بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم:::: وقاتلوهم حتى لا تكون فتنة ويكون الدين كله لله رضيت با لله ربا وبا لإسلام دينا وبمحمد نبيا وبا لقرأن إيماما How can you want Jannah, but are still unsure of what you choose, there are still this excuse and that excuse when the given mandate can not be done. We can only give excuses without bearing out results. Fearing the human beings more than fearing Allah. Wake Up Brothers and Sisters of The Ummah…!!!
HIJRI
DISCLAIMER :
BEYOND THE ABOVE,WE, THE OPERATORS OF THIS BLOG, MAKE THIS ABSOLUTELY CLEAR,WE ARE NOT AFFILIATED IN ANY WAY WITH ANY ORGANIZATION OR GROUP,NOT EVEN WITH ANY OF THE SO-CALLED MAINSTREAM GROUPS.
ALL WE WANT IS ALLAH'S RULE TO BE UPHELD ON HUMANITY.
Friday, November 16, 2012
A Contemplated Re-Building...
" Rebuilding the Pathology of Torn Fractures Within The 3 Unique Compositions – The Multi-Colourful Flora and Fauna Way of the Malaysian Heritage."
We are always with the principal assertion that competition along the parallel lines and routes will get us nowhere. There is no optimum derivation from the parallel competitiveness. There seems to be no real gains to all prospects when the aim there is void of cohesion in the strategy of unpredictable implementation, that is to say planning without agreeable consensus, without the placement of a workable Standard in the chartered policy , the meeting of the set objective, does it sways the original intention towards workable solutions.?
There must be a mechanism that navigates the desired achievable and sustenable dynamics. The placement of identified derivatives, but its deviation from the Standard commonly recognised is the continous workable strife that must be found, to continously seek , by all components at play , the equation that ultimately resolves the complexity of haze in the breathing its balancing environment – the Equilibrium.
The dynamics is that, once Equilibrium is achieved the multi task of finding solution to any problematics, would thus be met with a considerable ease, hence so, avoiding the superflous complications, the falling into the endless intertwined deprivation with unpredictable losses. The task of this writing
– the degraded aggravation – is thus to energise and put the polemics to a definitive halt.
The path is to de-assemble all components or parts of the structure, where there lies all the the 3 known predominant robotics. To place them into the new mould, the platform but its pillar of bearing is the previous similar thermodynamics that hold together the 3 components at play. In the re - assembling of the new design of architecture, we like to call it the spiralling architecture of a gracious model.
The final work out would be the mode with which you would want to re - engineer the type of available elements at your disposal in your final analyses of the switch. You would want to choose from the several options available now a days for picks.
The modes that would be slightly laborious , known to all, is the manual mode. The other would inevitably, be a more relaxed, although not fully accustomed, the semi – automated nature, but the last not least, of all, is the fully synchronised automation. We only mention the macro aspects of each but the more detailed micro allegory of every each is up to the adjusted tendencies that suits you in all the applications that are being laid bare on the table.
The resultant model of the new design is thus almost complete, all the 3 primary components that lacks cohesion previously in their principal function, now put to reality, operates to the optimum desired per centum, they lay hands altogether collectively , with love and respect, aiming high for the
destination of a common chartered sail or flight. It makes no different between the two because they all work for the betterment of the Land where their people longingly aspire to live a more blessed and meaningful livinghood. Their children with the three primary coloured paintings within grasp, would now be in joy because they now know, whatever challenge that lies ahead, even without the parental – mentors around this time they are all, in great determination, ride the wave on that stormy night. You may want to ask Why and How?
For the modest reason, when civilization revolves, the people engulfed in that known entity also need to resolve to their best of ability. Seeing most things in good faith is the way of righteousness but then when seeing is believing, the above mentioning of the above. despite only the macro theme was architectured, Malaysians with whatever political idealism they are inclined to embrace, must dare to change.
The Malays alongside their other brethren, as all my late mentors of the past civilization used to sigh, to humbly quote, " apa mahu jadi pada ini Melayu, itu Cina dan sana India, apa kamu semua fikir kamu bisa ciptakan satu tanah lain yang baru seperti mana yang telah Tuhan kurniakan. Apa mereka telah lupa jika cendkiawan silam yang purba Greek iaitu, Ptolemy pernah menyelidiki tanah di limpahi penuh rahmah ini, dengan penuh kagum lagi ilmiah memanggil ia sebagai the "Golden Chersonese" terpahat indah pada lakaran peta dunia beliau.
