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UN: Middle East wars hit 13 million schoolchildren

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More than 8,850 schools no longer usable due to violence in six Middle East nations and territories, UNICEF reports.

In the Gaza Strip at least 281 schools had been damaged, and eight 'completely destroyed', the UN said [Reuters]

In the Gaza Strip at least 281 schools had been damaged, and eight ‘completely destroyed’, the UN said [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

More than 13 million children are being denied an education due to conflicts in the Middle East, the UN has said, warning “the hopes of a generation” would be dashed if they cannot return to classrooms.

In a report on the impact of conflict on education in six countries and territories across the region, the UN’s children fund UNICEF on Thursday said more than 8,850 schools were no longer usable due to violence.

It detailed cases of students and teachers coming under direct fire, classrooms used as makeshift bomb shelters and children having to cross active front-lines just to take their exams.

“The destructive impact of conflict is being felt by children right across the region,” Peter Salama, regional director for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa, told AFP news agency.

“It’s not just the physical damage being done to schools, but the despair felt by a generation of schoolchildren who see their hopes and futures shattered.”

Last year alone, UNICEF documented 214 attacks on schools in Syria, Iraq, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, and Yemen.

In Syria, it said education was paying a “massive price” after four-and-a-half years of conflict.

One in four schools have been closed since the conflict erupted, causing more than two million children to drop out and putting close to half a million in danger of losing their schooling.

In addition, more than 52,000 teachers have left their posts, saddling the country’s crumbling education system with an acute skills shortage.

“Even those Syrian teachers who have ended up as refugees in other countries have faced obstacles which prevent them from working,” the report said.

‘School no longer safe’

UNICEF said one of the worst direct attacks on a school in the region came in Yemen, where 13 staff and four children were killed in an assault on a teachers’ office in the western city of Amran.

“The killing, abduction and arbitrary arrest of students, teachers and education personnel have become commonplace” in the region, the report said.

Hundreds of schools and colleges have been closed since March, when a Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on Houthi rebels who had seized the capital Sanaa and several parts of the country.

In the embattled Gaza Strip, which saw a 51-day war last year between Hamas and Israel kill about 2,200 Palestinians and 73 on the Israeli side, the UN said at least 281 schools had been damaged, and eight “completely destroyed”.

“My children were injured in a school. They saw people injured with missing hands or legs, with wounded faces and eyes,” the report quoted Gaza mother-of-two Niveen as saying.

“They no longer see school as a safe place.”

‘Generation in the balance’

UNICEF said that violence in Iraq, where pro-government forces are battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, has had a severe impact on the schooling of at least 950,000 children.

It detailed scenes among the 1,200 schools in Iraqi host communities that have been turned into shelters for those displaced by violence, with up to nine families per classroom forced to prepare meals in courtyards.

Conflict has also affected child learning in Libya – still reeling from the 2011 ouster of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi – with more than half of those displaced in the chaos reporting that their children cannot attend classes.

In the second city of Benghazi alone, the UN said just 65 of 239 schools are still functioning.

In Sudan, the agency said high numbers of internally displaced families fleeing violence in Darfur and South Kordofan states was putting untenable strain on the country’s creaking school infrastructure.

UNICEF called for better informal education services in countries affected by school closures and for donor nations to prioritise education funding throughout the Middle East.

“With more than 13 million children already driven from classrooms by conflict, it is no exaggeration to say that the education prospects of a generation of children are in the balance,” it said.

Saudi Arabian airstrike kills 120 civilians as US-backed war in Yemen rages

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Humanitarian crisis continues with no end in sight as forces armed and supported by the United States continue to terrorize the people of Yemen

Houthi followers demonstrate against Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen's capital Sanaa July 24, 2015. A Saudi-led coalition of Arab states has been bombing the Iranian-allied Houthi rebel movement and army forces loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh since late March in a bid to restore exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. (Photo: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)

Houthi followers demonstrate against Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen’s capital Sanaa July 24, 2015. A Saudi-led coalition of Arab states has been bombing the Iranian-allied Houthi rebel movement and army forces loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh since late March in a bid to restore exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. (Photo: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

Intense fighting between Houthi factions and Yemeni forces allied with a Saudi-backed military campaign continued on Sunday, just a day after the killing of approximately 120 civilians by a Saudi airstrike spurred an impromptu call for a five-day ceasefire in the war-torn and poverty-stricken country.

