Why not Barghouti?

Gilad Shalit, the franco-Israeli soldier captured by Hamas militants in 2006 should be returning home next Tuesday.
Following a deal with Hamas negotiated with the help of Egypt and Germany, Shalit will be released into Egyptian hands before regaining Israel.
Once Shalit reaches the Sinai, Israel will release 27 female Palestinian prisoners.
After he sets foot on Israeli soil, another 450 Palestinian prisoners will be set free, the list having been compiled during the Hamas-Israel negotiations…
In two months, the agreement stipulates that Israel is to release an additional 550 prisoners, of its own choosing.
Israel has pledged however, to liberate security detainees, and not, to quote Haaretz, mere car thieves…
Of the 1007 Palestinians to be set free, 280 were serving life sentences in Israeli jails. All in all, according to the Israelis, they are responsible for the death of some 600 people…
The list of those being freed includes one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, Yihya Sanawar.
Although all released detainees will be required to sign a statement vowing not to resort to violence in the future, Shin Bet, Israel’s national security agency expects that about 60% will probably do so anyway…
Hamas also made some concessions to clinch the deal.
Israel reserves the right, again with Hamas’ approval, oddly enough, to arrest or assassinate any released militant it chooses, should they be perceived as a potential threat to the state.
Furthermore, the agreement calls for the deportation of 203 Palestinians to Gaza, or foreign countries. Jordan and Turkey have been mentioned as possible new homes for these militants.
Israel had always refused to release so many prisoners it considered dangerous in exchange for Shalit’s liberation.
Why did it accept such terms now, five years after the young soldier's capture?
President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempts to gain UN recognition for the state of Palestine may have been the decisive factor in goading both sides to accept a deal that had been available for years…The Israelis were clearly intent on changing the subject and deflecting attention from the Abbas campaign.
Hamas is increasingly unpopular due to continued economic hardship imposed by Israel’s blockade of the territory, and its political isolation.
In addition, Hamas has thrown its support behind the Assad regime in Syria (one of its principle patrons), even though the latter has brutally cracked down on a popular uprising looked upon favorably by the peoples of the region (including Palestinians) and elsewhere.
Hamas’ leader Khaled Meshal lives in exile in Damascus…
Hamas was thus in dire need of a political boost.
The Islamic movement also managed to achieve what years of Israeli-Palestinian Authority negotiations never did: a mass release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails!
Their victory is another nail in the coffin of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues in the Fatah leadership. Again, as in the case of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the Palestinians have learned that the diplomatic path leads them to a dead end, while terror gets settlers out of the territories and abductions spring hundreds of people out of jail, wrote Akiva Eldar, chief political columnist for the daily Haaretz.
Indeed, that was undoubtedly not lost on most Palestinians, thereby further discrediting the moribund peace process that has been agonizing for years and that the Quartet is now desperately seeking to resurrect, with little hope of success, judging from Israel’s latest real estate plans in Jerusalem..
More people will be convinced that the only thing Israel understands is power and force. This kind of achievement undermines the negotiation process, Abdul Sattar Kassem, a political science professor, and Hamas supporter, told the LAT.
It will destroy him (Abbas). It will show the only people who can release real prisoners are Hamas, while he can’t do anything, Hani al-Masri, a Palestinian political analyst predicted two years ago…
Some in Israel condemned the agreement for similar reasons.
The deal is a prize for terrorism. It isn’t a deal. It is capitulation, wrote the columnist Ben-Dror Yemini in the daily Maariv.
As a result, it is safe to say that a negotiated peace settlement is further away than ever. The Palestinians are divided and too feeble to extract Israeli concessions, while the Israelis are under no pressure to come to the negotiating table, and will only do so if they can dictate the terms of any agreement.
This situation may explain why Marwan Barghouti is not on the list of security detainees to be released.
Sometimes referred to as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela, he was jailed for life in 2004 by the Israeli authorities on five counts of murder.
Barghouti, it must be said, has a less inflated view of himself.
 I am not a terrorist, but neither am I a pacifist. I am simply a regular guy from the Palestinian street advocating only what every other oppressed person has advocated-the right to help myself in the absence of help from anywhere else, he once wrote.
He was found guilty of providing financial aid and weaponry to militants who, in a series of attacks, killed four Israelis and a Greek Orthodox monk, and of being the leader of Fattah’s military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
The latter organized suicide bombings during the Second Intifada inside Israel.
Barghouti declined to present any defense, considering his arrest illegal, and the court illegitimate. When the prosecutor branded him a terrorist, he retorted occupation is terrorizing, in Hebrew…
Barghouti remains influential in Palestine because he advocates not only negotiations with Israel (which have, after 17 years, failed to advance the Palestinian national agenda) but also resistance.
Betting on negotiations alone was never our choice. I have always called for a constructive mix of negotiations, resistance, political, diplomatic and popular action, he wrote in 2009.
