Twin suicide bombings rock central Baghdad, at least 28 dead

January 21, 2021

BAGHDAD (AP) — Twin suicide bombings ripped through a busy market in the Iraqi capital Thursday, killing at least 28 people and wounding 73 others, officials said. The rare suicide bombing attack hit the Bab al-Sharqi commercial area in central Baghdad amid heightened political tensions over planned early elections and a severe economic crisis. Blood smeared the floors of the busy market amid piles of clothes and shoes as survivors took stock of the disarray in the aftermath.

No one immediately took responsibility for the attack, but Iraqi military officials said it was the work of the Islamic State group. Iraq’s military said at least 28 people were killed and 73 wounded in the attack and said some of the injured were in serious condition. Several health and police officials said the toll might be higher. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The Health Ministry announced all of its hospitals in the capital were mobilized to treat the wounded. Maj. Gen. Tahsin al-Khafaji, spokesman for the Joint Operations Command, which includes an array of Iraqi forces, said the first suicide bomber cried out loudly that he was ill in the middle of the bustling market, prompting a crowd to gather around him — and that’s when he detonated his explosive belt. The second detonated his belt shortly after, he said.

“This is a terrorist act perpetrated by a sleeper cell of the Islamic State,” al-Khafaji said. He said IS “wanted to prove its existence” after suffering many blows in military operations to root out the militants.

The suicide bombings marked the first in three years to target Baghdad’s bustling commercial area. A suicide bomb attack took place in the same area in 2018 shortly after then-Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi declared victory over the Islamic State group.

No one immediately took responsibility for Thursday’s attack, but Iraq has seen assaults perpetrated by both the Islamic State group and militia groups in recent months. Militias have routinely targeted the American presence in Iraq with rocket and mortar attacks, especially the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone. The pace of those attacks, however, has decreased since an informal truce was declared by Iran-backed armed groups in October.

The style of Thursday’s assault was similar to those IS has conducted in the past. But the group has rarely been able to penetrate the capital since being dislodged by Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition in 2017.

IS has shown an ability to stage increasingly sophisticated attacks across northern Iraq, where it still maintains a presence three years after Iraq declared victory over the group. Iraqi security forces are frequently ambushed and targeted with IEDs in rural areas of Kirkuk and Diyala. An increase in attacks was seen last summer as militants took advantage of the government’s focus on tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

The twin bombings Thursday came days after Iraq’s government unanimously agreed to hold early elections in October. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi had announced in July that early polls would be held to meet the demands of anti-government protesters.

Demonstrators took to the streets in the tens of thousands last year to demand political change, and an end to rampant corruption and poor services. More than 500 people were killed in mass demonstrations as security forces used live rounds and tear gas to disperse crowds.

Iraq is also grappling with a severe economic crisis brought on by low oil prices that has led the government to borrow internally and risk depleting its foreign currency reserves. The Central Bank of Iraq devalued Iraq’s dinar by nearly 20% last year to meet spending obligations.

Associated Press writer Murtada Faraj contributed.

Turkey refuses to deport Iranian journalist

January 20, 2021

Turkey will not deport Iranian journalist Mohammad Mosaed back to Iran, security sources have revealed. Instead, he is being allowed to remain while his application for asylum is processed,

According to a statement released on Monday by the Washington-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mosaed was arrested by the Turkish authorities at the weekend for entering the country illegally.

The Iranian authorities sentenced him in August to four years in prison on charges of “colluding against national security” and “spreading propaganda against the system.” His sentence, he was told at the time, would start after two days.

Mosaed then fled from Iran and arrived in the Turkish city of Van, where he alerted the Turkish authorities to his presence in the country by calling the emergency services on Sunday to save him from freezing to death. The award-winning journalist was detained by police and he contacted the CPJ and filed an application for international protection that was received by the authorities in Van.

“We believe that Mohammad Mosaed has a well-founded fear of persecution should he be returned to Iran,” said Sherif Mansour, the CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Coordinator. He called on the Turkish government to respect its obligations under international law; to refrain from deporting Mosaed; to consider any request for political asylum that he may make; and to assure that his rights are protected through due process of law.

According to a security source, Turkey won’t deport him. “There is capital punishment in Iran and he is a journalist, not a mobster,” the source told Middle East Eye.

In recent years, numerous Iranian dissidents and activists have sought refuge in Turkey fearing persecution in their home country. The government in Ankara has often refused to deport such dissidents. Iranian activist Maryam Shariatmadari, for example, was not deported when her residency permit expired last year.