Justeru itu kami pun menyeru, dengan segala nyawa kami di dalam genggam Nya, Tuhan Semesta Alam, agar di renungkan, di fikirkan ke dasar minda dengan bijaksana. Apakah masih relevant bila tiga kelompok utama dibariskan berdepan pada dua barisan, bilamana dalam mencari dan meraih pengaruh, masing-masing dalam keghairahan - alpa, keterlupaan tujuan hakiki, mereka di 'adakan' pada tanah warisan ini.
Dalam kesungguhan mereka megatur langkah berbaris dalam garis barisan masing-masing, mereka terlupa bilamana pada penghujung langkahan kemas masing-masing mereka menuju destinasi, telah membelakangi hikmah wadah sebenar. Mereka masing - masing tidak menemukan titik pertautan sejagat yang tulus kerana mereka dalam persiapan barisan masing-masing tetap mendongak masih tetap berdepan sesama mereka, dalam mengukir senyuman,tetap sinis sesama mereka. Mereka TIDAK lagi
" BIDUK LALU KIAMBANG PUN BERTAUT "
Justeru kami pun dalam segala kelumit keinsafan dalam kesadaran kesejagatan alam ini tetap cuba mengukir tersenyum seraya bertanya kepada diri lalu tunduk dan masih bertanyakan padaNya :
" Oh Tuhan, ketika memiliki 2 mata yang sehat, untuk bisa melihat orang-orang yang kita cintai pada hari ini, melihat keindahan dunia dalam semesta jagad raya ini. Air mata ku hamba dhoif Mu ini telah mengalir darah, O Tuhan. "
Dalam ketakutan kami, Oh Tuhan., sekian lama telah kami hilang bentuk -- telah kami pada Kemurahan Mu Oh Tuhan, pada ketidakbatasan Rahmah Mu, kami rebah...rebah pada cahaya KeEsaan Mu. Apa bisakah kami ..lantas layakkah kami Oh Tuhan ku
menyapa Mu, mencorakkan langkah baru memegang lalu mengibarkan Panji Ke DaulatanMu!.
"Seandainya kalian menghitung nikmat Allah, tentu kalian tidak akan mampu"
( An-Nahl: 18). ...
" Maka nikmat Tuhan kamu yang manakah yang kamu dustakan?
[Ar Rahman:30]
سَنَفْرُغُ لَكُمْ أَيُّهَ الثَّقَلَانِ [٥٥:٣١]
"Soon shall We settle your affairs, O both ye worlds! "
[Ar Rahman:31]
-- traveller
Monday, November 12, 2012
Friday, November 9, 2012
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
The Usage Of Poisonous Chemical Weapons In Afghanistan By The Invading Americans
Джамаа аль-Таухид Wal-джихад
Джамаа аль-Таухид Wal-джихад в Филиппин обратилось к Всемирному моджахедов, чтобы помочь джихаду в Филиппины
В последнее время, два видео выданных Джамаа аль-Таухид валь-Джихад, группа филиппинских была размещена в Джихад аль-Shumukh форуме. В первом видео, которое длится три минуты, человек, одетый в лицо покрытия и называл себя Абу-Джихад аль-Luzuni, обвинил Америку в оккупационных Филиппины, осуществляющих пытки и убийства мусульман. Он продолжал присягнуть на верность лидеру Аль-Каиды Айман аз-Шейх-Завахири и других групп, филиал Аль-Каиды.
Во второй записи, Абу Абдалла аль-Фарис Аль-Mulatham обратился к моджахедам во всем мире, чтобы оперативно оказывать помощь братьев-мусульман на Филиппинах, в которой он утверждал, что был убит и ограблен захватчика Америке и помогать моджахедам там с деньгами , армирование, знаний и подготовки. Абу-Абдалла также присягнул на верность лидеры джихада во всем мире, в первую очередь с лидером Исламского Эмирата Афганистан мулла Мухаммад Омар, лидер Аль-Каиды Айман аз-Шейх-Завахири. Это видео длится около 11 минут, производится Аль-Ярмук СМИ.< Ниже приведены основные моменты и видео. Видео было выпущено до приезда госсекретаря США Хиллари Клинтон на Филиппины с официальным визитом, который продолжался в течение нескольких дней: Абу-Джихад аль-Luzini в видеообращении, размещенном 7 ноября заявил, что нет никакого способа восстановить исламский халифат и освободить родину от kafireen за исключением пути джихада и мечи, которые оформлены в Аллаха.
