire line – dividing Pakistani and Indian Kashmir, and had sent special forces and helicopter gunships to attack Pakistani ‘militants’ and soldiers on Sept. 28-29.

The significance of this raid by the Indian military cannot be underestimated. The near unanimity of the Indian political, military, and media establishment to demonstrate Indian military prowess vis-a-vis Pakistan is particularly disturbing and dangerous. Commentators have pointed out the particular hawkishness of the current rightwing BJP regime in regard to such bellicose posturing, but that is misleading.

THE ROLE OF WASHINGTON

But there is a larger, more dangerous geopolitical chessboard on which all of these developments are unfolding. The Indian establishment has always been frustrated by Pakistani support for groups in Kashmir and beyond. What explains the timing of such flagrant demonstration of potentially catastrophic militarism at this point?

The answer may lie in the reticence of Washington’s response to such a blatant violation of international law by India. Of course, the US and its special forces’ raids and drone strikes in Pakistan are emblematic of the same phenomenon. But this near unanimous endorsement of India’s raids in Pakistani-held Kashmir, from influential individuals associated both with the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations, indicates that the gloves are off now when it comes to targeting, humiliating, isolating, and potentially dismembering Pakistan.

In an unprecedented move, the Indian Prime Minister earlier this year said that India has to give ‘moral support’ to the Baloch insurgency. Though there is a genuine struggle for justice among the Baloch against the excesses of the Pakistani state, this Indian line is consistent with now well-documented Western think tank policy prescriptions to destabilize, undermine, and dismember Pakistan. Conspiracy theories don’t start to look so conspiratorial anymore.

What of course has infuriated the Pentagon and the CIA about Pakistan since the invasion of Afghanistan in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ is the Pakistanis’ inability to ‘do enough’ to curtail the Taliban resistance, or rather, actually, to do the opposite: give it safe havens and perhaps even support it. The Pakistani establishment, like all states, believes in hard and fast realpolitik, knows that US-NATO forces will be forced to withdraw one day and hence, Islamabad has kept it’s horse in the race (i.e., the Taliban) intact.

But that has been low-intensity conflict, if you will. Washington will occasionally launch a drone strike here, a special ops raid there (like killing Osama), or even an air strike once in a while (that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in the Pakistani base of Salala) – just to send a message to the Pakistanis, a message that of course had little effect. At some stage, the US has understood its defeat in Afghanistan as a fait accompli, and the Pakistanis are merely relied upon to facilitate NATO supply lines to allow the US to maintain the fiction that it has control over Afghanistan and its puppet regime there.

All of these crises in West Asia, whether in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan, compelled Obama to ‘pivot to Asia,’ to focus on containing the rise of the real, formidable competitor, China. While all of the ‘usual suspects’ of the Pacific nations have been mobilized in that objective, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and so on, there was one power that – if cajoled into this grand alliance – would be a huge prize. That power was India. And that is precisely why the US has entered into all sorts of geopolitical, military, security, and economic arrangements with India that allow the latter to obtain the confidence as an effective sub-imperialist hegemonic power. In short, Washington wants India to move toward being a ‘frontline’ state in American belligerence toward China, and for now, New Dehli seems to be happily playing that game.

If Pakistan was being slapped on the wrist now and then before, now the new ‘partners in crime’ – the US and India – are hell-bent on punishing Islamabad. The reason is that whereas for most of Pakistan’s history it had a close relationship with both Beijing and Washington, now it is much more the former at the expense of the latter. The $48 billion being invested by the Chinese in the Pakistan China Economic Corridor, which would give the Chinese access to the Pakistani port of Gwadar, is anathema to both Washington and Dehli. In case the US tries to blockade China in the South China Sea, Beijing – if this corridor goes through – would still have access to a port in the Indian Ocean, not to mention another formidable nuclear-armed military on its side, that of Pakistan’s.

This is the stuff that makes movies and fictional novels so thrilling. In real life, what these geopolitical developments point to is perhaps the most dangerous moment for human life since the Cuban missile crisis. Two nuclear armed countries, India and Pakistan, are on the brink of war because of Washington’s drive to contain and undermine China, embolden – to reckless levels – its newfound close ally, India, and push the rulers in Islamabad to a point where they feel isolated enough to also act and react in potentially dangerous ways.

