Con la “scusa ufficiale” della visita in Iran, la Russia guarda invece sopratutto alla Siria… La Siria infatti rappresenta un interesse economico per la Russia. Stiamo parlando di diversi miliardi di dollari in contratti. Per quanto rimanga un cliente relativamente piccolo, Damasco gioca un ruolo chiave nella sopravvivenza di alcune imprese russe. Nel 2011, secondo il Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, organizzazione no-profit russa che traccia le vendite di armi, la Siria rappresentava il 6% delle esportazioni di armamenti russi. Oggi, c’è chi ipotizza che sia arrivata al 10%, ovvero il terzo cliente per ordine di importanza. Gli interessi russi abbracciano anche il settore energetico. Contratti di lungo periodo sono stati siglati con Damasco per l’esplorazione e lo sfruttamento di riserve di gas naturale, complice il gasdotto “Arab Gas Pipeline” che collega l’Egitto alla Turchia e a un sito produttivo a 125 miglia a est di Homs. Complice la sua posizione in medio oriente e a un passo dall’economia turca bisognosa di energia, come pure l’Unione Europea poco distante, il gasdotto evidenzia il significato strategico della Siria. La base navale di Tarsus, in particolare, è l’ultimo avamposto russo nel Mediterraneo. I nodi che legano Iran e Siria, invece, sono soprattutto di tipo religioso e strategico. L’Iran, infatti, è il più popoloso stato shiita. La Siria è dominata dagli alawiti, affiliati agli shiiti e l’ultima cosa che Teheran desidera è una Siria controllata dai sunniti.

A visit to Iran by Foreign Minister of Russia Lavrov has been set for December 10-11,ˈ a Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters.
The agenda for the trip includes topics concerning bilateral relations, regional problems and steps to resolve issues related to Tehranˈs nuclear program in light of the agreements that were recently reached in Geneva, he said.
Iran and world powers in Geneva last month agreed to freeze aspects of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a modest easing of the sanctions regime.
Iran has categorically and in countless occasions denied the baseless accusation that it is working to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a peaceful nuclear program.
Russia has aided Iran, a key regional ally since the Soviet era, in developing nuclear power generation, and completed the construction of its only functioning nuclear power station at Bushehr.
Iran is to hold expert-level talks with major powers on its nuclear program next week in Vienna.

Source IRNA

Traffico di esseri umani dall’Eritrea al Sinai: un fenomeno atroce che dimostra da anni come le autorità politiche e religiose dell’Eritrea, dell’Egitto, del Sudan e degli altri paesi coinvolti in questo barbaro commercio si mostrino indifferenti e spesso complici del crimine organizzato e dei movimenti terroristici, che traggono finanziamento proprio dalla vendita di armi, droga, esseri umani e organi.

A new report published on Wednesday claims that Eritrean and Sudanese military officers are jointly working on trafficking thousands of Eritrean children who are being held hostage for ransom in Sudan and further sold on to a trafficking network in Sinai, Egypt.
The report titled: “The Human Trafficking Cycle: Sinai and Beyond”, said Eritrea’s Border Surveillance Unit (BSU), which is under the command of General Teklai Kifle locally known as ‘Teklai Manjus’ is responsible for the human trafficking operations of children who, according to the report, are even as young as two or three years old.
Researchers, by Prof. Mirjam van Reisen, Meron Estefanos and Prof. Conny Rijken,
said the children are abducted and first smuggled to neighbouring Sudan where captives are asked to raise as much as 10,000 dollars or are threatened to be sold to Bedouin traffickers in Sinai.
The children, the report for the Europe External Policy Advisors alleges, are sold with the help of Sudanese military officers who collude with Sinai smugglers.
Once they are in the hands of Bedouin traffickers, the children are often subjected to torture and different forms of inhuman treatments so as to push their relatives to pay the demanded ransom.
An Eritrean opposition official on Friday told Sudan Tribune that if relatives fail to raise the money the children either are tortured to death or will be subjected to organ harvesting such as to the extraction of kidneys.
According to the report, between 2007 and 2012 up to 30,000 children were trafficked from inside Eritrea.
Many others were also kidnapped from refugee camps in Sudan.
An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 hostages have died in captivity. Many who managed to pay the ransom were also among the victims.
Among the several kidnapping incidents the report mentioned on the kidnapping of 211 children in October 2013 from a camp in Sudan.
Captors then demanded a ransom of $10,000 per head to release the children.
According to the study, some $600 million have been extorted in ransoms during the past five years.
Most of the children who are freed after the ransom payout are arrested by Egyptian security and are jailed indefinitely.
Every month, an average of 3,000 Eritreans cross borders to Sudan fleeing repression by regime in Asmara.
Currently there are nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees at a camp in eastern Sudan.
The study by the Swedish and Dutch researchers was based on the interviews with 230 Eritreans who survived the trafficking and the torture in Sinai.
The report has been presented to the European Union parliament.
Source Sudan Tribune

WhyIl problema non è tanto se Arafat è stato assassinato, quanto piuttosto perché? E chi si é avvantaggiato dalla sua uccisione?