Чтение трудов на арабском языке на листе бумаги в руке, Абу Джихада попросил всех мусульман, где бы они ни были, чтобы слова Аллаха Всевышнего, пока правда и справедливость нескрываемым, и он сказал, что единственным способом достижения этого является путем внедрения шариата Аллаха. Он подчеркнул, что мусульманская умма в настоящее время в состоянии унижения, под контролем врагов Ислама и мусульман, должны работать вместе, чтобы спасти умму от деградации и угнетения. Выступая от имени моджахедов Филиппины, Аль-Luzuni сказал: "Мы, молодежь уммы, из различных племен острова Филиппин, озабочены тем, чтобы ответить на этот божественный вызов ... в рамках удалить горя и гнева со стороны сердца людей, кто имеет веру (т.е. мусульман), и защищать честь нашей угнетенных братьев и сестер, погибших и тех, кто были изгнаны из своих домов и земли, которые были украдены ... Мы призываем Вас помочь нам и подготовить нас с пути джихада ради Аллаха ... потому что нет никакого способа восстановить исламский халифат и славу ислама, для отражения врагов ислама, а также освобождение нашей родины от накипи других кафиров, кроме путем Джихад и обнаженные мечи ради Аллаха ". В то время как Абу Абдулла начал видеозапись, подчеркнув, что Филиппины были исламские земли от древности, и что, хотя он был завоеван различными захватчиками на протяжении всей истории, мусульмане никогда не сдался им. Он обвинил Америку - у которого есть "оккупированных" Филиппинах более 100 лет - в пытках и убийствах мусульман и захватить их земли, вплоть до превращения мусульман стали беднейшие слои населения (на Филиппинах). Он обратился к исламской умме, чтобы не сидеть сложа руки, но, чтобы подняться и защитить свою религию, свою жизнь, свою честь, и их свойства. Абу Абдалла затем присягнул на верность всех лидеров мирового джихада, говоря: "Мы заявляем о своей лояльности к Аллаху, Его Расул, верующих и их имамов сегодня, такие как мулла Омар Шейх Айман аз-Завахири, Абу Бакр аль-Багдади аль-Кураиши и эмир AQAP, AQIM, моджахеды Аш-Шабааб в Сомали и других фронтах джихада ". Он сказал, что исламская умма будет взять на себя этот мир из Америки, потеряв силы, как мировой сверхдержавы, о чем свидетельствует потери, которые они испытывают в Афганистане. Он также отметил, крах американской экономики и падения жестоким правителям арабских стран, добавив, что правители в Йемене и Сирии могут быть обречены, как Муаммар Каддафи. Абу Абдалла заключение выступающий призвал моджахедов во всем мире, чтобы помочь своим братьям на Филиппинах. "Мы действительно нуждаемся в вас, чтобы отправить нам специалист по взрывчатым веществам и производство оружия, как наши братья в Ираке и Афганистане ... или дать нам Львов (т.е. моджахедов), чтобы предоставить нам тренировки в стрельбе и инша Аллах и мы, и вы получите место в грядущем мире ".
(Arrahmah.com)
Во второй записи, Абу Абдалла аль-Фарис Аль-Mulatham обратился к моджахедам во всем мире, чтобы оперативно оказывать помощь братьев-мусульман на Филиппинах, в которой он утверждал, что был убит и ограблен захватчика Америке и помогать моджахедам там с деньгами , армирование, знаний и подготовки. Абу-Абдалла также присягнул на верность лидеры джихада во всем мире, в первую очередь с лидером Исламского Эмирата Афганистан мулла Мухаммад Омар, лидер Аль-Каиды Айман аз-Шейх-Завахири. Это видео длится около 11 минут, производится Аль-Ярмук СМИ.< Ниже приведены основные моменты и видео. Видео было выпущено до приезда госсекретаря США Хиллари Клинтон на Филиппины с официальным визитом, который продолжался в течение нескольких дней: Абу-Джихад аль-Luzini в видеообращении, размещенном 7 ноября заявил, что нет никакого способа восстановить исламский халифат и освободить родину от kafireen за исключением пути джихада и мечи, которые оформлены в Аллаха.
