Russia is supplying weapons to Damascus under contracts signed since the conflict in Syria began in 2011
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Syria gets Russian arms under deals signed since conflict began: Assad | Reuters - 0 views
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appeared to contradict Moscow's line that any Russian arms supplies to Damascus were agreed before the conflict began
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"There are contracts that had been sealed before the crisis started and were carried out during the crisis. There are other agreements on arms supplies and cooperation that were signed during the crisis and are being carried out now
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They went through some changes to take into account the type of fighting the Syrian army carries out against the terrorists
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Assad gave no details of the weapons being supplied by Russia, the world's second-biggest arms exporter, since the start of the conflic
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In fact, Moscow has always highlighted that there have been and are no embargoes on military cooperation. There are no legal limitations no us
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Russia is a longstanding ally of Assad and is hosting meetings in Moscow on April 6-9 involving some of the more moderate Syrian opposition representatives and Damascus envoys.
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Expectations of a breakthrough are low after a first round of consultations made little progress. Many Syrian opposition figures shunned the January consultations, saying they would appear only at meetings that led to Assad's removal from power
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Russia claims that the arms deal it has with Syrian President Assad was made before the Syrian civil war started and simply just carried out the deal throughout the war. On the other hand, Assad states that they signed agreements at the beginning of the war, maybe a bit earlier.
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Syria crisis: Russia and China step up warning over strike - BBC News - 0 views
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Russia and China have stepped up their warnings against military intervention in Syria, with Moscow saying any such action would have "catastrophic consequences" for the region
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The US and its allies are considering launching strikes on Syria in response to deadly attacks
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The US said there was "undeniable" proof of a chemical attack
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UN chemical weapons inspectors are due to start a second day of investigations in the suburbs of Damascus
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UN team came under sniper fire as they tried to visit an area west of the city
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US officials said there was "little doubt" that President Bashar al-Assad's government was to blame
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Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich has called on the international community to show "prudence" over the crisis and observe international law.
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Attempts to bypass the Security Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa
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US said it was postponing a meeting on Syria with Russian diplomats, citing "ongoing consultations" about alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria
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The two sides had been due to meet in The Hague on Wednesday to discuss setting up an international conference on finding a political solution to the crisis
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Western powers were rushing to conclusions about who may have used chemical weapons in Syria before UN inspectors had completed their investigation
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Both the Syrian government and rebels have blamed each other for last Wednesday's attacks
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Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said three hospitals it supported in the Damascus area had treated about 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic symptoms", of whom 355 had died
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UK is making contingency plans for military action in Syri
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Earlier in the day, the UN convoy came under fire from unidentified snipers and was forced to turn back before resuming its journey
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In the most forceful US reaction yet, US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday described the recent attacks in the Damascus area as a "moral obscenity
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Syrian government had something to hide
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What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of moralit
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President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable peopl
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Analysts believe the most likely US action would be sea-launched cruise missiles targeting Syrian military installations.
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the West had not produced any proof that President Assad's forces had used chemical weapons
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some Western countries that military action against the Syrian government could be taken without a UN mandate
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Mr Lavrov said the use of force without Security Council backing would be "a crude violation of international law
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an international military response to the suspected use of chemical weapons would be possible without the backing of the UN
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The UN Security Council is divided, with Russia and China opposing military intervention and the UK and France warning that the UN could be bypassed if there was "great humanitarian need".
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if the West does not intervene to support freedom and democracy in Egypt and Syria, the Middle East will face catastrophe
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After Western powers suspected that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, tensions grew against them and Russia, China, and Syria. The Eastern Powers believe that Western powers are overstepping their bounds for their need of power but the Western powers think that they need to interfere to help the people.
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Nimmi Gowrinathan | Understanding and Combating Female Extremism | Foreign Affairs - 1 views
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Those who ask it assume, first, that women are more peaceful than men by nature; and second, that women who participate in armed rebellion are little more than cannon fodder in a man’s game, fighting foolishly for a movement that will not benefit them.
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rooted in identity
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between Sunni and Shiite Muslims
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with several smaller minorities caught in between
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To be sure, for women, gender and politics can overlap in ways that they do not for men.
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female Tigers cited rape, or the fear of rape, by government forces as a central reason for joining the movement.
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Women fight for personal as well as political power, often sacrificing one for the other.