Meanwhile, just like the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine seems to be forgotten amidst the chaos and destruction that Western interventions and machinations have created in West Asia and North Africa (WANA), so it seems that the harsh Indian occupation of Kashmir, and the thousands of Kashmiris who have suffered, is obscured by Western imperial hegemony and the way it has fueled regional conflicts and rivalries. As Noam Chomsky points out, it has been a miracle that nuclear weapons have not been used again since the US deployed them in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. That miracle may no longer be sustained if imperial hegemony and its geopolitical theatrics continue to value domination over the survival of the human race.

Junaid S. Ahmad is the Secretary-General of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Islamic State said to use human shields as coalition advances on Mosul

 The fog of war as Peshmerga forces close in on Mosul

By Ahmed Rasheed and Michael Georgy | BAGHDAD/ERBIL- Wed Oct 19, 2016

Residents of Mosul said Islamic State was using civilians as human shields as Iraqi and Kurdish forces captured outlying villages in their advance on the jihadists' stronghold.

The leader of Islamic State was reported to be among thousands of hardline militants still in the city, suggesting the group would go to great lengths to repel the coalition.

Peshmerga forces gather in the east of Mosul to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari--Iraqi security forces advance in Qayara, south of Mosul, to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq.REUTERS/Stringer

Smoke rises from clashes in the east of Mosul during clashes with Islamic State militants, Iraq. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari--Smoke rises from clashes in the east of Mosul during clashes with Islamic State militants, Iraq, October 18, 2016.REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

With attacking forces still between 20 and 50 km (12-30 miles) away, residents reached by telephone said more than 100 families had started moving from southern and eastern suburbs most exposed to the offensive to more central parts of the city.

Islamic State militants were preventing people fleeing Mosul, they said, and one said they directed some towards buildings they had recently used themselves.

“It’s quite clear Daesh (Islamic State) has started to use civilians as human shields by allowing families to stay in buildings likely to be targeted by air strikes," said Abu Mahir, who lives near the city's university.

Like other residents contacted in the city, he refused to give his full name, but Abdul Rahman Waggaa, a member of the exiled Provincial Council of Nineveh of which Mosul is the capital, corroborated his account to Reuters.

The fall of Mosul would signal the defeat of the ultra-hardline Sunni jihadists in Iraq but could also lead to land grabs and sectarian bloodletting between groups which fought one another after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told reporters that it was known that civilians were being used as human shields.

"This has been going on for several weeks where we've seen civilians being forcibly detained and their movements being prevented where they can't get out of Mosul. They are being held there against their will," he told reporters.

Davis described the operation to retake Mosul as "an ugly fight", adding: "But I will tell you we've seen very good progress. It's day one, don't get your hopes up, it's going to be a while."

Around 1.5 million people still live in Mosul and the International Organization for Migration said Islamic State may use tens of thousands of residents as human shields to hold onto their last city stronghold in Iraq.

The IOM said there was a likelihood of chemical attacks by the jihadists, who had used such weapons previously against Iraqi Kurdish forces.

DIFFICULT FIGHT

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said safe routes had been secured for civilians who wanted to leave Mosul and it was the duty of the U.S.-led coalition to prevent Islamic State fighters from escaping into nearby Syria.

The Syrian army, meanwhile, accused the coalition of planning to allow Islamic State militants to flee across the border.

U.S. President Barack Obama said it would be a difficult fight but Islamic State "will be defeated in Mosul".

Obama is hoping to bolster his legacy by seizing back as much territory as he can from Islamic State before he leaves office in January.

The Iraqi army and Peshmerga forces from autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan began moving towards the city at dawn on Monday under air cover from a U.S.-led coalition set up after Islamic State swept into Iraq from Syria in 2014.

Hoshiyar Zebari, a senior Kurdish official, said initial operations succeeded due to close cooperation between the Iraqi government and Kurdish peshmerga fighters, allowing them to clear Islamic State from 9 or 10 villages east of Mosul.

“Daesh is disoriented they don’t know whether to expect attacks from the east or west or north,” he told Reuters.

On Tuesday attacking forces entered another phase, Zebari said. “It won’t be a spectacular attack on Mosul itself. It will be very cautious. It is a high-risk operation for everybody.”