According to the Associated Press:

The airstrikes late Friday hit workers’ housing for a power plant in Mokha, flattening some of the buildings to the ground […] A fire erupted in the area, charring many of the corpses, including children, women and elderly people.

Wahib Mohammed, an eyewitness and area resident, said some of the bodies were torn apart by the force of the blast and buried in a mass grave on Saturday. Some of the strikes also hit nearby livestock pens, he said. Human and animal blood pooled on the ground of the surrounding area.

The deadly strike highlights growing concerns that the Saudi-led coalition’s airstrikes are increasingly killing civilians as they continue to target Shiite rebels known as Houthis.

Responding to the carnage, Hassan Boucenine of the Geneva-based Doctors Without Borders told AP, “It just shows what is the trend now of the air strikes from the coalition. Now, it’s a house, it’s a market, it’s anything.”

In the wake of the deadly airstrike on Saturday, the Saudi-led coalition, which includes the United States and allied Gulf states, called for a five-day ceasefire that would begin at midnight local time on Sunday.

However, even as mixed reporting by Reuters indicated that Houthi military leaders may have rejected the call, a fierce battle raged near the port city Aden over a strategically valuable air base:

The al-Anad base, 50 km (30 miles) from the major southern port city, has been held by the Iranian-allied Houthi movement for much of a fourth-month-old civil war, and is regarded as a strategic asset commanding the approaches to Aden.

The Arab coalition on Saturday announced a ceasefire to take effect at 11.59 p.m. (2059 GMT) on Sunday evening for five days to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Reuters indicated that a Houthi leader may have taken to Twitter to reject the call for the midnight ceasefire, but other journalists expressed doubt that the message was valid:

Since the Saudi-led bombing began in March of this year, the United Nations last week estimated that in addition to the many more thousands injured and maimed, at least 1,693 civilians have been killed in Yemen, of which 365 were children. Already one of the poorest nations on the planet before the fighting and subsequent bombing campaign began, both the UN and independent aid agencies have warned that so long as the war continues and humanitarian blockade enforced, Yemen’s further spiral towards total political chaos and a full-fledged famine will continue.

Israel’s clandestine alliance with Gulf Arab States is going public

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"Relations with Israel have long been a third rail for Arab states," writes Hussain. That, however, appears to be changing. (Photo: AP/Saudi Arabian Press Agency)

“Relations with Israel have long been a third rail for Arab states,” writes Hussain. That, however, appears to be changing. (Photo: AP/Saudi Arabian Press Agency)

by Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept

In 2009, a U.S. State Department diplomatic cable gave one of the first glimpses of a burgeoning alliance between Israel and the Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The cable quoted Israeli Foreign Ministry official Yacov Hadas saying, “the Gulf Arabs believe in Israel’s role because of their perception of Israel’s close relationship with the United States,” adding that GCC states “believe Israel can work magic.”

Israel and the Gulf states also shared an interest in countering what they saw as rising Iranian influence in the Middle East. So while the two sides sparred in public — Israel’s “Cast Lead” military operation had just claimed more than 1,400 lives in the Gaza Strip and was condemned by Saudi Arabia, in a letter to the United Nations, as “fierce aggression” — they enjoyed “good personal relations” behind closed doors, Hadas said, according to one cable. Hadas reportedly added that the Gulf Arabs were still “not ready to do publicly what they say in private.”

Fast forward six years, and it seems as though the GCC states have finally readied themselves to go public about their warming relationships with Israel. In an event at the Council on Foreign Relations this week in Washington, reported on by Bloomberg’s Eli Lake, high-ranking former Saudi and Israeli officials not only shared the stage but disclosed that the two countries had been holding a series of high-level meetings to discuss shared strategic goals, particularly around the perceived regional ascendance of Iran. At the event, former Saudi General Anwar Eshki openly called for regime change in Iran, while former Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Dore Gold, once a fierce critic of Saudi Arabia, spoke of his outreach to the country in recent years, and of the possibility of resolving the remaining differences between the two nations, stating, “Our standing today on this stage does not mean we have resolved all the differences that our countries have shared over the years, but our hope is we will be able to address them fully in the years ahead.”