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This article talks about the women of ISIS and what are some factors that lead to them joining ISIS or other rebellion armies around the world. The article also speaks about how for women, gender and politics overlap in a way that is doesn't for men. Sometimes in times of conflict women have to join these group in order to survive.
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Revisiting the Libyan War | The American Conservative - 0 views
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I do not in any way regret my support for that intervention, which saved many thousands of lives and helped to bring an end to a brutal regime. Still, it is impossible to look at Libya’s failed state and civil war, its proxy conflict and regional destabilization, and not conclude that the intervention’s negative effects over the long term outweigh the short-term benefits.
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left Libya without a functioning state and little solid ground upon which to build a new political order. The likelihood of such an outcome should have weighed more heavily in my analysis.
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My hope had been that the intervention would act to restrain other autocrats from unleashing deadly force against protesters and encourage wavering activists to push forward in their demands for change. Unfortunately, this only partially panned out and had unintended negative effects.
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No government that bordered on Libya wanted outside intervention, presumably because they feared that they would be adversely affected by it. The Arab governments that most wanted the war were the ones least likely to suffer from its ill effects. The fact that authoritarian GCC governments supported this “humanitarian” intervention should have been a reason to be very wary of military action instead of being an argument in its favor.
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The worst effects were on Syria. The Libya intervention may have imposed a certain level of caution on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, leading him to search for just the right level of repression to stay beneath the threshold for international action.
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Libya intervention almost certainly encouraged Syrian activists and rebels – and their backers in the Gulf and Turkey – in their hopes for a similar international campaign on their own behalf. That unintended moral hazard probably contributed to the escalation of Syria’s civil war.
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Intervention in Libya was always likely to give protesters and rebels in other countries false hope that their plight would trigger outside intervention as well. The moral hazard may not have been intended, but it was there for all to see.
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The Isis economy: Meet the new boss - FT.com - 0 views
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Iraq’s second city of Mosul looks like a model of success for its new rulers from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
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But in the back alleys, litter fills the streets. The lights stay on, but only because locals rigged up generators themselves. And under the blare of café televisions, old men grumble about life under Isis’s self-proclaimed caliphate.
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“We’ve endured international sanctions, poverty, injustice. But it was never worse than it is now.”
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Abu Ahmed at first welcomed the takeover by Isis,
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Sunni Muslims in both countries have long felt discriminated against by regimes dominated by rival sects
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without an economy that gives people a chance to make a living, many say Isis has little more to offer
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“Compared to past rulers, Isis is a lot easier to deal with. Just don’t piss them off and they leave you alone,” says Mohammed, a trader from Mosul. “If they could only maintain services — then people would support them until the last second.”
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“They’re operating like something between a mafia, an insurgency and a terror group. Maybe they thought six months ago they were going to function as a state. But they don’t have the personnel or manpower.”
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the FT found its attempt at state-building has so far failed to win over locals.
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volunteers handing out sacks of wheat stamped with their black and white seal. They even announced plans to issue a currency,
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In some cases they say Isis takes credit for systems in place before it seized power. In others, locals say it is stealing the resources of the region it seeks to rule
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Travellers must stock up on Iraqi dinars to use in Iraq, US dollars for the road and Syrian pounds once they arrive.
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“I’m against Isis with all my heart,” Mahmoud says. “But I can’t help but admire their cleverness.”
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Isis struggles to balance its books,
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services continue to function because of the money Baghdad still pays to former civil servants in Mosul. Isis taxes those employees at up to 50 per cent of their salaries.
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It is as if Isis is financing itself partly through a pyramid scheme, and this has begun to falter.”
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Though many now question Isis’s economic management, its military prowess and organisational skills are clear.
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Isis allows easy movement through its territories to facilitate trade. Trucks passing through are taxed about 10 per cent of the value of their cargo.
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“I may be a Salafi, but I’m not an idiot,” he jokes.
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Daniel Byman | Why Drones Work | Foreign Affairs - 0 views
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Whereas President George W. Bush oversaw fewer than 50 drone strikes during his tenure, Obama has signed off on over 400 of them in the last four years
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And they have done so at little financial cost, at no risk to U.S. forces, and with fewer civilian casualties than many alternative methods would have caused.
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So drone warfare is here to stay, and it is likely to expand in the years to come as other countries’ capabilities catch up with those of the United States.
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Critics of drone strikes often fail to take into account the fact that the alternatives are either too risky or unrealistic.
