About Collaborators, Agents, and Spies

Alan Hart   Intifada Palestine

Could there be an Israeli takeover of the Palestine Authority?

On the face of it that’s a silly question and the speculation it represents — that Palestinian “President” Abbas could be replaced by an Israeli agent or asset — is not worthy of discussion. But before dismissing it readers might do what I did and consider two things.

The first is that Mohammed Dahlan, formerly one of the most powerful Fatah leaders and almost certainly the one who administered for Israel the polonium that killed Arafat, is now putting a big effort into getting rid of Abbas by one means or another and replacing him with — guess who? — himself.

In passing it is interesting to note that according to a recent report in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, Netanyahu’s special envoy, Yitzhak Molcho, is in a secret dialogue with Dahlan who spends his time shuttling between Cairo and the U.A.E. where he currently lives. One assumption has to be that Netanyahu is hoping that if Dahlan became President of the PA he would go much further than collaborator Abbas in delivering for Israel. (Also worth noting is that Dahlan speaks fluent Hebrew. He learned to do so during his 11 spells in Israeli jails between 1981 and 1986).

The second consideration is Israel’s track record in successfully placing its agents inside Arab institutions and organizations at very high levels.

I’ll give two examples to make the point but first a note on the need for some precision with the terminology. In the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the terms collaborator and agent or asset are not necessarily one and the same.

At leadership level a collaborator is a Palestinian who, out of weakness and to protect his own position and interests, is prepared to do more or less what is required of him by Israel and the US, but who does it with reluctance (and may even have a problem sleeping at night for doing it). In that light it can be said that Abbas and many of his leadership colleagues have been collaborators with Israel and America.

An agent or asset is a Palestinian who serves Israel’s purposes with enthusiasm in order to advance his own interests (and probably does not have a problem sleeping at night). Dahlan’s record suggests that he is an Israeli agent or asset. (He is also well connected to the intelligence services of the US, Egypt, and some Gulf monarchies). But more of this in a moment.

One of the most successful Israeli agents was Eli Cohen. His devout Jewish and Zionist father was from Aleppo in Syria and moved to Alexandria in Egypt where Eli was born in 1924.

Eli Cohen’s role in the first half of the 1960′s for Mossad and Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence was to insert himself into Syria’s political and military establishments at the highest level. To do this he posed as a Syrian businessman returning from Argentina where he went to create his cover. (While he was in Argentina he had unlimited funds available for the purpose of taking care of all the needs of visiting Syrian leaders and businessmen. Their needs included whores, alcohol and loans).

In Syria Israeli spy Eli Cohen became Chief Adviser to the Minister of Defense. And there were some in the top levels of Israel’s intelligence community who entertained the thought that their man could perhaps go all the way and become Syria’s president.

As it happened it all ended badly for Eli Cohen. In January 1965, with some assistance from Soviet experts, Syrian counter-intelligence officers uncovered his spying activities; and on 18 May 1965 he was publicly hanged in the Marieh Square in Damascus.

Because Eli Cohen’s work is classified we will probably never know the details of the information he provided for his Israeli masters about Syria’s military capabilities and intentions, but there’s a quite widely held view that attacking and taking the Golan Heights might not have been on Israel’s 1967 war agenda but for the information Eli Cohen provided about how they were defended. (On my reporting trips to Israel in the long countdown to the Six Days War I had conversations with visiting military experts from all over the world who were convinced by their own observations from afar that the Golan Heights were “impregnable” and, therefore, that Israel would not attempt to capture them when war came).

My second example to illustrate Israel’s ability to call the shots on the Arab side is what happened inside Abu Nidal’s organization.

Abu Nidal (Sabri Khalil al-Banna) broke with Fatah in 1974 and set up his Baghdad-based terrorist organization because he was fiercely opposed to Arafat’s pragmatic policy of politics and compromise with Israel. Among those assassinated by Abu Nidal’s hit men were about 20 of Arafat’s peace envoys. They were Palestinians Arafat trusted to tell European and other leaders behind closed doors what he could not then say in public himself — that he really was moving the PLO to a compromise and a two-state peace with Israel.

Under Arafat’s direction, Abu Iyad, then in charge of Fatah’s security, conducted a lengthy and detailed investigation into how Abu Nidal’s organization worked. The findings, which they subsequently shared with me, were that Abu Nidal was an alcoholic — he drank at least one bottle of whisky a day — and his number two, the man who was masterminding the assassination of Arafat’s envoys, was an Israeli agent.

Abu Nidal was shot dead in Baghdad in August 2002. Palestinian sources said he was taken out on the order of Saddam Hussein. His government’s public story was that Abu Nidal had committed suicide. My guess was that Arafat or Abu Iyad said to Saddam, “Kill him.”

Before we return to Mohammed Dahlan, I’ll share with readers what Arafat told me about his biggest fear. It was that Syria would follow Egypt and Jordan and make peace with Israel if it was wise enough to withdraw from and return the Golan Heights. I asked Arafat what would be so frightening about that if it happened. He replied to the effect that Syria would then join forces with Jordan and Egypt to compel the Palestinians to accept whatever crumbs Zionism was prepared to offer them.