On November 7, Raanan Gissin commented on the instructions given by the then PM Ariel Sharon in 2002, to the effect that “everything [must] be done to ensure that Arafat… was not killed by our soldiers,” the statement is correct but also misleading as to Israel’s responsibility for Arafat’s death. The Swiss team has concluded that polonium 210 was the weapon and in Francois Bochud’s words the “results reasonably support the poisoning theory.”  Although recent French medical reports suggested otherwise and that he died of natural causes, yet we are left to ponder the reasons and the hands that carried out the murder not whether it was a murder. The question is why and what interests were served by killing Arafat?
Oslo, Arafat and ending the PLO
To understand the decision-making process that led to Arafat’s murder, we must go back to the events that culminated into the Oslo Accords; the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin; and the political re-emergence of Sharon after a prolonged absence which was the final nail in the “peace process coffin”. From the beginning of the “peace process”, Israel’s leadership moved to create “facts on the ground” in an attempt to prejudice final negotiations and to strengthen the hold of settlers in the West Bank.
Israel had a deep mistrust of Arafat and the PLO. It attempted to eliminate both in the past. For Arafat, the engagement in peace negotiations was a strategic decision taken at a time of changing regional and global power structures. He believed in resistance and that it should always be an option independent of negotiations until the occupation is ended. Yet in this process Israel wanted Arafat to use his power to provide security for the settlements and settlers while they both expanded throughout the negotiations, an untenable position for the Palestinian leadership.
In this context, Israel understood and needed Arafat since he was not a regular figure, but rather an embodiment of the Palestinian struggle in his persona, history, dress and political machination. He was the bridge between all Palestinian factions and despite his best efforts to maintain control and discipline post-Oslo, Israel’s strategy at fragmenting the PLO and penetrating its inner leadership circle in the Occupied Territories was gaining traction. Arafat’s hold on power levers was the only remaining obstruction.  
In reality, the PLO was the major challenge to Israel since it represented the Palestinians’ collective claims and had an effective global footprint. I do have long standing and extensive critique of the PLO.This, however, should not be confused with recognising the importance and the role it played across the globe, managing to create a state of Palestine without a territory – a monumental feat if one considers the obstacles.  

 Arafat entered the “peace process” in a very weak position with limited or no Arab support, and a changing regional and global strategic map. One has to see the signing of Oslo as his way of getting back into centre stage and forcing Palestine on the international agenda. However, it was a strategic miscalculation to trust the US in the search for a Palestinian state. The Oslo agreement ended the PLO as an international body and transformed it into an authority responsible for the Palestinians under occupation. Thus the global challenge posed by the PLO was eliminated and what remained was subject to direct Israeli control, if not employed by it. One Israeli aim in the “peace process” was to decapitate the PLO and to end the Palestinian political structure, narrowing the scope of legal claims against it.
Al-Aqsa intifada and isolating Arafat
On September 28, 2001, the Second Intifada erupted after Ariel Sharon’s visit to Al-Aqsa compound with over 1000 Israeli soldiers. The visit was the needed spark for a ticking bomb emerging from unfulfilled expectations and the Palestinians’ loss of land since the signing of Oslo. The response from Israel was massive and violent, especially after the highly contentious election that brought Ariel Sharon to the PM.