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Even the most unfavorable estimates of drone casualties reveal that the ratio of civilian to militant deaths is lower than it would be for other forms of strikes.
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signature strikes,” which target not specific individuals but instead groups engaged in suspicious activities.
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After a strike in Pakistan, militants often cordon off the area, remove their dead, and admit only local reporters sympathetic to their cause or decide on a body count themselves. The U.S. media often then draw on such faulty reporting to give the illusion of having used multiple sources. As a result, statistics on civilians killed by drones are often inflated.
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data show that drones are more discriminate than other types of force.
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Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, also at times allowed drone strikes in his country and even covered for them by telling the public that they were conducted by the Yemeni air force.
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As officials in both Pakistan and Yemen realize, U.S. drone strikes help their governments by targeting common enemies.
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A 2012 poll found that 74 percent of Pakistanis viewed the United States as their enemy, likely in part because of the ongoing drone campaign. Similarly, in Yemen, as the scholar Gregory Johnsen has pointed out, drone strikes can win the enmity of entire tribes.
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Many surveys of public opinion related to drones are conducted by anti-drone organizations, which results in biased samples.
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And for most Pakistanis and Yemenis, the most important problems they struggle with are corruption, weak representative institutions, and poor economic growth; the drone program is only a small part of their overall anger, most of which is directed toward their own governments.
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shared by allieggg on 14 Nov 14
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Car Bombs Explode Near Egyptian and U.A.E. Embassies in Libya - NYTimes.com - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...nd-uae-embassies-in-libya.html
UN militias armed groups war middle east proxy car embassies nytimes
shared by allieggg on 14 Nov 14
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Car bombs exploded outside the embassies of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in Tripoli, Libya, early on Thursday, apparently in a backlash against the two countries for their role in a regional proxy war playing out in Libya.
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The side that controls Tripoli includes hard-line and more moderate Islamists, as well as non-Islamist regional or tribal groups who all say they are fighting against a return to Qaddafi-style authoritarianism. The other side, based in Tobruk and Baida, includes former soldiers loyal to Colonel Qaddafi and tribal groups who say they are fighting Islamist extremists.
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Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have backed the anti-Islamist faction. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and their ally, Saudi Arabia, all see Libya as a central front in a broader regional war against the forces of political Islam — a fight that began to intensify when the Egyptian military ousted President Mohamed Morsi last year.
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The United Arab Emirates launched a series of airstrikes from Egyptian bases against Islamist-allied militias fighting in Tripoli over the summer. And Egyptian forces have actively aided anti-Islamist military units fighting around Benghazi in eastern Libya.
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Western diplomats familiar with intelligence reports say that Egyptian special forces have participated in raids near the airport in Benghazi, Libya, as well as at a camp near the Libyan stronghold of Derna, with mixed results.
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Each side in Libya’s conflict now claims its own government — one in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk. The anti-Islamist government in Tobruk includes the headquarters of a recently elected Parliament, although it operates with little visibility and the number of lawmakers attending its sessions has been difficult to assess.
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The Islamist-allied government in Tripoli contends that a recent Supreme Court decision invalidated the election of the Parliament in Tobruk. The government in Tobruk argues that the court was intimidated by the threat of militias in Tripoli.
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Any doubts that Libya has pivoted to a proxy war have been eliminated with the recent bombings outside UAE and Egyptian embassies as a backlash against their role in the regional "tug of war" on Thursday. Each side of the conflict has its own government as well as city headquarters. Islamists have occupied Tripoli and Haftar's forces Tobruk. The actions of regional players are escalating the civil war to the utmost extent.
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Tradition of female genital mutilation persists in Egypt - SFGate - 0 views
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Tradition of female genital mutilation persists in Egypt
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Raslan Fadl, the first doctor in Egypt to be put on trial for committing female genital mutilation
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still practicing
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Residents call him a well-respected figure in the community, known for his charity work.
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could not be determined whether any were at his office for “circumcision
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Fadl’s continued popularity demonstrates the challenges to curbing the practice in Egypt,
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90 percent of
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key precedent for deterring doctors and families in the future.
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criminalized in 2008,
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Sunni Muslim religious authority has declared it dangerous and without any religious justification
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one of the highest rates in the world
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A verdict is expected Thursday in Fadl’s trial
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two years in prison.
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slow reduction in the rate of the practice but that it is still widespread.
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s little outcry against the practice.
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“purification.