My speculation (and I repeat speculation) is that if Mohammed Dahlan became PA President, he would be prepared to use force as necessary to impose Israel’s terms for peace on the Palestinians.

Dahlan demonstrated his enthusiasm for doing Israeli and American dirty work when, at the request of the Bush administration, he agreed to lead a military campaign to destroy Hamas after its election victory in 2006. The Bush administration provided Dahlan with money and arms and trained his Fatah fighters in a number of Arab countries.

But it all went badly wrong for Dahlan and his sponsors. Hamas got wind of what Dahlan (fronting for the Bush administration and Israel) was intending and launched an Israeli-like pre-emptive strike. It destroyed Fatah’s security forces based in the Gaza Strip (which had been Dahlan’s base) and put Fatah politically out of business there.

Commenting on what had happened in the Gaza Strip, Hani al-Hassan, for many years Arafat’s crisis manager and one of his two most trusted advisers, said it was “not a war between Fatah and Hamas but between Hamas and Fatah collaborators who served the Americans and the Israelis.”

Subsequently the Bush administration exerted heavy pressure on Abbas (which he resisted) to appoint Dahlan as his deputy. And some Palestinian officials said that the US and a number of European countries had made it clear that they would like Dahlan to succeed Abbas as head of the PA. They presumably believed then, as Netanyahu might well do today, that Dahlan as President would use whatever means were necessary to compel the Palestinians to make peace on Israel’s terms.

Shortly after his forces were expelled from the Gaza Strip, Dahlan re-established himself in the West Bank. And thereafter tensions between his Fatah supporters and opponents grew and grew.

In June 2011 he was expelled from Fatah because of the assumption that he had delivered for Israel whatever it was that poisoned Arafat. Three months later Abbas ordered a raid on Dahlan’s house and the arrest of his private armed guards.

Today in exile, and consulting with his allies in Sisi’s Egypt and some Gulf monarchies as well as Israel and the US, Dahlan is plotting his comeback to replace Abbas by one means or another.

The Ma’ariv article I mentioned above wrote about Dahlan claiming, that he and not Abbas could be counted on to bring peace, and that in 2010 he reportedly sent a letter to the Obama administration in which he said: “There is no choice but to replace Abbas with someone who can deliver results.”

Because Dahlan must know that Israel’s leaders are not remotely interested in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept, I think it is reasonable to assume that the result he has in mind is peace imposed on Israel’s terms — effectively a Palestinian surrender to Zionism’s will.

Is a Dahlan/Israeli takeover of the PA really possible?

An indication that Abbas seems to think it cannot be ruled out was his request to President Obama that he press Israel to include Marwan Barghouti in the fourth and final batch of Palestinian prisoners due to be released at the end of this month. (Prisoner release was one of the inducements to secure Abbas’s green light for Secretary of State Kerry to launch his “peace process”. But today Netanyahu is under mounting pressure from the neo-fascist factions to the right of him to say NO to any further prisoner releases).

Barghouti is by far the most popular Palestinian leader and he would easily win an election to replace Abbas as President. And that, of course, is precisely why Israel won’t release him. So if Abbas can be bullied and bribed by Israel and the US into lifting the ban on Dahlan’s return from exile to the occupied West Bank, he, Dahlan, could be in with a chance. In my view a victory for him would be the final betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

Further reading:
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/03/palestinian-authority-israels-doppelganger/

Killers Paradise

If you are one of the persons who get a thrill from killing fellow humans, there are several places on this planet where you can fulfill your aspirations quite easily. One of them is Syria, a country where you as an Islamic fighter will have ample opportunity to kill. Not only that, you also will be able to torture and to inflict pain and suffering in various other ways which may be deeply satisfying and fulfilling for you.

But Syria is not such an ideal place for pathological murderers as it appears at first glance, because the Syrian army and the National Defense units are increasingly effective, systematically eliminating the Western backed Islamists who descend on their homeland.

You maybe not enjoy killing and torturing long enough to make it worth the effort.

Yet there is another nation in close proximity where you will be able to satisfy your urges, and there is only one snag, one hurdle you have to overcome: The nation is Israel, and the hurdle is that you must be Jewish or at least must successfully claim that you have Jewish ancestors.

If you can master that, you only need to become a member of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), a police officer, or a settler, and you will be able to kill as many Palestinians as you please. Palestinians are fair game, untermenschen, vermin or cockroaches (as Menachem Begin and various other renowned Israeli heroes repeatedly pointed out).

Dear valued blog visitor or subscriber, you are in all likelihood not a pathological murderer who is glad about the advice given here, but you could be sympathetic to Israel and view the introductory paragraphs of this text as offensive, unjustified, and over the top.

Please consider the following and just let the numbers sink in:

49 Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers between 2000 and 2010. The UN OCHA documented 2,100 settler attacks in 8 years and found, that the attacks almost quadrupled between 2006 and 2014.

The Palestinian police is forbidden to act against Israeli settlers.

In addition to continuous and increasing settler violence the Israeli army and police have for decades displayed a callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank with total impunity.