Relations with Israel have long been a third rail for Arab states. Following the creation of Israel in 1948 and the resulting displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, other Middle Eastern countries have maintained a position of public hostility towards Israel, in line with longstanding domestic public opinion. Although countries such as Egypt, under military dictatorship, have concluded formal peace treaties with Israel in defiance of popular sentiment, for the most part Gulf states have remained aloof.

In recent years, however, the dual phenomena of the Arab uprisings and growing Iranian influence have pushed GCC leaders closer to Israel. Last year, Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal took the unprecedented step of publishing an op-ed in a major Israeli newspaper calling for peace between Israel and GCC nations, as well as for a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. As the United States under the Obama administration has pursued détente with Iran in recent years, reports have also surfaced suggesting covert security cooperation between Israel and GCC states. The investigative news site Middle East Eye recently documented the existence of regular, secret flights between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv, despite the ostensible ban on Israeli citizens entering the UAE.

In his 2012 book After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies, Durham University Professor Chris Davidson wrote that Gulf states will continue to seek Israeli support thanks to growing external pressures on Gulf States in the wake of regional upheaval. Even as it describes the GCC countries as consisting of “national populations who for the most part are anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, with the topics of Israel and Zionism often stirring strong emotions,” the book documents increasing clandestine economic and political coordination by GCC leaders with their Israeli counterparts in recent years.

There are signs, however, that even popular anti-Israeli sentiment within these countries may be shifting. A recent poll of Saudi public opinion conducted by students at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, an Israeli university, found that a minority of the Saudi public viewed Israel as a major threat to their country, and cited instead either Iran or the nascent Islamic State as their primary objects of concern. “What we think here in Israel about the Saudis is not exactly what they are,” said Alex Mintz of IDC Herziliya, who helped oversee the poll. “We assume that we know what people in Iran, Gaza and Saudi Arabia think, [but] nobody that I talked to thought that Saudis would say by a margin of 3-to-1 that Iran scared them more than Israel, nobody predicted that.”

With the Obama administration seeking to conclude a controversial nuclear agreement with Iran next month, it seems likely that Gulf Arab states and Israel, traditional U.S. allies united in their opposition to the deal, will continue to grow their strategic coordination. The recent decision by high-ranking former officials representing both Gulf and Israeli interests to go public with their cooperation is only the latest signal of the strength of this burgeoning alliance. Given that this relationship is flourishing against the backdrop of the still-ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, as well as the ascendance of far-right political parties within Israel itself, it seems clear that GCC leaders have decided in the wake of the Arab Spring to place their own narrow political interests above any publicly-stated principles about stability in the region.

 

Arab diplomats held secret talks with Israel: report

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Israeli delegates reportedly met with Arab and EU diplomats in Jordan. (AFP/File)

Israeli delegates reportedly met with Arab and EU diplomats in Jordan. (AFP/File)

by Ma’an

A secret meeting between Israeli diplomats and diplomats from Arab countries that do not have open diplomatic relations with Israel was recently held in Jordan, Israeli radio station Voice of Israel reported Tuesday.

The broadcasting station added in a report on their Arabic-language website that representatives of the European Union and the United States had also attended the meeting.

The report alleged that several Arab diplomats said that countries in the region should be preparing for a new reality as the United States’ influence on regional security begins to retreat.

They also were quoted as saying that Sunni countries in the Middle East are interested in cooperating with Israel on security issues.

However, Voice of Israel added that political deadlock between Israel and Palestine has so far prevented cooperation between Arab countries and Israel.

In recent months, commentators have noted an increasing alignment between Israeli and Gulf security priorities.

Saudi Arabia has been leading a predominantly Sunni military coalition against allegedly Iran-backed rebels in Yemen since March and is one among several Gulf states believed to be funding Syrian rebels fighting Iran’s allies in Syria and Iraq.

Israel has long been a hostile opponent of Iran.