Barghouti was born in 1958, in Kabar, near Ramallah.
He joined Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement when he was 15.
Three years later, he was jailed for four years by the Israelis for belonging to a terrorist organization (Fatah, also the party of Abbas, was considered as such by the Israelis at the time).
While in jail, he learned Hebrew and completed his high school education. He also claims to have been tortured by his jailers...
He would eventually earn a M.A. in International Relations from Birzeit University.
In 1987, he became one of the leaders of the First Intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation, in the West Bank.
As a result, he was arrested by the Israelis, and deported to Jordan.
After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, Barghouti returned to the West Bank, and supported the negotiation process with the Israelis.
He also launched a campaign within Fatah to purge the movement, riddled with corruption, and another against Arafat’s security forces, who he accused of numerous human rights violations.
In 1996, he was elected to the Palestine parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council.
After the Camp David Summit ended in failure in 2000, Barghouti lost faith in the process, and when the Second Intifada erupted in September 2000, he became a vocal leader of the Palestinian resistance.
He also advocated the right of the Palestinians to self-defense in the Occupied Territories.
While I, and the Fatah movement to which I belong, strongly oppose attacks and the targeting of civilians inside Israel, our future neighbors, I reserve the right to protect myself, to resist the Israeli occupation of my country and to fight for my freedom. If Palestinians are expected to negotiate under occupation, then Israel must be expected to negotiate as we resist that occupation, he wrote in the WP in 2002.
I do believe that I am one of the prominent people who support the peace process, he declared in a 2001 interview, however.
One can negotiate peace with Israel while simultaneously resisting its occupation of Palestinian land, according to Barghouti.
When we are talking about resistance, this also includes armed resistance against the Israeli occupation. This is very clear…As I said before, in principle, we oppose any kind of military activity inside Israel, but we do believe any activity inside the Occupied Territories is legal, he added.
If the Israelis tomorrow make a decision for full withdrawal from the territories, we will distribute flowers for the Israelis soldiers as they withdraw from the Occupied Territories…
We are talking about the 1967 borders. We recognized Israel, and we constantly repeat that. The question is not if we recognize Israel, but if Israel recognizes us, he told the interviewer, Jefferson Fletcher.
It must be said however, that during the Second Intifada, some Palestinian radicals had absolutely no qualms about targeting civilians inside Israel, making no distinction between Israel proper and the Occupied Territories.
Barghouti and the moderates were thus unable to contain the resistance movement.
We gave the OK to resistance by the gun against Israeli troops and settlers. We were against operations inside Israel, but it happened out of our control.
We made a big mistake, Ziad Abu Ain, now a deputy minister in the Palestinian government (in the West Bank) told The Guardian in 2009
In 2001, Barghouti narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when his car was struck by an Israeli missile…
Five years later, while in jail, Barghouti co-wrote the Prisoners’ Document (officially known as the National Reconciliation Document), along with the jailed leaders of four other Palestinian factions, including Hamas. It called for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 (thereby implicitly confirming Hamas’s recognition of the state of Israel) and the right of return of refugees.
Hence, Barghouti is a potentially credible partner in any genuine peace process, precisely because his legitimacy and popularity as a representative of the Palestinian people has rested on his two-track approach of negotiation and resistance.
Some in Israel are conscious of this.
Zelev Schiff, a prominent Israeli defense analyst now deceased, once described Barghouti as a charismatic, popular and worthy Palestinian negotiating partner, according to The Guardian.
He may be the only leader able to reunify the Palestinian nationalist movement, currently bitterly divided between Fatah in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza.
A peace agreement signed by Barghouti would thus have a genuine chance of winning the support of the Palestinian people.
Are the Israelis currently interested in striking such a deal?
The prevailing status quo, characterized by the division of the Palestinian nationalist movement into two antagonistic factions, serves the agenda of an Israeli government not keen on reaching an accord that will entail evicting Israeli settlers from occupied Palestinian land.
Arguably, the current division between the Palestinian factions works in Israel’s interests and Barghouti’s commitment to draw Fatah and Hamas back together might represent a serious strategic threat. Many in Israel’s intelligence agencies apparently think so, wrote The Guardian in 2009...
Nothing much has changed these last two years…
As long as the Palestinians are divided, and devoid of an undisputed leader, Israel is under little pressure to resume serious negotiations.
Similarly, Hamas was in no hurry to facilitate the release of a leader that could eventually dominate Palestinian politics and reunify the Palestinian nationalist movement at its expense…
Israel shall release Marwan Barghouti the day it is truly interested in negotiating a genuine and balanced accord with the Palestinians.
Until then…
(the above photograph of Marwan Barghouti was found here)