Last year alone 22 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children, were killed in the West Bank. Since 2011 at least 261 Palestinians, including 67 children, have been seriously injured by live ammunition and more than 8,000 Palestinians, including 1,500 children, have been wounded with rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas.

Peaceful protesters, civilian bystanders, human rights activists, and journalists are among those who have been killed or injured.

Several victims were shot in the back suggesting that they were targeted as they tried to flee and that they posed no genuine threat to the lives of Israeli soldiers or police officers. In several cases, Israeli security personal resorted to lethal force against stone-throwing protestors.

Investigations by the Israeli authorities into such incidences, if they happen at all, usually result in the exoneration of the involved soldiers or police officers, sending an unmistakable signals to the security forces that they are given a carte blanche and can murder with impunity.

On Monday, March 10, another settler shot and killed another Palestinian who was allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli cars in the West Bank. On the same day Israeli border guards shot and killed Raed Zeiter, a Jordanian-Palestinian judge, at the Allenby crossing, the main border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank.

While the murders of unarmed Palestinians are not an unusual occurrence and for the IDF soldiers “business as usual”, the death of Raed Zeiter could have severe consequences and even negative implications for Western plans to increase military operations in southern Syria.

The slaying of Raed Zeiter, an acclaimed and well known judge, has resulted in an explosion of anger in the Hashemite kingdom. Protests and marches took place near the Israeli Embassy in Amman and a vigil at the Justice Palace saw thousands of lawyers and judges unite in denouncing the murder.

Students also protested at various universities, but perhaps the strongest voices were raised at a March 11 afternoon session of the Jordanian parliament, where legislators demanded in unison that the government should expel the Israeli ambassador and recall Jordan’s envoy to Tel Aviv. Many even went so far as to call for scrapping the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour did his best to soothe the Jordanian parliamentarians’ anger and provided what he said was proof that the government had pushed for and won Israeli concessions. Ensour said that Israel had agreed to a request that the investigation of Zeiter’s death on the Allenby crossing be carried out jointly by Israel and Jordan. He also stated twice that Israel had apologized to Jordan for killing the unarmed bus passenger.

An apology translates as an acceptance of guilt, whereas official Israeli announcements and media reports say only that Israel has expressed “regret” leaving it unclear what exactly transpired between the two sides. Official Israeli statements assert that soldiers shot the judge in self-defense and claim that Zeiter had attempted to seize a soldier’s gun. Another report states that the judge ran toward a soldier in an attempt to strangle him.

These inconsistent reports have been countered by eyewitnesses who say that Zeiter was punched by a soldier, as he was slow in returning to the bus after the initial check of passenger IDs. The eyewitnesses insist that after Zeiter was punched and fell to the ground, he attempted to get up to defend himself, but was shot in the foot, followed by a second shot that missed him, before another soldier fired three deadly shots into his chest.

Israel claims that the cameras at the crossing point were not working that day. This assertion is clearly a lie, because vehicles entering and leaving the area are allowed passage only after a barrier is raised, and this is done from a windowless room where the Israelis monitor all movements via cameras. It would have been impossible for the bus to have been allowed passage without an Israeli seeing its approach via a functioning camera.

While passengers have regularly expressed anger at the harsh way in which Israeli soldiers treat arriving passengers, Palestinians are usually reserved and unwilling to challenge the Israeli border guard. It appears that Zeiter was not as willing to suffer humiliation.

King Abdullah II of Jordan is under unprecedented public pressure to produce some sort of results and he has at the same time to quell the growing resentments against his cooperation with Israel, against the use of Jordan as base and training ground for Islamic fighters, and against the economic decline caused by the Syrian war and the flood of refugees.

Right now a major effort is under way to reactivate the southern front against Syria. An international command center at the intelligence headquarters building in Amman, staffed by military officials from 14 countries, including the USA, Israel, Britain, and the Gulf monarchies is coordinating the plans, which include the delivery of large amounts of new weapons like sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, heavy machine guns, and armored vehicles to Islamic fighters.

The command center is also organizing the training of rebel fighters in Saudi Arabia and the Western and Arab military advisers at the command centre are coordinating the various rebel brigades, make adjustments to tactics, and help determine when and how military operations can go ahead.

Whether or not the combined efforts will amount to a full-blown spring offensive, they already have evoked increased fighting around the city of Daraa in recent weeks because the Syrian army attempts to pre-empt any rebel push towards Damascus.

As a result, the flow of refugees into Jordan from southern and central Syria has doubled this month to 1,000 or more a day. About 1.2 million Syrians are now living in Jordan, causing major social and economic problems for the Hashemite kingdom.

The new arrivals are not at all welcomed by Jordanians who already face economic hardship and shortages of common goods and food. It is also an open secret that some of the refugee camps are in fact training facilities for jihadist fighters and the population as well as the political cast is weary and worried about the activities of Sunni fundamentalists and the dangers that entail.

Israel, a nation not held exactly in high esteem by Jordanians, plays a big part in the Western plans. Not only has Israel conducted at least 6 air raids against Syrian targets (the latest against the Jamraya military base near Damascus on May 5), it treats wounded Islamists in Israeli hospitals, transports weapons supplies, and provides corridors to infiltrate Syria via the Golan Heights. Last week alone, 1400 terrorists who were trained by CIA-agents in Jordan entered Syria via Israeli territory under the control of the Israeli government.