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without it, a girl would be “sexually voracious,”
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dangerous for her”
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Muslims and Christians,
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Genital mutilation involves removing all or part of the clitoris and labia minora
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29 countries,
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nothing happened to them.”
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cleanliness or to prevent a girl’s sexual desire from running out of control.
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ncircumcised daughter will be unable to marry
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Social pressure is strong:
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not easy getting the landmark case to trial
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Soheir’s family initially filed a police report saying she died as a result of the mutilation but changed their story after reconciling with the doctor
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Prosecutors were slow, preferring “for the matter to end
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latest survey, conducted in 2008, showed 91 percent for women age 15 to 49 have undergone the procedure.
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15 to 17, the rate is down to 74 percent,
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ore families are deciding to forgo it.
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Getting Started with Diigolet - Diigo help - 0 views
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Tags help you find and organize your bookmarks by letting you select all of your bookmarks with a certain tag or combination of tags. Quickly add relevant tags to a bookmark by clicking on any of the recommended tags that appear under the description field on the “Save Bookmark” pop-up. When you are satisfied with the information in the “Save Bookmark” pop-up, click the “Save Bookmark” button. Now a link to the page is stored in your Diigo library, and the information you entered is stored with it.
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Highlight Highlighting lets you denote important information on a page, just like highlighting in a book, but with Diigo, the highlighted text will be conveniently saved to your library as well. There are some important things for me to denote on my recipe. My wife doesn’t like pineapple, my grandfather can’t have eggs or chocolate, and I don’t like coconut very much, so I highlight those items on the recipe to let me know I need to deal with them. Highlight by clicking “Highlight” on the Diigolet. Then select the text you want to highlight. The text will be visually highlighted and the text is now stored in your library. It’s that easy. Click the button again to exit highlighter mode. You can also change the color of a highlight by clicking the downward-pointing arrow next to “Highlight” and choosing a color. Colors are useful for differentiating different types of highlights. I will use a different color for each of the different people I need to consider.
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To add a sticky note to a highlight, simply move your mouse cursor over a highlight. When the little pop-up tab with the pencil on it appears, move the cursor to it and a menu will appear. Choose “Add Sticky Notes”. Now you can type and post a sticky note just like before, but this time it will be tied to the highlighted text.
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shared by allieggg on 12 Nov 14
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Can Libya Rebuild Itself After 40 Years of Gaddafi? - 0 views
www.newsweek.com/f-after-40-years-gaddafi-68601
Gaddafi libya Arab Nationalism recontruction political tabula rasa Revolution politics middle east
shared by allieggg on 12 Nov 14
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the man has hollowed out the Libyan state, eviscerated all opposition in Libyan society, and, in effect, created a political tabula rasa on which a newly free people will now have to scratch out a future.
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Jamahiriya, a political system that is run directly by tribesmen without the intermediation of state institutions
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the problem is, of course, that much like in the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, virtually everyone at one point or another had to deal with the regime to survive.
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Libya is truly a case apart.
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the disastrous Italian legacy in Libya, has been a constant element in Gaddafi’s speeches since he took power
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inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser, neighboring Egypt’s president, whose ideas of Arab nationalism and of the possibility of restoring glory to the Arab world, would fuel the first decade of Gaddafi’s revolution.
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he was unimpressed with the niceties of international diplomacy,
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In a brilliant move that co-opted tribal elders, many of whom were also military commanders, he created the Social Leadership People’s Committee, through which he could simultaneously control the tribes and segments of the country’s military.
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When it turned out that Libya, which was still a decentralized society in 1969, had little appetite for his centralizing political vision and remained largely indifferent to his proposals, the young idealist quickly turned activist.
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Green Book, a set of slim volumes published in the mid-1970s that contain Gaddafi’s political philosophy, a blueprint is offered for a dramatic restructuring of Libya’s economy, politics, and society. In principle, Libya would become an experiment in democracy. In reality, it became a police state where every move of its citizens was carefully watched by a growing number of security apparatuses and revolutionary committees that owed loyalty directly to Gaddafi.
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Having crushed all opposition by the mid-1970s, the regime systematically snuffed out any group that could potentially oppose it—any activity that could be construed as political opposition was punishable by death, which is one reason why a post-Gaddafi Libya, unlike a post-Mubarak Egypt, can have no ready-made opposition in a position to fill the vacuum.