There have, however, been a number of cases in Turkey where dissidents have been assassinated or kidnapped by Iranian agents. Dissident and former intelligence agent Masoud Maulavi Vardanjani was assassinated in Istanbul in November 2019, a killing apparently instigated by Iranian diplomats in the country.

A year later, the Ahvazi activist Habib Chaab was abducted in Istanbul by Iranian agents and smuggled across the border into Iran where he is being held in detention.

Source: Middle East Monitor.

Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210120-turkey-refuses-to-deport-iranian-journalist/.

Snow blankets Saudi Arabia and Algeria as temperatures plummet

January 19, 2021 

Snow fell in Saudi Arabia and Algeria at the weekend as temperatures plummeted to below freezing. Residents of the southern Aseer region in the Kingdom also saw an extremely rare snowfall on Thursday when temperatures dropped as low as minus 2o Celsius in the mountainous region, the lowest recorded level in half a century.

Local residents and foreigners rushed to the area to see the snow-covered desert and surrounding hills, reported GeoNews. Camels were pictured standing in heavy drifts of snow in the area around Aseer.

Saudi Arabians living in Tabuk close to border with Jordan have also reported unusual weather patterns this month. January is normally the coldest month in Saudi Arabia, with temperatures hovering around an average of 20oC. In Tabuk, however, they tend to fall to an average of 4oC during the winter months.

In North Africa, meanwhile, snow has also fallen in the north-western Algerian desert town of Ain Sefra. Photographer Karim Bouchetata captured the stunning sight of Saharan sand dunes covered in a thin layer of snow.

Temperatures in the town, known as the “Gateway to the Desert” due to its position in the Atlas Mountains almost 1,000 meters above sea level, dropped to minus 3oC on Wednesday. Ain Sefra also reported snow in 2018, for the third time in 40 years.

Snow is extremely rare in deserts, though not completely unknown. High pressure systems of cool air move over the deserts, picking up moisture on the way and causing very low temperatures.

Although desert snow usually melts very quickly, the freezing temperatures in Saudi Arabia and Algeria have meant that it has lasted longer than usual.

Last year, snow fell in Baghdad for only the second time this century. The last recorded snowfall in the city was in 2008, but many residents said it was the first time they had ever seen snow. The people of Baghdad are more used to heat than cold, experiencing temperatures of up 50oC during the summer months.

Source: Middle East Monitor.

Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210119-snow-blankets-saudi-arabia-and-algeria-as-temperatures-plummet/.

The dark motives behind Saudi Arabia’s push for Gulf unity

David Hearst

6 January 2021

It took Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman three years and six months to come to the same conclusion that some of us reached days into the blockade of Qatar: that it was doomed to failure.

The project to silence the voice of an independent neighbor was doomed the moment that then-US defense secretary James Mattis and then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson, a former oilman with extensive links to Qatar, learned of plans to invade the peninsula and stopped them.

As the weeks passed, Qatar’s hand was only strengthened. Turkish troops arrived in Doha to form a physical buffer. Iran gave Qatar the use of its airspace. The blockade could never work with an air bridge established around Saudi Arabia.

It took only months for Qatar to assemble a major lobbying operation in Washington, undoing or rolling back the influence of the principal lobbyist for the Saudis, the Emirati ambassador Youssef al-Otaiba, and establishing solid support of its own. US President Donald Trump did not even acknowledge that Qatar hosted the Pentagon’s most important airbase in the region, Al Udeid, when he tweeted his approval of the blockade in 2017. 

In the end, the Saudi prince overestimated Trump’s influence and underestimated the residual power of the US military. Both Tillerson and Mattis are long gone, but the pressure to reverse this mad act of recklessness never receded; it only grew with time.

With the imminent arrival of a hostile US president in Joe Biden, bin Salman sensed the time had come to put an end to his folly. Today, none of the 13 demands originally placed on Qatar by the blockading states have been met. Neither its hosting of members of the Muslim Brotherhood nor its foreign policy have changed. Al Jazeera has not been closed down. Qatar’s alliance with Iran and Turkey has, if anything, strengthened.

Domestically, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, is held in higher esteem for his defense of the state than he was before, as Qatari nationalism has mounted. Qatar is more self-sufficient and confident than it was before the blockade. 

‘Qatar has won’

If anything, this unpleasant shock has strengthened Qatar. The same goes for Turkish and Iranian foreign policy.

“You could say Qatar has won,” Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of politics in Dubai who was one of the foremost defenders of the blockade three years ago, told the Financial Times. “The cost of fighting was too high – there is a realization now that this is the black sheep of the family and we just have to put up with it. These have been the worst three-and-a-half years in the history of the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council].”