We really feel alone…

Yesterday, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem urged foreign nations not to support or recognize the recently established Syrian National Council (SNC).
The architects of the organization succeeded in uniting all the various currents of the political opposition to the Assad regime.
Speaking after having met a delegation of Latin American countries (including Cuba and Venezuela) supporting Assad, the foreign minister said the following:
I am not interested in what they (the SNC) are trying to achieve. And we will adopt strict measures against any country that will recognize the illegitimate council.
What those measures would be he did not elaborate…
Formed earlier this month in Istanbul (after a long protracted process), the SNC is composed of 190 members representing the nation’s principle currents: the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic party, the Damascus Declaration, a pro-democracy organization led by dissidents; the Syrian Revolution General Commission, comprising forty opposition groups; representatives of various Kurdish parties, and other minorities, such as the Christians and the Alawites (a Shiite sect to which belong Assad and the dignitaries of his regime).
Significantly, it also represents those inside Syria leading the protest movement, the Local Coordination Committees. In fact, about 50% of the members are currently within Syria, resisting the regime.
A general assembly of all 190 members is to take place next month. A president of the council is to be elected then.
The council will function as a parliament, where policy options are to be reviewed and debated by its members.
The aim of the council is to offer support and encouragement to those protesting and thus risking their lives in Syria; propose an alternative to the vicious Assad regime; fill any leadership vacuum should the regime eventually collapse, and provide the international community with a legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
This had been a demand formulated by the West for some time.
I think the (international) pressure requires an organized opposition, and there isn’t one. There’s no address for the opposition. There is no place that any of us who wish to assist can go, declared last August Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The council’s spokesman, Bourhan Ghalioun,  professor of  Contemporary Oriental Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, clearly affirmed the organization’s purpose: achieve the goals of the revolution to topple the regime, including all of its components and leadership, and to replace it with a democratic pluralistic regime, he said.
I think that this (Assad) regime has completely lost the world’s trust. The world is waiting for a united Syrian (opposition) that can provide the alternative to this regime, so that they can recognize it. The council denounces the (regime’s) policy of sectarian incitement…which threatens national unity and is pushing the country to the brink of civil war, he also declared.
The formation of the SNC did send an important message to the Syrians, but also to the international community, therefore.
The Syrian opposition had succeeded in bridging its differences at last, in order to achieve a common goal: hasten the demise of a brutal, illegitimate regime.
This is the real deal. I’m optimistic because finally we have a comprehensive council that we can say legitimately represents the revolution. This will reinvigorate the protesters and give us a voice with the international community, Shakeeb al-Jabri, an activist exiled in Beirut, told Liz Sly of the WP.
The council will also work towards obtaining the support and recognition of foreign powers in the near future.
We need to mobilize the international community to cut its relations with this regime and support the struggle of the Syrian people, Bourhan Ghalioun told Aljazeera.
Today, French foreign minister Alain Juppé, who had welcomed the formation of the SNC, declared that France would establish relations with it.
A number of urgent issues however, currently divide the council and will need to be addressed.
The first is whether to continue protesting peacefully against a regime unabashed about shooting at its own people, or take up arms as a matter of self-defense.
The other pressing question involves the role, if any, of the international community (and in particular of NATO), in ousting Assad.
The council rejects any outside interference that undermines the sovereignty of the Syrian people, Mr. Ghalioun declared in Istanbul. Yet, more ambiguously, he had also requested that the international community protect the Syrian people from the declared war and massacres being committed against them by the regime.
Can the uprising sustain itself without outside military help?
The situation is deteriorating rapidly on the ground. It’s a war, and the people inside are calling for all the help they can get, Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian dissident based in Washington, and a member of the council, told Liz Sly of the WP.
Many Syrians inside the country, bearing the brunt of the regime’s brutal and savage repression favor an outside intervention. Many of those in exile do not…
The question has yet to be resolved. This will be the most difficult decision for the council to take, Ziadeh added.
In any case, NATO has yet to show any particular interest in replicating the Libyan campaign in Syria. We took on responsibility in Libya because there was a clear UN mandate and because we received clear support from countries in the region. None of these conditions are fulfilled in regards to Syria, and these conditions are essential, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared last week.
In order to ensure that the Syrian opposition (unlike its Libyan counterpart in Benghazi) does not have a foothold inside the country from which to march on Damascus, Assad has done his utmost to crush all attempts by the most virulent supporters of the uprising (army deserters) to resist militarily, particularly in Rastan and Hama.
If the regime can prevent the opposition from controlling even a swath of Syrian territory from which to organize armed resistance against Assad, then those currently in power probably have faith in their ability to outlast the protest movement.
The Syrian regime feels it can weather this storm, David Lesch, a professor of Middle East studies at Trinity University in San Antonio, suggested to the LAT.
In addition, the regime warned its enemies that it would not hesitate to launch missiles on Tel Aviv should the West intervene militarily…
In essence, Assad is ready to do whatever it takes to remain in power…
The Syrians need our help.
We really feel we are alone. We feel no one is helping us. And after all the bloodshed we have seen, we want any kind of help, an activist told the WP.
We owe the brave Syrian people all the help that we can provide…
Actively supporting the SNC would be a significant first step.
France seems to have taken it.
May their American, British, German (etc., etc.) allies quickly follow suit…
(the photograph above of Bouhran Ghalioun is by Reuters)



 

Our revolution will eventually win...