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The tribes—the Warfalla, the Awlad Busayf, the Magharha, the Zuwaya, the Barasa, and the smallest of them all, the Gadafa, to which he belonged—offered a natural form of political affiliation, a tribal ethos that could be tapped into for support. And perhaps, in the aftermath of Gaddafi, they could serve as a nucleus around which to build a new political system.
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Gaddafi feared they might coalesce into groups opposing his rule. So, during the first two decades after the 1969 coup, he tried to erase their influence, arguing that they were an archaic element in a modern society.
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comprehensive reconstruction of everything civic, political, legal, and moral that makes up a society and its government.
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After systematically destroying local society, after using the tribes to cancel each other out, after aborting methodically the emergence of a younger generation that could take over Libya’s political life—all compounded by the general incoherence of the country’s administrative and bureaucratic institutions—Gaddafi will have left a new Libya with severe and longstanding challenges.
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the growing isolation of Libya as international sanctions were imposed.
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Lockerbie was the logical endpoint for a regime that had lost all international legitimacy.
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while the regime still had the coercive power to put down any uprisings that took place in the 1990s, it became clear to Gaddafi’s closest advisers that the potential for unrest had reached unprecedented levels.
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way out was to come to an agreement with the West that would end the sanctions, allow Libya to refurbish an aging oil infrastructure, and provide a safety valve by permitting Libyans to travel abroad once more.
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intent to renounce weapons of mass destruction in December 2003—after a long process of behind-the-scenes diplomacy initially spearheaded by Britain
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“The Revolution Everlasting” was one of the enduring slogans of his Libya, inscribed everywhere from bridges to water bottles.
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regime that had, for four decades, mismanaged the country’s economy and humiliated its citizens
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country was split in half, with eastern Cyrenaica and its main city Benghazi effectively independent—a demonstration of the kind of people’s power Gaddafi had always advocated. Reality, in effect, outgrew the caricature.
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used a set of divide-and-rule policies that not only kept his opponents sundered from each other, but had also completely enfeebled any social or political institution in the country.
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Beyond Gaddafi, there exists only a great political emptiness, a void that Libya somehow will need to fill.
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the creation of a modern state where Libyans become true citizens, with all the rights and duties this entails.
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the terrorist incidents
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Regimes can use oil revenues strategically to provide patronage that effectively keeps them in power.
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This article from News Week basically paints a picture of Libyan history and how Gaddafi's reign devastated the state economically, socially, and politically. Author Dirk Vandewalle uses the phrase "a political tabula rasa" which in Latin means a blank slate, to describe the fate of Libya after Gaddafi's rule and convey the extent to which the country has to literally reconstruct every component that makes up a society and its government. He highlights major events that led to the downfall of both the Gaddafi regime and the Libyan state as a whole such as Arab nationalism, Jamahiriya, the Green Book, security apparatuses snuffing all opposition, terrorist incidents, isolation and international sanctions, the Lockerbie bombing, weapons of mass destruction, human right violations, divide and rule policies, and his use of oil revenue to fuel his insurgency. Vandewalle concludes the article with uncertain ideas thoughts towards Libya's future and the way the state is going to literally rebuild themselves from this "blank slate" that Gaddafi left behind.
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3 Survivors Reveal the Brutal Reality of Female Genital Mutilation - 0 views
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3 Survivors Reveal the Brutal Reality of Female Genital Mutilation
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According to the AHA Foundation, up to 228,000 girls and women in the U.S. are vulnerable to what's called "vacation cutting," when parents send their daughters to stay with their families abroad and to endure female genital mutilation (FGM)
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they make themselves invisible
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"We have a culture of silenc
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"Most women won't share their stories because they are afraid of what will happen to them, what will happen to their parents."
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The shame runs so deep that girls are taught to never look at or touch their genitals, and most of them have never been to a gynecologist
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don't even know they have been mutilated until they attempt to have sex, at which time they often need to be cut open again to consummate a marriage.
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Dukureh has been the only U.S.-based survivor to speak up so publicly against FGM
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I was 6 and my sister was 3 at the time.
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We were there three months. We ate out of one shared bowl.
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We went into a home, and immediately women grabbed and blindfolded us and tied us to some thick bushes.
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There was loud drumming and older women were singing songs, which I was too young to understand.
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. I saw an old woman holding a knife so sharp I could see the drops of blood sliding down the edge.