But these conclusions are, for the moment, bin Salman’s alone. It is interesting to note who was absent from the display of brotherly love at the GCC summit on Tuesday. The no-show by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed came alongside the absence of Bahrain’s King Hamad and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Bahrain is in the midst of an increasingly bitter border dispute with Qatar, and Egypt remains skeptical about the whole enterprise. Mada Masr quoted Egyptian government sources as saying that Cairo does not see a sufficiently strong foundation to open a new page in relations with Doha. Qatar, they claimed, was still mounting a “methodological campaign aimed at the Egyptian regime”. 

The sources noted that none of the basic demands made of Qatar – closing down Al Jazeera, shuttering a Turkish military base, severing ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and reducing ties with Iran – had been met. It is too early to say whether this signals a fracturing of the counter-revolutionary forces that have held together since they paid for and installed Sisi as president of Egypt after a military coup in 2013.

Tensions over Yemen and Israel

Certainly, there are grounds for a bust-up between mentor bin Zayed and his protege, bin Salman. One is Yemen: who is really in charge of the Saudi-led intervention that bin Salman launched in March 2015 – the Saudis or the Emiratis? Militias funded by and loyal to the UAE have taken control of the south, leaving the Saudis with an unresolved war with the Houthis in the north.

A second source of tension is Israel. In spearheading normalization with Israel, the Emiratis clearly pitched themselves as Tel Aviv’s principal Gulf partner. Otaiba’s boast that the UAE and Israel had the two most capable military forces in the region raised eyebrows in Riyadh and Cairo.

Writing the first-ever op-ed by a Gulf diplomat for an Israeli newspaper, Otaiba boasted before normalization took place last year: “With the region’s two most capable militaries, common concerns about terrorism and aggression, and a deep and long relationship with the United States, the UAE and Israel could form closer and more effective security cooperation. As the two most advanced and diversified economies in the region, expanded business and financial ties could accelerate growth and stability across the Middle East.”

The Emirati claim to be the principal partner of Israel could cause problems for the future king of Saudi Arabia. Another notable absentee from the GCC summit was the country’s current king, Salman.

Apart from throwing a bone to the incoming US president, bin Salman might also nurture his own dark reasons for making peace with Qatar. He knows that in doing so, he will buy, even temporarily, the relative quiescence of Qatari-controlled media, principally Al Jazeera Arabic, which has the greatest audience in the Arab world. 

Kingdom split

Al Jazeera’s coverage of the tumultuous events shaking the Arab world has waxed and waned. Even before the blockade, it did not, for instance, devote the same attention to the murderous bombardment of Yemen by Saudi warplanes as it did to the Egyptian revolution in 2011. 

While producers and reporters are freer to report than most of their contemporaries in the Saudi-, Emirati- and Egyptian-controlled media, the state of Qatar still has its hands on volume control. There are many examples, including the decision to downplay coverage of the trial of Loujain al-Hathloul, the prominent Saudi activist recently sentenced to five years and eight months in prison.

Bin Salman could use this détente with Qatar to achieve two objectives: to announce his own recognition of Israel, and to persuade his father to abdicate and pass the crown to him.

There is no doubt that bin Salman thinks it is time to do both. From the very start of his campaign to become king, establishing close clandestine relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been key to bin Salman’s relationship with US presidential adviser Jared Kushner and his father-in-law, Trump. 

The kingdom is split from top to bottom on the issue of normalization with Israel. Foreign-policy heavyweights in the family still publicly voice opposition, notably the former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal. The king himself, to whom Prince Turki remains close, is also opposed, and the issue will have a strong impact on the Saudi people.

Future turmoil

One first step towards resolving this is to neutralize or turn down the volume of the Arab media that could run against bin Salman. This mainly comes from Qatar, which might explain why Kushner himself was present at the GCC summit.

For all the pain involved, the prize is great – and Biden, a committed Zionist, would welcome it. To deliver Saudi Arabia into the hands of Israel would represent a real prize to the alliance being built over and around the heads of Palestinians. Saudi Arabia remains, by dint of its size and wealth, a “real” Arab nation.

While the resolution of the crisis with Qatar is to be welcomed, the motives for doing so could lead to yet more turmoil in Arab world.

Source: Middle East Eye.

Link: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/dark-motives-behind-saudi-arabias-push-gulf-unity.

Saudi women’s rights activist sentenced to nearly 6 years

December 28, 2020

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — One of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent women’s rights activists was sentenced Monday to nearly six years in prison, according to state-linked media, under a vague and broadly worded counterterrorism law. The ruling nearly brings to a close a case that has drawn international criticism and the ire of U.S. lawmakers.