Arafat became a persona non grata not welcomed in diplomatic gatherings, while the newly empowered PM Mahmoud Abbas was invited to meetings with President Bush and Arab leaders at the World Economic Forum. While Sharon was called a “man of peace” by President Bush,  Arab leaders had no objections to Arafat’s isolation. Certainly, the train of Arab normalisation has left the station and Arafat was no longer welcome on it.
Why kill Arafat?
After the First Gulf War, a new order emerged that witnessed normalisation of relations between  Arab and Muslim states and Israel, cooperation in intelligence and military training, economic investment and projects with the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, US, Europe and Gulf States that produced a new elite connected to and ready to defend this order and its interests in it. 
 In addition and a very important fact is that Sharon, the US and the Arab world operated in a post 9/11 logic and a changing global landscape with Arafat being a relic from a distant political past. The “new” order in the Arab world supported invading Iraq, opened torture centres for rendition and linked its security, economic and political elites to Israel. Arafat was the odd man in the mix. For him, Palestine was a real cause and not a mere tool to dispense with for a new free trade zone, a Most Favorite Nation clause or sweat shops for products to be sold at Macy’s.
The new alignment moved swiftly to factor Arafat out and I believed in 2002 that his days were numbered and that the search for a replacement was underway. More importantly, Israel managed to divide the Palestinian national body and fragmented the consensus on the touchstone issues that defined the cause since the 1948.  At best, the current Palestinian political structure is a hostage to Israel’s occupational forces, and at worst it has been transformed into a platform for paid employees empowered to protect the settlements from the anger of the Palestinians.
What Arafat had was his signature, and as soon as it was delivered in 1993, the execution countdown was under way. Indeed, what was left was the how and when, not the if. Arafat’s nationalist credentials were a threat not to be left to circumstances or allowed to reconstitute. Arafat was killed because he was too nationalist for his own good and too aware of the historical and religious significance of Palestine to accept being a chief in a new colonial plantation.
The hands that delivered the venom were ready to serve in a Palestinian Bantustan connected to the neoliberal Arab and Muslim order, with all its glitter and wealth. For sure, the actual hands that placed the polonium for Arafat’s consumption are Palestinian belonging to the inner circle but the execution warrant can be traced to Sharon, Israel and the host of players in the new Arab order that have too much invested to worry about the life of one old man or Palestine for that matter. 

Hezbollah ha annunciato oggi l’uccisione di un suo leader nei pressi di Beirut accusando Israele. “La resistenza islamica annuncia la morte di uno dei suoi leader, Hassan Hawlo al-Lakiss, assassinato nei pressi di casa sua nella regione di Adath”, ad est di Beirut, ha annunciato la tv del movimento sciita, Al Manar.

”L’accusa diretta e’ rivolta contro il nemico israeliano, che ha tentato di eliminare il nostro fratello martire piu’ volte e in diversi luoghi, ma i cui tentativi erano falliti fino a questa mattina: il nemico deve assumersi la piena responsabilita’ e le conseguenze di questo crimine ignobile”, ha precisato il comunicato di Hezbollah.

Nei giorni scorsi, un attentato contro l’ambasciata dell’Iran a Beirut, che sorge in un quartiere a maggioranza sciita e sotto il controllo di Hezbollah, ha provocato 23 morti e piu’ di 140 feriti.

In seguito all’attentato all’ambasciata iraniana a Beirut, Al-Qaeda ha annunciato che ”ci saranno ulteriori attacchi” finche’ Hezbollah, alleato dell’Iran e della Siria, combattera’ a fianco del governo di Damasco e ”finche’ non saranno liberati i prigionieri delle brigate Azzam in Libano”. (fonte AFP).

You know you’ve made some bad life decisions when you’re involved in a globally-notorious terror group. Step into the shoes of one such man, Lebanese Hassan Hawlo al-Lakiss, who joined Hezbollah and rose through its ranks to become one of its top leaders. His path to prominence in Hezbollah wasn’t really all that difficult; he simply had to avoid getting killed or tasked with blowing himself up for his imaginary friend. As a Hezbollah military leader, al-Lakiss directed jihadist troop movements and consulted with Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel, of course, wouldn’t put up with Islamic Hezbollah savages throwing rocks and shooting rockets. However, al-Lakiss didn’t directly antagonize Israel; he just told others to. Were his jihadist leanings what got him killed? His Hezbollah BFFs seem to think so. al-Lakiss was “assassinated” in a parking lot near his home a couple days ago by three masked gunmen. Hezbollah released this statement regarding his death: “Direct accusation is aimed of course against the Israeli enemy which had tried to eliminate our martyred brother again and again and in several places but had failed, until yesterday evening.”

“The Israeli enemy.” Totally the religion of peace right there. Despite the lack of evidence implicating Israel in the crime, the Muslims immediately blamed their eternal foes, the Jews. It is unknown who killed al-Lakiss, but even if Israel were involved, the terrorist kinda brought it upon himself for his fervently jihadist ways.
da  Your Daily Muslim