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Bible Quotation For Today/For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.
Matthew 13/10-17: "Then the disciples came and asked Jesus, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’He answered, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. The reason I speak to them in parables is that "seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand. "With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: "You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them." But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it."

Bible Quotation For Today/Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?
First Letter to the Corinthians 06/12-20: ‘All things are lawful for me’, but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful for me’, but I will not be dominated by anything. ‘Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food’, and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh.’ But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 26-27/15
Another round of Hezbollah - Future Movement tension/Myra Abdallah/Now Lebanon/October 26/15
Direct Experience: The One Benefit of Accepting Muslim Migrants/Raymond Ibrahim/October 26/15/Frontpage Magazine/October 26/15
Looking to Abdullah, because Abbas won’t douse the flames/By HERB KEINON/J.Post/October 26/15
Senate to grill Kerry on Russian war in Syria/Julian Pecquet/Al-Monitor/October 26/15
Could Egypt be key to political solution in Syria/Ahmed Fouad/Al-Monitor/October 26/15
Clinton questions Jordan’s stability, provoking ire in Amman/Aaron Magid/Al-Monitor/October 26/15
Israel-Palestine peace process 'kidnapped by religious zealots'/Uri Savir/Al-Monitor/October 26/15
No breakthrough in Syria possible without Iran/Al-Monitor/October 26/15
Turkey's Thugocracy/Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/October 26/15
The End of Arms Control in the Second Nuclear Age/Peter Huessy/Gatestone Institute/October 26/15
Including Yemen in the GCC/Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/October 26/15
Why we must count the human cost of war/Robert Muggah/Al Arabiya/October 26/15
ISIS after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi/Andrew Bowen/Al Arabiya/October 26/15
The Egyptian State: a ‘non-regime’/H.A. Hellyer/Al Arabiya/October 26/15

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin for Lebanese Related News published on October 26-27/15
French Interior Minister in Beirut for Talks with Top Officials
Report: Salam Did Not Threaten to Resign, Still Has Several Options to Tackle Crisis
Saudi Prince Held in Record Beirut Airport Drug Bust
Partial SCC Strike, Demanding Inclusion of Wage Scale on Agenda
Dialogue Session Shows No Glimpse of Solution to Trash Crisis
Kataeb Suspends Participation at National Dialogue over Mounting Trash Crisis
Exporting Lebanon's Trash Back to Spotlight
Shehayyeb: Final Decision on Trash Crisis Should Be Taken within Two Days
Environment Minister Blames 'Political Forces' for Growing Trash Crisis
Report: Berri to Threaten Use of Force to Resolve Trash Crisis
Liberman: Syria fighting will be over soon, Hezbollah will turn its sights on Israel
Hariri: We Firmly Stand by Salam, Won't Give Hizbullah Chance to Undermine Dialogue
Another round of Hezbollah - Future Movement tension

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 26-27/15
Israeli Defense Ministry intercepts shipment of military uniforms for Hamas and ISIS
Direct Experience: The One Benefit of Accepting Muslim Migrants
Powerful 7.5 Quake Rocks South Asia, More Than 160 Dead
Bid to Ease Tensions over Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Stumbles over Cameras
Oman's Top Diplomat Meets Assad in Rare Syria Visit
Russia Hits Record 94 Targets in Syria in 24 Hours
France to Host Syria Talks on Tuesday
Ministry: one killed after Saudi mosque blast
U.N. says 120,000 displaced by rising violence in Syria
Turkish police and ISIS militants killed in firefight
Radical Islamists demand segregation at Yemen university
Saudi forces foil Houthi infiltration of al-Hurath border area
Bomb attack on Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad kills 7: sources
Russia hits record 94 targets in Syria in 24 hours
Oman FM meets Assad to help end Syria crisis
Analysis: Looking to Abdullah, because Abbas won’t douse the flames

Christian Persecution
Catholic bishops call for “complete decarbonization” by 2050, remain silent on global jihad against Christians/October 26, 2015/Robert Spencer/Jihad Watch
Video/‘Lambs among Wolves’: Documentary about the Muslim Brotherhood’s burning of Coptic churches

Video/‘Lambs among Wolves’: Documentary about the Muslim Brotherhood’s burning of Coptic churches
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2015/10/26/lambs-among-wolves-documentary-about-the-muslim-brotherhoods-burning-of-coptic-churches/
October 26, 2015/Ralph Sidway
https://youtu.be/WQ2TORVwKvI
This looks promising: an English-language documentary on the Muslim Brotherhood’s planned, systematic burning of over 70 Coptic churches in Egypt, August 2013, just weeks following the popular overthrow of the ruthless, sharia-based government of Mohamed Morsi. Will it discuss the Obama administration’s unwavering support of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood? Or Koranic and hadith support for Muslim persecution of Christians and destruction of churches?E en should such important components not be featured, showing the world what is at the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood should be a landmark achievement.
“Lambs among Wolves: A documentary about churches burning in Egypt
Aug 2013,” Coptic Youth Channel, October 25, 2015:
EXCLUSIVE ON CYC the only english documentary movie that tells exactly the details of the Muslim Brotherhood attack over churches of Egypt which caused the burning of more than 70 churches in 2 days!! Hatred burnt every thing in churches, it was a complete destruction! Wait for the entire movie soon on CYC!

Catholic bishops call for “complete decarbonization” by 2050, remain silent on global jihad against Christians
October 26, 2015/Robert Spencer/Jihad Watch
Complete decarbonization? You first, fellas. No more jetting to Rome to cause trouble for everyone by canonizing hard-Left Democratic Party policies. And let’s see you portly prelates start bicycling from parish to parish — no more driving for you, McManus. That wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
While the bishops call for this destruction of the global economy, they continue to ignore a genuine and growing threat from the global jihad. Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Ephrem Joseph III Younan recently appealed to the West “not to forget the Christians in the Middle East.” And he is not the only one. “Why, we ask the western world, why not raise one’s voice over so much ferocity and injustice?” asked Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI). The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III has also said: “I do not understand why the world does not raise its voice against such acts of brutality.”I do. It’s because the bishops in the West believe that the spurious and self-defeating “dialogue” they’re conducting requires them to be silent about Muslim persecution of Christians: “Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.” — Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, February 8, 2013. That’s why bishops such as McManus, Kevin Farrell of Dallas, Jaime Soto of Sacramento and others move actively to silence and demonize voices that tell the truth about this persecution. Meanwhile, their “dialogue” hasn’t persuaded a single jihadi to lay down his arms. Nor has it prevented a single Christian from being murdered by Muslims in pursuit of that jihad. Nor has it kept a single church from destruction at the hands of those jihadis. The Church could have and should have been a voice for a genuinely charitable response to the jihad threat, and a robust defense of the value of Judeo-Christian civilization. Instead, it parrots Leftist talking points about climate change.
Francis and bishops
“Global bishops call for ‘complete decarbonisation’ by 2050,”
AFP, October 26, 2015:
Bishops launched a global appeal Monday for a break-through at upcoming Paris climate talks, including a “complete decarbonisation” of the world’s economy and more help for poor countries battling the effects of climate change.
The bishops said any agreement “should limit global temperature increases to avoid catastrophic climatic impacts, especially on the most vulnerable communities”.
From across five continents they called “not only for ‘drastic reduction in the emission of carbon dioxide and other toxic gasses’, but also for ending the fossil fuel era”.
The goal should be “complete decarbonisation by mid-century, in order to protect frontline communities suffering from the impacts of climate change, such as those in the Pacific Islands and in coastal regions”.
The November 30-December 11 conference in Paris will be the culmination of six years of work since the ill-fated 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, which failed to lock down significant agreements.
The bishops urged those taking part to “keep in mind not only the technical but particularly the ethical and moral dimensions of climate change” as laid out in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“Those responsible for climate change have responsibilities to assist the most vulnerable in adapting and managing loss and damage and to share the necessary technology and knowhow,” they said in a statement….

French Interior Minister in Beirut for Talks with Top Officials
Naharnet/October 26/15/French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve arrived in Beirut at dawn on Monday where he will meet top officials. Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq tweeted early in the morning that he had welcomed the French official at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport. Cazeneuve is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Tammam Salam. Later on Monday, he visited the eastern Bekaa region to tour Syrian refugee encampments, reported Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3).

Report: Salam Did Not Threaten to Resign, Still Has Several Options to Tackle Crisis
Naharnet/October 26/15/Prime Minister Tammam Salam is not ready to resign from his post and expose the country to more vacuum, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Monday. Sources denied to the daily recent media reports that said that the premier would step down from his position on Thursday due to ongoing political disputes, most notably those on the trash disposal crisis. “Who will the prime minister hand in his resignation to? Who will accept or reject it? The presidency has been vacant for over a year and a half,” they said. Salam will place great emphasis during Monday's national dialogue session on tackling the waste disposal crisis, revealed al-Joumhouria. “The premier still has several options, including being frank with the Lebanese people over recent developments and their causes,” the sources continued. “Perhaps such a step would help bring some people back to their senses and let them assume their responsibilities in confronting the environmental and health crisis facing Lebanon,” they remarked. “There are no constitutional articles that dictate how to confront the situation we are experiencing today. The unprecedented reality could create unconstitutional and illegal norms that have nothing to do with ethical political work,” warned the sources.Lebanon has been suffering from a trash disposal crisis since July with the closure of the Naameh landfill. Politicians have failed to find an alternative to the landfill, resulting in the pile up of garbage on the streets of the country. The heavy rain on Sunday brought with it flooded streets coupled with waste, as experts warned of the health and environmental impact of the crisis.

Saudi Prince Held in Record Beirut Airport Drug Bust
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 26/15/A Saudi prince and four others were detained on Monday in the largest drug bust in the history of the Beirut airport, a security source said. Saudi prince Abdel Mohsen Bin Walid Bin Abdulaziz and four others were detained by security at Rafik Hariri International Airport while allegedly "attempting to smuggle about two tons of Captagon pills and some cocaine," a security source told AFP. "The smuggling operation is the largest one that has been foiled through the Beirut International Airport," the source said on condition of anonymity. Captagon is the brand name for the amphetamine phenethylline, a synthetic stimulant. The banned drug is consumed mainly in the Middle East and has reportedly been widely used by fighters in Syria. The security source said the drugs had been packed into cases that were waiting to be loaded onto a private plane that was headed to Saudi Arabia. The five Saudi citizens were still in the airport and would be questioned by customs authority, the source added. In April 2014, security forces foiled an attempt to smuggle 15 million capsules of Captagon hidden in shipping containers full of corn from Beirut's port. The National News Agency said the private plane was to head to Riyadh and was carrying 40 suitcases full of Captagon. Saudi Arabia's large royal family has had past run-ins with authorities in various countries. Late last month, a Saudi prince was arrested in Los Angeles for allegedly trying to force a woman to perform oral sex on him at a Beverly Hills mansion. But authorities decided not to pursue the charge, citing a lack of evidence. In 2013, a Saudi princess was accused in Los Angeles of enslaving a Kenyan woman as a housemaid, but the charges were also eventually dropped.

Partial SCC Strike, Demanding Inclusion of Wage Scale on Agenda
Naharnet/October 26/15/The Syndicate Coordination Committee held a partial strike on Monday in the public institutions and schools demanding that the new wage scale be included on the agenda of the expected legislative session. The public institutions, private, elementary and intermediate public schools closed on Monday while public high schools did not join the protest. In a sit-in they held by the Social Affairs Ministry, the SCC said: “Our protests will continue until our demands are met. “The government has failed so far to solve the problems in the country. They only favor their own interests and priorities,” they said. “They have paralyzed the cabinet, the only jurisdiction left functioning. They do not care about the people's needs and concerns,” they concluded. They extended their gratitude to Speaker Nabih Berri for urging politicians to hold a legislative session.The SCC objections come in parallel with consultations among political blocs aiming to hold a legislative session to approve the pressing issues in the country under the so-called legislation of necessity amid the presidential void. The bureau is scheduled to convene on Tuesday, while media reports predicted that the legislative session will be held in November. Speaker Nabih Berri urged lawmakers last week, during a meeting to elect the various committees of the parliament, to agree to hold a legislative session as soon as possible, cautioning them that the World Bank has warned Lebanon that it would drop it from its list of aid receivers for years to come in the absence of the necessary financial legislation. The SCC committee, which is a coalition of private and public school teachers and public sector employees, has staged numerous strikes in recent years to demand the adoption of the new wage scale. The salary hike has been at the center of controversy since it was approved by the government of ex-Prime Minister Najib Miqati in 2012. Several parliamentary blocs had refused to approve the draft-law over fears that it would have devastating effects on the economy.

Dialogue Session Shows No Glimpse of Solution to Trash Crisis
Naharnet/October 26/15/The eighth dialogue session convened at parliament on Monday after it tackled several pressing issues mainly the lingering trash crisis that saw the streets of the capital swirling with trash bags on Sunday. Another session will be held next week on November 3. However, Progressive Socialist party chief Walid Jumblat did not attend the session citing health reasons. Al-Mustabqal bloc leader Fouad Saniora, who was abroad, and Telecommunications Minister Butros Harb also did not attend. On the other hand, Kataeb party leader Sami Gemayel announced that he will suspend his participation in the sessions until the politicians agree on a solution for the “mounting”trash crisis. MP Hagop Pakradounian said after the meeting: “The landfill of Bourj Hammoud is a red line. We have tolerated the trash for over 20 years.” Al-Jadeed television meanwhile said Prime Minister Tammam Salam told Speaker Nabih Berri during the session that he is "willing to call a cabinet session if all political forces reach an agreement to resolve the garbage crisis."Berri for his part expressed regret after the session over Kataeb's suspension of its participation in dialogue while noting that the party's move "stemmed from good intentions aimed at activating the work of institutions."Streets in parts of Lebanon turned into rivers of garbage on Sunday as heavy rains washed through mountains of trash that have piled up during a months-long waste collection crisis. Residents and activists posted photographs and video online showing water from torrential showers carrying accumulated waste down streets in the early morning outside Beirut and beyond. On his way into the parliament, Tourism Minister Michel Pharaon expressed pessimism at the cabinet's ability to solve the file, he said: “The cabinet is incapable to solve the trash file. We don't know if it has any future.” Berri had sponsored the dialogue sessions among the main political parties to discuss a stalemate that has frozen government institutions for months.

Kataeb Suspends Participation at National Dialogue over Mounting Trash Crisis
Naharnet/October 26/15/The Kataeb Party announced on Monday its suspension of its participation in the national dialogue talks due “to the mounting daily problems endured by the people.”It said in a statement: “We have repeatedly called for separating the people's daily concerns from political disputes and for the cabinet to convene, especially after the garbage crisis turned into an environmental and health disaster.”“We have long warned of the mounting disaster and cabinet is still absent and being hindered from convening,” it added. “We therefore announce the suspension of our participation at the talks until a solution to the people's daily concerns, especially the trash crisis, are resolved,” it stressed. The national dialogue session is underway at parliament. Lebanon has been suffering from a trash disposal crisis since July with the closure of the Naameh landfill.Politicians have failed to find an alternative to the landfill, resulting in the pile up of garbage on the streets of the country. The heavy rain on Sunday brought with it flooded streets coupled with waste, as experts warned of the health and environmental impact of the crisis.