Both Israel and Gulf nations have expressed dismay over an Iranian agreement with world powers that would prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons in exchange for an easing of crippling economic sanctions.

Obama to back Gulf allies against any 'external attack'

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President makes remarks at end of US-GCC summit at Camp David amid Arab anxiety over efforts for nuclear deal with Iran.

U.S. President Barack Obama looks back toward Oman Deputy Prime Minister Sayyid Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said (L) and the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (2nd L) while hosting the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at Camp David in Maryland May 14, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

U.S. President Barack Obama looks back toward Oman Deputy Prime Minister Sayyid Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said (L) and the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (2nd L) while hosting the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at Camp David in Maryland May 14, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

by Al Jazeera

President Barack Obama has vowed to back Gulf allies against any “external attack,” seeking to reassure them of Washington’s commitment to their security amid Arab anxiety over US-led efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran.

Obama, hosting the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council for a rare summit at the Camp David presidential retreat, pledged that the US would cooperate with them to address what he called Iran’s “destabilizing activities in the region.”

“The United States will stand by our GCC partners against external attack and will deepen and extend cooperation that we have,” Obama told reporters, with Gulf leaders standing by his side at the end of the talks.

Obama promised a “concrete series of steps” from the one-day summit as he sought to allay Gulf Arab fears that the potential lifting of international sanctions on Tehran would embolden it in the region and raise the risk of more sectarian strife.

Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Camp David, said Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister had said details of the Iran agreement were still being implemented so Riyadh would wait and see what happens.

The leaders issued a joint statement saying that in the event of aggression, the US stood ready to work with the Arab nations “to determine urgently what action may be appropriate, using the means at our collective disposal, including the potential use of military force, for the defense of our GCC partners”.

While the US has long provided military support to partners in the Gulf, the joint statement pledged new cooperation on counterterrorism, maritime security, cybersecurity and ballistic missile defense, among other things.

But US officials said the increased US commitments stop short of a formal defence treaty that some of the Gulf countries had sought.

The leaders also agreed to press all parties in Libya to reach political agreement and a national unity government before Ramadan.

Gulf Arab frustration

Differences over US policy toward Tehran, Syria’s civil war and the Arab Spring uprisings loomed over Thursday’s meetings, which were already clouded by the absence of most of the Gulf’s ruling monarchs, who instead sent lower-level officials.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud pulled out early, sending Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in his place.

The decision was widely interpreted as a snub that reflected the GCC’s frustration with the Obama administration.

The White House has said such decisions were not intended as slights and has portrayed the summit as more than just a symbolic event.

In an interview to Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane on Wednesday, Rhodes, Ben Rhodes, US deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, had said the US was committed to the defence of the GCC countries but a formal treaty would not happen in the near future.

“A treaty is not what we’re looking for. It took decades to build NATO and the Asian allies but we can provide clear assurances that we will come to their defence,” he said, alluding to a prospective alliance with the GCC members.

Sunni Arab leaders are concerned that lifting Western sanctions as part of a nuclear deal with Iran would empower Tehran to act in further destabilising the region, especially in volatile countries such as Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

The Obama administration would like GCC support, or at least a toning-down of any criticism, for the deal to help convince a sceptical US Congress it has broad backing in the region.

Adding weight to Arab concerns, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy fired warning shots over a Singapore-flagged cargo vessel in international waters in the Gulf on Thursday.
The shots prompted the vessel to flee into the UAE’s territorial waters, according to US officials.
Rhodes said the incident highlighted “exactly” why Gulf Arab states were concerned about Iran’s behaviour.

Tony Blair accused of seeking $45m UAE contract while working as peace envoy

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Tony Blair is accused of ‘relentlessly cashing in on contacts,’ earning up to $90m from consultancy while working on Israel-Palestine talks

Blair is highest-earning former UK leader in history thanks to consulting work with Gulf states, new book alleges (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

Blair is highest-earning former UK leader in history thanks to consulting work with Gulf states, new book alleges (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

by Middle East Eye

Multi-million dollar deals with various states in the Middle East have helped Tony Blair amass a fortune thought to be worth an estimated $90m, claims a book published this month.