They summoned him outside but he refused to go.
A month before, they had already attempted to kill him…
As a result, the assassins stormed his apartment (located in Qamishli, in the Kurdish north east of Syria) and opened fire.
Mashaal Tammo, 53, founder and leader of the Kurdish Future Movement Party, a liberal organization, was killed.
His son, Marcel, and a party activist, Zahida Rashikilo were wounded in the attack.
Tammo’s politics were inclusive, his goal being to forge a democratic and pluralistic Syria. Not everyone in the Kurdish community shared his views…
He was also a member of the executive committee of the recently established Syrian National Council. The umbrella organization seeks to unite the disparate strands of the Syrian opposition movement.
Released after having spent over three years in jail for his political activities, Tammo had been organizing protests against the Assad regime in Qamishli.
The Syrian Arab News Agency, an official organ, claimed that Tammo was killed by an armed terrorist group. It elaborated by stating that those responsible were gunmen in a black car who fired at his car.
Tammo’s funeral was held the next day, on Saturday.
Some 50,000 people thronged the streets of Qamishli to pay him tribute, but also to vent their anger at the Assad regime.
All of Qamishli is out today. The funeral is turning into a massive protest, Mustafa Osso, a lawyer and Kurdish activist, told AP.
A general strike was also organized in the city on this day of mourning.
The crowds chanted, leave, leave; others demanded Assad’s execution.
Some also shouted Azadi, the Kurdish word for freedom.
Now Tammo has become a flame of the revolution, Abdul Ghafar Mohammed, a Qamishli resident, told CNN (Tammo‘s first name, Mashaal, means flame in Arabic…).
Predictably, Syrian troops fired into the crowd, killing five mourners.
The targeting of a prominent member of the Syrian opposition, of Kurdish origin, could prove an ominous development, however.
The Kurds, accounting for some 10% of Syria’s population of twenty million have long been a neglected minority, victims of discriminatory policies…
They cannot learn the Kurdish language in their schools, nor operate their own radio stations. Many have even been denied Syrian citizenship. At the outset of the uprising last spring, however, Assad promised to reverse course on this issue, in an obvious attempt to mollify them…
In essence, the Assad regime is no friend of the Kurdish people…
And yet, the Kurds have failed so far, to support wholeheartedly the anti-Assad opposition movement.
This long oppressed minority (also oppressed in Turkey, and until recently, in Iraq) is suspicious of Arab intentions generally and has little faith that a post-Assad regime would treat the Kurdish people more benevolently…
There is a mutual lack of trust between the two sides; the Kurds are worried. They already feel excluded from the decision making process and they fear for the future, a Syrian opposition leader told AP.
The killing of Tammo sparked outrage in Syria’s Kurdish province and may alter the political calculus of its political leaders…
This blood is precious to them (Kurds), they will not give up until the regime is overthrown and until the execution of Bashar al-Assad, one of Tammo’s sons, Fares, told Aljazeera.
My father’s assassination is the screw in the regime’s coffin. They made a big mistake by killing my father, he declared to the NYT.
Assad may indeed rue the day his security forces killed Tammo, should the Kurds now opt to support vigorously the anti-regime movement.
There’s a real potential for it (the security situation) getting out of hand, Peter Harling, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, and who is based in Syria, told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
Why then, make the potentially tragic and lethal mistake of killing a prominent Kurdish leader?
Is Assad still in control of the security apparatus, or did he grant it carte blanche to crush the movement as it saw fit?
What is clear however is that the regime has decided to confront the opposition movement solely with repressive, military means.
The security solution essentially amounts to giving a free hand to the security services to dramatically raise the levels of violence in an attempt to restore the wall of fear. In doing so, the regime has undermined its own ability to think and act politically. This is sheer violence, with no limits, a « solution» that has every chance of creating many new problems, Harling added.
Also on Friday, another prominent opposition figure, Riad Seif was arrested next to a Damascus mosque, but not before he was so severely beaten that he had to be hospitalized.
As far as the regime is considered, it is acting in self-defense.
Syria is the target of terrorist threats, its deputy foreign minister told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday.
He brazenly repudiated Western condemnations of the Assad regime’s behavior.
The culture of human rights is a disease. We have to take into considerations that the conduct of some of those developed countries is not honorable in the area of human rights. Syria has been subjected to a series of criminal attacks…accompanied by an unprecedented media campaign of lies and allegations, he added, according to AP.
The regime, quite clearly has neither the intention of changing strategy nor of seriously taking into consideration the Syrian people’s demands for change.
Even Russia, which last week, along with China , vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the violence, calling for an end to the repression and hinting at possible sanctions, at an unspecified future date, seems to be slowly coming to this conclusion….
If the Syrian leadership is unable to undertake these reforms, it will have to go, Russian President Dimitry Medvedev declared Friday.
Last month, the day after he narrowly averted an assassination attempt, Tammo declared the following: we’re living in chaos, and the regime is pushing us toward even more chaos. But we’ll never stop, according to the NYT.
As a result, the violence in Syria does seem to be escalating.
Razan Zeitouneh, a Syrian activist, director of the Syrian Human Rights Information Link, who was this year’s recipient of the Anna Politkovskaya Award granted by the Group RAW in War, corroborated this view (for some background on Anna, see here, and on the prize,  here).
The situation is getting more and more violent every day. Now the average number of people killed by the security (forces) and army is about 20 daily. The army still surrounds many cities and villages, every day new areas and new cities are raided by the security (forces) and the army. Hundred of people get arrested daily, the cases of (people) getting killed under torture is increasing, day after day. Kidnapping people from the street and killing them is also increasing, especially in the city of Homs. In spite of all of that, the protests are still going on, she told RFE/RL.
There is no doubt that the protesters and our revolution will eventually win. If we don’t believe that we will win, we couldn’t continue under all this violence by the regime. We couldn’t bear all these crimes against our people. I’m sure that every single Syrian believes that the revolution will win in the end, she concluded.
Let us hope that victory will be achieved quickly and that the West does its utmost to support the Syrian opposition any way it can, and continues to apply pressure on Syria’s few remaining friends, in particular China and Russia.
They must be made to realize that Assad’s days are numbered and that supporting the Syrian people is not only the wise thing to do, but also the right thing to do…
(the above photograph of Qamishli residents mourning Mashaal Tammo is by Safin Hamed AFP/Getty  Images)

Once again, China and Russia come to Assad's rescue...