Exporting Lebanon's Trash Back to Spotlight
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 26/15/A suggestion to export the trash that has been piling in the country since July seems to emerge again, despite the fact that it is a complicated and expensive solution, unnamed sources following up closely on the trash crisis told the daily al-Akhbar on Monday. There are three companies interested in taking this matter into their own hands and they have in that regard contacted the premiership and the committee of Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb, and the discussions have reached an advanced phase, the sources added. However a decision to transport the garbage abroad faces a number of hurdles mainly that it requires a cabinet convention and the cabinet is disrupted currently. Adding to the political obstacles, the plan if approved, faces technical problems because the trash requires almost 20 days for packaging, taking into consideration the international specification standards in addition to the approval of the countries that wish to import the trash. Streets in parts of Lebanon turned into rivers of garbage on Sunday as heavy rains washed through mountains of trash that have piled up during a months-long waste collection crisis. The scenes come three months into a crisis precipitated by the closure of Lebanon's largest landfill in July, and the government's failure to find an alternative. The crisis sparked a protest movement led by the "You Stink" activist group, which brought thousands of people into the streets for several weeks of demonstrations. The cabinet in early September approved a plan that involved finding new sites for landfills and temporarily reopening the closed Naameh site for the immediate disposal of already-accumulated waste. But the plan has run into a series of obstacles, including the refusal of residents around Naameh to allow its reopening and protests by people living near prospective new landfill sites. Activists and several ministers have long warned that the arrival of winter, which often brings heavy rains to Lebanon, risked dispersing months worth of trash that has accumulated in open dumps. "You Stink" activists wearing protective suits and facemasks sorted trash that had washed into the Beirut river from piles where it has been dumped along its banks on Sunday. "We are proud to be 'waste workers' in this country, for trash, corruption, and the corrupt," the group wrote on its Facebook page. It accused Lebanon's politicians of doing nothing "while the country drowns in their trash as a result of rampant, criminal corruption and inaction.

Shehayyeb: Final Decision on Trash Crisis Should Be Taken within Two Days
Naharnet/October 26/15/Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb stated that the ongoing problem in tackling the garbage disposal crisis lies in some parties' “lack of seriousness” in addressing the issue, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper Monday. He told the daily: “A final decision on the matter should be taken within two days.” “What more can I do after I had warned over a month ago of the danger of the advent of winter on the garbage crisis?” he asked. “The problem is becoming worse and some officials have neglected the file, which has allowed some juveniles to play a negative role in the media and other outlets by inciting the people against my plan,” Shehayyeb said. “Some politicians in the civil society movement wanted to keep the garbage on the street in order to keep street action alive,” he added. “Let them all assume their responsibility otherwise the problem will get worse,” warned Shehayyeb. “We still have time, even if it may be short and pressing. Today is better than tomorrow, and yesterday is better than today, but at the end of the week, we will no longer be able to do anything. At least I won't,” he cautioned. Lebanon has been suffering from a trash disposal crisis since July with the closure of the Naameh landfill. Politicians have failed to find an alternative to the landfill, resulting in the pile up of garbage on the streets of the country. The heavy rain on Sunday brought with it flooded streets coupled with waste, as experts warned of the health and environmental impact of the crisis.

Environment Minister Blames 'Political Forces' for Growing Trash Crisis
Naharnet/October 26/15/Environment Minister Mohammed al-Mashnouq on Sunday blamed the political forces for the worsening garbage crisis in the country, after heavy rains turned streets in parts of Lebanon into rivers of trash. Mashnouq reminded that he had asked the council of ministers two months ago to “declare an environmental state of emergency in Lebanon, out of fear of the possible fallout from the garbage crisis, whose solutions are still being obstructed by the political forces.”“The political forces did not heed my repeated appeals and today we are facing the situation that we had warned of,” the minister added. He cautioned that the country will witness “unlimited threats from the disaster if the political forces do not take an immediate positive stance.” Noting that “Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb have spared no effort to address the problem,” Mashnouq warned that “the political forces' obstacles are leading Lebanon into the unknown.”Mashnouq had on August 31 suspended his participation in a ministerial panel addressing the crisis amid massive street protests sparked by the trash collection problem. Civil society activists have voiced repeated calls for the minister's resignation since the eruption of the unprecedented crisis on July 17. After Mashnouq suspended his role in the waste management file, Salam tasked Shehayyeb and a team of experts with finding a solution to the garbage collection problem. An emergency plan devised by Shehayyeb and his team was approved by the government in September. It calls for waste management to be turned over to municipalities in 18 months, the setting of two “sanitary landfills” in Akkar and the Bekaa, and the reopening for seven days of the controversial Naameh landfill south of Beirut. Shehayyeb's proposals were met by angry protests by residents and activists in the regions that were cited in his plan. Fresh protests were organized Sunday in downtown Beirut and outside Salam's residence in Msaitbeh after heavy rains caused floodwaters to mix with mounds of uncollected garbage, raising public health concerns. There are fears the uncollected waste and the rain season could spread diseases such as cholera among the population.

Report: Berri to Threaten Use of Force to Resolve Trash Crisis
Naharnet/October 26/15/Speaker Nabih Berri is set to make a “severe” position at Monday's national dialogue session given how disappointed he is over the lingering trash disposal crisis that was exacerbated over the weekend with the first heavy rainfall of the season, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper. It said on Monday that Berri “would call for the implementation of the waste disposal plan and would resort to the use of the military and security forces if the need arises.”He took the example of Italy's Naples as an example of when force was used to tackle a trash crisis. The speaker “wondered how the state cannot take advantage of lands it owns to establish landfills,” criticizing those exploiting the file and who are addressing it from a sectarian angle. Naples has for years suffered from a garbage disposal crisis due to political corruption and Italian officials had threatened to deploy the army to resolve the problem, said the BBC in 2014 report. Lebanon has been suffering from a trash disposal crisis since July with the closure of the Naameh landfill. Politicians have failed to find an alternative to the landfill, resulting in the pile up of garbage on the streets of the country. The heavy rain on Sunday brought with it flooded streets coupled with waste, as experts warned of the health and environmental impact of the crisis.

Liberman: Syria fighting will be over soon, Hezbollah will turn its sights on Israel
By JPOST.COM STAFF/10/26/2015 /Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman warned Monday that comments made by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah over the weekend suggest that the organization intends to set its sights on Israel as soon as it extricates itself from fighting in Syria's civil war.
During a rare public appearance in Beirut to mark the Shi'ite Ashura holy day, Nasrallah attacked both Israel and the US, saying that Hezbollah has fought Israel in the past and will continue to do so. "Anyone who thinks that we will retreat or give up- that won't happen. We will win," he vowed. Speaking ahead of a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday, Liberman said that he was "very concerned" by Nasrallah's comments. "For those who did not understand the meaning of what Nasrallah said, it was: 'We are almost finished in Syria, and we will then be free to deal with you,'" Liberman warned. Liberman estimated that world powers would make an agreement to end the war in Syria within a year, freeing up Hezbollah from the fighting it has been entrenched in defending the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad for the past four years.
"We need to take Nasrallah's comments seriously. Because what he said is, 'We and the Iranians will take care of you, just let us finish our work in Syria,'" Liberman said. He attacked the government's handling of security threats, and expressed doubt that it would be able to handle an added threat from an engaged Hezbollah. "I think that a government that has exhibited helplessness against Hamas in Gaza and against the wave of terror in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem is a government that is unable to handle the threats and unable to deal with Hezbollah and the dangers that it poses. Therefore there is room for concern," he said. "I hope that the prime minister will address the matter today in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee - Nasrallah's comments and what the conclusions of the defense establishment are. I hope that the government understands the writing on the wall, and we will ask them to show us what they intend to do about it," he added.Nasrallah said during his speech on Friday that Israel was "a tool of the West" that was acting as a "subcontractor for US hegemony in the Middle East.""Israel is a tool that is being used by the West to take control of the Middle East region," the Hezbollah leader said during an event that was guarded by heavy security. "That's why the West defends it." "The Palestinian people, and all the other nations in the region, chief among them the Lebanese, who have suffered from the Israeli occupation and massacres - they are the ones that bear the burden of the American project of domination [of the Middle East]," the Hezbollah chief said. "The US is responsible for the crimes being committed in Palestine." The Hezbollah leader said the US "inherited the old colonialist behavior whose goal is to control the Middle East politically, socially, militarily, and culturally." Nasrallah accused the Americans of wishing to "bring every Muslim under its control so that eventually the nations of the region will recognize Israel."

Hariri: We Firmly Stand by Salam, Won't Give Hizbullah Chance to Undermine Dialogue
Naharnet/October 26/15/Al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri threw his support Monday behind Prime Minister Tammam Salam while stressing that Mustaqbal will not allow Hizbullah to “undermine dialogue.”“Any Lebanese cannot but feel insulted by the scenes of the garbage that floated in Beirut's streets and the rest of the regions,” Hariri said in a statement released by his press office.His remarks come a day after heavy rains turned streets in parts of Lebanon into rivers of trash due to the garbage that has been accumulating in random sites since the July 17 closure of the Naameh landfill.
“What's needed is to put the decision that was taken by the government on the track of implementation through approving the decrees and measures that are required by the implementation process, and through asking all the relevant parties to shoulder their responsibilities,” Hariri said.
“In this regard, we firmly stand by PM Tammam Salam and renew our confidence in his premiership, management and wisdom,” he added. Hariri noted that Salam, along with the panel headed by Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb, are “capable of taking measures to overcome the obstacles that are preventing the implementation of the feasible plans, and of paving the ground for an integrated environmental project that can meet the aspirations of citizens and civil society groups.”“Resolving the garbage crisis requires everyone to shoulder their responsibilities to enable PM Salam to convene the cabinet as soon as possible,” added Hariri.The country has been in the grip of a months-long trash crisis caused by the government shutting down the country's main landfill in Naameh without finding an alternative. Political bickering, the refusal of various municipalities to accept Beirut's trash and the objections of some residents and civil society activists have prolonged the crisis. In September, the government approved a plan devised by Shehayyeb and a team of experts which calls for waste management to be turned over to municipalities in 18 months, the setting up of “sanitary landfills” in Akkar, the Bekaa and Bourj Hammoud, and the reopening for seven days of the controversial Naameh landfill. Turning to dialogue and the tensions with Hizbullah, Hariri renewed his movement's “commitment to dialogue” despite what he described as “the ongoing attempts to plunge it into futile debate and extraordinary agenda topics” and “the rhetoric of intimidating the Lebanese with regional junctures and illusionary victories.”“We simply and clearly want dialogue to continue under the ceiling of the Lebanese national interest and nothing else, not within the boundaries of preconditions, foreign diktats and military shows of force,” the ex-PM added.
He also stressed that Russia's military intervention in Syria “has nothing to do with determining the fate of the presidency in Lebanon.”“In this period in the history of Lebanon, dialogue must be limited to ending the presidential vacuum and agreeing on a national figure who can activate the work of state institutions,” Hariri went on to say. “We will not grant Hizbullah the opportunity to undermine dialogue, because it is the only way to manage our differences, no matter how much the disagreements deepen, and because we have partners around the dialogue table with whom we share loyalty to Lebanon and keenness on the national interest and coexistence,” the ex-PM added. A national dialogue session was held earlier on Monday and another is scheduled for next Tuesday. Several sessions have been held so far amid little progress on the debated topics.Speaker Nabih Berri had launched the dialogue sessions among the main political parties to discuss a stalemate that has frozen government institutions for months.

Another round of Hezbollah - Future Movement tension
Myra Abdallah/Now Lebanon/October 26/15
Relations between Future Movement and Hezbollah have been strained since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Certain periods have been more stable than others, but never less tense. The dialogue between Hezbollah and the Future Movement kicked off in December 2014. Back then, officials from the two parties stressed the importance of the talks in securing and maintaining a minimum of stability in Lebanon. In the beginning, the dialogue was seen as a very positive step for future relations between the two parties. Later, it became clear that harmony and productivity between Hezbollah and the Future Movement were not prominent characteristics of the dialogue. Its agenda changes continuously and has reached no agreements after numerous sessions. On top of this, Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk and Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah continue to trade accusations in fiery speeches.
“There are two reasons for the current tension between Future Movement and Hezbollah,” analyst Kassem Kassir told NOW. “The first reason is related to the internal situation of the Future Movement: Minister Machnouk was facing an internal campaign and needed to restore [his image] inside the party. Machnouk was accused of coordinating with Hezbollah and he had this [public statement against Hezbollah] as a reaction. The second reason is more external — the situation between Saudi Arabia and Iran that reflected a tension between the Future Movement and Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
Analysts NOW spoke to say that the main reason behind the tension is Machnouk’s statement after being accused of establishing ties with Hezbollah. Future Movement MP Ahmad Fatfat, however, said that the tension is strictly related to Hezbollah’s position in paralyzing the cabinet and the security plan. “The main reason behind the current tension is that Machnouk offered [on behalf of the Future Movement] many potential solutions while Hezbollah refused to offer any practical solution,” he told NOW. “The dialogue had two major goals: decreasing the Sunni-Shiite tension through executing the security plan and finding a solution for the presidential vacuum. On one hand, the security plan was only successful in the north and Beirut while Hezbollah made sure it failed in Dahiyeh and Baalbek; and on the other hand, they did not offer any solution related to the presidential elections.”
Concerns have been raised that Future Movement ministers might resign from the cabinet, but analysts say it’s unlikely. “I do not think that Future ministers will resign from the cabinet,” Kassir told NOW. “Resignation is senseless at this point. The current cabinet is filling in the blanks of the presidential vacuum. If this cabinet resigned, another one couldn’t be formed during the absence of a president. Besides, Future Movement is in charge of two important ministries — the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of interior — and it won’t let them go.” Likewise, analyst Ibrahim Bayram said that the Future Movement is very attached to this cabinet in particular. “This is the fourth cabinet since the assassination of Rafik Hariri and all the previous ones already failed. Resigning from this cabinet would make the Future Movement lose their power — [resigning] is not in its interests.”
Not resigning from the cabinet, however, does not mean that the dialogue will continue. In fact, after personal accusations between Machnouk and Hezbollah MP Hussein Hajj Hassan, Machnouk stated that he might not attend the next dialogue session. He still hadn’t decided as of Friday morning, though this is not necessarily indicative of Future’s position as well. “In their last statement, Future bloc members stated that they are attached to the cabinet and the dialogue at the same time,” Bayram told NOW. “Machnouk might not assist the dialogue’s sessions anymore. Taking into consideration that he is one of the three main participants of the dialogue, alongside Samir al-Jisr and Nader Hariri, if he decided not to attend he could become a scapegoat [for other Future members] and by that, his rivals inside the party will have been able to win over him.”
“Most probably, the dialogue will continue,” said Kassir. “All political parties are admitting that the dialogue is useless, yet they are still participating in the dialogue sessions.”“After this tension, I think the situation between the two parties will calm down again,” Bayram told NOW. “However, their relationship will always be tense on a political level. Hezbollah is accused of assassinating the founder of Future Movement — the situation can never be better than that.”