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Three other women were holding down my arms and legs, and another was sitting right on my chest, covering my mouth
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I can still feel the weight of her today
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t. What the cutter does is hold on to your clitoris to make sure she gets that and scrapes everything else that comes along with it — all of the labia,
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we were left to bleed into little dirt holes for hours.
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it is common practice to circumcise infant
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receive our "treatment
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They took dried leaves and placed them on the wound and that would stay on for two to three days
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We were also taught, every day, that if we ever talked about this, if we even mentioned it, they would kill us.
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I learned two of them later died in childbirth, which was too difficult for them because of FGM. They bled to death.
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h the rite of passage
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This is who we are."
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She cannot have kids as a result of her FGM.
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I will never take them back. My family will never see them.
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! This article shares 3 stories of women who have gone through the FGM procedure. They tend to consider FGM as the "Right of Passage" for young worn. Many women die in childbirth or have complications because of the results of FGM.
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New ISIS Propaganda Video May Feature Latest American Recruit - 1 views
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"Look at the little children," the gun-toting militant tells the camera, bouncing a child on his hip. "They're having fun." This is the quote from an alleged American ISIS fighter in one of ISIS' newest propaganda videos.
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Egyptians uncertain about future under President Sisi - 0 views
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This article discusses the uncertainty behind President Sisi's presidency. Although Sisi has been in office over a year, very little is know about this military man. this is an interesting article because it talks about Sisi's personality points.
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Libya's civil war: That it should come to this | The Economist - 3 views
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It is split between a government in Beida, in the east of the country, which is aligned with the military; and another in Tripoli, in the west, which is dominated by Islamists and militias from western coastal cities
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Benghazi is again a battlefield.
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The black plumes of burning oil terminals stretch out over the Mediterranean.
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Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring
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Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters
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the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya
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Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control
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In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.
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Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya
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he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.
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militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties
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The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.
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Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside
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The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad
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tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi
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The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered
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He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes
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which might have given militiamen jobs
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Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks
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the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.
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In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.
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In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity
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The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote
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Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.
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Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before
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Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east
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Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government
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So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.
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The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.
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Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.
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General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry
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the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam
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Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers
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Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists
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threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.
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Yusuf Dawar
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The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset
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And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies
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ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.
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Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile
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oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago
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The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money
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The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli
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Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways
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Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out
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Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter
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In Fashloum
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residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi
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“No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti
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Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,
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Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe
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On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint
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The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.
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the Western powers
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have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines
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Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador
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Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.
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Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off
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Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms
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The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west
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If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table
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Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west
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The old divisions still matter
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the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army
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Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.
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July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.
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In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support
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Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.
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Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world
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opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council
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Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
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In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.
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10 Reasons Why America Should Let Others Destroy ISIS and End Perpetual Military Involv... - 0 views
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U.S. troops have been in combat longer than at any point in American history. In addition to two major wars, U.S. Special Forces were deployed to 133 countries (approximately 70 percent of the nations on the planet) in 2014. It makes little sense to continue with the same tactic of perpetual war, without any assurance of a better strategic outcome.
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Al-Qaeda hasn't gone away, and is gaining - 0 views
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The terror network "remains far from crippled, and there is little evidence" al-Qaeda is on the decline, says one analyst. BEIRUT - The death of leader Osama bin Laden did not end the spread of al-Qaeda, say analysts. It may have even helped it.
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Education in Jordan - general overview | Jordan Times - 0 views
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large majority of students attends public schools, often taught by poorly qualified teachers
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Curricula, teaching and evaluation methods do not permit free dialogue or exploratory learning, and consequently do not open the doors to creative thinking and analysis.
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“Imparting” knowledge is the dominant feature, which weakens the capacity to hold opposing or various viewpoints.
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n Jordan, there is an excessive use of lecturing and memorisation, with little emphasis on analysis of what is being memorised. It is well known that students in public schools are required to memorise endless facts and formulas from a dreary academic curriculum.
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hile all new theories of language acquisition are based on meaningful communication through which students can acquire English as a second language without translation or focusing on grammatical principles and rules, “grammar translation method” is still the only popular method used in public schools and even at universities in Jordan.
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Over the years, there has been much talk about reforming the education system in Jordan, but less action. Reform i
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We need an education through which students are able to connect the facts they learn about to the real world, which helps them innovate, understand social responsibilities, ethics and values.