Yesterday, China and Russia vetoed a UN resolution condemning Syria for its military crackdown against an overwhelmingly peaceful protest movement that has killed over 2,700 people, according to the UN.
The resolution, drafted by France, assisted by Britain, Germany and Portugal, demanded an end to the violence, condemning arbitrary executions, excessive use of force and the killing and persecution of protesters,  and that those responsible for the repression be held accountable.
It also called for measures guaranteeing fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech, and of assembly, and demanded the release of all political prisoners….
The language on possible sanctions was modified three times in order to mollify potentially reticent members, and in the final draft, the term sanction is not even mentioned…Instead, the resolution merely refers to the possibility of sanctions in the future should Syria persist in defying the will of the international community.  
The vote in the Security Council was nine in favor, and two opposed.
India, South Africa, Brazil and Lebanon abstained…
China and Russia voted against it, and since both possess a right of veto as permanent members of the Council, the resolution was rejected…
Its supporters were both disappointed and outraged.
Alain Juppé, France’s Foreign minister denounced Syrian President Assad as a dictator who is massacring his people,  and pledged continued support for those in Syria demanding the respect of their fundamental rights.
France’s Ambassador to the UN condemned the veto as a rejection of the extraordinary movement in support of freedom and democracy that is the Arab Spring.
The US voiced its outrage at the resolution’s defeat.
During this season of change, the people of the Middle East can now see clearly which nations have chosen to ignore their calls for democracy and instead prop up desperate, cruel dictators, Susan E. Rice, the US ambassador declared.
The Russians justified their rejection of the resolution, considering it too confrontational. This approach is against the peaceful solution of the crisis on the basis of a Syrian national dialogue, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin declared.
The Chinese could not countenance the notion interference in Syria’s affairs…
In fact, both nations feared that a more robust resolution could lead to a Libya-like Western intervention in Syria, a proposition they could not possibly support.
Rice denounced this objection as a cheap ruse on the part of those nations determined not to lose their lucrative arms deals with Syria.
This is not, as some would like to pretend, a Western issue. We had countries all over the world supporting this resolution today, and we have countries throughout the region who’ve been very clear that the brutality of the Assad regime has to end and that the behavior of the regime is absolutely intolerable, she said.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan indicated that his nation would adopt its own sanctions against its neighbor.
Out of necessity our package of sanctions will come into effect, he declared.
 Furthermore, to increase the pressure on Syria, the Turks announced that they would be holding military maneuvers lasting eight days in Hatay province, which borders the Syrian state…
Hence, the Russians and Chinese once gain came to the rescue of the brutal and despicable Assad regime…
This is hardly surprising, considering how Russia handled Chechnya’s quest for independence…
As for the Chinese, no one has forgotten how the despotic regime responded to the demands for freedom and democracy on the part of its youth one June day in 1989...
The Syrian people are unlikely to forget those nations that preferred to support a brutal despot victimizing his own people, instead of those brave citizens brazen enough to march in their cities' streets demanding justice, freedom and democracy…
(the photograph above of the Syrian child protester was found here...)

Drone justice...