Israeli Defense Ministry intercepts shipment of military uniforms for Hamas and ISIS
By YAAKOV LAPPIN/J.Post/10/26/2015/The Defense Ministry's Crossings Authority intercepted a shipment of fabrics it suspects were destined to be used to make uniforms for Hamas's military wing in Gaza and an ISIS offshoot in the Sinai Peninsula. Personnel at the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Gaza found the fabrics in an Israeli truck, adding that a variety of colored uniforms and patterns were found. "They were, according to our suspicions, meant for sewing workshops in Gaza that make uniforms for various Hamas units," the Crossings Authority said. Fabrics for uniforms of the type used by ISIS in Sinai were also found. More than 500 attempts to smuggle banned goods into Gaza were intercepted by the Crossings Authority in 2015 alone.

Direct Experience: The One Benefit of Accepting Muslim Migrants
Raymond Ibrahim/October 26/15/Frontpage Magazine
A silver lining exists in the dust cloud being beat up by the marching feet of millions of Muslim men migrating into the West: those many Europeans and Americans, who could never understand Islam in theory, will now have the opportunity to understand it through direct and personal experience.
Perhaps then they will awaken to reality? The fact is, most Western people have had very little personal interaction with Muslims. Moreover, because Muslims in the West are still a tiny minority—in the U.S., they are reportedly less than one percent of the population—those few Muslims that Westerners do interact with are often on their best behavior, being surrounded as they are by a sea of infidels (according to the doctrine of taqiyya). And although there are a few media outlets and websites that document the hard but ugly truths of Islam, these are drowned out by the overarching “Narrative” that emanates from the indoctrination centers of the West (schools, universities, news rooms, Hollywood, political talking heads, et al). According to the Narrative, there is nothing to fear from Islam. If violence and mayhem seem to follow Muslims wherever they go—not to mention plague the entire Islamic world—that is because Muslims are angry, frustrated, and aggrieved, usually at things the West has done. Although Islamic doctrine calls on Muslims to have enmity for and strive to subjugate non-Muslims whenever possible; although Muslims initiated hostilities against and were the scourge of Europe for a thousand years, until they were defanged in the modern era; although most of the so-called “Muslim world” rests on land that was violently seized from non-Muslims; although reportedly some 270 million non-Muslims have been killed by the jihad over the centuries; and although many modern day Muslims maintain the same worldview that animated their ancestors—most people in the West remain ignorant. In this context—or absolute lack thereof—how is the average Western person to know the truth about Islam? Enter mass Muslim migrations. That is, let the barbarians at the gate in. I speak not of the true refugees—women and children—but of the hordes of young and able bodied Muslim men; the ones shouting “Allahu Akbar!” as they barge into Europe.
When discussing Western and Muslim interactions in the modern era, it’s my custom to provide historical precedents to show that Muslim hostilities—whether hate for Christians and their churches and crosses, or whether violent lust for “white” women—are not aberrations but continuations. In this case, however, I have none to give. For never before in history have the peoples of one civilization been so divorced from reality as to welcome millions of people from an alien civilization—one that terrorized their ancestors for centuries—to come and dwell among them. The only “history” one can cite is the modern day experiences of those European regions that already have significant Muslim populations, and are taking more in. In Germany and the United Kingdom, crime and rape have soared in direct proportion to the number of Muslim “refugees” accepted. Sweden alone—where rape has increased by 1,472% since that country embraced “multiculturalism”—is reportedly on the verge of collapse. The price of the Islamic influx into Western lands is violence and chaos, in accordance with Islam’s Rule of Numbers: women and children will be exploited and raped; the elderly will be mugged; churches and other institutions will be attacked; terror will set in. Look to the plight of non-Muslims living alongside Muslims to get an idea of what is coming.But alas, at this late hour, such appears to be the price that must be paid for decades of willful ignorance. If the West cannot learn the truth about Islam from theory, from doctrine, from history, and now even from ongoing current events, then let it learn from up close and personal contact. And if after such firsthand experiences, any Western nation is still too politically correct to act in the name of self-preservation, then let it die. For it will be evident that there is little left worth saving.
http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/direct-experience-the-one-benefit-of-accepting-muslim-migrants/

Powerful 7.5 Quake Rocks South Asia, More Than 160 Dead
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 26/15/A powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake which rocked parts of South Asia killed more than 160 people Monday, including 12 Afghan girls crushed in a stampede as they fled their collapsing school. At least 1,000 more were injured and hundreds of homes destroyed as the quake shook a swathe of the subcontinent, sending thousands of frightened people rushing into the streets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. It was centered near Jurm in northeast Afghanistan, 250 kilometers (160 miles) from the capital Kabul and at a depth of 213.5 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said. "Initial reports show a big loss of life, huge financial losses in Badakhshan, Takhar, Nangarhar, Kunar and other regions, including the capital Kabul," said Afghanistan's chief executive Abdullah Abdullah. At least 31 people were confirmed dead in Afghanistan and 135 in Pakistan, according to officials, with the toll set to rise. "Exact numbers are not known because phone lines are down and communication has been cut off in many areas," Abdullah said, adding that the government has asked aid agencies for relief. "The quake wrecked huge devastation in some districts," said the governor of Badakhshan province, Shah Wali Adib. "So far 1,500 homes are reported to be damaged or destroyed." The epicenter was just a few hundred kilometers from the site of a 7.6 magnitude quake that struck in October 2005, killing more than 75,000 people and displacing some 3.5 million more, although that quake was much shallower.
Horrifying news emerged of at least 12 schoolgirls being trampled to death in a northern Afghan province. "The students rushed to escape the school building in Taluqan city (capital of Takhar), triggering a stampede," Takhar education department chief Enayat Naweed told AFP. "Twelve students, all minors, were killed and 35 others were injured."
Very powerful'
The quake, which lasted at least one minute, shook buildings in Kabul, Islamabad and New Delhi. At least 31 people were killed in Afghanistan including the 12 schoolgirls, officials said. The toll included nine in Badakhshan province near the epicenter; eight in Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan, and at least two in northern Baghlan province, according to local officials. In Pakistan at least 135 people had been killed, according to a tally from local and provincial officials. The military put the toll at 123 with 956 injured, and the National Disaster Management Authority put the official death toll at 43, but said it was checking unconfirmed reports of more deaths. One aftershock hit shortly afterwards, with the USGS putting its magnitude at 4.8. In a statistical prediction on its website, the agency said there was a one-third chance of the number of fatalities climbing to between 100 and 1,000 people, with several million dollars' worth of damage likely caused. The rescue effort was being complicated by the lack of communications, with the region's already fragile infrastructure hit. Gul Mohammad Bidar, deputy governor of Badakhshan in Afghanistan, told AFP lines were down and it was difficult to reach stricken communities. "The earthquake was very powerful -- buildings have been damaged (in Faizabad) and there are possible casualties," he said. Pakistan mobilized its troops and all military hospitals have been put on high alert, army spokesman Lieutenant General Asim Bajwa said, adding that specialized earthquake rescue machinery and army helicopters were being readied for use. The Pakistan air force said it was offering full support to the National Disaster Management Authority. Arbab Muhammad Asim, district mayor for Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar, said more than 100 people had been injured there alone. "Many houses and buildings have collapsed in the city," he said. Dr Muhammad Sadiq, the head of emergency services at a government hospital in Peshawar said the injured were still being brought in. "Many are still under rubble," Sadiq told AFP. "I have never seen such a massive earthquake in my life, it was huge," 87-year-old Mohammad Rehman told AFP from Peshawar.
Panicked residents
Traffic came to a halt in downtown Kabul, with frightened people getting out of their cars as they waited for the quake to stop. Restaurants and office buildings emptied in Islamabad, with cracks appearing in some buildings but no major damage reported. Hundreds in north India poured onto the streets from office blocks, hospitals and homes. Delhi's metro ground to a halt during the tremor although the airport continued operating. In the Kashmir region, panicked residents evacuated buildings and children were seen huddling together outside their school in the main city of Srinagar. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter immediately after the quake. "Heard about strong earthquake in Afghanistan-Pakistan region whose tremors have been felt in parts of India. I pray for everyone's safety," he wrote, adding that India stood ready to assist, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan if required. Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies near the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. South Asia's quakes occur along a major fault line between the two plates -- one under India pushing north and east at a rate of about two centimeters (0.8 inches) per year against the other, which carries Europe and Asia. In Nepal twin quakes in May killed more than 8,900 people, triggered landslides and destroyed half a million homes.

Bid to Ease Tensions over Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Stumbles over Cameras
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 26/15/Efforts to douse Israeli-Palestinian tensions over Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound ran into trouble Monday when the Islamic trust which administers the holy site accused Israeli police of blocking the agreed installation of cameras.
Israel on Saturday agreed to install surveillance cameras at the highly-sensitive site after an intense diplomatic drive to calm spiraling violence that many fear heralds a new Palestinian intifada. In the latest in a wave of knife attacks by Palestinians, a 19-year-old Israeli was stabbed in the neck and severely wounded while his attacker was shot dead, the army said. Attacks and clashes have become near daily occurrences since simmering tensions over the status of the Al-Aqsa compound boiled over in early October, leaving dozens dead. The site is sacred to both Muslims and Jews, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday agreed to install the cameras to allay Palestinian fears that Israel plans to change rules governing the site. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said the cameras would be a "game changer in discouraging anybody from disturbing the sanctity of the holy site". However the Jordanian trust known as the Waqf which administers the compound said that when a team went to install the cameras on Monday morning, "Israeli police interfered directly and stopped the work.""We severely condemn the Israeli interference into the working affairs of the Waqf, and we consider the matter evidence that Israel wants to install cameras that only serve its own interests, not cameras that show truth and justice," it said in a statement. Israeli police had no immediate comment. Netanyahu was set to address parliament later Monday as part of commemorations of the 20-year anniversary of the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, as the fresh wave of violence throws into stark relief the failure to resolve the decades-old conflict. Rabin was gunned down on November 4, 1995 by a rightwing Jewish extremist who hoped to derail the landmark 1993 Oslo accords he inked with the Palestinians. The deal lies in tatters after repeated failed efforts to solve the conflict, the most recent of which collapsed in April 2014 amid bitter recriminations on both sides. The latest clashes erupted in September as Muslims protested an increase in Jewish visitors to Al-Aqsa during their religious holidays. Palestinian protesters accuse the Jewish state of seeking to change the rules governing the compound which allows Jews to visit, but not pray there. The Al-Aqsa mosque compound is situated in east Jerusalem which was seized from Jordan in the 1967 war. While Amman has retained custodial rights over the holy sites, administered by the Jordanian Waqf, Israel controls access. The compound is considered the third holiest site in Islam and is revered by Jews as their holiest site, known as Temple Mount. Netanyahu said on Sunday that having cameras at the site would be in Israel's interest.
"Firstly, to refute the claim Israel is violating the status quo. Secondly, to show where the provocations are really coming from, and prevent them in advance," he said. Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh had said that technical teams from both sides would meet to work out the details of the new measures. Sheikh Azzam al-Khateeb, head of the Waqf, told AFP that the decision to install the cameras on Monday came from Jordanian King Abdullah II. "We want to have clear and open cameras for all the world," he said. "There is no other authority in the mosque except the administration of the Jordanian Islamic Waqf ... no one has the right to (carry out) this action except the Waqf administration."The tensions over Al-Aqsa sparked a series of knife attacks and shootings by Palestinians that has left eight Israelis dead and dozens wounded. In the latest attack a Palestinian man stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli in the southern West Bank before being shot dead by soldiers, the army said. "The assailant stabbed the Israeli in the neck, wounding him severely. The attacker was shot on site, resulting in his death. The wounded victim is now being evacuated for emergency medical care," a statement from the military read. On Sunday, a 17-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead while allegedly trying to knife Israeli border police in Hebron. Monday's attack takes the number of Palestinians killed in attempted attacks and clashes to 54. An Israeli Arab attacker has also been killed.

Oman's Top Diplomat Meets Assad in Rare Syria Visit
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 26/15/Syrian President Bashar Assad met with Oman's top diplomat, Yussef bin Alawi, in Damascus on Monday, in a rare visit for a Gulf official since Syria's conflict broke out, state media reported. Official news agency SANA said Assad and Alawi discussed "the ideas proposed at the regional and international levels to help resolve the crisis in Syria." "The Syrian people ... welcome the sultanate's sincere efforts to help Syrians realize their aspirations in a way that preserves the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Assad said. Alawi, for his part, was quoted as saying Oman was eager to preserve Syria's "unity and stability" and would continue its efforts to find a political solution to the conflict. Oman has not cut diplomatic or political ties to Damascus, unlike other Arab countries in the Gulf. In August, Syria's top diplomat Walid Muallem met with Alawi in Muscat, in the foreign minister's first visit to the Gulf since the brutal war began in 2011. Oman's discreet diplomacy has contributed to several breakthroughs this year, including the release in August of a French hostage held in Yemen and the July nuclear accord between Iran and world powers.

Russia Hits Record 94 Targets in Syria in 24 Hours
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 26/15/Russian jets struck 94 "terrorist" targets in war-torn Syria over the past 24 hours, the highest one-day tally since Moscow started its bombing campaign on September 30, the military said. "In 59 sorties in the past 24 hours, Russia's air force hit 94 terrorist targets in the provinces of Hama, Idlib, Latakia, Damascus, Aleppo and Deir Ezzor," Russian news agencies quoted defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying.

France to Host Syria Talks on Tuesday
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 26/15/France is organising a meeting on Syria to take place in Paris on Tuesday, involving its "principal regional partners", a foreign ministry spokesman said. "We are working to organize a new meeting involving the principal regional partners this Tuesday in Paris," the spokesman told Agence France Presse, without specifying who would take part. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced on Friday that he wanted to bring together several of his counterparts from Western and Arab countries to discuss the Syrian crisis. "I invited our German, British, Saudi and American friends, and others, to Paris next week... to try to move things forward," said Fabius. His comments came on the same day that leaders from Russia, the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia gathered in Vienna, notably in the absence of France. Fabius said the meeting in Paris would not include Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. "There are other meetings where we will work with the Russians," he said. His entourage said Turkey and Saudi Arabia were invited to Paris, but not Iran, which is closely allied to Russia and the Syrian government.