Jordan is already a social and political pressure cooker and the slaying of the Jordanian judge could well be the last straw leading to popular unrest and political instability in the country which is now the main base of Western backed rebels. Turkey was the main base before, but it is engulfed in political turmoil, causing a significant reduction of anti-Syrian activities.

The Jordanian troubles could not come at a worse time for the Syria regime change planners.

Insights about Syrian militias

This post includes two reports from Syria who provide essential insights about Western supported militias fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.

Dr. Franklin Lamb  Intifada Palestine

Historical background

Every school kid in Syria learns at an early age about the various colonial land grabs that have lopped off key parts of their ancient country and they receive instruction about their personal national duty to recover this sacred territory.

One such land grab that is galvanizing resistance on behalf of Syria and against the Turkish, Qatar, and Saudi sponsored jihadists is the case of Iskenderun, north of Latakia. This area, which for thousands of years was part of Syria and is rich in natural resources, was cut from Syria and grafted onto Turkey by the French more than half a century ago.

Iskenderun preserves the name, but probably not the exact site according to historians, of Alexandria ad Issum where around 333 BC Alexander the Great camped and establishing the city. One importance of the place comes from its geographical location — it is the easiest approach to the open ground of Hatay Province and Aleppo.

It all started on July 5, 1938, when Turkish forces under Colonel Sukril Kanath with French approval launched an aggression and ethnically cleansed the local Armenian Christian and Allawi populations. The Turkish invasion was made possible by the French, partners with Britain in Sykes-Picot, who had remained as illegal occupiers of Syria as holdovers from the League of Nations mandate. The French successively were complicit in a rigged referendum and essentially ceded this Syrian territory of Iskenderun, by then referred to as the Republic of Hatay. The land grab was part of a secret deal to secure Turkey’s help in the approaching war with Germany. Paris and Ankara struck a deal that resulted in Turkey, while not joining the allies against Germany, declaring neutrality and essentially sitting out WW II.

Rather than trying to expand, as it sometimes is accused by Turkey and Israel, Syria has been constantly losing territory. It lost northern Palestine in 1918, Lebanon in 1920, and the Iskenderun area through French duplicity in 1938. In 1967 it lost Golan. Syrian patriots intend to recover all this territory starting with Iskenderun.

One retired Western diplomat, speaking only for himself and representing no government, told me on this subject: “Surely Lebanon must also be returned to Syria. It was never a real country and it never will be as far as I am concerned. It is part of Syria!” After World War I, most Lebanese wished their land to remain part of Syria (see the results of the King-Crane commission) rather than live in a separate nation under French domination. As we parted, the former diplomat shook my hand and declared: “Of course Iskenderun is also part of Syria. No honest person can deny this!”

Founding the PLFI

Ali Kayali (aka Abu Zaki) hails from Turkish occupied Syria (Iskenderun) and leads one of the most effective pro-government militias in the northern part of Syria while vowing to one day liberate and restore Iskenderun to Syria. In 1982 He went to Beirut to resist the Israeli aggression. Soon he was, in one sense, being baptized under fire, while carrying the banner of his new group, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Iskenderun (PFLI) under the tutelage of Dr. George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He fought on a number of south Lebanon fronts and inside West Beirut.

After studying on his own in Tartus, and having escaped from prison in Turkey, where he was being jailed for demonstrating against the regime, he returned to Tripol, Lebanon and joined Syrian army battles against the Bilal Shaaban led Al Tawhid al-Islami (Muslim Brotherhood) and from then he and the PFLI moved to the area of Halba in Akkar, Lebanon, organizing a resistance training camp. Eventually he returned to Syria where his group was supported by Syrian citizens but was not formally part of the Syrian security/resistance apparatus.

Speaking with non-government analysts in Latakia, I was repeatedly told that the PFLI has the reputation of understanding the geography and politics of the Syrian coast area where its fighters are currently active (including Aleppo, Banias, Tartus, the countryside around Latakia, as well as the Idlib, Homs, and Damascus areas).

Talking to PFLI fighters and officials, I was briefed on the past two years of PFLI Resistance in Syria. One of the places where the PFLI is currently fighting is in the strategic rebel bastion of Yabrud in the Qalamoun Mountains, north of Damascus near the Lebanese border. On March 3, during a meeting with me and some of his associates, Ali Kayali got a phone call with information that Sahel village, about four miles from Yabrud, is now controlled by Syrian forces including the PFLI. Ali, who is open and forthcoming with battlefield details, explained that pro-Syria forces do not want to storm Yabrud but rather to control the villages surrounding it in order to corner al-Nusra and other rebel militias inside.

When asked about the trapped local population and whether their likely fate is not the same as the inner city populations of Aleppo, Homs, and a dozen other locations, Ali shrugged and turned up his palms.