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and explosives expert Fawzi Ali Nouimeh were both in the city, according to what Zebari described as "solid" intelligence reports.

A total of 20 villages were taken from the militants east, south and southeast of Mosul by early Tuesday, according to statements from the two forces, fighting alongside one another for the first time.

SUICIDE BOMBS

Islamic State said on Monday its fighters had targeted the attacking forces with 10 suicide bombs and that their foes had surrounded five villages but not taken them. None of the reports could be independently verified.

Abadi announced the offensive on Monday around two years after Iraq's second-largest city fell to the militants, who exploited the civil war that broke out in Syria in 2011 to seize territory there.

The operation had been planned since July with U.S. and other coalition forces and Western and Iraqi officials, mindful of the civil war that followed Saddam's fall, say plans for administering the mainly Sunni city and accommodating those who flee the fighting are in place.

The United Nations has said up to a million people could flee the city and that it expected the first big wave in five or six days, indicating fighting would reach the city then.

But some residents said Islamic State was making sure people did not leave. One, who gave his name as Anwar, said he fled the Sumer district near Mosul airport, fearing ground forces and aerial bombing.

"I told Daesh fighters at a checkpoint 'I’m going to stay at my sister’s house'," he said. "A Daesh fighter made calls through his radio to make sure I was not lying and only after the voice on the other side said: 

'Let him go', did I let myself breathe."

Fighting is expected to take weeks, if not months, as 30,000 government forces, Sunni tribal fighters and Kurdish Peshmerga first encircle the city then attempt to oust between 4,000 and 8,000 Islamic State militants.

More than 5,000 U.S. soldiers are also deployed in support missions, as are troops from France, Britain, Canada and other Western nations.

The Iraqi army is attacking Mosul on the southern and southeastern fronts, while the Peshmerga carried out their operation to the east and are also deployed north and northwest.

The Kurdish forces said they secured "a significant stretch" of the 80 km (50 mile) road between Erbil, their capital, and Mosul, about an hour's drive to the west.

Coalition warplanes attacked 17 Islamic State positions in support of the Peshmerga operation in the heavily mined area, the Kurdish statement said, adding that at least four car bombs were destroyed.

There was no indication of the number of military or civilian casualties in the Iraqi or Kurdish statements.

France said it would co-host a multilateral meeting with Iraq on Oct. 20 to discuss how to stabilise Mosul and its surroundings once Islamic State has been defeated.

Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the militants were likely to retreat to their Syrian bastion Raqqa, so it was vital to consider how to retake that city too.

(Additional reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh in ERBIL, Ahmed Rasheed and Stephen Kalin in BAGHDAD, Stephanie Nebehay in GENEVA, Warren Strobel, Yara Bayoumy and Jonathan Landay in WASHINGTON; writing by Philippa Fletcher and Giles Elgood, editing by Peter Millership)

Rebels reject withdrawal from Aleppo after Russia halts bombing

Russia's 'goodwill' gesture founders as rebels refuse 'surrender' and UN says it cannot use ceasefire for humanitarian operations

Maarouf, a 12-year-old Syrian boy receives treatment at a hospital after being rescued from the rubble of a building following a reported air strike on the the rebel-held Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo on 16 October. (AFP)

Tuesday 18 October 2016

Syrian rebels said on Tuesday that they rejected any withdrawal of fighters from Aleppo after Russia announced a halt in air raids which it said was designed to allow rebels to leave and to separate moderate fighters from militants.

"The factions completely reject any exit - this is surrender," said Zakaria Malahifji, the political officer of an Aleppo-based rebel group.

The Russian and Syrian air forces halted all air strikes on Aleppo on Tuesday, bringing forward a planned pause in bombing designed to allow rebels and civilians to leave the city, the Russian defence minister said.

Al-Farouk Abu Bakr, an Aleppo commander in the powerful Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, said the rebels would fight on.

"When we took up arms at the start of the revolution to defend our abandoned people we promised God that we would not lay them down until the downfall of this criminal regime," he said, referring to President Bashar al-Assad's government.

"There are no terrorists in Aleppo," he said, speaking from the city. Rebels in eastern Aleppo have consistently said that rebel groups linked to al-Qaeda or inspired by it have no real presence in the opposition-held part of the city.