Ministry: one killed after Saudi mosque blast
Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Monday, 26 October 2015/The Saudi interior ministry on Monday said at least one was “martyred” after a suicide bomber targeted worshipers who were exiting a mosque after finishing their prayers in the Saudi city of Najran, close to the Yemeni frontier, Al Arabiya News Channel reported.While the ministry said one was killed, Al Arabiya News Channel reported that at least three people were killed and 19 others were wounded. Initial reports also said the attacker targeted the worshipers inside al-Mashhad mosque in the southwestern city but the Saudi interior ministry said the incident took place at the courtyard of the mosque. Further information about the perpetrators behind the deadly incident was not given. This is not the first time mosques have been targeted by bombers in the kingdom.In mid-October, five people were killed after a gunman opened fire on a Shiite Muslim meeting hall in the Eastern city of Saihat. In August, at least 12 security officers were killed after a suicide bombing targeted a mosque used by special forces in the southern Saudi city of Abha. Roughly half of Najran's population belongs to the Ismaili Shiite community. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group claimed esponsibility for two separate attacks which took place in May and August.The militant group has also targeted Shiite mosques and places in other regional countries including Kuwait and Iraq in attempt to create sectarian strife.

U.N. says 120,000 displaced by rising violence in Syria
Reuters, Geneva Monday, 26 October 2015/At least 120,000 people have been displaced since early October in the Syrian governorates of Aleppo, Hama and Idlib, the United Nations said on Monday, more than doubling an earlier estimate of 50,000. Most of the people who have fled from an upsurge of fighting have moved within their home regions, close to their towns and villages of origin, or to camps near the Turkish border, said Vanessa Huguenin, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “They mainly need tents, basic household items, food and water and sanitation services,” she said.

Turkish police and ISIS militants killed in firefight
Reuters, Diyarbakir Monday, 26 October 2015/Two Turkish policemen and seven Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants were killed in a firefight after police raided more than a dozen houses in Turkey's southeast early on Monday, security sources said. The clashes in the Kayapinar district of the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir were on-going, the sources said. Turkish authorities have extended operations into suspected ISIS cells after a double suicide bombing in Ankara that killed more than 100 people - the worst attack of its kind in Turkey's modern history - was blamed on the militant group. Last week, President Tayyip Erdogan said Syrian intelligence and Kurdish militants, not just ISIS, were behind the attack that targeted a rally of pro-Kurdish activists and civic groups. Erdogan said Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, the Syrian "mukhabarat" secret police and the Syrian Kurdish PYD militia had worked together with Islamic State in the bombing on Oct. 10.

Radical Islamists demand segregation at Yemen university
AFP, Sanaa Monday, 26 October 2015/Radical Islamist gunmen have threatened to use force against university students in Yemen’s southern city of Aden if they do not observe segregation of the sexes on campus, witnesses said. Students said armed militants distributed leaflets containing the threats and signed by ISIS in at least three departments of the university of Aden. The leaflets also banned music and demanded that students perform collective prayers on campus, they added. They set a Thursday deadline for the demands to be met. Otherwise they threatened to carry out car bomb and petrol bomb attacks.
The authenticity of the leaflets signed by the Aden and Abyan branch of IS could not be immediately verified.

Netanyahu: Aqsa camera installation must be ‘coordinated’ with Israel
By AFP Jerusalem Monday, 26 October 2015/Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the installation of cameras at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound must be “coordinated” with the Jewish state.The Islamic trust that administers the holy site protested earlier that it had been blocked by Israeli police when trying to install the cameras. But the prime minister said in a statement that the agreed measure to curb Israeli-Palestinian tensions over Al-Aqsa was “intended to be coordinated.” Meanwhile, an Islamic trust which administers Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound accused Israeli police Monday of blocking the installation of cameras there, a key measure agreed to defuse Israeli-Palestinian tensions over the holy site. The Jordanian-run trust said a team was “working on the installation of cameras belonging to the Islamic Waqf... but the Israeli police interfered directly and stopped the work.”“We severely condemn the Israeli interference into the working affairs of the Waqf, and we consider the matter evidence that Israel wants to install cameras that only serve its own interests, not cameras that show truth and justice,” it said in a statement. Israeli police had no immediate comment.
The mosque compound is situated in east Jerusalem which was annexed from Jordan in 1967. While Amman has retained custodial rights over the holy sites, administered by the Jordanian Waqf, Israel controls access. Considered the third holiest site in Islam, and revered by Jews as their holiest site, known as Temple Mount, the compound is a crucible of tensions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Clashes at the site broke out in September between Israeli police and Palestinians who accuse the Jewish state of seeking to change the rules governing the compound to allow Jews to pray there, which is currently not allowed. A series of lone-wolf knife attacks and shootings by Palestinians has left eight Israelis dead and dozens wounded. At least 54 Palestinians and one Israeli Arab have been killed while carrying out attacks or in violent clashes with police. In the latest attack a Palestinian man stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli in the southern West Bank before being shot dead, the army said. An intense diplomatic drive to ease tensions resulted in Jordan and Israel agreeing Saturday on the installation of surveillance cameras at the mosque, with Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh saying technical teams from both sides would be meeting to work out the details.U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday that the cameras would be a “game changer in discouraging anybody from disturbing the sanctity of the holy site.

Saudi forces foil Houthi infiltration of al-Hurath border area
Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Monday, 26 October 2015/Saudi forces foiled attempts by Yemen’s Houthi militias to infiltrate border areas in Saudi’s southwestern al-Hurath area near the al-Jizan near the Yemeni frontier, Al Arabiya News Channel reported Monday. Saudi drones also shelled trenches used by the Houthis for its snipers to hide and other arms depots in southern Dhahran in the neighboring mountainous regions of Asir region and Najran. Meanwhile, fierce battles intensified in Yemen’s southwestern city of Taiz a surrounding areas between the pro-government Popular Resistance and national army forces fighting Houthi militias and allied forces with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, sources told Al-Arabiya News Channel, adding that these battles were accompanied with multiple airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition. According to the sources, the Popular Resistance has imposed a strict siege on a camp of special security forces, east of Taiz. Sources also said that the coalition’s battleships are approaching Mocha Port, south of the Red Sea and west of Taiz, and are shelling militias’ posts in the city and surrounding areas. Houthi militias have admitted that the coalition warplanes have launched more than 35 airstrikes on their military posts west of the Sirwah District, Haylan Mountain and Majzar District in Marib. Popular Resistance sources confirmed that Houthi militias have suffered great losses in lives and equipment as a result. In the southern al-Bayda governorate, confrontations escalated between the Resistance and Houthi militias and Saleh forces who resorted to destroying the houses of citizens, sources told Al Arabiya News Channel. In the western Ibb governorate, confrontations in the districts of Ash-Sha’ir, al-Udayn and Hazm al-Udayn between Resistance forces and Houthi and Saleh's militias resulted in casualties among the latter’s ranks. Around the same time, Yemeni President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi pledged a near victory for the Resistance forces and his army in the city of Taiz. In a phone call with the chief of the military council in the city, Hadi reiterated his support of the Resistance and national army in their battles against Houthi militias.

Bomb attack on Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad kills 7: sources
Reuters, Baghdad Monday, 26 October 2015/A suicide bomber killed seven people, including two police, in an attack on a Shiite Muslim procession on Monday in a northern Baghdad neighborhood, police and medical sources said. The explosion, which left 23 others wounded, was one of few attacks reported in Iraq over the weekend as Shi'ites across the Muslim world marked the holy day of Ashura, which commemorates the slaying of Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein in AD 680. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but ISIS militants who seized swathes of northern and western Iraq last year have claimed similar bombings on Shi'ite targets. Iraq is also gripped by a sectarian conflict mostly between Shiites and Sunnis that has been exacerbated by the rise of the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents of ISIS. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry confirmed that the blast, caused by an assailant wearing an explosive vest, had resulted in several deaths and injuries. Security during Ashura has been tight since suspected al-Qaeda suicide bombers and mortar fire killed 171 people during the rituals in Kerbala and Baghdad in 2004, though attacks have continued.

Russia hits record 94 targets in Syria in 24 hours
AFP, Moscow Monday, 26 October 2015/Russian jets struck 94 targets in war-torn Syria over the past 24 hours, the highest one-day tally since the Kremlin began its month-old bombing campaign, the Russian defence ministry said Monday. "In 59 sorties in the past 24 hours, Russia’s air force hit 94 terrorist targets in the provinces of Hama, Idlib, Latakia, Damascus, Aleppo and Deir Ezzor," the defence ministry said in a statement. Moscow says the bombing campaign that began on September 30 targets Islamic State jihadists and other "terrorists," but the West claims the strikes have focused on moderate rebels fighting Russian-backed President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. The defence ministry said the latest strikes had destroyed a command post and a base used by "terrorists" in the Aleppo region, as well as three defensive positions near the village of Salma in the coastal Latakia province. The strikes also caused the destruction of an ammunition depot used by the Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front in Eastern Ghouta, some 50 kilometres northeast of Damascus, the ministry said. Russian warplanes also hit an ammunition depot outside the city of Deir Ezzor and a convoy near the city of Palmyra in Homs province. The Russian air force, which struck 285 targets in the past three days, is monitoring Syrian roads leading to conflict zones in an effort to disrupt rebel supply routes, Moscow said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said last week that Russia air strikes had killed at least 446 people, more than a third of them civilians. The Kremlin on Monday insisted Russian forces had been carefully avoiding residential areas. "Our military officers have said many times that terrorists [...] often hide in residential areas," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti state news agency. "In this case [the military] makes a choice not to hit residential neighbourhoods."On Monday, defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov dismissed a claim by the Syrian-American Medical Society that the Russian strikes had hit medical facilities, killing civilians and medical personnel. "The true purpose of these organisations is to create unsourced information for designated media outlets to pick up," Konashenkov said in comments broadcast on state television.

Oman FM meets Assad to help end Syria crisis
AFP, Damascus Monday, 26 October 2015/Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met with Oman’s top diplomat, Yussef bin Alawi, in Damascus on Monday, in a rare visit for a Gulf official since Syria’s conflict broke out, state media reported. Official news agency SANA said Assad and Alawi discussed “the ideas proposed at the regional and international levels to help resolve the crisis in Syria.” “The Syrian people ... welcome the sultanate’s sincere efforts to help Syrians realise their aspirations in a way that preserves the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Assad said. Alawi, for his part, was quoted as saying Oman was eager to preserve Syria’s “unity and stability” and would continue its efforts to find a political solution to the conflict. Oman has not cut diplomatic or political ties to Damascus, unlike other Arab countries in the Gulf. In August, Syria’s top diplomat Walid Muallem met with Alawi in Muscat, in the foreign minister's first visit to the Gulf since the brutal war began in 2011. Oman’s discreet diplomacy has contributed to several breakthroughs this year, including the release in August of a French hostage held in Yemen and the July nuclear accord between Iran and world powers.

Analysis: Looking to Abdullah, because Abbas won’t douse the flames
By HERB KEINON/J.Post/10/26/2015
Unlike the US, Jordan is not a “mediator or observer” in the Middle East diplomatic process, but a “stakeholder,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said Saturday night in Amman, alongside US Secretary of State John Kerry. “When it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli peace, all of the final status issues between the Palestinians and the Israelis touch the very heart of Jordan’s national security and national interests,” he said. Jordan, Judeh continued, “has a special role in Jerusalem, and His Majesty King Abdullah II is the custodian of Christian and Muslim holy sites in the holy city. When it comes to the other final status issues such as borders, security, water – no arrangement can be reached, no final arrangement can be arrived at, without the input and active participation of Jordan. We’ve made that clear from the beginning.
So from the perspective of final status negotiations, from the perspective of the complexity of the issues that we see in Jerusalem, Jordan has not just an interest, but a very key and active role.”
To those words, both Kerry and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could easily answer “amen,” and add the hope that Jordan will play a more active role.As the Mideast strategic thinkers in the State Department are continuing with their reassessment of how to proceed with the diplomatic process – following last year’s breakdown of the Kerry-led negotiations between Israel and the PA – one thing should be clear: it’s going to be impossible to get Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to work together. Forget about it; it’s not going to happen. The enmity, the distrust, is too deep. And Abbas, with his words of praise for every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem, his rant about Jewish feet defiling the Temple Mount, and his blatant lie about the Israeli execution of a 13-year-old Palestinian youth who went on a stabbing spree in Jerusalem, has also further alienated the Israeli center.
Kerry and leading diplomats in the EU may still view him as a large part of a future solution, but Netanyahu – and wider and wider swaths of the Israeli public – increasingly see him as a large part of the problem.
Kerry, too, seems to understand this reality. In efforts to tamp down the violence, he looked as much during the current crisis toward Amman, as toward Ramallah.Wise move. Abbas has shown through his comments and speeches over the last three weeks that he has little interest in dousing the flames – in fact, maintaining the flames serves his purpose. More terrorism means more Israeli reactions, which means more crisis and more pressure from the international community to step in and stop the “cycle of violence.” Abbas wants more international involvement, and one way to ensure it is by ensuring there is a crisis.
As a result, it was clear that Abbas was not going to pull the burning coals out of the currently raging fire. Not only does he not want to, but the US leverage on him has proven scarce. And even if he did want to put a lid on the violence, it is not exactly clear how many people would heed his call.
So, instead, the hopeful eyes of Kerry and others are cast toward Jordan, as the custodian of the Muslim sites in Jerusalem.
Jordan does have an interest in tamping down the violence.
Abdullah is currently faced with strains on his government caused by an influx of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in the north, concern about Islamic State from the east, and an ever-present agitation from the Muslim Brotherhood inside his kingdom. The last thing he needs right now is a conflagration in the West Bank that could conceivably lead to a Hamas overthrow of Abbas, which would send very destabilizing ripple waves into Jordan. While the current crisis serves Abbas’s efforts to provoke the world to impose a solution on Israel, it does not serve Jordan’s interest of trying to maintain stability inside the kingdom during very tough times. Second, the US – which provides Jordan with a billion dollars in military and economic aid a year and has some 2,200 military personnel stationed there – has a degree of leverage in Amman that it does not have in Ramallah. It was natural, therefore, that Kerry’s efforts to deescalate the situation would focus on Abdullah rather than Abbas.
And, indeed, it was Abdullah who suggested the idea – swiftly approved by Israel – of placing 24-hour surveillance cameras on the Temple Mount. If the impetus to the current wave of terrorism is the claim that Israel is endangering, threatening or planning to divide the Temple Mount, what better way to debunk that claim than have cameras constantly scanning that site? The surveillance cameras – a telltale sign that Jordan is interested in dousing the flames – were an idea that Kerry characterized as a potential game-changer, and that Amman also welcomed as a “step in the right direction,” as were Netanyahu’s comments about Israel’s commitment to the status quo. The initial Palestinian reaction was equally telling. PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki called the idea an Israeli trap. “We are falling into the same trap once again,” he told a Palestinian radio station. “Netanyahu cannot be trusted.
Who will monitor the screens of these cameras? Who will record the movements of those worshipers wishing to enter? How will these cameras be employed, and will the recordings later be used to arrest young men and worshipers under the pretext of incitement?” And therein lies the reason why the thrust of the efforts to quell the tensions is currently focused more on Jordan than on the Palestinian Authority. While it is not certain any one party can douse the tensions, it is certain that Jordan – at least – wants to.

