Best News Out of Libya in a Few Weeks

Protestors have stormed and over-run the Islamist militia HQ in Benghazi for the group suspected of killing the US Ambassador.

The militia suspected of killing the US ambassador to Libya nearly two weeks ago has been driven out of its base in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Police and protesters stormed the HQ of the Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia.

The HQ of the Sahaty Brigade, said to have official backing, was also stormed. At least nine people were killed there, another died elsewhere.

The attack on the US consulate was triggered by an amateur video made in the US which mocks Islam.

Protests against the film have been held across the Muslim world. At least 19 people died in Pakistan on Friday alone, in clashes with police trying to stop protesters attacking US diplomatic buildings.

US citizens have been urged not to travel to Pakistan and the US embassy has paid for adverts on Pakistani TV showing President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemning the film.

By: Brant

"Day of Love" Indeed

Pakistan declared a "Day of Love"... How's that working out for you, anyway?

Pakistan has declared Friday a "Day of Love for the Prophet Mohammad". Critics of the unpopular government said it was pandering to Islamist parties.
Protesters took to the streets of the Pakistani city of Peshawar, an old frontier town on the main road to Afghanistan, and torched two cinemas and clashed with riot police who tried to disperse them with teargas.
At least five protesters were hurt, a doctor at the city's main hospital said. The ARY television station said an employee had been killed.
Near the capital, Islamabad, protesters set fire to a motorway toll booth. The previous day, about 1,000 stone-throwing protesters clashed with police as they tried to force their way to the U.S. embassy.

By: Brant

Another Quip on "Offended" Muslims

WaPo's op-ed page asked over the weekend, "Why is the Muslim world so easily offended?"

Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks.

By: Brant

Double Speak from the MoBro

It's always amusing when Doonesbury points out your hypocrisy.

"Egyptians rise up to support Muhammad in front of the American Embassy."
-- Brotherhood Arabic tweet

"We're relieved none of @USEmbassyCairo staff were harmed and hope Eg relations will sustain turbulence of Tuesday's events."
-- Brotherhood English tweet

"Thanks. By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds? I hope you know we read those too."
-- U.S. Embassy tweet

By: Brant

Secretary Clinton Addresses Religion & Riots

Once again proving she's the adult in the global room, Secretary Clinton lays the verbal hammer down after the MidEast riots.

In her remarks, Clinton repeated much of what she's said in the last two days. Namely that the Benghazi attack was carried out by a "small and savage group," and that the United States completely rejects what she called the "inflammable and despicable" anti-Muslim film circulating the Internet. However, Clinton pointed out all religions have faced insults and denigration, but that's no justification for violence. The response to such insults is what separates people of true faith from those who would use religion as an excuse to commit violent acts, she said.
"When Christians are subject to insults to their faith, and that certainly happens, we expect them not to resort to violence. When Hindus or Buddhists are subjected to insults to their faiths, and that also certainly happens, we expect them not to resort to violence," said Clinton. "The same goes for all faiths, including Islam."
She spoke movingly about her own personal beliefs as a way of re-enforcing her point.
"I so strongly believe that the great religions of the world are stronger than any insults. They have withstood offense for centuries," said Clinton."Refraining from violence, then, is not a sign of weakness in one's faith; it is absolutely the opposite, a sign that one's faith is unshakable."
She asked the crowd to work towards building a world where if one person commits a violent religious act, millions of people will stand up and condemn it

By: Brant

CNN Notes that "Arab Spring nations don't yet grasp freedom of dissent "

Trying to get across the point I was making earlier, CNN notes that the Arab Spring nations are very immature societies, and although my term of "savages" might be harsh, characterizing this behavior as "savage" hardly inaccurate.

These are people who were born and raised in dictatorships. They are accustomed to thinking that a government controls its citizens -- that a film or documentary cannot be produced without government approval. For decades, this has been the reality of their lives, and they strongly believe that the Western world and its citizens have a similarly controlling relationship between individuals and government.
In light of this assumption, they hold the U.S. government responsible for the tacky and distasteful film produced by a right-wing Muslimphobe.
Little wonder, then, that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has called for the prosecution by the U.S government of the filmmakers, and Egypt's top cleric, Mufti Ali Goma, has called on the United Nations to forbid denigration of faiths. Morsy studied in the United States and Ali Goma regularly visits the West on the interfaith circuit, yet both men don't yet grasp that religious freedom and the freedom of expression are inextricably linked in America.
It is hard for younger Arabs not born into freedom to understand how individual liberty works in real life.
The freedom to proselytize also guarantees the right to apostatize. Heresy and blasphemy are essential parts of free and democratic societies. Arab activists cannot seek to emulate the West's political and social achievements by looking at the United States and Europe today, but must observe and learn from the religious battles of 17th-century Europe, the smashing of the tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church, the ending of burning witches and the forbidding of hanging heretics.
It is this history of unbolting the doors of dissent that led to the conditions in which John Locke and John Stuart Mill could write and think freely and then influence Thomas Jefferson and the other U.S. Founding Fathers. There are no shortcuts to freedom, except to learn from the mistakes of the West in the past.