Last Friday, Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric, was killed in a US drone attack in Yemen.
Another American who was with him, Samir Khan was also killed.
Mr. Awlaki’s name had been added to the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command hit list in April 2010.
The ACLU, on behalf of Nasser al-Awlaki, the cleric’s father, had filed a lawsuit last year in order to prevent the administration from targeting him, but to no avail.
He was the only American citizen to be included on the hit list…
President Obama justified the killing thus:
Earlier this morning, Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was killed in Yemen. The death of al-Awlaki is a major blow to al Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate. Awlaki was the leader of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
In that role he took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans. He directed the failed attempt to blow up an airplane on Christmas day 2009. He directed the failed attempt to blow up US cargo planes in 2010. And he repeatedly called among individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda.
Hence, the President repeatedly emphasized that Mr. al-Awlaki was a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and that he directed specific attacks on US targets.
As a result, the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was justified, regardless of whether he was an American citizen or not…
What evidence did the President or his administration present to justify the killing of an American citizen, one who had never been charged with or convicted of any crime?
None.
Since the President asserted that Mr. Awlaki was affiliated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or rather its leader, and this organization affiliated with the original al Qaeda, formerly led by the now deceased Osama ben Laden, then he was a legitimate target, since Congress had approved the use of military force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.
The fact that the drone attack took place in Yemen and far from the original theater of war, Afghanistan was irrelevant, since the war on terror is a global one…
As a belligerent, Anwar al-Awlaki forfeited all due-process rights.
What constitutes due process in this case is a due process in war, an administration official told the WP, therefore death by drone attack.
Furthermore, the Justice Department, in a legal memorandum, confirmed the legality of ordering the killing of a US citizen.
The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a US citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Awlaki, the officials said, wrote the WP.
Those who defended the killing of Mr. Awlaki made similar arguments.
Before someone like Mr. Awlaki is targeted, multiple intelligence sources support the conclusion that he is a dangerous threat, top lawyers from many agencies scrutinize the action, policy makers at the highest levels of government approve the action after assessing its legal and political risks, and the Congressional intelligence committees are informed about the intelligence community’s role in the operations, wrote in the NYT Jack L. Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general in the preceding administration.
Satisfied therefore, that all relevant legal issues had been adequately addressed, and since the principle parties inside the administration agreed with the memorandum’s conclusions, Awlaki became a legitimate target, and killed at the first opportunity…
What was the administration’s legal analysis?
We do not know, for the document remains confidential, and the administration refuses to comment further on the matter.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Awlaki, or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process, according to the WP.
The Fifth Amendment stipulates that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
In essence, why Mr. Awlaki was denied his basic constitutional rights remains classified and is none of our business…
As such, we shall have to satisfy ourselves with the President’s claims that Mr. Awlaki was the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula…the leader of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, that he took the lead in planning and directing the efforts to murder innocent Americans.
If the President says so then it must be true…
The President’s word will have to suffice, we are implicitly told…
We shall have to trust him and remain confident that he acted appropriately and that the nation’s laws were fully adhered to…
Did he not swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?
Yet, if the evidence against Mr. Awlaki is so convincing, why not share it with the rest of us?
If the finest legal minds of the administration concluded, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Awlaki was a dangerous terrorist masterminding evil plots against the American people, why should these conclusions remain classified?
Secrecy can only fuel suspicion, and rightly so, for the historical precedents in this field are devoid of any ambiguity…
In the run up to the invasion of Iraq, US intelligence agencies were under great pressure to produce evidence the administration urgently required to justify its imminent attack.
As a result, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate confirmed with high confidence the existence of Iraq’s WMD programs…
That is what was expected from the intelligence community by the Bush/Cheney administration, and that is precisely what it delivered.
Prior to the war, the politicization of intelligence gathering and analysis was blatant and extensive, according to Paul Pillar, a former official of the National Intelligence Council.
A similar phenomenon can be detected concerning the Bush/Cheney policy of enhanced interrogation techniques, to use the official expression then in vogue.
The Bush/Cheney administration was obviously seeking legal cover to utilize methods universally considered torture, even by previous administrations, against high value terrorist suspects.
The Bush/Cheney euphemism covered such methods as grabbing and slapping detainees, forcing them to remain standing while handcuffed for forty hours or more; confining  naked detainees in cold cells while regularly dousing them with cold water and, of course, waterboarding.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee dutifully complied, drafting a series of legal memoranda now infamously known as the Torture memos.
At my direction, Department of Justice and CIA lawyers conducted a careful review. They concluded that the enhanced interrogation program complied with the Constitution and all applicable laws, including those that ban torture, Georges W. Bush wrote in his memoirs…
As a result of this legal authorization, a number of suspects were waterboarded including Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.
The former was subjected to this part of the enhanced interrogation program some 183 times, the latter a mere 83 times, at least…
Through these memos (subsequently made public by the Obama administration in April 2009, following an ACLU FOIA request in court) Justice Department lawyers authorized interrogators to use the most barbaric interrogation methods, including methods that the US once prosecuted as war crimes. The memos are based on legal reasoning that is spurious on its face, and in the end these aren’t legal memos at all-they are simply political documents that were meant to provide window dressing for war crimes, concluded Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project, upon their release.
The documents released today provide further confirmation that lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel purposefully distorted the law to support the Bush administration’s torture program, added Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU.
Should a man’s fate truly depend on advice and information coming from these quarters?
Is there any reason to believe that the intelligence services and the Justice Department are less politicized today then they were two years ago?
What is clear is the following: government departments run by political appointees cannot be trusted to deliver objective, unvarnished, and potentially undesirable advice to their employers in the White House.
As a result, should matters of signal importance such as constitutional rights, that concern every citizen in the land, be confiscated by politicians and their appointees, who purport to be the sole custodians of our best interests and most fundamental rights?
Should not evidence that can lead to the execution of a citizen be reviewed by independent parties?
What are courts and judges for?
President Obama has just asserted the hubristic authority to execute who he wants, when he wants, where he wants (even his fellow citizens), at his sole discretion!
In a democracy, a leader does not possess that kind of power.
If he does, then it is incumbent on the people and their representatives to deprive him of it.
American citizens are not to be trusted with the evidence that justified the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, since it will not be released.
Would they come to a different conclusion?
If not, why the secrecy?
In Obama’s America (a legacy of the Bush/Cheney administration he chose not to repudiate), the function of the citizen, kept willfully ignorant, is to salute the leader for his boldness, and express his gratitude for the President’s successful efforts to keep him safe…
Does a democracy worthy of the name function thus?
Drone justice just dispatched Anwar al-Awlaki into the next world.
That he was a radical who condoned violence in fiery sermons posted on YouTube and in interviews is irrelevant, or is the First Amendment, like the Fifth, obsolete as well?
Incidentally, the young American Samir Khan (who edited al Qaeda's online magazine Inspire) was also killed in the attack..
He had never been charged with any crime either.
Presumably, knowing and meeting with Awlaki was sufficient to deserve the death penalty.  Up to seven people may have killed in the drone strike...
Awlaki and Khan yesterday…
Who shall it be tomorrow, who shall be obliterated by a drone or series of drones, after the President of the United States determines in total secrecy that that particular individual is an enemy of the US and thus deserved to die?
(the above photograph of a drone strike was found here)

Defectors flee Rastan as Syrian army tanks occupy the city...

Today, after six days of fighting, the Syrian army retook control of Rastan, a city located 160 kilometers north of Damascus, the Syrian capital, where hundreds of defectors from the armed forces had taken refuge.
On Friday, the Syrian high command had dispatched 250 tanks to the city in order to crush the defectors’ resistance.
In fact, the defectors, members of the Khaled bin Al-Walid Battalion (named after the first Arab conqueror of Syria)  chose to leave the city after enduring heavy machine gun fire and shelling, facilitating the deployment of Syrian troops in Rastan.
Because of major reinforcements and the weapons used in Rastan by Assad’s gangs, we have decided to withdraw in order to better wage the struggle for liberty, the defectors declared in a statement, according to Al Jazeera.
The Syrian army has taken complete control of Rastan, and 50 tanks left on Sunday. Many houses have been destroyed there and the humanitarian situation is very bad. We have information that dozens of civilians were killed and buried in the gardens of houses as the army shelled the town, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Great Britain, said.
Obtaining precise information from witnesses in Rastan was difficult, the regime having cut all phone and cell phone services in the city…
On Sunday, however, protests were planned throughout Syria, particularly in university towns.
Today is the day of the universities uprising. Everyone knows the fear universities inspire in the regime, a post on The Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page said.
(the photograph above of a tank in the city of Rastan was found here)

There are no signs of torture and murder abating in Syria...