Senate to grill Kerry on Russian war in Syria
Julian Pecquet/Al-Monitor/October 26/15
Secretary of State John Kerry returns to Capitol Hill this coming week for a tough grilling on Russia's intervention in Syria and what the Obama administration is doing about it. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to hear from Kerry in a closed session Oct. 27 about the administration's response in the Syrian conflict. The briefing comes amid growing Republican anger over the administration's failure to prevent Russian airstrikes against US-backed rebels and follows a subpoena threat from Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn. Corker's committee is also set to hear Oct. 28 from the State Department's top Middle East official, Assistant Secretary Anne Patterson, and President Barack Obama's envoy for the global coalition against the Islamic State, retired Gen. John Allen, about the "US role and strategy in the Middle East." Allen will be stepping down Nov. 12 and will be succeeded by his deputy, Brett McGurk.
The Senate Armed Services Committee of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., holds a similar hearing Oct. 27 with Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the top military official, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford. And the House Foreign Affairs panel on the Middle East holds its second hearing the same day on the Syrian humanitarian crisis with Anne Richard, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, and Leon Rodriguez, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services. In other news, the House Foreign Affairs panel on human rights holds a hearing Oct. 27 on "the global crisis of religious freedom." Witnesses include David Saperstein, ambassador at-large for International Religious Freedom, and Robert George, chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. On the Senate side, MENA panel chairman Jim Risch, R-Idaho, holds a hearing Oct. 28 on Obama's ambassador picks for Libya and Oman, Peter William Bodde and Marc Jonathan Sievers. The next day, the full committee hears from Thomas Shannon, the nominee to succeed Iran deal negotiator Wendy Sherman as undersecretary of state for political affairs. The bicameral Tom Lantos Commission holds a hearing Oct. 29 on the human rights situation in Iran. Witnesses include UN Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed. Off Capitol Hill, the US Institute of Peace on Oct. 28 hosts Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi for a speech on "Democratizing Under Fire: Can Tunisia Show the Way?"

Could Egypt be key to political solution in Syria?
Ahmed Fouad/Al-Monitor/October 26/15
The Syrian crisis has taken a turn that could allow Egypt to act as a mediator in reaching a political settlement in Syria. Several Syrian and regional players are focusing on the fight against terrorism rather than on settling their political conflicts with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its opposing forces.
The priority has shifted away from the war between revolutionary or Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and a regime headed by a Shiite president who embodies “tyranny” for the opposition. Now at center stage is the conflict between Syria and the Islamic State (IS), whose growing influence threatens the Arab world and the Middle East. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose country is part of the international coalition against IS in Syria and Iraq, reiterated this stance in a Sept. 28 interview with CNN. Sisi was vocal about his concerns — since Egypt is fighting terrorism in its territories — when he said, “I am afraid that if the Syrian Arab army falls, its arms and equipment will fall in the hands of the radicals, thus giving them an additional push.” He added, “The situation between Assad and the Syrian opposition can be dealt with.” The intensifying crisis requires conflicting parties (Assad’s regime and the opposition) to seek a compromise or a political settlement as per the Geneva communique of 2012, which offers a perspective for the future of Syria within a firm timetable and without any further violence. The communique clearly stipulated the release of political prisoners, a transitional period capable of producing a freely and fairly elected multiparty parliament and a new constitution followed by a popular referendum. None of these steps oppose Russia’s, Iran’s and Egypt’s idea of Assad remaining in power at least until the security situation stabilizes and Assad’s hope of leaving power in a safe manner later.
A compromise remains a far-fetched goal since it has to be the product of an agreement between the regime and the opposition as well as among the countries supporting both sides of the conflict: on the one hand, Assad's allies Russia and Iran, and on the other the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the rest of the opposition’s allies.
However, such agreement could prove feasible if all the parties were open to compromise, which is essential in the fight against IS. Otherwise, any intransigent party will have to pay the price for adding further confusion to the political situation in Syria at the expense of the nation's war against the terrorist group.
In this context, Egypt could play a central role. At a joint press conference Oct. 4 in Cairo, following a meeting between Sisi and his Tunisian counterpart, Beji Caid Essebsi, Sisi stressed the need to work for a comprehensive political settlement to the conflict in Syria. The leaders agreed that such a settlement should preserve the unity and security of the nation while meeting the needs of its citizens.
In the September CNN interview, Sisi refused to admit Egypt’s support for Assad, but he indicated he is against overthrowing the regime by force, which would lead to the partition of Syria and the fall of its army. This may mean that the Egyptian government does not mind Assad stepping down as part of a gradual settlement that preserves the unity of Syria and the safety of the army. Egypt’s role in the political settlement of the Syrian crisis was reflected in an Oct. 17 meeting between Mikhail Bogdanov, the Russian president's special representative for the Middle East, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri. The men issued a joint statement saying they have agreed it is necessary to implement a political solution based on the Geneva communique. This step would guarantee the formation of a transitional body in Syria while at the same time continuing to fight terrorism. Recent events in Syria offer an exceptional opportunity to Egypt to assume a mediator role between the warring parties to reach a political solution.
On Sept. 30, in a dramatic escalation of events, the Russian air force launched an aerial operation against IS ground targets in Syria. The president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNC), Khaled Khoja, said Sept. 30 that the Russian airstrikes killed 36 civilians that day. He accused Moscow of supporting the regime and creating chaos in Syria. The Russian airstrikes not only hit IS targets but the Syrian opposition too, which could pressure the SNC into accepting a political settlement. The Russian operation in Syria probably represents a pressure play on the coalition to accept a political solution, since 25% of the SNC’s higher committee accepted the initiative presented by UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura during an Oct. 10 vote. Although this represents a sizable percentage, de Mistura's initiative was roundly rejected. Moreover, some of the coalition forces are “intransigent toward any political solution and insist on the immediate departure of Assad, no matter how hard it is according to many points of view amid the threats facing Syria,” Hassan Abdul-Azim, the head of the National Coordination Committee for the Forces of Democratic Change, told Al-Monitor
A senior SNC official, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, said, “The Russian operation certainly adds pressure on some of the SNC’s parties who were indeed the 25% who approved de Mistura’s initiative — although this initiative did not require the immediate departure of Assad. However, this initiative has nothing new to add to the previous initiatives — which were met with stronger rejection, reaching 100% at times — amid the absence of any pressure like the one brought on by Russia’s bombing.”
Abdul-Azim added that Assad’s intransigence also hinders any attempt at a political settlement, though he pointed out that Russia wields the greatest influence on Assad regarding a political solution.
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated Sept. 4 that Assad is ready to allow a "healthy" opposition to share power and hold immediate parliamentary elections; that is probably the result of Russia’s pressure. Putin also noted the unification of forces in the fight against terrorism should proceed along with a political process within Syria. The Pentagon announced Oct. 9 that it had abandoned its efforts to train rebel forces, deemed “moderate Syrian opposition,” and would focus on supplying arms and ammunition to Arab rebel commanders of existing Syrian units after screening them. On Oct. 10, the United States said it had resumed talks with Russia on air safety during bombing campaigns in Syria.
The new US stance may have shocked the SNC, whose forces were supposed to be trained by the United States. In light of these positions, the SNC was led to frustration over receiving further US support, as the SNC source believes these positions were the reason why more voters approved de Mistura's political solution. The US-Iranian rapprochement following the nuclear deal earlier this year also raises Saudi concern and encourages the Arab kingdom to maintain strong relations with Egypt for fear of Iran and Egypt developing relations; both share a similar position in the Syrian crisis.
The Egyptian government can seize the opportunity to convince Saudi Arabia — a main ally and arms supplier to the SNC and armed opposition in their fight against Assad — to pressure the opposition into accepting a political settlement. This reasoning concurs with political analyst Bahaa al-Maghawry’s statement to Al-Monitor: “If Saudi Arabia agreed to a political settlement, this would leave Turkey as the SNC’s last ally refusing a political solution. But Saudi Arabia could also convince Turkey, as the two share a mutual stance.” It seems quite possible that Saudi Arabia will accept a political settlement in Syria in light of the kingdom’s rapprochement with Russia (Assad’s ally) after both parties agreed June 18 on the establishment of 16 nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia, with Russian help. Also, Saudi Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir met Oct. 11 with Putin in Russia and agreed on the necessity to reach a national Syrian reconciliation. Although de Mistura’s initiative was rejected, the above-mentioned factors should lead Egypt to assume a mediator role in reaching a political settlement in Syria, especially after it expressed its goodwill by hosting the Syrian opposition’s conference in June. However, these factors remain hypothetical and could be seen by the parties only as leeway to gain time and hide their true intentions from the Syrian and international public.

Clinton questions Jordan’s stability, provoking ire in Amman
Aaron Magid/Al-Monitor/October 26/15
AMMAN, Jordan — While political analysts stateside have been dissecting the American presidential race, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s recent remarks have stirred controversy thousands of miles away in the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. Clinton told an audience Oct. 7 in Mount Vernon, Iowa, that a final peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is unlikely until both sides “know what happens in Syria" and also depends on whether Jordan remains stable. Questioning Jordan’s long-term stability angered many in the country’s political elite. “It’s definitely an irresponsible comment and Jordan should receive some clarification on what she meant,” professor Musa Shtewi told Al-Monitor. The University of Jordan’s director of the Center for Strategic Studies continued, “She [Clinton] knows Jordan quite well. It is very significant and worrisome.” In light of Jordan’s strong relationship with the United States and the mutual respect between the two countries, Oraib Rantawi, director of the Amman-based Al Quds Center think tank, told Al-Monitor that Clinton’s remarks were “shocking.” Clinton is the leading Democratic candidate for president. She served as secretary of state during President Barack Obama’s first term, 2009- 2013, with access to the country’s top intelligence assessments. As the top US diplomat, Clinton repeatedly met with King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh.
Al Ghad newspaper Editor-in-Chief Jumana Ghneimat disputed Clinton’s claim that Jordan’s future is uncertain. While noting the country’s economic and regional challenges, Ghneimat told Al-Monitor, “Jordan today is more stable than at any period in the past. Jordan is the country that passed through the Arab Spring safely, even though there were many revolutions in the region, including Syria, Yemen and Egypt.” Rantawi emphasized that Clinton’s many years of experience in foreign policy is why Jordanians are paying close attention to her remarks. “If such statements come from an individual who has no background to the Middle East and has a lack of intelligence about the situation in Jordan, nobody would react to it. But because it comes from Mrs. Clinton, this really has generated very serious and poor reactions in Jordan.”The local media has extensively covered Clinton’s comments, raising attention to an unwelcome issue for the Jordanian government.
Nabil Sharif, a former information minister and former ambassador to Morocco, also rejected Clinton’s contention. He told Al-Monitor, “Jordanian security forces are in full control of the country’s borders. Jordan has not had any major security incidents since the infamous 2005 Amman hotel bombings, which is a very good record by regional standards.”Despite Al-Monitor’s repeated requests, government spokesman and Minister of State for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani declined to comment for this article. Jordanian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Sabah Rafie also rejected a request for an interview regarding Clinton’s statements.
The Washington Post’s Anne Gearan noted Oct. 7 that it is “very rare” for American leaders to admit that Jordan’s King Abdullah — a close US ally — “may fall.”Clinton’s statements as secretary of state contradicted her remarks as a presidential candidate this month. In a 2010 video message to the Jordanian people in honor of the country’s May 25 Independence Day, Clinton declared, “Your country is a model of tolerance and stability.”Sharif stated that Clinton’s comments — that Jordan's and Syria’s ambiguous political future makes the creation of a Palestinian state unlikely — should be viewed in the context of her 2016 election campaign. “Hillary Clinton is trying to appeal to her constituency and potential voters, mainly those who support Israel,” Sharif told Al-Monitor. Postponing a Palestinian peace deal until regional tension calms would spare Israel from making painful concessions in withdrawing from the West Bank, a message Sharif believes would be receptive to American Jewish voters.While Clinton argued that potential Jordanian instability reduces chances for a peaceful Israeli-Palestinian outcome, many observers in Amman hold the opposite viewpoint: Israeli-Palestinian violence destabilizes the tranquil Hashemite kingdom. A Royal Court official told the International Crisis Group in March 2015, “Instability at Al-Aqsa harms internal Jordanian security and King Abdullah’s standing. We managed the Arab Spring with barely any protests of more than 800 participants. But an escalation at Al-Aqsa could bring out 80,000.” During the recent Jerusalem tensions, thousands of Jordanians protested in Amman and Irbid calling for harsher government policies against Israel. Amman faces a delicate balancing act given the public’s passionate opposition toward the Jewish state while still maintaining the country’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel.Perhaps the most sensitive part of Clinton’s comments to observers in Amman was her mentioning Jordan’s stability in the same sentence with the ongoing, brutal four-year Syrian civil war, which has caused the deaths of more than 200,000 Syrians. Ghneimat emphasized, “There is a big difference between Syria and Jordan. Syria today faces crises, revolution and a massive war. One can’t compare Jordan to Syria. … There is no logic or wisdom in this statement.”Rantawi noted that if the Democratic front-runner wins the presidential race, “We will consider Mrs. Clinton responsible for defusing such challenges facing Jordan and not to make it more complicated for the Jordanians when we are struggling to confront the threats surrounding our country.”Clinton did not provide any justification or explanations for why she believed Jordan’s stability is uncertain. Jordan serves as a key US ally: launching airstrikes together against the Islamic State, mediating with Secretary of State John Kerry to reduce Israeli-Palestinian violence and absorbing more than 600,000 Syrian refugees. While Clinton is currently focused on increasing her domestic political popularity, her rhetoric — even when addressing Iowa voters — should not come at the expense of a close American partner in the Middle East.