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A New System for K-12 Education in Qatar | RAND - 0 views
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The leadership of the Arabian Gulf nation of Qatar, like that of many other countries, views education as the key to future economic, political, and social progress.
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In summer 2001, the State of Qatar’s leadership asked the RAND Corporation to examine the K–12 (kindergarten through grade 12) school system in Qatar
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Qatari K–12 edu-cation system served about 100,000 students, two-thirds of whom attended schools that were financed and operated by the government. The highly centralized Ministry of Education oversaw all aspects of public education and many aspects of private education.
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Finally, although Qatar has a high per capita income, the national investment in education was small. Teachers received low pay and little professional development, many school buildings were in poor condition, and classrooms were overcrowded.
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he most fundamental need was for clear curriculum standards oriented toward the desired outcomes of schooling. The new system’s curriculum, assessments, and professional development would all need to be aligned with these clear standards
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AND presented three governance options to the Qatari leadership for discussion: (1) a Modified Centralized Model, which upgraded the existing, centrally controlled system by allowing for some school-level flexibility with or without parental choice of schools; (2) a Charter School Model, which encouraged variety through a set of schools independent of the Ministry and which allowed parents to choose whether to send their children to these schools; and (3) a Voucher Model, which offered parents school vouchers so that they could send their children to private schools and which sought to expand high-quality private schooling in Qatar.
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Qatar now possesses curriculum standards in Arabic, mathematics, science, and English for all 12 grades — and these standards are comparable to the highest in the world.
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These tests and surveys were then upgraded and repeated in 2005 and 2006 as part of the ongoing accountability system. The tests are the first standardized measures of student learning available in the Arabic language.
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otential school operators responded enthusiastically to the call to open the new schools.
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from a pool of 160 initial applicants; all 12 opened under three-year renewable contracts. In 2005, 21 additional Independent schools opened, and in 2006, 13 more opened.
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Increased expertise is needed in Qatar’s teaching workforce and among the Institutes’ staff. Non-Qatari specialists are likely to be required in the future, but it is important that they find the means to transfer knowledge to Qataris to build local human resources.
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The four principles of the reform — autonomy, accountability, variety, and choice
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The emirate of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates recently adopted a strategy of public financing for private providers of education that is similar to that of Qatar. Also, the Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council praised Qatar’s initiative, especially its curriculum standards. Since these standards are the foundation for teaching, learning, and accountability, the Secretary General’s praise, motivated by concern throughout the region about preparing students for later life, represents a major endorsement of the approach taken in Qatar.
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This piece is about the education reform K-12 in Qatar. The program has started to use local education supplies to create a better community attitude toward education. Their have been efforts to create a universal curriculum and higher evaluation and testing.
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Education caught in the crossfire of conflict | #ChildrenofSyria - 0 views
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he attack on Al Hayat Primary School in Qaboun, eastern Damascus in November 2014 killed 11 children and injured many more.
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But the Qaboun assault was just one of at least 68 attacks on schools across Syria between January and December 2014 alone
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round 1 in 5 – have been damaged, destroyed, or are currently sheltering internally displaced people according to data gathered by UNICEF
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nside Syria, two million children and adolescents are currently out of school.
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“We simply cannot allow an entire generation of children and adolescents to be lost to ignorance, exploitation, despair and radicalisation.”
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International humanitarian law, which declares that schools be respected as zones of peace and safe havens for children, has counted for little. The long-term consequences for children – and their place in the Syria of the future – can only be guessed at.
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utside Syria, more than 50 per cent (600,000) of Syrian refugee children and adolescents are out of school, and this number continues to grow.
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The campaigns include distribution of teaching and learning materials as well as school bags with stationary. Similar campaigns have been rolled out in countries hosting refugees.
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When I go to the refugee camps and see the smiling faces of children, then I think we should not give up in the face of difficulties,
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ublic schools receiving Syrian children are overstretched. Non-formal education spaces cannot absorb large numbers of students.
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achers are not well equipped to work with stress, overcrowding and difference. Syrian children and adolescents are receiving multiple and dispersed forms of curricula and content that are not adapted to their capacity and needs and that come with enormous challenges in certification and accreditation.
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This article also talks about the problems Syrian children face regarding education. International laws about "schools remain out of conflict" has gone ignored for a long time. Public Schools are overstretched in neighboring countries due to extra children in schools. The most interesting part of this article is the video which goes into more details about the growth of education in the last four years.