Blair accepted the job of Middle East peace envoy with the Quartet (the United Nations, the US, the EU and Russia) on the same day as he stepped down from office in 2007.

The Quartet was established with the aim of finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and as Special Envoy Blair has travelled extensively in the region, most recently to Gaza last month.

His trips to the region have also seen him strike lucrative deals with the region’s governments for consultancy work.

One of the biggest of these, revealed by the Sunday Times, was a proposed contract with the UAE worth up to $45m.

Tony Blair Associates, an umbrella organisation founded to coordinate the diplomat’s various consultancy groups, offered its services to the UAE’s Foreign Affairs Ministry in a five-year commercial partnership.

A 25-document about the September 2014 deal obtained by the Sunday Times states that “there is nowhere in the world right now where we could not work or provide the necessary contacts either politically or commercially, should we want to”.

Blair has worked in partnership with various governments whose human rights records have been criticised by international monitors. In 2013, he offered public relations advice to the president of Guinea after security forces shot protesters during anti-government clashes, killing nine people.

The contract with the UAE was proposed while Blair was working as Middle East peace envoy. He is now facing calls to step down from the position of envoy over allegations of a conflict of interest.

Andrew Bridgen, a Conservative MP who has called for former prime ministers to be bound by tighter regulations, accused Blair of “relentlessly cashing in his contacts” while the Middle East is “on fire”.

“This is damaging to Britain’s reputation, and he should now stand down as the Middle East peace envoy.”

Blair’s office responded to the allegations by saying that the document was “out of date” and insisting that he would never engage in paid work that caused a conflict of interest with his work as peace envoy.

“The UAE is not a member of the Quartet. Tony Blair has undertaken other paid work in the Gulf, but not in respect of anything that is linked to what he does unpaid for the Quartet.”

The UAE does not recognise the state of Israel, one of the parties in the Quartet’s peace efforts, and the countries have no official diplomatic or economic ties.

However, a recent investigation by Middle East Eye revealed that an Israeli-owned company has become responsible for a huge surveillance system that protects critical infrastructure in the Gulf kingdom.

Blair’s other work with Gulf States includes a $40m four-year contract for consultancy work with the Emir of Kuwait and a deal to provide the government of Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate in the UAE, with “global strategic advice” at a cost of up to $1.5m a year.

According to Blair Inc, a book by Francis Beckett and David Hencke, to be released this month, he also arranged a covert contract in 2010 with Saudi oil company PetroSaudi.

The deal, according to the book, saw Blair arrange introductions to contacts in China, and was reportedly worth $60,000 a month. He also supposedly earned 2 percent commission on any deal resulting from the introductions.

Blair has also said he is “happy to help” Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, though he denies working as a formal advisor to Sisi’s government, which launched a military takeover of the country in 2013.

An alleged leak that emerged last week claimed to feature Egyptian officials arranging for a visit by an Emirati delegation, who were “bringing along Tony Blair”.

The purported leak, said to have been recorded in early 2014, appears to indicate that Blair and the Emirati officials spoke with high-level Egyptian politicians, including the president, the head of intelligence and the foreign minister, in “unofficial meetings”.

The international media is failing to report the Syrian war properly

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Civilians in Aleppo: not in the news. EPA/Ali Mustafa

Civilians in Aleppo: not in the news. EPA/Ali Mustafa

by Scott Lucas, The Conversation

February 2015 has already seen some major developments in Syria’s four-year conflict. At the start of February, rebels launched more than 100 rockets into Damascus and the Assad regime fired mortars on areas of its own capital, hoping to discredit the insurgents. At least six people were killed in the attacks.

Then came almost 50 regime air strikes on opposition-held areas near Damascus, which killed at least 82 people. Another 25 were killed in Aleppo when a barrel bomb hit a bus on a roundabout.

Meanwhile, rebels also claimed to have blown up 30 men fighting for the Assad regime – Hezbollah troops, Iranians, and Iraqis among them – at a militia headquarters west of Damascus.

All this while US-led coalition air strikes were carried out in eastern Syria against the Islamic State (IS), with Jordan in particular vowing to “wipe them from the face of the Earth” after the group murdered a captured pilot.