Israel-Palestine peace process 'kidnapped by religious zealots'
Uri Savir/Al-Monitor/October 26/15
The current violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis makes one reminisce about better days — when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO leader Yasser Arafat were working together for a peaceful solution.A senior PLO official, who was one of a very small number of Palestinians who negotiated directly with Rabin and Peres, told Al-Monitor, on condition of anonymity, that he remembers well his attendance at Rabin's funeral on Nov. 6, 1995: "We felt a common sadness, we knew that this was more than a personal tragedy, it was a loss for peace." He added with great concern, "We hardly agreed with Rabin on any issue. His concept of security infringed on our right to freedom. Yet we respected him and his strategic intention to achieve a peaceful two-state solution. At this time, no matter what the differences in view between him and Yasser Arafat were, the conflict was of national nature — two national movements struggling over self-determination on the same land — and so was the potential solution, which aimed at sharing the land between two states. Since then, we had to deal with five Israeli prime ministers and 10 years of a Netanyahu government. The process has been kidnapped by religious zealots, mainly Israeli settlers, who are playing into the hands of fundamentalist Hamas; thus, we must face a conflict that is turning religious and is leading to major violence."The senior official, who still has an important say in Ramallah today, is right. In Israel, the traditionally secular governments dating back to independence have now been replaced with a government that — while led by a mostly secular party, the Likud — is dependent on and driven by a religious powerhouse — the HaBayit HaYehudi party of Naftali Bennett — and a constituency of almost half a million settlers.
In Palestine, the flaws in Fatah's nation-building efforts, and even more so the failure of the various peace efforts, have brought Hamas to power in Gaza, with an important say in the West Bank as well. Bennett and senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh see the conflict as religious. Bennett and his friends believe that Israel's right to all the land is a biblical right. Haniyeh and his friends believe that Israel is nothing but a conquest of Jewish infidels. Both are leading toward a religious conflict over Jerusalem. This tendency is exacerbated by the weakness of the secular leaderships.
In Palestine, President Mahmoud Abbas has very little love lost for Hamas, but feels compelled to unite with it given the lack of a viable diplomatic track leading to independence. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won the last March 17 elections due to the great number of traditional HaBayit HaYehudi voters and many of the settlers, who, at the last minute, saved the prime minister from defeat. Netanyahu knows that his leadership base and his sustainability depend on the national religious party and voters, as well as the settlers. These political realities in Palestine and Israel rule out a rational solution to the current crisis, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is on its way to turning into a religious one. This makes the current crisis a very dramatic one. It is not about the level of violence or casualties or about current policy measures of the two parties in crisis management. This is about a possible major watershed in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of the Middle East conflict all together. If the religious factions become the main forces that drive the conflict, the eventual ramifications will be considerable. The focal point of such a conflict will be Jerusalem and the holy sites, raising the passions and flames of the conflict to uncontrollable levels. Too many people are ready to die and kill in the name of God. We risk witnessing outbreaks of violence of unprecedented nature. Religious antagonisms are intoxicating, and the level of mutual hatred and racism will be difficult to control. Such a conflict would bring new players into the field, especially fundamentalist terror movements such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and various other jihadi movements. In Israel, the security services are gravely concerned by the desire of extremist Jewish religious zealots like the "Price Tag" movement to set the region on fire. A religious conflict would ignite the broader Islamic world with its 1.4 billion people to support its Muslim brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The religious clash could spread internationally, bringing about Jewish-Muslim confrontations in France, for instance, and the deterioration of relationships between the West and the Muslim world. We are not there yet, but a new trend has taken off in this dangerous direction. It is up to Israel and Palestine to make an immediate turnabout in policies and divorce the alliance with religious parties. In Israel, it's about Likud replacing Bennett's HaBayit HaYehudi party with the Zionist Camp and freezing the expansion of settlements. In Palestine, Abbas must abandon the alliance with fundamentalist Hamas and reject its terror.
This should happen now, before it is too late.

No breakthrough in Syria possible without Iran
Kerry says Iran "not at the table"
Al-Monitor/October 26/15
Russia’s military intervention in support of the Syrian government has kick-started a new round of diplomacy toward a political transition in Syria.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu announced in Vienna on Oct. 23 that there will be a more expansive meeting on Syria, perhaps as soon as Oct. 30.
Kerry acknowledged that although the United States and its allies still disagree on the role of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a political transition, there is enough common ground, including a shared interest in a “unified Syria” and defeating the Islamic State, to initiate a new round of high-level talks.
The Geneva II conference on Syria in January 2014 faltered, in good part, on divisions between Russia and the United States and its allies over Assad’s role in a transition. The absence of Iran, which was invited and then disinvited to attend Geneva II, also contributed to the conference’s eventual failure.
Lavrov dismissed rumors that Russia has agreed on a plan for Assad’s departure after a certain period of time. “This is not true,” he told reporters Oct. 23. The very first Week in Review in November 2012 reported that “President Assad is the leader of the Alawites, until the armed Alawites decide otherwise. Simply put, until the Syrian Alawites themselves make a change, they will back Assad. Any initiative that therefore leaves out these same Alawites of Syria, and overlooks the sectarian, local and regional dimensions of the Syrian conflict, is a recipe for diplomatic failure and more deaths among all Syrians.”
Lavrov also said that Iran, as well as Egypt, must be part of the diplomacy to resolve the Syrian crisis. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini agreed, saying, “I hope that Iran can be part of this common effort in Syria.”
Kerry, however, said, “Iran is not at the table, and there will come a time perhaps where we will talk to Iran, but we’re not at that moment at this point in time,” although he later added, “We want to be inclusive and err on the side of inclusivity rather than exclusivity” with regard to participation.
Kerry’s hesitance on Iran is puzzling, unless this is part of some necessary diplomatic choreography to be worked out over the next week. The US secretary of state led negotiations between the P5+1 countries (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States plus Germany) and Iran on the historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28 that the JCPOA is a “development which can and should be the basis of further achievements to come,” implying that a UN multilateral effort might be applied to regional crises.
Syria cannot afford another diplomatic flop, so inclusivity would seem to be the best approach when deciding who is “at the table.” Ruling out Iran, whose generals and advisers are directing and coordinating ground operations with the Syrian military, would seem a recipe for a failure.
Hama sees "heaviest fighting"
Mohammed al-Khatieb reports from the front lines in Hama, including witness to the role of Hezbollah forces working with Syrian military units.
“The northern countryside of Hama is witnessing the heaviest fighting as the regime forces try to break the opposition forces’ defensive lines with dozens of tanks and armored vehicles under Russian air cover. Al-Monitor toured the towns of Hama’s northern countryside Oct. 10. We noticed the presence of large numbers of opposition fighters, mainly affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), such as the Knights of Justice Brigade, 13th Division, the 101st Division and the Central Division, in addition to Ahrar al-Sham and other factions, along with massive reinforcements, which foretells the critical importance of this crucial battle. FSA fighters use individual weapons and a car equipped with heavy machine guns as well as numerous TOW anti-tank missiles and a small number of tanks; while on the opposite side, the regime, assisted by Russian helicopters, comb the roads to allow its forces to launch their offensive under a heavy cover by Russian warplanes and rocket launchers. Hezbollah is also present in this battle along with the regime forces, and perhaps the killing of its prominent leaders — Hussein Hassan Haj on Oct. 10 and Mehdi Hassan Obeid on Oct. 12 — proves the extent of Hezbollah's role in this battle. News sites close to Hezbollah confirmed that both were killed during the battles against the opposition in Idlib and Hama.”
Carter avoids reference to Syrian Kurds
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said Oct. 23 that the United States will ramp up its operations against terrorists in Syria, including support for “Syrian Arab Coalition fighters” and “moderate Syrian forces.” While Carter discussed US coordination with Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces in the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq, he managed to avoid referring to “Syrian Kurds,” let alone the Democratic Union Party (PYD). The PYD’s armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), is considered by the United States as among the most effective and reliable armed groups in Syria.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by contrast, considers the PYD a “terrorist group” like the Islamic State.
This column reported last week that the divide between the United States and Turkey over Syria policy because of differences over Syrian Kurds is greater than ever, and this week, despite Carter’s artful dodge, it seemed to get even worse. "All they want is to seize northern Syria entirely," Erdogan said Oct. 24. "We will under no circumstances allow northern Syria to become a victim of their scheming. Because this constitutes a threat for us, it is not possible for us as Turkey to say 'yes' to this threat." Semih Idiz reports that Syria’s “PYD headache” is going from bad to worse. “Turkey’s failed Syria policy has forged a double-edged problem for Ankara — with the United States on one edge and Russia on the other — that it is finding hard to overcome,” Idiz writes. Fehim Tastekin reports, “Turkey has been removed from reality in Syria for a long time. From the beginning, Turkey’s analysis of Syria lacked knowledge of the field. … Turkey, not to contradict its own narrative, does not want to admit the Syrian army’s attacks on IS positions. Ankara believes that the Kurds cannot pursue their own agenda and can only serve as somebody else’s tools. Also, by thinking that the autonomy moves at Rojava were exclusively by the Kurds, Ankara ignored local dynamics. … For Ankara, the PYD and its armed branch, the People's Protection Units (YPG) — which has become the partner of the United States — were nothing more than Kurdish shabiha (local militias) working for Assad.”
Gaza’s days of rage
Asmaa al-Ghoul reports from the Gaza Strip on the uprising among Gaza youths against Israel, which started Oct. 9 in response to the uprisings in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
“The youths are experiencing overgrown crises in Gaza. The blockade has intensified, and it has been months since the Rafah border crossing was closed. Moreover, the reconciliation and reconstruction process has been delayed, and unemployment has reached 43.9%, the highest rate in the world, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East,” Ghoul writes. Ghoul describes the scene after Friday prayer: “Other people started to rally following Friday prayer on Oct. 16, which was declared 'a day of rage' by Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Jihad. The road quickly filled with hundreds of youths, where people in their 30s and 40s were rare, except for journalists. While they were advancing, some were holding slingshots, and others Molotov cocktails. Many carried marbles, while the majority had onions used to mitigate the effects of tear gas.”

Turkey's Thugocracy
Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/October 26/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6670/turkey-thugocracy
As in 1908-1912, journalists are at the center of the government's rage.
"They [journalists from Turkey's leading newspaper, Hurriyet] had never had a beating before. Our mistake was that we never beat them in the past. If we had beaten them..." — Abdurrahim Boynukalin, Member of Parliament from the governing AKP Party. Last week, Ahmet Hakan, Hurriyet's popular columnist, who has 3.6 million Twitter followers, was beaten by four men, three of whom happened to be AKP members. Hakan had to undergo surgery. Of the seven men involved in allegedly planning and carrying out the attack, six were immediately released. The mob confessed to the police that they had been commissioned to beat Hakan on orders from important men in the state establishment, including the intelligence agency and "the chief." Hundreds of Turkish and Western politicians have publicly condemned the attack on Hakan. Except President Erdogan. Hardly surprising.
In 1908, the Ottoman Empire, under the new name of The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), transformed into an autocratic establishment openly threatening its critics, especially journalists. In 1910, three prominent journalists, Hasan Fehmi, Ahmet Samim and Zeki Bey, who were leading opponents of the regime, were murdered. Several other journalists were beaten by thugs commissioned by the CUP. In the election three years later, when the party lost its parliamentary majority, its leaders declared that election null and void. Soon mobs, often holding batons in their hands, "guarded" ballot boxes. Miraculously, the CUP vote rose to 94 percent! Victory, however, did not bring good fortune to the party. Its leaders would eventually have to flee the country. More than a century later, in 2015, Turkey's new autocratic regime, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan practically declared the polls null and void, as in 1911, and called for renewed elections on Nov. 1. And just as in 1908-1912, journalists are at the center of the government's rage.
On September 6 and 8, 2015, the offices and printing works of Turkey's biggest daily, Hurriyet, were pelted with stones by hundreds of club-wielding fans of Erdogan. Video footage from the September 6 attack shows a Member of Parliament from the governing AKP Party, Abdurrahim Boynukalin, leading the mob. In a fierce speech in front of the newspaper's building, Boynukalin vowed that the Dogan media company [which owns Hurriyet] will "get the hell out of Turkey" when Erdogan will have additional executive powers "whatever the electoral outcome on November 1 will be."
Abdurrahim Boynukalin (center of left image), a Turkish Member of Parliament from the ruling AKP Party, leads a mob in front of the offices of Hurriyet newspaper, September 6, 2015. At right, the shattered windows of the building's lobby, after the mob hurled stones.
Other video footage showed Boynukalin speaking to the same mob that attacked Hurriyet. Referring to Hurriyet columnist Ahmet Hakan [and to Hurriyet's editor-in-chief, Sedat Ergin], Boynukalin says: "They had never had a beating before. Our mistake was that we never beat them in the past. If we had beaten them..."
Well, last week, Hakan was beaten by four men, three of whom happened to be AKP members. The popular columnist, who has 3.6 million followers on Twitter, had to undergo surgery for his broken nose and ribs. Members of the group confessed to the police that they had been commissioned by a former police officer to beat Hakan on orders from important men in the state establishment, including the intelligence agency and "the chief." Of the seven men involved in plotting and carrying out the attack on Hakan, six were immediately released. It remains a mystery who "the chief" is. It is highly unlikely that police will find any evidence that the attack was ordered by the AKP or by any of its senior members. Nor will any police or intelligence officer be indicted for ordering it.
Pro-Erdogan and pro-AKP vigilantism is increasingly popular among the party's thuggish Islamist loyalists. Columnist Mustafa Akyol writes: "[I]t is already worrying that the culture of political violence, which has dark precedents in Turkish history, is once again showing its ugly face ... the campaign of hate that is going on in the pro-government media (and social media) inevitably calls for it. Deep down, the problem is that the AKP era, which began as a modest initiative for reform, has recently recast its mission as a historic 'revolution.' Just as in the French Revolution, it demonized the 'ancien régime' and the 'reactionaries' that supposedly hearken back to it. And now, just as in French Revolution, we see these 'Jacobin' ideas taking form in the streets in the hands of the vulgar 'sans-culottes.'" Since the beginning of the 20th century, Turkey has seen a collapsed empire, the birth of a modern state, a one-party administration, multi-party electoral system, several elections, three military coups, civil strife along political and ethnic lines, oppression by one ideology or another and dozens of political leaders. But one feature of Turkey's political culture persistently remains: Violence. President Erdogan is probably not too unhappy. He may think that the deeper the political polarization, the stronger his loyalists will feel attached to him. Hundreds of Turkish and Western politicians have publicly condemned the attack on Hakan. Except Erdogan. Hardly surprising.
**Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