Чтение трудов на арабском языке на листе бумаги в руке, Абу Джихада попросил всех мусульман, где бы они ни были, чтобы слова Аллаха Всевышнего, пока правда и справедливость нескрываемым, и он сказал, что единственным способом достижения этого является путем внедрения шариата Аллаха. Он подчеркнул, что мусульманская умма в настоящее время в состоянии унижения, под контролем врагов Ислама и мусульман, должны работать вместе, чтобы спасти умму от деградации и угнетения. Выступая от имени моджахедов Филиппины, Аль-Luzuni сказал: "Мы, молодежь уммы, из различных племен острова Филиппин, озабочены тем, чтобы ответить на этот божественный вызов ... в рамках удалить горя и гнева со стороны сердца людей, кто имеет веру (т.е. мусульман), и защищать честь нашей угнетенных братьев и сестер, погибших и тех, кто были изгнаны из своих домов и земли, которые были украдены ... Мы призываем Вас помочь нам и подготовить нас с пути джихада ради Аллаха ... потому что нет никакого способа восстановить исламский халифат и славу ислама, для отражения врагов ислама, а также освобождение нашей родины от накипи других кафиров, кроме путем Джихад и обнаженные мечи ради Аллаха ". В то время как Абу Абдулла начал видеозапись, подчеркнув, что Филиппины были исламские земли от древности, и что, хотя он был завоеван различными захватчиками на протяжении всей истории, мусульмане никогда не сдался им. Он обвинил Америку - у которого есть "оккупированных" Филиппинах более 100 лет - в пытках и убийствах мусульман и захватить их земли, вплоть до превращения мусульман стали беднейшие слои населения (на Филиппинах). Он обратился к исламской умме, чтобы не сидеть сложа руки, но, чтобы подняться и защитить свою религию, свою жизнь, свою честь, и их свойства. Абу Абдалла затем присягнул на верность всех лидеров мирового джихада, говоря: "Мы заявляем о своей лояльности к Аллаху, Его Расул, верующих и их имамов сегодня, такие как мулла Омар Шейх Айман аз-Завахири, Абу Бакр аль-Багдади аль-Кураиши и эмир AQAP, AQIM, моджахеды Аш-Шабааб в Сомали и других фронтах джихада ". Он сказал, что исламская умма будет взять на себя этот мир из Америки, потеряв силы, как мировой сверхдержавы, о чем свидетельствует потери, которые они испытывают в Афганистане. Он также отметил, крах американской экономики и падения жестоким правителям арабских стран, добавив, что правители в Йемене и Сирии могут быть обречены, как Муаммар Каддафи. Абу Абдалла заключение выступающий призвал моджахедов во всем мире, чтобы помочь своим братьям на Филиппинах. "Мы действительно нуждаемся в вас, чтобы отправить нам специалист по взрывчатым веществам и производство оружия, как наши братья в Ираке и Афганистане ... или дать нам Львов (т.е. моджахедов), чтобы предоставить нам тренировки в стрельбе и инша Аллах и мы, и вы получите место в грядущем мире ".
(Arrahmah.com)
Syria Seizes 60,000 Electrical Detonators Used in IED
Syria Seizes 60,000 Electrical Detonators Used in IED
Local Editor
Syrian security forces on Wednesday evening seized 60,000 electrical detonators hidden inside spare tires of a truck in Hassia area in Homs, state-run news agency reported.
An official source told SANA reporter that the truck was coming from al-Jarajir village in Damascus Countryside and heading towards Manbij city in Aleppo.
The source pointed out that the detonators are used in making explosive devices.
On the other hand, a unit of the Armed Forces on Wednesday night repelled an armed terrorist group attempting to infiltrate from the Lebanese territories into Syria near Halat site in the countryside of Talkalakh in Homs.
SANA reporter cited a source in the province as saying that the army members inflicted heavy losses upon the group, killing and injuring several insurgents and forcing the rest to flee back into Lebanon.
http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?fromval=1&cid=23&frid=23&eid=72411
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Israel Attack on Iran: Same BS Different Day
Friday, February 03, 2012
Israel Attack on Iran: Same BS Different Day
“Israel to attack Iran” is a hardy if never-blooming perennial. I rerun this post (originally written on the occasion of Israel’s bombing of an alleged nuclear facility in Syria in 2007) every year as a reminder of the rather daunting technical issues involved in flying from Israel to Iran and blowing things up in a truly convincing fashion, even as the same threats are put forward again and again.