Today, (March 7) the PFLI is fighting to cut off the road linking Yabrud to Arsal in eastern Lebanon, whose majority population supports the Syrian revolt. They were involved last week with the fall of Al-Sahl, a town a little over a mile south of Yabrud, and are now fighting in and around Yabrud preparing for the anticipated final assault. According to Ali’s personal body guards, they are facing Al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of PFLI’s 3000 troops are also fighting this week in Douma, Jobar, Aleppo, the countryside around Lattakia, and Deralcia near Nubek on the main Damascus-Homs highway.

According to Ali Kayali the PFLI receives sporadic support from the local community. The PFLI needs money, weapons, and regular supplies of food. The PFLI also needs places for the fighters to sleep at the various battle sites, more uniforms because of an increasing influx of new members, and funding for death benefit payments to the families of killed PFLI men and women.

PFLI fighters get no salaries, which sets them far apart financially from most Gulf backed (and often Western trained) militias who can garner monthly salary payments of between 500 and 1,000 US$. By contrast, pro-government popular committees numbering approximately 5,000 and National Defense units which number approximately 25,000 fighters, receive approximately 20,000 Syrian Pounds or 126 US$ each month. Footing much of this bill are Syrian businessmen like Rami Mahlouf, cousin of President Bashar al-Assad. Regular Syrian army recruits get only 3000 Syrian Pound or about $20 monthly but they also receive food and lodging, plus health and travel benefits. Syrian army reservists are said to receive approximately 10.50 US$ per month.

For Ali Kayali, the PFLI which he commands is also a family matter. His wife and daughter and two sons are deeply connected with the Resistance goals of the PFLI. The sons are fighters and his wife and daughter are fighters when called upon and otherwise they are involved in related resistance projects. His 22 year old daughter, nicked-named “Joan of Arc” is in medical school but is also reputedly a ferocious fighter and battlefield tactician, with dramatic results in a number of attacks against rebels over the past nearly two years. She is a strong no-nonsense feminist and told me she loves to shock takiris who sometimes appear amazed to see her and her female unit chasing them up the side of some mountain.

Captagon Jihad

Sitting in the lobby of a run-down, less than one star dock-side hotel, opposite the Mediterranean and used for sleeping by various militia, I spoke leisurely one early morning with a son of Ali Kyali who is, when not fighting jihadists, among his father’s bodyguards. I have for a while been interested in Western government claims that it was supplying “humanitarian non-lethal aid” to rebel groups including night goggles, telecommunication equipment, and GPS devices. I view all this equipment as misnamed and think it indeed constitutes lethal aid as the equipment helps one side killing the other via night snipers and is facilitating troop movements.

I was a bit surprised to learn what PFLI fighters thought of this kind of equipment being given to their adversaries. Ali’s son told me: “Not having night goggles, except for some we take off the enemy is not much of a problem for us because we can sense where al-Nusra fighters are, and they tend not to fight at night.” I asked why they didn’t fight in the night, thinking maybe it had something to do with a religious edict of some sort. But I was mistaken. Ali’s son explained, “No it is not that, it’s because they are too paranoid and exhausted from taking Captagon and even stronger drugs”. According the guys I was sitting with, some with more than two years fighting experience in the PFLI, many if not most of the Gulf sponsored jihadists are given bags of pills to enhance their battle field courage. And it works to a degree.

At dawn each day, jihadists take drugs, including sometimes large doses of Captagon and other available drugs including but not limited to potent substances locally known as “Baltcon”, “Afoun”,”Zolm”. They also use Opium, Heroin, Cocaine, and Hashish. The main drug supplies for the Syrian battle zones come from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, lesser amounts come from Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan. Lebanon’s Bekaa valley produces large quantities of Captagon pills for shipment to the Gulf and now to Syria.

Jihadists high on drugs apparently feel invincible and do not fear death. Many are indeed ferocious and fearless fighters during the day, as many media sources have reported. But by nightfall, when the drugs wears off the fighters become exhausted and sometimes they are found asleep on the spot where they were fighting. Ali’s son explained that “many of the “Gulfies” are in fact heavily addicted to strong heroin like drugs and they crave them and sometimes they even fight with their fellow militiamen to get their fixes. “We were told by some we captured that when one of them is killed his comrades will descend on his body, not particularly to pray over it but to rummage his pockets for drugs.”

In 2011 alone, Lebanese authorities confiscated three amphetamine production labs and two Captagon-producing labs which they claim sent hundreds of thousands of pills to the Gulf states, which forward the stimulants to their fighters in Syria. The seizure of trucks with Captagon in their chassis in Lebanon and at Beirut airport shows a growing demand for these products among Syrian militias.

As some media outlets have reported, Jabhat aL-Nusra and ISIS (the most extreme “imported jihadists” as some here call them) claim to be better fighters than Hezbollah, whose units set the fighting-skill bar fairly high these days. Some also claim that they have not really started their battle to defeat Hezbollah on its own territory but will do so when they are ready and that they have no doubt they will defeat Hezbollah. But as one PFLI fighter explained, with some of his buddies nodding agreement, only when high on drugs do Qatari/Saudi jihadist’s exhibit bravery and bravado, posing a serious threat because they ignore normal defensive fighting tactics. “We know many of these guys quite well and lots of them were never even religious. There are many who are drug addicts and when they get high they lose their fear of dying. So they are dangerous to confront and they often use strange tactics.”