Take a look at the world’s media coverage, though, and you might be forgiven for thinking things were rather more quiet.

Silence

If you read The New York Times, you are unlikely to learn about much of this; the newspaper has no reporting from correspondents, only a Reuters report. The same is true of the Washington Post, CNN, and al-Jazeera English. And the BBC? As the attacks and the deaths mounted on February 5, its lead story was on the conviction of former pop star Gary Glitter on sexual assault charges; the corporation later made partial amends on its website with a story headlined Syria Conflict: Dozens Killed in Heavy Damascus Fighting.

However, both the BBC and Reuters articles relied heavily on the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which often passes off rumour and chatter gleaned from social media as a news “network” inside Syria.

There are obvious practical reasons why gathering and circulating important news from Syria is such a fraught business. The world’s media has had to withdraw journalists because of threats to their security, drastically elevated by the rise of Islamic State, and most local stringers have had to flee the country for the same reasons. The fog of war and the attempts by all sides to “spin” events makes independent verification a nightmare.

This is what Aleppo looks like. EPA/Ali Mustafa

But it’s still possible to provide in-depth day-to-day coverage of the conflict, with careful analysis of the political, economic, humanitarian, and military dimensions. Even a small news organisation can work with local activists, citizen journalists, and official sources from all sides to keep readers informed and ask challenging questions.

The real problem is not the impossibility of “seeing” what is happening in Syria. The problem is that instead of dealing with the complexity of the crisis, it’s much easier to cling to simple and often misleading narratives to explain what’s going on.

Towards the end of 2014, the favourite narrative (which never quite played out) could be summed up as “Assad is winning”. This year, the theme is “jihadists versus extremists versus jihadists”: this refers to both the Islamic State, which is fighting against Syria’s rebels, and to the “al-Qaeda-linked” Jabhat al-Nusra, which often fights alongside those rebels (but not always).

The international attention given to IS is of course understandable. However, overlooking the travails of Syria’s insurgents and the opposition to “Jabhat al-Nusra” is a serious distortion of the situation.

Main attraction

While its paramilitaries have proved effective enough on the battlefield, Jabhat al-Nusra provides only a fraction of the forces fighting against the Assad regime. It is small compared to the largest insurgent factions, the Islamic Front and the Free Syrian Army. These are part of blocs with the vast majority of Syria’s rebels, such as the Sham Front and Southern Front, which go almost unnoticed in Western media.

In recent months, these assorted anti-Assad groups have not only turned the tide on the Damascus regime’s forces, but have made notable advances throughout Syria. Sometimes working with Jabhat al-Nusra, they have moved into towns and villages and captured Syrian military bases.

They now control most of north-west and south-west Syria, and, in January 2015, they advanced from the south towards Damascus. They have also been battling the Islamic State throughout Syria, from Aleppo Province in the northwest to Hama and Homs Provinces in the centre, to the greater Damascus area.

But without any “jihadists” or “extremists” for the headline, it seems this real news hardly registers outside Syria itself.

This just in

Many analysts have effectively given up on thorough evaluation, since it’s far easier and more dramatic to post the latest social-media flutter about a foreign fighter. An entire website is dedicated to “Jihadology”, and a leading news agency creates “Under the Black Flag” on the Islamic State, with critiques such as “‘Watch Out For Satanic Earrings!’ IS Publishes Women’s Manifesto”.

Syrian refugees at the Turkish border. EPA/Ulas Yunus Tosun

In contrast, relatively little journalistic time is being spent monitoring the state of the Syrian opposition and the Assad regime, or indeed the situation of the many Syrian people who do not align with one of the competing sides.

The outcome is that there are two very different Syrian conflicts. On the one hand there’s the byzantine soap opera rendered in the international media, a saga of slaughter in which the villainous Islamic State outshines Assad and extremist factions upstage his other opponents. The current episode is “Jordan Unleashes Wrath on Islamic State”, in which the extent, location and impact of Jordan’s claimed air strikes are starting to become clear.

Meanwhile, the more substantial Syrian conflict – the one with another 200 deaths daily, and 300,000 since 2011, with 4m refugees worldwide and 7m people displaced inside the country – has all but disappeared from view.