Blowing things up in a truly convincing fashion involves a) flying there b) getting refueled in mid-air c) getting rearmed d) going back and do it again and again against Iran’s dispersed and hardened nuclear facilities.
So it won’t be an orgasmic one-off like the Osiraq reactor strike against Iraq, a nice quasi-surgical demonstration of civilized Israeli warfare. It would be a grinding, prolonged assault, presumably with plenty of Iranian casualties, and with the unmistakable, sustained assistance of a local ally to keep the planes in the air.
Iran’s nuclear facilities are beyond the combat range of Israel’s fighter bombers. So Israeli planes would not only need to overfly Iraq or Saudi Arabia and/or Turkey with or without permission; they would have need to get refueled over Iraq or Saudi Arabia as well on the return trip.
It doesn’t look like the US is going to provide refueling facilities, leaving it up to local partners (unlikely/infeasible) or Israel itself.
This year, the presence of a pro-Iranian government in Iraq would make it necessary for Israel to cross Iraqi airspace without permission, and defy the Iraqi government in prolonged fashion by having Israel’s tankers hovering over Iraq for multiple bouts of mid-air refueling.
And I don’t think Turkey’s going to be keen about permitting overflight, since they aren’t even signing on to the proposed bilateral sanctions against Iran.
That leaves the Saudis. Saudi Arabia is in the midst of an aggressive rollback against Iran in particular and Shi’ites in general, and the London Times quoted an anonymous Saudi source as saying Israeli jets attacking Iran would be waved through Saudi airspace.
Doesn’t quite pass the smell test for me, though. I don’t think the Saudi government is happy to harass the Iranians, but I don’t think they have the stomach for taking the Israeli side in a full-blown war.
On the record comments in December from Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s top security honcho, will undoubtedly be dismissed as disinformation by Western observers because he’s calling for a nuclear-free Middle East (a slap at Israel!), but I think his statement more closely reflect Saudi reality:
Replying to a question about the possibility of an attack on Iran to force it to roll back its nuclear program and the impact of such an action, Prince Turki reiterated that the impact will be “calamitous … cataclysmic, not just catastrophic.”
He said that Iranian actions have provoked worldwide opposition but at the same time suggests that Iran's nuclear program is being singled out, while Israel is being given a clean chit. Any unilateral decision to launch a military attack aimed at halting the nuclear program of Iran could have huge consequences, he warned.
As to the technical issues of refueling, the IDF has made a big deal of demonstrating that it does not need US refueling services, as this report indicates:
In the last days of May and first week of June, 2008, Israel staged an impressive and well-reported exercise over Crete with the participation of the Greek air force. More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighter jets, as well as Israeli rescue helicopters and mid-air refueling planes flew a massive number of mock strikes. Israeli planes reportedly never landed but were continuously refueled from airborne platforms. Israel demonstrated that a 1400 km distance could be negotiated with Israeli aircraft remaining aloft and effective. Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility is 1400 km from Israel.
Early in 2011, the Jersusalem Post reported Israel took delivery of a 707 for conversion into a tanker for refueling its F15-I fighter bombers coming back for Iran. How many additional tankers Israel has is “classified”, but an unsourced thread puts the total number of converted 707s to eight.
The JPost article went on to say:
The air force has conducted a major upgrade of its tanker fleet in recent years and now plans to wait for the US Air Force to choose its future tanker before buying additional aircraft.
Reading between the lines, maybe the United States is not particularly keen on delivering tankers and enhancing Israel’s capability to conduct unilateral air operations against Iran.
Accordingto Karl Vick at Time magazine, Israel doesn’t have the tanker capacity or, for that matter the ordnance, to devastate Iran for weeks:
What everyone agrees, however, is that as formidable as the Israeli Air Force is, it simply lacks the capacity to mount the kind of sustained, weeks-long aerial bombardment required to knock down Iran’s nuclear program, with the requisite pauses for damage assessments followed by fresh waves of bombing. Without forward platforms like air craft carriers, Israel’s air armada must rely on mid-air refueling to reach targets more than 1,000 miles away, and anyone who reads Israel’s order of battle sees it simply doesn’t have but a half dozen or so. Another drawback noted by analysts is Israel’s inventory of bunker-busting bombs, the sort that penetrate deep into concrete or rock that shield the centrifuge arrays at Natanz and now Fordow, near Qum. Israel has loads of GBU-28s, which might penetrate Natanz. But only the U.S. Air Force has the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator that could take on Fordow, the mountainside redoubt where critics suspect Iran would enrich uranium to military levels.