According to another PFLI source, the “imported jihadists” die in high numbers because they ignore the battle field realities. Their average number of death in any given firefight over the past two years is estimated to be approximately five times the number of Hezbollah casualties.

How the Maaloula nuns were freed

Mohammad Ballout   As-Safir

Shortly before midnight March 9, the suffering of the 13 Maaloula nuns and their three aides ended with them being freed. Another kidnapping file in Syria has been closed. It was a case similar to that of the kidnapped Lebanese in Azaz in terms of battlefield pressure (which tightened the noose around the kidnappers), the role played by Lebanon and other regional mediators, and the details of the exchange deal. The next question is if the case of the kidnapped bishops Youhanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yazigi can be solved similarly (and if they are alive still).

The last few meters of the nuns’ trip to freedom were not easy. There were a lot of breaths held, there were ups and downs in expectations before the matter ended in the early hours of the morning as the nuns reached Jdeidet Yabous, where they were received by the mediator who played a key role in their release, the director of the Lebanese General Security Directorate, Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim. Also present was a delegation representing the Orthodox patriarchate, the Syrian minister of endowments, the bishop of Damascus, the governor of Damascus, and others who had followed the nuns’ case from A to Z.

The nuns’ release was the culmination of long and thorny negotiations, which lasted for three months involving various states, especially Qatar, and were mediated by Maj. Gen. Ibrahim under the auspices of Lebanese President Michel Suleiman.

The freed nuns’ reached Jdeidet Yabous from a point inside Syria, accompanied by a convoy from the General Security Directorate, one of whose patrols had received the 16 nuns and aides at Wadi Ata in the barren environs of Arsal. The release operation had hit a snag due to last-minute pressure by the kidnappers to amend the terms, which almost threatened to scuttle the deal. But the kidnappers then agreed to the original terms after Maj. Gen. Ibrahim categorically refused any attempt to amend the provisions of the deal.

It has been learned that in the last minutes before the exchange, the kidnappers proposed increasing the number of female detainees they were demanding be released (whereby eight nuns would be released first and the rest later) and that the Syrian government had to release dozens of female detainees in multiple stages as well. Ibrahim refused that proposal. He told the kidnappers that the deal would be either implemented as agreed upon and all the nuns would be released together, or the entire operation would be canceled.

What provided impetus to the negotiations was that the Syrian army demanded that the nuns be released within 24 hours in conjunction with the battlefield situation around Yabrud, where the nuns were being held. That prompted the gunmen to agree on the deal as is.

Freeing the Maaloula nuns emerged as part of a deal involving the release of female detainees in Syrian prisons (more than 100 according to Ibrahim) and giving the kidnappers 16 million US$, which Qatar agreed to pay. Qatar’s intelligence chief Ghanem al-Qubaisi arrived in Lebanon on March 8.

Details of the exchange deal

Intermittent and complex negotiations took place since the abduction of the Maaloula nuns on December 3, 2013. Three different channels negotiated with the deputy emir of Jabhat al-Nusra in Qalamoun, Abu Azzam al-Kuwaiti, at his headquarters in Yabrud, before a mutual understanding was reached.

In the wake of the kidnapping, two negotiating tracks were launched on the basis of the nuns being “guests” who could easily be freed, because they were not hostages. This scenario was repeated by Syrian opposition figures such as Michel Kilo to provide political cover for the kidnapping. After the abduction, Kilo had said that the Maaloula nuns were the guests of a friend in Yabrud and had not been kidnapped.

In the first few weeks, before Qatar joined the negotiations, Abu Azzam al-Kuwaiti had taken the nuns from Mithqal Hamama, their original kidnapper and a smuggler between Lebanon and Syria. Hamama is one of the leaders of the Sarkha Brigades, the group that kidnapped the nuns during the second attack on Maaloula in December.

At first, the kidnappers approached the United Nations’ office in Damascus and its head representative, Mokhtar Lamani, but Lamani refused to go to Yabrud and negotiate directly with Jabhat al-Nusra after talking with al-Kuwaiti via Skype. The UN headquarter in New York had instructed Lamani to reject any direct contact with Jabhat al-Nusra, which is on the terrorists list. So, the negotiations stopped.

A second track had opened in parallel with the faltering UN track. A businessman from Yabrud, George Hasswani, played a prominent role in the negotiations. He was not a mediator in the strict sense of the word. Hasswani is close to the Syrian government and he passed on and responded to the back-and-forth offers of exchange in coordination with Maj. Gen. Ibrahim. Hasswani sometimes restored the negotiating path with the kidnappers to its proper scope to gain time by responding to his one and only negotiator, al-Kuwaiti (who btw. never took off his explosives belt while talking with Hasswani via Skype).

During the negotiations, the kidnappers and the hostages moved to Hasswani’s residence in Yabrud, which Jabhat al-Nusra had taken over in his absence. Hasswani paid the costs for the kidnappers living in his three-story residence to improve the conditions under which the nuns were being held and to make talking to them easier.