The End of Arms Control in the Second Nuclear Age?
Peter Huessy/Gatestone Institute/October 26/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6755/second-nuclear-age
So radical is this proposal that -- while Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are arming themselves to the gills and seizing territory -- it would reduce America's nuclear "assets" from over 500 missiles, bombers and submarines to less than a handful of nuclear-armed submarines. "To my knowledge, our unilateral disarmament initiatives have done little to promote similar initiatives in our potential adversaries, and at the same time, they have reduced our arms control negotiating leverage." -- Admiral Richard Mies (Ret.), former Commander of the United States Strategic Command. America's nuclear deterrent is roughly 35-40 years old. By the time there has been a complete modernization (by 2020) of the Russian nuclear missile force, the U.S. will not have yet built a single new strategic nuclear weapon for its arsenal. To help with modernization, Congress and administration needs to get rid of the defense budget caps. Removing them should be America's #1 arms control and nuclear deterrent priority in the nation. Congress should approve, and potential presidential candidates should announce, their support to fund and accelerate the modernization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, including capabilities that strengthen tactical nuclear deterrence especially in Europe. The modern U.S. nuclear deterrent umbrella over more than 30 NATO allies is one of the prime reasons most of them have not sought to build nuclear weapons themselves -- the U.S. makes them feel safe. Most importantly, with the North Korean, Chinese and Russian nuclear and missile capabilities in mind, the U.S. and its allies should as quickly as possible protect our country and its electrical grid from missile delivered nuclear electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) threats. The U.S. should also adopt a global missile defense plan, including enhanced U.S.-based missile defenses that can deal with EMP threats. Of particular concern is that the U.S. has no missile radar capability looking south from the continental United States.
The United States may have come to the end of traditional nuclear arms control. Since 1972 the United States and Russia have signed seven major nuclear weapons treaties, beginning with the SALT I agreement in 1972 and concluding with the 2010 New Start treaty; however, upwards of 65% of all nuclear warheads in the world still remain under no treaty limits, mainly because countries with such arsenals have no interest in agreeing to nor the technical means to verify, such controls. Between 1972 and 2015, the number of U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons peaked at roughly 13,000 in each country's arsenal, then declined to between 1,800-2,500. This reduction represents a cut of more than 80% in their respective deployed arsenals, a remarkable accomplishment.[1] Despite this progress, advocates of what is termed "global zero" are pressing the United States to reduce even further its deployed and stockpiled weapons to no more than 500-1000 strategic weapons. The problem, if examined closely, is that such proposals will simply make the military balance between the two nuclear powers, Russia and the United States, highly unstable.[2]
There is, for example, in Congress, one legislative proposal that adopts such a warhead ceiling. It would unilaterally eliminate American nuclear bombers and land-based missiles through attrition, while significantly cutting the planned twelve new nuclear-armed submarines to eight. So radical is this proposal that -- while Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are arming themselves to the gills and seizing territory in regions such as the Arctic Circle, the South China Sea and the Middle East -- it would reduce America's nuclear "assets" from over 500 missiles, bombers and submarines to just a few nuclear-armed submarines.[3]
An adversary would thus only have to take out two submarine bases -- Kings Bay and Bangor -- and 2-3 submarines at sea to disarm the United States of its nuclear weapons altogether. Such a U.S. surrender to aggressive, expansionist, authoritarian powers would markedly heighten security dangers to the United States and its allies.The U.S. nuclear "triad" consists of nuclear warheads mounted on platforms based at sea, in the air and on land. Thankfully, there is a strong bipartisan consensus in Congress not to pursue such further reductions. This agreement seems in large part due to three factors: Russia's increasing bellicose international behavior, a huge Russian advantage in both tactical nuclear weapons and warhead production capacity, and Russia's massive nuclear modernization.[4]
Retired Admiral Richard Mies, the former Commander of the United States Strategic Command, says of the imbalance between the U.S. and Russian nuclear warhead stockpiles: "They reflect a growing disparity in total warheads because of the large Russian advantage in small, short range tactical nuclear warheads that are not subject to any arms control limits."[5]. Further, according to the Admiral, "we have dramatically and unilaterally drawn down our tactical nuclear forces in contrast to Russia. To my knowledge, our unilateral disarmament initiatives have done little to promote similar initiatives in our potential adversaries, and at the same time, they have reduced our arms control negotiating leverage. In that sense, the lead-part of the 'lead and hedge strategy'—the idea that if we lead, others will follow—has proven illusory."The Russians have between 2,000-6,000 tactical, or theater, nuclear weapons while the United States deploys 500 such weapons -- all in the NATO European Theater. A second area that concerns the Admiral is that Russia also has the capability to build upwards of 2,000 new nuclear warheads a year. The United States cannot at the moment produce nuclear warheads on a sustained basis beyond 10 or 12 a year, although there are approved plans to build a "responsive" nuclear infrastructure capable of doing more in the future.[6]
While Moscow's nuclear arsenal exceeds that of the United States, there is no current arms control agreement to address these disparities. Monitoring such small nuclear weapons and weapons production capability by satellite is nearly impossible. Thus, the assurances that the U.S. can always "verify" deals with its adversaries is totally inoperable in this case.[7]. Are there better nuclear arms control and deterrent policies that the U.S. could pursue? Yes there are.The U.S. first needs to start with a strategic pause in traditional U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear arms control. Thankfully, there is now a strong consensus in Congress to do just that. The next item for the U.S. is to strengthen and maintain nuclear deterrence even as it explores possible future nuclear initiatives. Given the extraordinarily heavy Russian and Chinese strategic nuclear modernization efforts --- consisting of a combined four new land-based missile types, a new strategic nuclear bomber and cruise missile, and two new submarines and submarine-launched ballistic missiles -- the U.S. faces a formidable nuclear threat that it must seriously continue to deter. By the time there has been a complete modernization (by 2020) of the Russian nuclear missile force, the U.S. will not yet have built a single new strategic nuclear weapon for its arsenal.[8]
Fortunately, the strong bipartisan Congressional consensus could remedy the alarming weakness in America's nuclear deterrent. It is currently, across the board, roughly 35-40 years old. The budget for this badly needed nuclear modernization is scheduled to increase, during the next decade, from $24 billion annually to $31 billion. If one compares this amount to the $65 billion that the U.S. spent on nuclear matters at the height of the Cold War, it is less than half. Certainly, by comparison, the cost required is a relatively modest, but necessary, investment in the nation's security. To help with this effort, the Congress and administration need to get rid of the defense budget caps. Removing them should be America's #1 arms control and nuclear deterrent priority. If the U.S. funded the needed nuclear modernization effort within the budget caps, it would do grave harm to other conventional capabilities. The current administration and Congress should remove the caps now.[9]. What then should be next for a new President and Congress in 2017?
As one looks at the nuclear landscape, Great Britain, France, Israel, China, Pakistan, India, and North Korea have no legal limits on their nuclear arsenals. The U.S. and Russian deployed tactical and strategic reserve stockpile weapons also must be included in that category as they also are under no treaty limits.
Thus, up to as much as 65% of the world's nuclear arsenals have no arms control limits. In rough terms then, many thousands of nuclear warheads -- probably between 6,200-7,500 -- now under the control of those nine nations, have no treaty or legal limits.[10]. How then should one focus on preventing the use of nuclear weapons, as well as seeking to control and limit those warheads beyond the reach of current traditional arms control agreements? As the Yale professor Paul Bracken explains in his book, "The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics," controlling the central strategic nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Russia once made great sense: "Previously, all decisions involving mushroom clouds ran through Washington and Moscow. But, he explains, things are different now. "Today there are nuclear triggers in Islamabad and New Delhi, Pyongyang and Beijing... and maybe someday soon, Tehran."
What to do?
Currently popular on the left is the conventional idea, most recently promoted by the completed nuclear non-proliferation review conference in New York last spring for a "Middle East nuclear free zone." Such an idea is most likely to be avoided: it is primarily a rhetorical vehicle just to attack Israel's nuclear deterrent, rather than a more useful effort to, for example, fully eliminate Iran's nuclear capability, which the U.S. and the JCPOA are empowering.[11]A more serious problem that needs to be addressed are the dangerous implications of Russia's current reckless nuclear policy. Senior Russian officials repeatedly talk about using nuclear weapons in a crisis much as former Chicago Mayor Daley said about voting: it should be done "early and often."According to one study, since 2009 Russian officials have threatened to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. and its allies more than two dozen times.[12] Such Russian nuclear threats undermine the stability and security of NATO and America's European and Asian allies. Such nuclear belligerence has also prompted the American administration to prepare new war plans for a potential Baltic battle against Russia.
In light of this danger, what useful work then might be done now and by the next administration?
First, Congress should approve, and potential leaders of the next administration should quickly announce, their support to fund and even accelerate the modernization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. This should include capabilities that strengthen tactical nuclear deterrence, especially in Europe. The modern U.S. nuclear deterrent umbrella over more than 30 NATO allies is one of the prime reasons most of America's allies have not sought to build nuclear weapons themselves --- the U.S. makes them feel safe. That is a big "arms control" advantage, as it limits the number of nuclear-armed nations in Europe, thus making nuclear deterrence a more manageable task. Second, the U.S. should lead an effort to seek both nuclear force structure and decision making transparency between India and Pakistan. If each country is reassured how the other would act in a crisis, there is less likelihood that these two nuclear-armed powers would use nuclear weapons against each other. Whatever the ambitions of each and notwithstanding Pakistan's support of terrorist organizations, a nuclear exchange between the two nations would be catastrophic.
Third, the U.S. should enlist its Asian allies to press China for transparency in its nuclear expenditures, nuclear force structure and nuclear deterrent policies. Some have likened this quest to asking Al Capone how many guns he has. But the US should still pursue such information. Currently, estimates of China's nuclear forces are little more than a guessing game among China "experts." As China expert and former top Department of Defense official Michael Pillsbury warned recently, China is hiding its hegemonic ambitions while steadily modernizing its nuclear forces.[13] Fourth, the U.S. Congress should establish an outside-Iran monitoring group with bipartisan and independent experts -- a "Red Team" -- with necessary capabilities and clearances and access to intelligence data on Iran. The group would assess on a regular basis the implementation of the JCPOA. This effort should highlight Iran's nuclear, terrorist and missile-related actions, and recommend to Congress and the administration corrective changes to American and allied policy.
Critical to this effort should be the enhancement of the 2003 Proliferation Security Initiative, the better to interdict nuclear and WMD technology being shipped to and from rogue states such as Iran, North Korea, Russia and China. And fifth, most importantly, with the North Korean, Chinese and Russian nuclear and missile capabilities in mind, the United States and its allies should, as quickly as possible, take action to protect the United States and its electrical grid from missile-delivered nuclear electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) threats, especially with the adoption of both the Shield Act and the bipartisan-supported Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.
The U.S. should also adopt a global missile defense plan, including enhanced U.S.-based missile defenses that can deal with EMP threats. Of particular concern is that the U.S. has no missile radar capability looking south from the continental United States, as well as no advanced missile defense bases. Missile defense is a strong component of arms control as well as deterrent policy in that it can dissuade U.S. adversaries from building dangerous missile arsenals and also protect the U.S. and it from coercive and terrorist nuclear missile threats.[14]
Even if any one of these five objectives would be a formidable challenge to a new administration, it is necessary to work on all of them to improve the security and safety of America and its allies. This is indeed an expanded view of arms control but in this nuclear age, it is an American security imperative.[15]
[1] The 2010 New Start treaty between the U.S. and Russia calls for a reduction in deployed strategic nuclear warheads of no more than 1550. But because bombers are only calculated at one warhead, (even if the planes carry 8-12 such weapons), the actual "deployed" level is higher than the official ceiling. The treaty also only limits strategic nuclear weapons "in the field" and actually being carried ("deployed") on long-range bombers, silo and mobile land-based missiles and strategic submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Stockpiled, reserve and tactical nuclear warheads are not limited.
[2] The proposal to reduce the U.S. strategic deterrent to 500-1000 warheads has been proposed by many American "arms control" organizations, including Global Zero, Ploughshares Fund, the Arms Control Association, the Federation of American Scientists, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. See also Maxwell paper #54 by Lt Colonel David Baylor, "Consideration of US Nuclear Force Structure Under 1000 Warheads."
[3] Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) has proposed that the U.S. nuclear arsenal be unilaterally reduced to 8 submarines of which roughly 2-3 might be on patrol at sea at any one time given Navy operational requirements. This quantity would reduce the entirety of the U.S. nuclear deterrent to five targets -- three submarines at sea and two Navy bases where the submarines would be home-ported.
[4] Tactical nuclear warheads are defined as those weapons carried by short-range platforms such as fighter-bombers, rockets and missiles. Satellites generally cannot determine the number of warheads being carried by such platforms, thereby making it virtually impossible to verify any kind of treaty limits on such weapons. In addition, without extraordinary cooperation including on-site inspections, there are also no means by satellite and other verification measures accurately to determine the production capability of the Russians.
[5] Undersea Warfare: "The Strategic Deterrence Mission: Ensuring a Strong Foundation for America's Security" by Admiral (Ret) Richard Mies, Spring 2012. All the quotes in this section from Admiral Mies are from this article or personal communication with the author.
[6] The U.S. government has plans to increase the U.S. production capability of nuclear warhead pits to between 60-85 per year by 2030. According to top nuclear expert Jon Medalia of the Library of Congress, "the Department of Defense (DOD) requires the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to have the capacity to make 50-80 pits per year by 2030." He also noted in an earlier report "the FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act requires the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which manages the nuclear weapons program, to produce them at a rate of 80 pits per year for 90 days in 2027." The conference report for the FY2016 National Defense Authorization Act, released September 30, 2015, states that "the capability and capacity to produce, at minimum, 50 to 80 pits per year, is a national security priority." It does not contain a date-certain for this to happen, but states that "delaying creation of a modern, responsive nuclear infrastructure until the 2030s is an unacceptable risk to the nuclear deterrent and the national security of the United States."
[7] Verification of the number of relatively small nuclear warheads or munitions that can be carried by relatively short-range missiles and airplanes is impossible to determine by technical means such as satellites.
[8] Russian and Chinese nuclear modernization programs have been detailed in two presentations on May 26, 2105: Rick Fisher, "China's Nuclear Build-Up—Implications for American Security Strategy" and April 14, 2015, Mark Schneider, "Russian Nuclear Modernization. The Ukraine Crisis and the Threat to NATO." Mark Schneider, of the National Institute of Public Policy, also addresses the question of whether lack of revenue may impact the Russian modernization plans:
"There may be some impact, but the bottom line is that nuclear weapons are their highest priority and the last thing that will be cut. They [the Russians] have just announced a 17 percent increase in nuclear missile production. The disparity in modernization is monumental. Right now there is not a single new strategic missile or bomber in production in the U.S. Russia says it has modernized half of its strategic missile force and will complete modernization by 2021. They will also start adding newly produced Tu-160 strategic bombers by 2021. Even if you assume a two or three year delay by Russia, the U.S. will not add a single new strategic nuclear weapon before there has been a complete modernization of the Russian nuclear missile force."
[9] The defense budget caps, if maintained, will produce the oldest and smallest Air Force in our history and an Army and Navy smaller than the US maintained just before World War II.
[10] For this estimate, I received a great deal of help from Mark Schneider of the National Institute of Public Policy (NIPP), and Hans Christensen of the Federation of American Scientists. See for further information http://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/
[11] Here is an excerpt from the report of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the review conference:
"During the period, the Islamic Republic of Iran continued to fully support all international and regional efforts towards the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East. Likewise, Iran maintained its principled position to vote in favor of all resolutions on the establishment of such a zone... In this context, the Islamic Republic of Iran officially declared its readiness to participate therein, which, regrettably, was not, convened owing only to the refusal of the Israeli regime to participate in that Conference."
[12] Mark Schneider has testified before Congress on the extent to which Russian nuclear policy reflects a willingness to use nuclear weapons early in a crisis or conflict. For example, on October 14, 2011 he noted:
"In 2009, Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev revealed that the doctrine allowed for first use of nuclear weapons in regional and local conventional war, which was not evident on its face. In February 2010, Russia released a new military doctrine. Like the 2000 version of the doctrine, it reserves the right of nuclear retaliation against nuclear, chemical and biological attack. It also provided for the first use of nuclear weapons in conventional warfare."
[13] Annual Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition, Air Force Association, September 2015,China's view of United States Air Force, Dr. Michael Pillsbury.
[14] Information on the Shield Act and Infrastructure Protection Act can be gotten from EMPACT America as well as from the office of Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ), the prime sponsor of the legislation.
[15] NPR, Bracken interview, November 8, 2012, "Author Warns 'Second Nuclear Age' is Here."
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Including Yemen in the GCC
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/October 26/15
The population of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries will be 70 million if Yemen, whose population is 25 million, joins. Its inclusion will strengthen the GCC geopolitically as it will overlook all sea lanes in three strategic seas. The Yemen war has proven undoubtedly that the country can be the door through which the winds of chaos and foreign interference blow. It is too early to talk about Yemen's future given the ongoing war there, but a roadmap on Yemen’s future ties with the GCC should be now be discussed in order to be paired with the current political arrangements being put in place in Aden and Sanaa. Prior to the Arab Spring, the Council had studied several options regarding including Yemen as a member. However, Ali Abdullah Saleh's presidency represented a huge problem because Gulf governments do not trust him, especially because of his shifting alliances. When the Arab Spring reached Yemen, discussions on including the country in the GCC were frozen.Reservations on including Yemen are not only political - there are also currency problems and economic disparities. However, there are various solutions to these problems, as has happened with economic reforms among the weakest members of the European Union (EU). Therefore, what matters is political will.
Opportunity
Perhaps the current tragedy in Yemen presents a historic opportunity for the GCC to promise to include and support it. This will make the Yemeni people realize that there is a better future, and will help them understand that Gulf intervention in the current war has a positive plan, and is not a mere personal or regional struggle. Yemeni parties and figures across the spectrum will be able to take responsible stances that serve the future of the country. Reservations on including Yemen are not only political - there are also currency problems and economic disparities. Yemen grants the GCC strategic, economic and demographic weight due to its labor market and geography. The country remains a major part of the GCC system, which despite its name actually represents the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. It is time to complete this system.