Russia is asking countries that have backed the rebels to help resolve the conflict in Syria by pressing militant fighters to leave Aleppo after Moscow ceased air strikes on rebel-held areas in a goodwill gesture, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

"Russia now expects its partners... to take the baton and assist this humanitarian operation, to make sure the bandits leave Aleppo, especially its eastern part, in order for a real process of separation of the so-called moderate opposition from terrorist groups to begin," he told a conference call with reporters.

Despite the bombing pause, the United Nations has said it cannot use the Aleppo ceasefire without security guarantees from all sides.

UN humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke said on Tuesday that the UN did not have the security guarantees it requires to carry out humanitarian operations in eastern Aleppo or evacuate sick and wounded people from the Syrian city.

"When the weapons fall silent, we need all weapons to fall silent. We need assurances from all parties to the conflict, not just a unilateral announcement that this will happen. We need everybody to give us those assurances before it is immediately useful for us to do anything meaningful," Laerke said.

"The announcement that we heard was for an eight-hour pause but on consecutive days, for more than one day," Laerke said, referring to the Russian ceasefire proposal.

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

What Rodrigo Duterte Is Giving Up

The Philippine president is determined to forge closer ties with China — but at what cost?


BY GREG RUSHFORD-OCTOBER 17, 2016

Since he took office on June 30, Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte — also known as “Duterte Harry” — has earned international notoriety for a harsh anti-drug campaign that has led to the extrajudicial killings of more than 3,600 alleged traffickers around the country. The crackdown has alarmed the European Union, the United Nations, and the United States. At one point Duterte called Barack Obama “a son of a whore,” later telling the U.S. president “to go to hell” after Washington dared to criticize the murders. Sooner or later, Duterte has vowed, he will “break up with America,” the Philippines’ longstanding treaty ally and security guarantor.

There’s one international power that doesn’t seem particularly bothered by Duterte’s excesses. “The Chinese side fully understands and firmly supports the Duterte administration’s policy that [prioritizes] the fight against drug crimes,” said Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua in a speech last month. He went on to express his satisfaction at the “friendly interactions’ between the two countries since the new president began his term, predicting that the sun “will shine beautifully on the new chapter of bilateral relations.”

In anything, the ambassador may have understated the matter. This week Duterte is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where the two are planning to sign a range of high-level bilateral agreements that will dramatically boost trade and investment between the two countries. Nor is their new friendship restricted to business. The visit comes just days after Duterte declared an end to joint Philippine-American naval patrols in the strategically sensitive waters of the South China Sea, where China has been steadily expanding its presence despite rival claims by Manila and other countries.The 65-year alliance between the U.S. and the Philippines has never looked so fragile.

So why the shift in policy? On one level, Duterte’s desire to seek friendship with the Chinese reflects a willingness to appease Beijing’s aggressive stance in the disputed waters. Chinese Coast Guard warships armed with machine guns and water cannons have harassed Philippine fishermen, preventing them from earning their livelihoods in their traditional fishing grounds in the South China Sea (90 percent of which China claims as its own). Chinese dredges have been deployed well within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, where they have destroyed irreplaceable coral reefs to build airstrips and naval bases aimed at enhancing Chinese offensive power. China has also forcibly prevented Filipinos from developing valuable oil, gas, and mineral resources that they’ll need in the coming years to power their electricity grid. “I will not go to war” over such matters, Duterte has declared.

On July 12, just short of two weeks into Duterte’s presidential term, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled that China has been acting in violation of Beijing’s sworn obligations under international maritime law. The litigation was brought in 2013 by Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno Aquino Jr., who sought to use the rule of law to rally international opinion to pressure the Chinese to respect Philippine sovereignty. Now Duterte appears to be signaling that he’s willing to overlook the tribunal’s findings if China is willing to do a deal.

There are various explanations for Duterte’s eagerness to seek a compromise. Some of those who know the president well suggest that the pivot is rooted in the left-of-center ideology he has professed in his past, which left him with a residual suspicion of the West (and Americans in particular). Duterte openly admires one of his former college professors, Jose Maria Sison — the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army. Others point out that Duterte, who has several times threatened to declare martial law, has praised authoritarian leaders like former Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos. And besides China’s President Xi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has been wooing the Philippine president with suggestions of cheap financing for Russian attack helicopters.