The kidnappers repeated that they were not looking for a ransom and that all they wanted was to exchange the nuns for female detainees in Syrian government prisons. At first, the kidnappers presented a list with hundreds of names, before settling on 138. They insisted that the negotiations would only continue if the Syrian government made a goodwill gesture and released an Iraqi prisoner named Saja Hamid al-Dulaimi, the wife of an Iraqi al-Qaeda official. Syrian authorities had detained Saja along with three of her children in an operation outside Damascus.

The Syrian government rejected the request because Dulaimi was not a Syrian detainee and said that not all the names submitted by Kuwaiti were being held by the government. The Syrian government said that it had no information on 66 of the 138 names, released 10, and said that 23 others could be released.

Those following the negotiations became convinced that by requesting Dulaimi’s release, al-Kuwaiti was only a front for the true negotiators, who were somewhere else. During the negotiations, al-Kuwaiti was never able to respond to the offers made to him. It later became apparent that he was no more than an intermediary, controlled by other parties in Jabhat al-Nusra, which is led by Abu Mohammed Golani, Nusra’s emir in the Levant.

The negotiations on the Syrian track stalled earlier this year, and the Qatari track was activated in coordination with Maj. Gen. Ibrahim during the last month. Qatari envoys visited the area around the mountains in Arsal and began to speak directly with the kidnappers but without making the slightest progress. The kidnappers gave Ibrahim a list with the names of no less than 1,000 Syrian female detainees. The Syrian authorities refused to negotiate and considered the list non-serious.

It was noteworthy that the list contained some 150 names of Islamist detainees in Lebanon’s Roumieh prison, most of whom were not Lebanese nationals. Maj. Gen. Ibrahim’s position, in coordination with President Suleiman and former Prime Minister Najib Mikati, was to categorically refuse to negotiate the release of any prisoners in Roumieh.

The battlefield reality revived the negotiations

A Syrian official who followed the negotiations said that the negotiations were revived a few days ago after important developments in Yabrud that were similar to the circumstances surrounding the deal in Azaz.

During the past two weeks, the Qalamoun battle had been raging, involving 10,000 fighters on all fronts. The original kidnapper, Mithqal Hamama, was killed, which freed the hands of the other negotiators.

A week ago, the kidnappers decided to leave Hasswani’s residence in Yabrud as the Syrian army approached and the strategic hills around the Rima Farms, on the outskirts of Yabrud, fell into the hands of Hezbollah and the Republican Guard. The nuns were separated and taken to a number of sites in Yabrud.

Two days earlier, Abu Yazin, the head of the al-Ghuraba brigade in Qalamoun, had reopened contacts with the Syrian government via the Qatari mediator. Abu Yazin called for quickly making a deal. He requested 16 million US$ and the release of the female detainees on a list.

Abu Yazin also wanted to make security and military matters part of the deal. He requested a ceasefire around Yabrud and a cessation of the bombings. He also requested corridors for the withdrawal of 1,500 gunmen from Yabrud to Rankous and Arsal, but that condition was flatly rejected.

Qatar agreed to pay the ransom and the Syrian authorities agreed to release the detainees. But introducing security and military matters into the exchange deal was entirely ruled out.

Maj. Gen. Ibrahim thanked the Syrian leadership, which provided all the facilities necessary to complete the exchange deal. He said that he would follow up on his promise to try to obtain the release of the kidnapped bishops. Ibrahim stressed, “The Maaloula nuns are fine and in good health. … We have abided by our commitments but the kidnappers tried to deviate from the agreement in the final hours. But we refused any bargains.”

All is quiet in Crimea

Ryan O’Neill  Everything Left

Initial thoughts and feelings from a visit to Crimea

Coming to Crimea with most of my knowledge of the region gained from media reports about the recent events that have put the peninsula in the spotlight, I didn’t really know what to expect. If the mainstream press is to believed, a Russian invasion and occupation has taken place here and parts of the region are heavily militarized and under control of the Russian army.

As I found out, the media reports in no way match the reality on the ground.

It would be very easy to label the mainstream media’s take on the events as a mere misunderstanding or misinterpretation, but the way in which footage of local events has been used to portray a situation that so clearly isn’t happening, cannot be called anything else than lying.

On Saturday morning I watched two rival demonstrations taking place in Simferopol. The much larger demonstration was pro-Russia. People had gathered on Lenin Square and began to march through the streets of the city. The pro-Ukraine demonstration had managed to attract around 100 people (who I was told were mainly Tatars) and was literally marching on the other side of the road.

There were no clashes, no trouble, and no signs that there would be any problems with this taking place. I saw no military presence in the city, only police and groups of cossack volunteers that had a presence around the airport. I was told that there had been a military presence of some sort a week earlier but that it had moved on and “self defense groups” that had formed in the region were working with police officers to ensure the trouble that gripped Maidan didn’t come to Crimea.

Despite the absence of military here, Putin’s claims that the people of Crimea felt threatened by the new government of Kiev and would look for protection from Russia are completely correct. The concerns and hopes for protection are very real and have been the reason to call for a referendum.