The wrap-up line?

Freedom is not only about majority rule, but ensuring that women, religious minorities and intellectual dissenters are able to flourish without fear.

By: Brant

Arrests in Libyan Embassy Attack

The Libyans have arrested four men in connection with the attack on the US consulate in Libya.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead, the president of the parliament's top aide said Friday.

Those arrested were not directly tied to the attacks that resulted in the deaths, Monem Elyasser, the chief aide to Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur, told CNN by telephone.

The announcement came as the United States is struggling to determine whether a militant group planned the attack that killed the four Americans.

Elyasser did not release the identities of the suspects nor did he detail the allegations against the four people in custody.

By: Brant

The Arab Summer... of Riots

The bottom line is that we are dealing with a backwards society of savages who violently riot at the slightest provocation and show no desire to join a modern, tolerant, free-thinking and open-minded world in which a variety of viewpoints are met and engaged with reason and discussion instead of RPGs and Molotov cocktails. Until the societies themselves want to change, these sorts of flare-ups will continue to happen, and the societies that engender them will continue to trail the rest of the world in economic, social, scientific, and intellectual development. And it will be completely their own fault.

By: Brant

US Ambassador to Libya Killed When Mob Storms Embassy

I guess our support for their revolution was swiftly forgotten when the rumor of an insult to their religion started to spread.

The US ambassador to Libya has died after an attack by militiamen on the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, Libyan officials say.

Ambassador Christopher Stevens is said to be among four US officials killed in a protest over a US-produced film that is said to insult the Prophet Muhammad.

US media quote US officials confirming the ambassador's death. But there is no comment from the state department.

Protesters have also attacked the US embassy in Cairo over the film.

In the attack in Benghazi, unidentified armed men stormed the grounds, shooting at buildings and throwing handmade bombs into the compound.

Security forces returned fire but Libyan officials say they were overwhelmed.

A Libyan official has said Ambassador Stevens died from suffocation as a result of the attack.

The death was confirmed by the Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagur.

"I condemn these barbaric acts in the strongest possible terms. This is an attack on America, Libya and free people everywhere," he said on the social networking site Twitter.

By: Brant

COA Analysis: Uprisings and Reform

(republishing this one in light of recent events in Egypt / Syria; it originally ran in February of 2011)

As uprisings sweep the across the Muslim/Arab world, what comes next?

There are 4 courses of action there to consider. Which do you think is most likely, and why? How might it play out per the next 6-8 months?


By: Brant

More Syrian Shootouts

I guess the UN observers are just observing Syrians shooting other Syrians at this point.

Syrian forces ambushed and killed nine army deserters in a north Damascus suburb on Monday, a human rights watchdog said, as NATO ruled out military action against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
The bloodletting also appeared to spill over into neighbouring Lebanon where two people were killed overnight in street battles between pro- and anti-Syrian groups in Beirut, a security official said.
The latest violence in Syria comes after a rocket-propelled grenade exploded on Sunday near a team of UN observers in a Damascus suburb, and at least 48 people were killed elsewhere in the country.
The nine army deserters were killed as they were retreating under cover of darkness from the village of Jisr al-Ab near Damascus's Douma suburb, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The watchdog on Sunday had reported fighting between rebels and regime troops near Douma, during which the RPG exploded near the team of UN observers.

By: Brant

Tackling Afghanistan's "Future" - And a Few Protestors, too

So world leaders are "set to tackle Afghanistan's future", eh? Here's a question: if we're bringing them into the 20th century, are we tackling their future, our past, or some combination of both?

World leaders weary of war will tackle Afghanistan's post-conflict future — from funding for security forces to upcoming elections — when the NATO summit opens Sunday.
President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will huddle on the sidelines of the summit or an hour-long meeting. Their talks are expected to focus on planning for Afghanistan's 2014 elections, as well as the prospect of a political settlement with the Taliban, a senior Obama administration official said.
Karzai has said repeatedly he will step down from power when his term ends in 2014, paving the way for new elections. NATO's scheduled end of the war was built around those plans, with foreign forces staying until the 2014 election but exiting the country by 2015.
Obama and Karzai will discuss ways to ensure that political rivals can compete fairly in the run-up to the election, as well as ways to reduce fraud and support the winner who emerges, the official said.
Past Afghan elections were riddled with irregularities, and the U.S. applied heavy pressure to Karzai to schedule a second round of voting during the last presidential contest in 2009. The runoff was never held because Karzai's challenger pulled out in protest of what he claimed was an impossible level of corruption.