Zainab Al Husni, 19, was on her way to the grocery store when plain-clothed Syrian secret police agents abducted her on July 27.
Her brother Mohammad Al Husni was a prominent pro-democracy activist and organizer of protest marches against the Assad regime in Homs, a center of the unrest, located in central Syria.
Mr. Al Husni had gone underground to evade the security forces.
The regime’s intentions in abducting Zainab were clear.
The secret police kidnapped Zainab so they could threaten her brother and pressure him to turn himself in to the authorities. The government often uses this tactic to get to activists, a spokesman for the Homs Quarters Union, a pro-democracy organization, told CNN.
She would be freed, her family was told, only if her brother surrendered to the authorities.
Mr. Al Husni was subsequently arrested (in what circumstances, it is not clear), and on September 13, his mother was instructed to go the morgue in order to identify her son’s mutilated, bruised and burned body.
While there she came upon Zainab’s remains, which had been stored in a freezer at the Homs military hospital for quite a while…
According to Amnesty International, Zainab had been decapitated, her arms cut off and skin removed.
The human rights organization also disclosed that the family had been compelled by the security forces to sign a document stipulating that Zainab and Mohammad had been kidnapped and killed by an armed gang.
The regime continues to claim, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that those opposing it are not peaceful protesters demanding change, but criminal gangs manipulated bye foreign radicals.
At her funeral, mourners held signs in honor of Zainab (They killed the rose Zainab).
They also chanted Syria wants freedom and the people want the president’s ouster.
Since August 31, Amnesty International has documented at least fifteen other cases of detainees dying in custody. The bodies have borne signs of beating, shooting and stabbing, according to the organization.
The regime’s tactics are getting harsher, for the uprising, although having lost some momentum since the Ramadan, continues.
Hence, all those actively involved in the protest movement, which has been overwhelmingly peaceful, are targeted in order to crush it once and for all.
Known in Darayya, a Damascus suburb, for his determination to shun violence, Ghiyath Matar, a tailor almost twenty-five, and about to become a father, was nicknamed Little Gandhi.
During demonstrations, he would distribute roses to soldiers and offer them cold bottles of water, while chanting peaceful, peaceful.
The security forces arrested Matar and his fellow activist Yahya Sherbaji after the latter’s brother, already in detention was compelled to call Yahya and ask for help, claiming that he had been wounded.
Aware that they were perhaps about to fall into a trap, they responded to the call anyway…
Four days later, on September 13, Matar‘s body was released to his family.
There were bruises around his throat and burn marks across his body, as well as two bullet holes in his abdomen.
The fate of Mr. Sherbaji remains unknown.
Why would the Assad regime torture and kill someone as harmless as Ghiyath Matar?
Ghiyath’s peaceful nature, his refusal to resort to violence when confronted by violence blatantly contradicted the regime’s depiction of the protest movement as a violent uprising of armed groups.
His sole presence in a street demonstration made a mockery of the regime’s justification for utilizing brutal repressive tactics against demonstrators.
As a result, his example was perceived as a dire threat by the authorities.
Ghiyath was embarrassing the regime with his high morals and principles. The regime likes the radicals to justify the military crackdown, but with Ghiyath, the regime knew it would lose, Abu Omar, a Matar relative, told Nada Bakri of the NYT.
Aware that his activities would likely lead to a premature death at the hands of Assad’s security apparatus, Ghiyath Matar had prepared a statement to be read after his death.
Don’t think they triumphed over me with the bullet they shot me with. No, I won and my case won every time I went to the streets, he wrote.
Remember me when you celebrate the fall of the regime and remember that I gave my soul and my blood for that moment. May God guide you on the road of peaceful struggle and grant you victory, he added…
Ghiyath Matar’s wake was attended by a number of foreign ambassadors posted in Damascus, including US envoy Robert Ford, France’s Eric Chevallier and those of Britain and Japan.
Once they had departed, Assad’s security forces raided the event, firing live rounds and tear gas.
If the relatives of peaceful activists, as well as those peaceful activists themselves are being deliberately tortured and killed by the regime, does peaceful resistance have a viable future in Assad’s Syria?
The life of a Syrian activist is becoming more and more dangerous. They face the prospect of death, torture, humiliation every time they venture on the streets, Iyad Sherbaji, a friend, though no relation, of Yahya Sherbaji, told the NYT.
Can peaceful resistance hope to overthrow the regime?
We know how peaceful this guy (Matar) was, and he was tortured to death, and it shows that if we continue like this, we’ll be treated like anyone who had a gun and was a terrorist. Everyone’s really , really angry, a Damascus activist known by his nom-de-guerre Alexander Page, told the WP.
For Assad, anyone demanding that his basic rights be respected is a terrorist.
Matar’s supporters however, are determined to follow his example come what may.
There are many views, and one of them is to take up arms. But for me, and for his friends, and for his family, peaceful resistance is the only option, a friend told the WP.
As we have seen, the regime has fine-tuned its strategy and now specifically targets the leaders of the uprising.
In Daraya, near Damascus, the Assad security apparatus succeeded in arresting all the known leaders of the protest movement.
This did not deter the citizens of Daraya from demonstrating in the city’s streets at the first opportunity…
Daraya security is flabbergasted. More than two dozen field activists and protest organizers were in detention, and the town protested as usual.