Why we must count the human cost of war
Robert Muggah/Al Arabiya/October 26/15
The economist Paul Collier famously argued that wars are development in reverse. The human costs are certainly devastating, resulting in the killing and maiming of hundreds of thousands. Around 180,000 people were slaughtered in 42 armed conflicts last year. Several times more likely died as a result of war-related malnutrition, disease and preventable illness. These are conservative estimates – the numbers are likely much higher. The reality is that we don´t really know the real toll. Peace is an essential precondition of sustainable development. But it is hard to know if the world is becoming more or less peaceful without a basic measure of the frequency and intensity of war. The fundamental unit of warfare is the number of deaths it generates. And while it is technically possible to track violent deaths and excess mortality resulting from armed conflict – it is the subject of Better Angles of Our Nature – this is demanding and resource-intensive work. The United Nation's newly minted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires all governments to, among many other things, “significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere”. This on its own represents an extraordinarily progressive and revolutionary agenda. What it means is that national authorities are responsible for monitoring changes in homicide and conflict-related deaths. Unsurprisingly, not everyone is equally enthusiastic.
While most countries support the idea of tracking conflict-related mortality, a smaller number are adamantly opposed to any global system that monitors trends. Some of them argue that counting bodies is too complex and amenable to outside meddling and manipulation. Others complain that there is no transparent methodology to generate credible data. These are familiar concerns. They are also out of date. In the end, any effort to track peace and development should be approached with caution. It is true that counting conflict deaths is political. Governments and rebel factions regularly obscure death tolls for legal and tactical reasons. Controversies over death counts occurred in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Darfur, Vietnam, and virtually every armed conflict over the last two centuries. Yet it is also worth noting that counting poverty rates, or food prices, or the prevalence of disease is political. This is hardly an excuse for inaction.
Count conflict deaths
More importantly, counting conflict deaths is a moral, legal and humanitarian imperative. Body counts treat every life as equally precious. Verifiable and reliable assessments can ensure the human costs are properly accounted for and can help justice be served. Generating solid numbers is an ethical imperative. While precision is important, counts and estimates don’t necessarily have to be exact to be useful. What is more, global capacities to count conflict deaths have expanded considerably over the past decade. While there is no official U.N. or governmental entity responsible, several research institutes are devoted to counting the dead. Some of them, including the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, track “direct” deaths occurring during battles or in the wake of mass atrocities, war crimes and genocide. Others like the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters use statistical measures to predict “indirect” deaths, crude mortality due to malnutrition and disease caused by war. The good news is that the quantity and quality of reporting on conflict deaths is improving dramatically. There are literally thousands of citizen groups monitoring lethal violence, many of them enabled by new technologies like the crowd-source platform, Ushahidi. And while there are naturally some disagreements between researchers over the merits of counting versus estimating death tolls, global awareness of the issue is rapidly expanding. Fortunately, a United Nations Inter-Agency and Experts Group will propose a final set of indicators for the SDGs. Their next meeting is in Bangkok from 26-28 October, and they have until early 2016 to complete their mandate and offer recommendations. Given the centrality of peace to the SDG agenda, they must adopt an indicator on conflict-related deaths. Omitting this metric would dilute the bold agenda signed-on to by every country in the world. In the end, any effort to track peace and development should be approached with caution. Global and national monitoring mechanisms must adopt a careful and conservative approach. This is equally true of many SDG indicators, and not just those related to conflict-related deaths. As is the case with Millennium Development Goal indicators established 15 years ago, the next 15 years offer an opportunity to improve how the world measures and responds to the defining challenges of our era.

ISIS after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?
Andrew Bowen/Al Arabiya/October 26/15
Last month, Iraqi forces reportedly targeted a compound where Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)’s leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was believed to have been staying, killing nine of his senior associates. Subsequent reports have indicated he wasn’t in the compound during the strike. The assassination of Baghdadi would have been a momentary coup for the struggling efforts against ISIS’s reign of terror in eastern Syria and western Iraq, which has led to the displacement of thousands of people. At the same time, this new “Republic of Fear” has been a recruiting ground for tens of thousands of foreign jihadists. However ISIS is a lot more resilient than the leadership of one man.
ISIS resilience
However, as a number of scholars note, ISIS is a lot more resilient than the leadership of one man. Unlike Al-Qaeda, ISIS should be understood as a Maoist-style insurgency driven from the ground up, according to Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economic (LSE).
Most likely, his death, in any future strike, will have little immediate impact. Baghdadi, who has been injured before in assassination attempts, has reportedly taken steps to ensure that ISIS can exist for the foreseeable future.
No U.S. strategy
His reported death came on the heels of President Barack Obama’s interview with U.S. news program 60 Minutes, during which he acknowledged the difficulties of the U.S.-led coalition’s struggle against ISIS more than a year since the organization seized Mosul. Pressed on the stalemate, Obama said: “Over time, the community of nations will all get rid of them, and we will be leading getting rid of them. But we are not going to be able to get rid of them unless there is an environment inside of Syria and in portions of Iraq in which local populations, local Sunni populations, are working in a concerted way with us to get rid of them.”Obama’s acknowledgement of the intractable and stalled nature of the campaign to counter ISIS cannot become a substitute for the absence of U.S. leadership and strategy in his final 14 months in office. With General Allen’s retirement as Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, his successor, Brett McGurk will likely similarly struggle the absence of a coherent strategy.
Competing great powers
Iran, which has struggled to fight ISIS in Iraq while choosing to not fight it in Syria, faced its own setbacks in Syria in recent weeks, reportedly at the hands of the group. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) deputy responsible for Syria operations, Hossein Hamedani, was assassinated in Aleppo, along with a few other senior officers. Russia’s entry into Syria to shore up the government has further hampered the anti-ISIS campaign. On the one hand, Moscow’s campaign has begun to reverse losses on the battlefield that the Syrian government had faced this past spring against the U.S.- and Gulf-backed opposition. On the other hand, among the most immediate beneficiaries of this operation appears to be ISIS who has taken advantage of Russia’s strategy. Moscow has deliberately avoided targeting ISIS, despite Russian security officials noting earlier this month that they disrupted an ISIS attack on Moscow’s public transportation system.
The current joint Russian-Iranian campaign to retake Aleppo appears to be the closest these states have come to directly fighting ISIL.Tensions between Moscow and Washington have also hampered the ability of the U.S.-led air campaign to safely and effectively operate in Syria’s air space, and several times Russia violated the air space of Turkey, a NATO ally. In response, Ankara requested that the United States keep Patriot missile batteries near the Syrian border, which Washington had scheduled to withdraw.
U.S. efforts to seek de-confliction agreements with Moscow have achieved mixed results. Russian officials have even reportedly urged Washington to focus its efforts on fighting ISIS in Iraq and to stay out of Syria. The increased arming of Syrian rebels groups with U.S.-made anti-tank TOW missiles has led to further tensions. Russia’s embassy in Damascus was coincidentally shelled earlier this month. Such disagreements have hampered the ability of the United States, Russia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to work together against ISIS. Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin led to no change in Moscow’s position, despite Riyadh’s warnings of the consequences such actions have on Russia’s long-term position in the region. Until the United States, GCC, Russia and Iran come to an agreement on Syria’s and Iraq’s political futures, it will be difficult to effectively fight ISIS. The recent announcement of a Russia, GCC, and U.S. meeting on Syria could be a positive step. Washington has a critical role to play in providing leadership and resources, but so far Obama has been reluctant to commit either.

The Egyptian State: a ‘non-regime?’
H.A. Hellyer/Al Arabiya/October 26/15
Coverage of Egypt continues to exist in a broad variety of media outlets – both regionally in the Arab world, but also internationally in the broader international community. Since 2013, with the military’s removal of then president Mohammed Mursi from office following widespread protests, Egypt’s political authorities are invariably described as the ‘Egyptian regime.’ That’s particularly the case in the English language media worldwide – but is the word ‘regime’ really applicable in Cairo’s case? In a heated exchange between myself and a senior Iranian official a couple of years ago, I described Iran’s authorities as the ‘Iranian regime’ – a regime I felt had egregiously supported rather nasty policies in Syria. The Iranian official’s indisputably humorous disposition notwithstanding, he objected to the use of the word ‘regime’, claiming it was a word that was a ‘slight’ upon his country’s authorities. (I didn’t stop using the word.) He had a point, in that one seldom finds the use of the word ‘regime’ in a positive fashion when applied to a state’s authorities. On the contrary – the subtext of such a word is going to always be negative in one shape or form. But in one way, it is certainly a compliment – because a ‘regime’ is one that runs, and rather cohesively at that.
Regime or not?
Can one describe Cairo’s ruling authorities as a ‘regime’? Analysis of the country’s ruling authorities is not the easiest to engage in nowadays – but rather than use the word ‘regime’, one might consider three models of organization to explain how this particular political dispensation does – or does not – function.
The first is a rather historical one, and familiar to Egypt. I cannot take credit for it – a colleague of mine, though under Chatham House rules, expressed it – and that was the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. It’s an interesting model to ponder to understand how Egypt functions – because in Mamluk Egypt, the Sultans might have had the largest number of mamluks (soldiers), but the lesser powerful Amirs could have some troops as well. If we imagine the mamluk as an embodiment of power, then it is clear to identify that there was no single power centre in Mamluk Egypt – and sometimes-conflicting power centres, while an overall agreement on a basic trajectory. In Cairo today, many observers also agree that power is certainly disparate and not altogether well strewn into a single web – while a ‘regime’, on the other hand, would certainly be far more cohesive. Even after the Mamluk Sultanate was taken over, the Mamluks continued to hold a great deal of power – one of the reasons Muhammad Ali in the 19th century essentially declared war upon them as a class was due to their feudal power. They owned, in real terms, much of the country – and that would interfere with Muhammad Ali’s vision for control. (It didn’t end very well for the Mamluks, history records. Not at all. Muhammad Ali wasn’t exactly kind with them.) The second is another state model, but a much more contemporary one – and that is Vladimir Putin’s Russia. At the height of the Mamluk Sultanate (and the record does vary over hundreds of years), it represented a pinnacle of political, economic and cultural grandeur in the medieval era. One can’t really say that for Mr Putin’s Russia in the slightest.
Russia is certainly powerful on the world stage, but Putin has hardly made the country a bastion of great attraction for the world. On the other hand, Vladimir Putin is a rather popular figure in Russia. Under his predecessor, there was a massive financial crisis, a declining GDP, a substantial increase in poverty, and security anxieties via militant activity. Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin, imposed order, and was blessed by high oil prices. For the average Russian, if only due to comparing their lives under Putin to what they had before, it’s not hard to see why he gained popularity.The Egyptian Don?Moreover, the concern around stability and order, even if at the expense of civil rights, is a very critical issue to keep in mind – and that is true in Egypt today as well. The presidency of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is one that came into office on a promise of order – and by and large, the majority of the Egyptian population, particularly given the security situation in the country, as well as more regionally, view him as providing that stability. It may be an unsustainable kind of ‘order’ – many make that argument with a forceful degree of evidence to back it up – but perceptions needn’t always be true, and the perception is that this dispensation works (for now). Additionally, the disparate power centres within Russia itself also make for some interesting parallels to be drawn with Egypt. Nevertheless, none of those parallels are particularly flattering – at the end of the day, after all, Russia is hardly viewed as a paragon of virtue. It is 122nd out of 167 countries in the Democracy Index, and the World Justice Project views it as 80th of 99 countries in terms of the ‘rule of law’.
But if the Russian comparison is one that many might draw with regards to Egypt, there is one final one to consider – and it is an Italian one. It is not, alas, the current Italian state – that would be nice indeed. It would be good to think of Egypt as comparable to the third largest economy in the Eurozone, with a remarkably high level of human development and the highest life expectancy in the European Union. No, unfortunately, the comparison is far more baser – the Sicilian mafia. (Point of interest – Sicily used to be an Arab-Muslim sultanate, and some historians argue the word ‘mafia’ comes from the Arabic ‘marfud’. But I digress. ) The notion of the ‘Godfather’ was popularised through a variety of films by the same name – but it wasn’t a media creation.
The concept was certainly controversial for some historians, who argued that the ‘capo dei capi’, or ‘boss of bosses’ was a fiction – but others insist that the concept had genuine currency. It’s an interesting concept – because, again, many observers of Egyptian affairs argue that rather than the cohesiveness that the word ‘regime’ might imply, it’s far more useful to see the current political dispensation in the country as being much more about disparate power centres, with an eponymous figure on top of that structure. In that regard, there are some parallels. In the Sicilian case, each power centre (or ‘family’) has its ‘boss’ or ‘don’. An individual power centre has a certain degree and level of autonomy, to be sure – and it uses it – but there is a veto power to be employed by the ‘capo dei capi’. The question is – when does he use it, and is he able to maintain a level of consensus on key issues, or not. If he can, and the other families do not rebel, then the ‘Godfather’ remains. It doesn’t mean he runs the show with full dictatorial powers, where all simply pay heed and obey – but it does mean the rules are more arbitrary than based on integrity, and the system is founded on power dynamics, more than they are on justice. That’s not exactly a grand system of respect for fundamental rights and responsibilities. It would seem, thus, perhaps, the Egyptian political dispensation is not, indeed, a ‘regime’ after all. The irony is, if only relatively speaking, it might be better if it were.

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