Meanwhile, a bunch of protesters are planning demonstrations for the NATO summit. Some people just can't help themselves.

Protesters gathering in Chicago for the NATO summit were gearing up for their largest demonstration Sunday, when thousands are expected to march from a downtown park to the lakeside convention center where President Barack Obama and dozens of other world leaders will meet.
Several hundred demonstrators wound through the city's streets for hours Saturday, testing police who used bicycles to barricade off streets and horseback officers to coax them in different directions. Increasingly tense clashes between protesters and police resulted in 18 arrests, Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said.
Most of Saturday's demonstrations remained relatively small and peaceful, including one march to the home of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff. But a later march stretched for hours as protesters zigzagged back and forth through downtown, some decrying terrorism-related charges leveled against three young men earlier in the day.
Organizers pledged a larger crowd when protesters from the Occupy movement will join forces with an anti-war coalition to mark the opening day of the summit later Sunday.
"We want the world to focus on NATO — they're not important and have no mandate anymore," said Micah Philbrook, an Occupy Chicago spokesman, who criticized the large police presence Saturday. "They're pushing us around and not letting anyone get out of the protest even if they want. They're very aggressive."

By: Brant

HRW Calling for Investigation of NATO; Call for Libya Coming? You Know Better

Look HRW, if you want to grab headlines, fine, keep calling for NATO to investigate civilian deaths in Libya. But if you want to be a truly effective and neutral broker of rights investigations, you better damn well call for an investigation of the civilian deaths caused by the now-deposed Libyan gov't, too.

A leading human rights organisation has urged Nato to investigate fully the deaths of civilians in air strikes in Libya last year.

Human Rights Watch believes Nato air strikes killed at least 72 civilians and says the organisation needs to bear responsibility where appropriate.

"We're calling for prompt, credible and thorough investigations," HRW's Fred Abrahams told BBC News.

Nato insists it took unprecedented care to minimise civilian casualties.

It argues that it cannot take responsibility because it has had no presence on the ground to confirm the deaths.

Aircraft from the US, the UK and France conducted most of the 9,658 strike sorties last year, targeting forces loyal to Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

By: Brant

Car Race Trumps Citizen Rights in Bahrain

Lessee... he, we got a car race! Let's ignore the street protests we've been brutality supressing.

Formula One drivers race in Bahrain on Sunday while rage boils on the streets outside, among protesters who denounce the Grand Prix as a gaudy spectacle by a ruling family that crushed Arab Spring demonstrations last year.
In the Shi'ite villages dotted around the capital, demonstrators hurling petrol bombs have clashed nightly with police during the past week, and security forces responded with teargas, rubber bullets and birdshot.
Black smoke from burning tyres wafted over Budaiya, a village outside the capital that saw mass protests this week.
For those inside the Formula One bubble, far from the scenes of protest, the unrest has had little impact. Teams assembled at Bahrain International Circuit amid the usual security precautions ahead of the race. At hotels where race participants were staying, guests swam and relaxed poolside in the morning. The highway to the circuit was lined with police cars.
The luxury sporting event is the government's chance to show that life has gone back to normal in the island kingdom after security concerns over anti-government demonstrations forced last year's race to be delayed, then cancelled.

See also this earlier post.

By: Brant

UN Observers in Syria Welcomed With Artillery Salute

Oh, uh... never mind.

An advance team of U.N. observers was negotiating the ground rules with Syrian authorities Monday for monitoring the country's 5-day-old cease-fire, which appeared to be rapidly unraveling as regime forces pounded the opposition stronghold of Homs with artillery shells and mortars, activists said.
Even though the overall level of violence across Syria has dropped significantly since the truce took effect, government attacks over the weekend raised new doubts about President Bashar Assad's commitment to special envoy Kofi Annan's plan to end 13 months of violence and launch talks on the country's political future.
The advance team of six U.N. monitors arrived in Damascus Sunday night. Annan's spokesman said the team, led by Moroccan Col. Ahmed Himmiche, met Monday with Syrian Foreign Ministry officials to discuss ground rules, including what freedom of movement the observers would have. Ahmad Fawzi said the remaining 25 observers are expected to arrive in the coming days.

By: Brant

Assassination and Elections

I don't need to tell you that this is in Africa, right? You could guess that by the headline, huh?