On Saturday afternoon, I arrived in Sevastopol and was immediately struck by the much heavier militarized scene. There are war ships in the bay that are visible as you enter the city, there are military patrol vehicles on the highways and military trucks that drive through the street. However, the people of Sevastopol do not seem to be concerned by this, they barely even seem to notice it, and it isn’t until you speak to them that you realize exactly why this is.

Sevastopol is a military base. There have been military vehicles and war ships here since the late eighteenth century. People do not perceive the military presence as anything other than normal because the soldiers and military personnel here are their friends and family members. Russia has an allowance in accordance with international law of up to 25,000 troops based in Sevastopol and Russia’s black sea fleet is a source of pride for the people of the city. They find notions of this very army “invading” their country not only confusing, but laughable.

Which brings me to the reporting of the mainstream media. I have seen footage from various news outlets of military vehicles driving through the streets of Sevastopol without making it clear that this is actually common for this place. There are parts of the press which through the use of visual footage without proper explanations of context are subtly implying that the military scenery of Sevastopol is a recent occurrence, supporting the myth of a Russian “military occupation.” Russia is no more occupying Sevastopol than Britain is occupying Sandhurst, or Wooton Bassett, or the United States are occupying the towns and cities near their 900 bases around the world.

Military bases bring military scenery to the place where they are located, this is just a matter of fact. I spoke to locals here at length about the Black Sea Fleet and learned that they see it very positive. There are holiday weekends to celebrate the presence of the fleet and one can tell just from their expressions as they discuss this that they are immensely proud of the military and not fearful in any sense of the word.

There have also been a lot of reports which linked the “self defense groups” to the Russian military. Footage started to circulate on Saturday night of two journalists being apprehended by “Russian troops” as they tried to film outside a military base. The video however shows clearly that it were members of the self defense organizations that were involved in the confrontation. Again, the evidence is clear and the media spin cannot called anything than an outright lie. Whether this lie is being peddled to pursue a certain agenda or to make the story more interesting is the only thing that is up for debate here. 

On Sunday afternoon, I met with members of the self defense groups to discuss why they have felt the need to organize in this manner. Every member I spoke with was from Sevastopol and many of them had a military background. One of them was keen to discuss with me how angry it made him that his friends from different parts of the world are calling to ask about Sevastopol since they heard that Russian troops have seized control or are patrolling the streets. He pointed out that he, along with all other local volunteers considers himself Russian, not Ukrainian, and that most of Sevastopol’s inhabitants have always considered themselves Russian.

They have been happy to live within the borders of Ukraine as a national minority but local majority in close proximity to the Russian military fleet for many years, but the fundamental changes in Kiev that risk separating them from their motherland have forced a likewise fundamental and forceful response.

Many Crimeans had tried to reach Kiev during Maidan protests to organize anti-Maidan or pro-Russia protests in the capital and they suffered severe beatings from aggressive elements of the pro-Maidan groups. They were taken from their buses and physically beaten on the street while the buses were set on fire.

The checkpoints the volunteers have set up in Crimea now are reflecting the real concerns that this type of violence which carried the far right groups to a positions of power in Kiev might come also to Crimea. Over the past week baseball bats, clubs, firearms, and even a large quantity of TNT explosives have been confiscated and it is frightening to consider what might have happened, had these checkpoints not been set up.

People of various ethnicities have volunteered for the defense groups and every one of them that I have spoken to talked about the elements of the far right within the new self imposed government in Kiev and the concerns that they all have regarding the actions of the Pravy Sektor. This is completely understandable if one views the situation within its proper historical context.

Another eye-catching feature of Sevastopol aside from the military fleet is the sheer number of Soviet memorials and remembrance statues about the fight against fascism. The steel railings that circle the main square in the city have “1941-1945″ in solid steel throughout the perimeter and there are Soviet statues along many of the main roads with the eternal flame burning. Looking at the events that specifically took place in Crimea in World War II, it becomes obvious why this city fears the ascent of far right nationalism and why people do anything to make sure the influence of the far right is not affecting the peninsula.

Crimea was the unfortunate victim of many Nazi massacres in World War II, especially in Kerch, and Sevastopol itself was a strategic battleground that was under German occupation until it was liberated by the Red Army towards the end of the war. As the far right is taking control over Ukraine via the interim government, ethnic Russians are targeted through laws or mob rule, and pro-Russian or left wing political parties are banned, the people here are taking no chances.

Crimeans were content to live within the borders of the Ukraine as a national minority and local majority, yet they certainly do not want to live within the borders of a country moving closer to Europe and away from Russia. Many of the people here are waiting for this referendum to simply say “we’ll rejoin Russia, the Ukraine can do whatever it likes, but without us.”

The referendum itself is clearly not the most interesting aspect of this dispute so far. Russian flags are on all municipal building, the Russian colors are on everyones clothing and cars, one sees and feels the anticipation and the hope. We already know what the result of this referendum will be.

While the outcome of the poll is easily to predict, the response from Kiev is not. Brute force has no chance in Crimea and the open question remains whether there is any willingness for diplomacy among the politicians who were pushed into power by the clubs and petrol bombs of the far right agitators.