Loujain al-Hathloul has already been in pre-trial detention and has endured several stretches of solitary confinement. Her continued imprisonment was likely to be a point of contention in relations between the kingdom and the incoming presidency of Joe Biden, whose inauguration takes place in January — around two months before what is now expected to be al-Hathloul’s release date.

Rights group “Prisoners of Conscience,” which focuses on Saudi political detainees, said al-Hathloul could be released in March 2021 based on time served. She has been imprisoned since May 2018, and 34 months of her sentencing will be suspended.

Her family said in a statement she will be barred from leaving the kingdom for five years and required to serve three years of probation after her release. Biden has vowed to review the U.S.-Saudi relationship and take into greater consideration human rights and democratic principles. He has also vowed to reverse President Donald Trump’s policy of giving Saudi Arabia “a blank check to pursue a disastrous set of policies,” including the targeting of female activists.

Al-Hathloul was found guilty and sentenced to five years and eight months by the kingdom’s anti-terrorism court on charges of agitating for change, pursuing a foreign agenda, using the internet to harm public order and cooperating with individuals and entities that have committed crimes under anti-terror laws, according to state-linked Saudi news site Sabq. The charges all come under the country’s broadly worded counterterrorism law.

She has 30 days to appeal the verdict. “She was charged, tried and convicted using counter-terrorism laws,” her sister, Lina al-Hathloul, said in a statement. “My sister is not a terrorist, she is an activist. To be sentenced for her activism for the very reforms that MBS and the Saudi kingdom so proudly tout is the ultimate hypocrisy,” she said, referring to the Saudi crown prince by his initials.

Sabq, which said its reporter was allowed inside the courtroom, reported that the judge said the defendant had confessed to committing the crimes and that her confessions were made voluntarily and without coercion. The report said the verdict was issued in the presence of the prosecutor, the defendant, a representative from the government’s Human Rights Commission and a handful of select local media representatives.

The 31-year-old Saudi activist has long been defiantly outspoken about human rights in Saudi Arabia, even from behind bars. She launched hunger strikes to protest her imprisonment and joined other female activists in telling Saudi judges that she was tortured and sexually assaulted by masked men during interrogations. The women say they were caned, electrocuted and waterboarded. Some say they were forcibly groped and threatened with rape.

Al-Hathloul rejected an offer to rescind her allegations of torture in exchange for early release, according to her family. A court recently dismissed her allegations, citing a lack of evidence. Among other allegations was that one of the masked interrogators was Saud al-Qahtani, a close confidante and advisor to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the time. Al-Qahtani was later sanctioned by the U.S. for his alleged role in the murder of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey.

While more than a dozen other Saudi women’s rights activists face trial, have spent time in prison or remain jailed, al-Hathloul’s case stood out in part because she was the only female rights activist to be referred to the Specialized Criminal Court, which tries terrorism cases.

In many ways, her case came to symbolize Prince Mohammed’s dual strategy of being credited for ushering in sweeping social reforms and simultaneously cracking down on activists who had long pushed for change.

While some activists and their families have been pressured into silence, al-Hathloul’s siblings, who reside in the U.S. and Europe, consistently spoke out against the state prosecutor’s case and launched campaigns calling for her release.

The prosecutor had called for the maximum sentence of 20 years, citing evidence such as al-Hathloul’s tweets in support of lifting a decades-long ban on women driving and speaking out against male guardianship laws that had led to multiple instances of Saudi women fleeing abusive families for refuge abroad. Al-Hathloul’s family said the prosecutor’s evidence included her contacts with rights group Amnesty International. She was also charged with speaking to European diplomats about human rights in Saudi Arabia, though that was later dropped by the prosecutor.

The longtime activist was first detained in 2014 under the previous monarch, King Abdullah, and held for more than 70 days after she attempted to livestream herself driving from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia to protest the ban on women driving.

She’s also spoken out against guardianship laws that barred women from traveling abroad without the consent of a male relative, such as a father, husband or brother. The kingdom eased guardianship laws last year, allowing women to apply for a passport and travel freely.

Her activism landed her multiple human rights awards and spreads in magazines like Vanity Fair in a photo shoot next to Meghan Markle, who would later become the Duchess of Sussex. She was also a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

Al-Hathloul’s family say in 2018, shortly after attending a U.N.-related meeting in Geneva about the situation of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, she was kidnapped by Emirati security forces in Abu Dhabi, where she’d been residing and pursuing a master’s degree. She was then forced on a plane to Saudi Arabia, where she was barred from traveling and later arrested.

Al-Hathloul was among three female activists targeted that year by state-linked media, which circulated her picture online and dubbed her a traitor.