So, why do we keep talking about Israel’s threats to attack Iran?
I’ve frequently commented that the main purpose of the attack-Iran threat is to yank America’s chain, and forestall possible rapprochement between the United States and Iran.
The Obama administration knows this, I think, and I find its politically-motivated willingness to continue with the sanctions charade, and the low level but cruel and destabilizing program of assassination, sabotage, and economic warfare against Iran rather shameful.
Israel Attack on Iran: Same BS Different Day
“Israel to attack Iran” is a hardy if never-blooming perennial. I rerun this post (originally written on the occasion of Israel’s bombing of an alleged nuclear facility in Syria in 2007) every year as a reminder of the rather daunting technical issues involved in flying from Israel to Iran and blowing things up in a truly convincing fashion, even as the same threats are put forward again and again.
Blowing things up in a truly convincing fashion involves a) flying there b) getting refueled in mid-air c) getting rearmed d) going back and do it again and again against Iran’s dispersed and hardened nuclear facilities.
So it won’t be an orgasmic one-off like the Osiraq reactor strike against Iraq, a nice quasi-surgical demonstration of civilized Israeli warfare. It would be a grinding, prolonged assault, presumably with plenty of Iranian casualties, and with the unmistakable, sustained assistance of a local ally to keep the planes in the air.
Iran’s nuclear facilities are beyond the combat range of Israel’s fighter bombers. So Israeli planes would not only need to overfly Iraq or Saudi Arabia and/or Turkey with or without permission; they would have need to get refueled over Iraq or Saudi Arabia as well on the return trip.
It doesn’t look like the US is going to provide refueling facilities, leaving it up to local partners (unlikely/infeasible) or Israel itself.
This year, the presence of a pro-Iranian government in Iraq would make it necessary for Israel to cross Iraqi airspace without permission, and defy the Iraqi government in prolonged fashion by having Israel’s tankers hovering over Iraq for multiple bouts of mid-air refueling.
And I don’t think Turkey’s going to be keen about permitting overflight, since they aren’t even signing on to the proposed bilateral sanctions against Iran.
That leaves the Saudis. Saudi Arabia is in the midst of an aggressive rollback against Iran in particular and Shi’ites in general, and the London Times quoted an anonymous Saudi source as saying Israeli jets attacking Iran would be waved through Saudi airspace.
Doesn’t quite pass the smell test for me, though. I don’t think the Saudi government is happy to harass the Iranians, but I don’t think they have the stomach for taking the Israeli side in a full-blown war.
On the record comments in December from Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s top security honcho, will undoubtedly be dismissed as disinformation by Western observers because he’s calling for a nuclear-free Middle East (a slap at Israel!), but I think his statement more closely reflect Saudi reality:
Replying to a question about the possibility of an attack on Iran to force it to roll back its nuclear program and the impact of such an action, Prince Turki reiterated that the impact will be “calamitous … cataclysmic, not just catastrophic.”
He said that Iranian actions have provoked worldwide opposition but at the same time suggests that Iran's nuclear program is being singled out, while Israel is being given a clean chit. Any unilateral decision to launch a military attack aimed at halting the nuclear program of Iran could have huge consequences, he warned.
As to the technical issues of refueling, the IDF has made a big deal of demonstrating that it does not need US refueling services, as this report indicates:
In the last days of May and first week of June, 2008, Israel staged an impressive and well-reported exercise over Crete with the participation of the Greek air force. More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighter jets, as well as Israeli rescue helicopters and mid-air refueling planes flew a massive number of mock strikes. Israeli planes reportedly never landed but were continuously refueled from airborne platforms. Israel demonstrated that a 1400 km distance could be negotiated with Israeli aircraft remaining aloft and effective. Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility is 1400 km from Israel.
Early in 2011, the Jersusalem Post reported Israel took delivery of a 707 for conversion into a tanker for refueling its F15-I fighter bombers coming back for Iran. How many additional tankers Israel has is “classified”, but an unsourced thread puts the total number of converted 707s to eight.