‘Tell us who pays you’: Tony Blair pressured over alleged paymasters

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Tony Blair pictured at the Munich Security Conference 2014. (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

Tony Blair pictured at the Munich Security Conference 2014. (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

by RT

Conservative MPs will launch a campaign on Monday to force Tony Blair to reveal how much he earns and who pays him.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen is tabling an Early Day Motion (EDM) in the House of Commons, demanding that former prime ministers be bound by the same rules of transparency and oversight as serving politicians.

While the EDM is unlikely to be passed by parliament, it follows growing concern over Blair’s work for authoritarian governments and controversial corporations.

Blair’s business transactions have been linked to the governments of Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan – all three of which are widely known for their human rights abuses.

“Tony Blair has embarked on a career of personal enrichment and has blurred the lines between his public and private interests,” Bridgen told The Sunday Times.

“No other former prime minister has gone to work for other sovereign states. Mr Blair is still in public life, but is not bound by its principles, and that needs to be changed,” he added.

Blair, who was last year awarded GQ’s Philanthropy Award, has come under intense scrutiny as he has been linked to a string of authoritarian regimes and less-than-ethical companies.

A consortium of energy companies, including BP, hired him last year to work on a new gas pipeline which will go from Azerbaijan to Italy via Turkey.

The project has come under fierce criticism for the environment destruction it may cause and for the wealth it will give Azerjaijan’s controversial leader, Ilham Aliyev.

Aliyev, whose government has imprisoned bloggers and journalists, was compared to a mafia don from The Godfather by US diplomats in a Wikileaks cable published in 2010.

The former prime minister’s consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, reportedly earns £7 million a year for advising Kazakhstan’s strongman president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Nazarbayev’s government has been accused of human rights abuses after its courts forcibly closed much of the country’s independent media and his troops massacred dozens of striking oil workers at a peaceful protest in Zhanaozen, in western Kazakhstan, in December 2011.

As if the list of unscrupulous customers wasn’t long enough already, Tony Blair Associates has also been linked to a Saudi Arabian oil company founded by the son of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.

A leaked contract, which emerged last November, showed that Blair had been hired by PetroSaudi to help facilitate a deal between the oil firm and Chinese state officials.

Blair, who also serves as a Special Envoy for the Middle East Quartet, was reportedly paid £41,000 a month to carry out these duties, and took a 2 percent cut from each successfully orchestrated deal.

Since leaving office in 2007, Blair has amassed millions of pounds in fees collected through his consultancy firm.

Some have speculated that the former prime minister’s personal fortune could amount to £100 million, but he has implied it is closer to £20 million.

This figure will raise eyebrows, however, as it is reported his personal expenses run into the millions.

Blair’s private jet alone is worth £30 million and reportedly costs £7,000 for every hour it is in the air.

Since leaving government Blair has also claimed a taxpayer-funded allowance for ex-prime ministers, in addition to other state subsidies.

A Freedom of Information request in 2012 revealed Blair was costing the taxpayer £400,000 a year in pensions, public duties allowances and security costs.

Freedom of speech: Long-time presenter Jim Clancy leaves CNN after ‘anti-Israel’ Twitter rant

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Jim Clancy

by RT

Veteran US TV journalist Jim Clancy has abruptly left the international news broadcaster after 34 years, following a seemingly tangential Twitter argument over Charlie Hebdo that escalated to a verbal war between Clancy and pro-Israel social media users.

“Jim Clancy is no longer with CNN. We thank him for more than three decades of distinguished service, and wish him nothing but the best,” said a terse statement from the Atlanta-headquartered network, which had sent Clancy as a reporter to Beirut, London, and Berlin before making him a senior anchor and contributor.

Although neither Clancy nor CNN revealed the reasons for the departure, almost all media outlets connected it with a somewhat incoherent Twitter spat that began in the wake of the fatal attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine.

“The cartoons NEVER mocked the Prophet. They mocked how the COWARDS tried to distort his word. Pay attention,” tweeted Clancy on January 7 – from an account that has since been deleted – referring to the magazine’s editorial output.