Guinea Bissau's former head of military intelligence was shot dead at a bar near his residence in the capital Bissau late on Sunday, hours after citizens voted peacefully in a presidential election, witnesses and a security source said.
The killing of Colonel Samba Diallo follows a rash of political assassinations in the tiny West African state, a known haven for cocaine smugglers, and places a cloud over a vote that was meant to usher in a period of greater stability.
A resident near Diallo's residence told Reuters that soldiers fired on him just before midnight and that his body was later taken away. Another witness said he saw Diallo's body at a hospital morgue after the shooting.
A security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Diallo was shot dead while at a bar near his home, but could give no further details. A Bissau army spokesman said he had no information on the incident.
Diallo had served as head of military intelligence under ex-Army Chief of Staff Jose Zamora Induta until the two were deposed and temporarily jailed in an April 2010 mutiny that Western diplomats said was likely over control of the lucrative drugs trade between Latin America and Europe.

By: Brant

Key Leader Leave Syrian Army; Form Opposition Group

Looks like they're following the same glide path Libya did.

Syrian army defectors announced on Monday the formation of a higher military council to "liberate" the country from President Bashar al-Assad's rule.
The council, named "The Higher Revolutionary Council" and designed to supersede the Free Syrian Army (FSA), said its head was General Mustafa Ahmed al-Sheikh, the highest ranking deserter who had fled to Turkey. The council's spokesman is Major Maher al-Naimi, previously the FSA spokesman, according to a statement sent to Reuters.
The announcement of the council's formation came hours after Assad's forces launched the heaviest bombardment to subdue the rebel city of Homs in the 11 month revolt.

By: Brant

Trouble In Nigeria

So they've already for tanks patrolling the northeast...

Heavily armed troops and tanks patrolled the streets of Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria Sunday, witnesses said, after the president declared a state of emergency in parts of the north affected by an Islamist insurgency.
President Goodluck Jonathan imposed the state of emergency on the northeast, the conflict-prone central city of Jos, and part of Niger state near Abuja Saturday, and closed the borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger in the northeast.
Nearly a week after the radical sect Boko Haram set off a series of bombs across Nigeria on Christmas Day, including one at a church that killed at least 37 people and wounded 57, Jonathan told state television his aim was to restore security in troubled parts of the north.

... and now Nigeria is dealing with riots after a fuel subsidy ends.

Ordinary Nigerians and trade unionists have condemned the government for withdrawing a fuel price subsidy which has led petrol prices to more than double in many areas.
The BBC's Chris Ewokor in the capital, Abuja, says Nigerians are angry at the announcement, fearing the price of many other goods will also rise.
The main trade unions have called people to prepare for a strike.
Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer, but imports refined petrol.
Years of mismanagement and corruption mean it does not have the capacity to refine oil, turning it into petrol and other fuels.

By: Brant

Syria Coming Apart at the Seams, II?

It sounds like outright warfare between the opposition and the government in parts of Syria

Syrian forces killed at least 56 people in the past 24 hours in the province of Idlib in violence raging ahead of the start of a mission to monitor President Bashar al-Assad's implementation of an Arab League peace plan, activists said on Wednesday.
The escalating death toll in nine months of popular unrest has raised the specter of civil war in Syria with Assad still trying to stamp out protests with troops and tanks despite international sanctions imposed to push him onto a reform path.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had the names of 56 "civilians and activists" killed in Idlib's Jabal al-Zawiyah region on Tuesday and the death toll could be as high as 121.
Idlib, a northwestern province bordering Turkey, has been a hotbed of protest during the revolt against Assad, inspired by uprisings across the Arab world this year, and has also seen escalating attacks by armed insurgents against his forces.
The Observatory said rebels had damaged or destroyed 17 military vehicles in Idlib since Sunday and killed 14 members of the security forces on Tuesday in an ambush in the southern province of Deraa, where anti-Assad protests began in March.

View Larger Map

By: Brant

Israeli Army Base Attacked... By Israelis?!

Yep, some right-wing settlers staged a "protest" that included an attack on an amy base.

Radical Jewish settlers attacked an army base and staged protests in a closed military zone on the Jordan border overnight, sparking a sharp condemnation on Tuesday from the Israeli premier.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, around 50 settlers forced their way onto a key army base in the northern West Bank and vandalised military vehicles there following rumours troops were about to evacuate settlement outposts, the military said.
Several hours earlier, some 30 settlers broke into a Christian baptismal site in a closed military zone along the Jordanian border to stage a protest.
Both incidents were swiftly condemned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who ordered the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) "to act aggressively" against anyone attacking Israeli troops.
"This incident must be completely condemned. The security forces need to concentrate on defending our citizens and not on such outrageous lawbreaking," he said in a statement.

Alright Brian - how the hell do you wargame this one?

By: Brant