The JPost article went on to say:
The air force has conducted a major upgrade of its tanker fleet in recent years and now plans to wait for the US Air Force to choose its future tanker before buying additional aircraft.
Reading between the lines, maybe the United States is not particularly keen on delivering tankers and enhancing Israel’s capability to conduct unilateral air operations against Iran.
Accordingto Karl Vick at Time magazine, Israel doesn’t have the tanker capacity or, for that matter the ordnance, to devastate Iran for weeks:
What everyone agrees, however, is that as formidable as the Israeli Air Force is, it simply lacks the capacity to mount the kind of sustained, weeks-long aerial bombardment required to knock down Iran’s nuclear program, with the requisite pauses for damage assessments followed by fresh waves of bombing. Without forward platforms like air craft carriers, Israel’s air armada must rely on mid-air refueling to reach targets more than 1,000 miles away, and anyone who reads Israel’s order of battle sees it simply doesn’t have but a half dozen or so. Another drawback noted by analysts is Israel’s inventory of bunker-busting bombs, the sort that penetrate deep into concrete or rock that shield the centrifuge arrays at Natanz and now Fordow, near Qum. Israel has loads of GBU-28s, which might penetrate Natanz. But only the U.S. Air Force has the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator that could take on Fordow, the mountainside redoubt where critics suspect Iran would enrich uranium to military levels.
So, why do we keep talking about Israel’s threats to attack Iran?
I’ve frequently commented that the main purpose of the attack-Iran threat is to yank America’s chain, and forestall possible rapprochement between the United States and Iran.
The Obama administration knows this, I think, and I find its politically-motivated willingness to continue with the sanctions charade, and the low level but cruel and destabilizing program of assassination, sabotage, and economic warfare against Iran rather shameful.
Syrian Bloodshed and the West's Abdication of Journalistic Responsibility
Syrian Bloodshed and the West's Abdication of Journalistic Responsibility
The October 13 BBC headline read: Clashes in Syria leave 19 dead – rights activists.
That gives the impression that the brutal Syrian army killed 19 Syrian demonstrators.
Not quite. The story continues:
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people died when government troops attacked the northern town of Banash.
In the southern town of Haara, armed men killed at least nine soldiers.
That’s nine Syrian government soldiers. According to Syrian government reports, 1100 Syrian government forces have been killed since the uprising began.
Anti-government violence by armed groups is one of the inconvenient truths about the Syrian uprising.
Democracy activists don’t want to admit it; sympathetic media outlets don’t want to report it.
Now that the issue is becoming unavoidable, the new tactic is to excuse it as the response of incensed deserters, while deploring the “slide toward civil war.”
Not so.
The issue of “armed gangs” has been there from the beginning.
It took a willful abdication of journalistic responsibility to suppress it—and to continue to misrepresent it in order to evade responsibility for the simple-minded (and single-minded) pro-democracy media cheerleading that characterized most reporting on Syria.
Now that the non-violent anti-government protests are sputtering into futility, center stage is taken by the advocates of violent struggle.
For the West and Sunni states to breathe more life into the anti-Assad movement, violence has to be portrayed as inevitable, principled response, not escalating provocation seeking to obscure the failure of a political movement.
I expect the media to cover the issue of anti-government violence with same dishonest, guilty evasiveness it has displayed in the past.
Here’s a piece I wrote in April 2011 about one of the first incidents—an attack on a government convoy near Banyas that killed almost a dozen soldiers, confirmed by a source that I consider impeccable: the family of Josh Landis, the Syria watcher at University of Oklahoma.
It also describes the state of play around a key anti-Assad figure: Abdul Halim Khaddam.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Does Abdul Halim Khaddam Have Anything to Do with What's Going on in Syria?
Is Saudi Arabia Showing George W. Bush How to Run the Regime-Change Table in the Middle East?
Saudi Arabia has engaged in some extremely public and forceful pushback against Middle East unrest in general and Iran in particular. In some quarters, it’s being called the Saudi counter-revolution.
Is the pro-Iran/pro-Hezbollah Assad government in Syria the next Shi'a domino?
Iran’s Press TV certainly thinks so.