The ironically-named anonymous pro-Israeli blogger Elder of Ziyon, and Oren Kessler, a Jewish-American Middle East analyst, both piped in with comments contradicting Clancy, saying that there had been explicitly anti-religious cartoons, and reminding the journalist that the magazine had been previously targeted by Islamists.

The debate then took an odd turn, with Clancy tweeting “Hasbara” – the name for Israel’s policy of spreading its message through mass media.

“This is great, a pro-Israel voice try [sic] to convince us that cartoonists were really anti-Muslim, and that’s why they were attacked. FALSE. These accounts are part of a campaign to do PR for Israel(including “Jews Making News”) but not HR (Human Rights.),” read one tweet.

Despite being met with incomprehension, Clancy then mysteriously tweeted “It’s called satire” before launching into a series of general anti-Israeli comments.

Several included mentions of Israeli officials being tried at the International Criminal Court, as well as Israeli settlements – a subject Clancy has covered extensively.

Perhaps the most offensive and telling tweet read “It’s my Friday night” – this was actually a Wednesday – and said “the Hasbara team need to pick on some cripple on the edge of the herd.”

The seemingly unprovoked outpouring sparked the ire of the Ruderman Family Foundation, a Jewish disabled people’s foundation.

Its head, Jay Ruderman, wrote an open letter to CNN, calling Clancy’s remarks “appalling” and asking why “in this day and age a senior anchor at CNN, a world leader in the media, would use a word such as ‘cripple,’ which is a derogatory term for people with disabilities.”

More and more media outlets picked up on the story, and Clancy first deleted several of the more inflammatory posts, and then eventually his account. However, screenshots of the tweets had been saved by Gawker and several other outlets.

By Friday, Clancy’s biography had been taken off the CNN website, and the journalist wrote a goodbye letter, saying “CNN has been a family to my own family,” and thanking it for providing “great adventures and achievements.”

Islamic State leader possibly killed – or possibly not – by airstrikes in Iraq

by

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

by Liz Fields, Vice News

The fate of the Islamic State’s top commander, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remains murky in the aftermath of coalition airstrikes that reportedly targeted a house in Iraq where top militants were meeting Saturday, according to witnesses and local media.

Dozens were wounded and killed in an attack that reportedly hit a gathering of Islamic State leaders near the western Iraqi town of Quaim, local residents told Reuters. Unconfirmed reports have stated that the reclusive al-Baghdadi was among those injured or possibly killed.

Following the assault, witnesses told Al Arabiya News that Islamic State fighters cleared a hospital in the town southwest of Mosul and brought their wounded there, using loudspeakers to encourage locals to donate blood to the fallen.

US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US troops in the Middle East, said that coalition warplanes conducted a “series of air strikes” against “a gathering of (IS) leaders near Mosul,” but did not confirm whether al-Baghdadi was there, AFP reported.

“This strike demonstrates the pressure we continue to place on the ISIL [IS] terrorist network and the group’s increasingly limited freedom to maneuver, communicate and command,” Centcom spokesman Patrick Ryder said Saturday.

Conflicting reports on the possible death or wounding of al-Baghdadi, who rarely appears in public and has been reported killed on numerous previous occasions, continued to circulate over the weekend.

Tribal sources told Al Arabiya News that al-Baghdadi was “critically wounded” in the strikes. Other senior Islamic State members believed to be among the dead or injured include the group’s leader of Iraq’s Anbar Province and his deputy, local residents told Reuters.

The Islamic State did not immediately issue any statements, but a Twitter account associated with the group stated that their leader was “alive and well.”

“Until now, there is no accurate information available,” a senior Iraqi intelligence official told AFP when asked whether Baghdadi had been killed.

“The information is from unofficial sources and was not confirmed until now, and we are working on that,” the official said without specifying what the initial reports indicated.

Al-Baghdadi’s death would be a major victory for the US and coalition forces fighting against the Islamist insurgency in Iraq and Syria. Washington has put a $10 million bounty on the leader’s head.

The airstrikes came a day after President Barack Obama announced the deployment of an additional 1,500 troops to Iraq, and the same weekend that a spate of deadly car bombings and a suicide truck attack killed at least 58 people and injured dozens more in cities across the country.

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