Meanwhile, Duterte and his foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay, have been courting the support of business elites who favor closer relations with Beijing. In his career as a lawyer, Yasay represented the interests of Chinese-Filipino tycoons who have good connections in Beijing. Yasay, who brought no foreign policy experience to his position, has also been careful to speak respectfully of the Chinese — while telling an audience of Washington, D.C. insiders that Filipinos no longer want to be America’s “little brown brothers.”

Among Yasay’s prominent clients has been Lucio Tan, one of the country’s richest men, who Duterte has said was one of the first to urge him to seek the presidency. While little-known outside Asia, billionaire Tan — who was born in China’s Fujian province and is considered on the mainland to be a “patriotic” Chinese — is one of the most controversial figures in Philippine political circles. He was one of the original so-called “Marcos cronies,” who became rich thanks to the tax breaks and other government subsidies granted in the 1970s by Ferdinand Marcos.

After Marcos was deposed in 1986, a series of successive Philippine prosecutors sought unsuccessfully to recover Tan’s allegedly ill-gained wealth. Today, he is chairman of Philippine Airlines, the country’s flagship carrier, and has extensive holdings in banking, mining, tobacco, beer, hotels and property development. He’s also made some major investments in China, which have clearly earned him the goodwill of Beijing. When Chinese presidents come to Manila, they always stay in one of Tan’s hotels.

Though there’s no evidence that Duterte is financially beholden to Tan — the president says he turned down the tycoon’s offer of cash and the use of aircraft during the campaign — they share a strong interest in closer ties with the Chinese. During his campaign, Duterte received an especially warm welcome from the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, of which Tan is an honorary chairman. Along with the Chinese ambassador, Tan was one of the first prominent visitors Duterte received after his election victory.

In his eagerness to establish close economic ties with Beijing, Duterte has also said he is looking to revive various Chinese-Philippine joint ventures that were envisioned a decade ago during the presidency of Gloria Arroyo. The most notable project on Arroyo’s watch involved a $329 million telecommunications contract with China’s state-owned ZTE Corp. But Arroyo’s hopes to forge closer economic ties with China were derailed by various allegations of pay-offs that involved ZTE, Arroyo herself, and members of her entourage. Authorities in Manila recently dropped graft charges against Arroyo and her former colleagues, and her four-year house arrest has been lifted. Duterte has insisted that he had nothing to do with those decisions, though he had publicly offered to pardon Arroyo, in any case.

While no corruption allegations have surfaced in the new Duterte administration, the concerns about the adverse consequences of doing business with China remain. As Philippine professor Aileen Baviera has observed, the ZTE deal “was an example of how Chinese wealth … can undermine already weak institutions and government norms in a recipient country.”

While some members of the Manila elite worry that Duterte’s campaign of extrajudicial killings threatens to corrode the hard-won rule of law, Filipino-Chinese businessmen are among the most vocal defenders of the president’s drug war. And a tycoon from mainland China, Huang Rulun, who first acquired his wealth while living in the Philippines, has pleased Duterte by volunteering to pay for a new internment camp for thousands of drug users who have surrendered to police rather than fall victim to the slaughter.

While Duterte is currently riding high in public opinion polls, signs of a backlash are already starting to emerge. A notable indicator came last week when respected elder statesman and ex-President Fidel Ramos — whom Duterte has said would be a special envoy to China — publically expressed deep concerns about where the new Philippine leader is headed. Ramos lamented that “Team Philippines” is losing, “and losing badly.” Also last week, Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio even felt it necessary to remind Duterte that to surrender Philippine sovereign rights would be an “impeachable offense.”

Indeed, if Duterte continues on his current course — downplaying the legally binding decision of the Hague tribunal and watering down his own country’s territorial claims — his honeymoon with voters could end quickly. The Philippines remains one of the most pro-American countries in the world; in one recent survey, a whopping 92 percent of the population held positive attitudes towards the U.S. And some of the most pro-American Filipinos are to be found in the military, which looks to the American security relationship to counter Chinese bullying — which might help to explain why Duterte has been busily showering top officers with favors and cash.