It was as if nothing had happened, Mohja Kahf, an activist wrote on Twitter, according to the NYT.
The Syrian people are creative enough to find ways to overcome the repression and keep protesting, an activist told the NYT.
Indeed, they are…
This is a clear manifestation of the protest movement’s stamina and determination, and a vibrant testimony to the inordinate bravery of the Syrian people.…
Yet relentless repression and the inability of the democracy movement to overthrow the regime after six months of protests have engendered a great deal of frustration and dismay.
A lot of people have gone into hiding, and a lot of people are not taking part in protests, Page told the WP.
That said, the uprising is by no means vanquished, and, as far as many activists are concerned, it can only continue.
Were they to concede defeat, the regime would avenge itself mercilessly…
Protesters are telling authorities that they have the patience of Job.
They have faith and believe that, if the protests stop, there will be revenge and killings that no one will survive from. That is why people are insisting to continue until the end, Iyad Sherbaji told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
A stalemate of sorts has been established that some believe can only be overcome by force of arms, given the brutality of the Assad regime.
From the beginning, I knew that the revolution would take a long time for us.
But we are unarmed and I don’t think the regime will fall when faced only with peaceful protests, a doctor told Reuters.
In addition, the growing number of army defectors (mostly disaffected Sunnis who dominate the enlisted ranks) joining the anti-Assad movement has accelerated the militarization of the uprising.
Some 10,000 have already done so, forming the Free Syrian Army, and the apparently rival Free Officers Movement.
It is the beginning of armed rebellion. You cannot remove this regime except by force and bloodshed. But our losses will not be worse than we have right now, with the killings, the torture and the dumping of bodies, General Riad Asaad, who defected in July, told Liz Sly of the WP.
His objective is to replicate the Libyan scenario: conquer a swath of Syrian territory; obtain international protection akin to the NATO-imposed no-fly zone in Libya, then march on Damascus…
The armed rebellion may be only in its infancy, but Assad is taking no chances.
Rastan, a city in eastern Syria, has become a center of the armed resistance to Assad, and hosts hundreds of defectors.
On Tuesday morning, the Syrian army, equipped with tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters, attacked the city.
Tanks closed in on Rastan overnight and the sound of machine guns and explosions has been non-stop. They finally entered this morning, one resident told Reuters.
In spite of clashes of this nature, the uprising has been overwhelmingly a peaceful one, no matter what the regime’s propaganda claims.
I don’t think the numbers (of defectors) are big enough to have an impact one way or another on the government or on the contest between the protesters and the government. The vast majority of protests are still unarmed, and the vast majority of protesters are unarmed, Ambassador Ford told Liz Sly of the WP.
Yet by transforming the act of peacefully protesting into a potentially lethal endeavor, the regime has left its opponents with but two choices: relent and go home, thereby giving the regime a new lease on life, or take up arms against it, thus justifying the official propaganda claiming that it is compelled to use force against armed groups bent on destabilizing the country and seizing power.
Will the opposition be tempted to resort to violence if the peaceful protests fail to topple the regime, thereby falling into what Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group called a trap?
Would such a transformation of the uprising however, be morally reprehensible?
A people under attack, one that is being fired upon by its own army, and threatened with abduction and torture, has the right to defend itself.
Assad has taken the fateful decision to wage war on his own people.
They have the right to resist because their demands are legitimate, in order to ensure their safety and wellbeing.
As in all nations, they have the right to demand freedom, justice and democracy.
If Assad persists in standing in their way, preventing them from obtaining these universal and inalienable rights, then he should be removed, by force if need be.
Should the Syrians, however, choose the violent option?
Those on the opposing side are Syrians too who shall still be there when the struggle is over.
The regime still has the support of Christian (about 10% of the Syrian population), Alawite and other minorities who fear being the victims of the chaos that would ensue the fall of the repressive Assad regime.
We are all scared of what will come next, Abu Elias, a Christian, told the NYT.
Specifically, the Christians fear that a future Sunni government could persecute them for being Christians, and former supporters of the Assad regime.
The Iraqi precedent is not encouraging…
In addition, it is by no means clear Assad’s opponents could defeat the regime’s security apparatus, dominated by the Alawites, who have too much to lose should Assad (himself an Alawite) fall.
It is for the Syrians to choose however and not for us to advise them from the comfort of our studies thousands of miles away…
Yet, only by choosing the path of peaceful resistance can the opposition hope to convince these anxious minorities that the new post-Assad Syria that should soon emerge is also theirs...

There are no signs of torture and murder abating in Syria.
The mounting toll of reports of people dying behind bars provides yet more evidence of crimes against humanity and should spur the UN Security Council into referring the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, wrote Philip Luther, of Amnesty International.
The UN Security Council has failed the Syrian people who deserve the support of all civilized nations.
How many Syrians will have to be arrested, tortured and killed ( over 2,700 to date, including some 100 children), how many more Zainabs and Ghiyaths sacrificed, before Syria’s patrons at the Council, Russia and China, finally decide to act?
(the photograph of Ghiyath Matar above was found here)