In an op-ed entitled Saudi Arabia, Jordan Behind Syria Unrest, the authors write:
Saudi Arabia, which often bows to US and Israel's policies in the region, tried to destabilize Bashar al-Assad's government by undermining his rule.
To this end, Saudi Arabia paid 30 million dollars to former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam to quit Assad's government.
Khaddam sought asylum in France in 2005 with the aid of Saudi Arabia and began to plot against the Syrian government with the exiled leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Khaddam, who is a relative of Saudi King Abdullah and former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, used his great wealth to form a political group with the aim of toppling Bashar al-Assad.
The triangle of Khaddam-Abdullah-Hariri is well-known in the region as their wives are sisters.
Khaddam's entire family enjoys Saudi citizenship and the value investment by his sons, Jamal and Jihad, in Saudi Arabia is estimated at more than USD 3 billion.
Therefore, with the start of popular protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, the Saudi regime saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between Tehran, Damascus and Beirut axis.
Due to the direct influence of the Saudi Wahhabis on Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, the people of the cities of Daraa and Homs, following Saudi incitement and using popular demands as an excuse began resorting to violence.
It is reported that the United States, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia formed joint operational headquarters in the Saudi Embassy in Belgium to direct the riots in southern Syria. Abdul Halim Khaddam, who held the highest political, executive and information posts in the Syrian government for more than 30 years, is said to have been transferred from Paris to Belgium to direct the unrest.
The reason for this was that based on French law, political asylum seekers cannot work against their countries of origin in France and therefore Khaddam was transferred to Brussels to guide the riots.
Jordan equipped the Muslim Brotherhood in the two cities with logistical facilities and personal weapons.
Although, Bashar al-Assad promised implementation of fundamental changes and reforms after the bloody riot in the country, the Brotherhood followed continued to incite protesters against him.
The Syrian state television recently broadcast footage of armed activity in the border city of Daraa by a guerilla group, which opened fire on the people and government forces. It is said that the group, which is affiliated to Salafi movements, obtained its weapons from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Because Syria's ruling party is from the Alevi tribes associated with the Shias, the Brotherhood, due to its anti-Shia ideas, has tried for three decades to topple the Alevi establishment of the country.
Hence, the recent riots in Syria are not just rooted in popular demands and harbor a tribal aspect and Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the US are directing the unrest for their future purposes.
Press TV aside, Abdul Halim Khaddam--who used to be Hafez al-Assad's right hand man/fixer before coming up short in the succession struggle--is insisting he’s just letting human nature and pent-up demands for freedom drive events in Syria without any help from him.
In this recent picture, Khaddam looks quite comfortable in his plush Parisian digs, purportedly purchased through the generosity of his brother-in-law, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and/or acquired as the result of his own billionaire-level business acumen, so maybe he’s just kicking back and letting politics take its course inside Syria.
Of course, in his own words he’s “working around the clock to set an executable plan to achieve [his] targets”, but we’re led to believe that relates to the political struggle after popular unrest has kicked the props out from under the Assad regime.
He’s also willing to foment anti-Iranian and anti-Shi’a sentiment, something that would please his alleged patrons in Riyadh.
In 2006, Khaddam told had this exchange with an interviewer:
Q: What are you current priorities? Do you want to reform the regime, reform it, or topple it?
A: This regime cannot be reformed so there is nothing left but to oust it.
Q: But how will you oust it?
A: The Syrian people will topple the regime. There is a rapidly growing current in the country. Opposition is growing fast. I do not want to oust the regime by military coup. A coup is the most dangerous type of reform. I am working to create the right atmosphere for the Syrian people to topple the regime.
In another interview in 2006—the year he optimistically expected the Assad regime to fall-- Khaddam elaborated on the theme:
Gulf News: On January 14, you announced you would form a government-in-exile that would take over power when the government of President Bashar Al Assad collapsed, but nothing has happened since then. I have contacted opposition forces in London and Washington who welcomed your move but said they have not heard from you. What happened to the government-in-exile idea and are you going to cooperate with the existing opposition forces or form a government of your own supporters?
Abdul Halim Khaddam: I am working with different opposition forces which exist inside Syria and in exile. We are discussing the formation of a government-in-exile. Its main task will be to fill the power vacuum in the country and be in action after the collapse of the regime in Damascus.
I am discussing my proposal directly with the leaders of opposition factions or through mediators. We are looking to foster and strengthen cooperation among different opposition factions, including Muslim Brotherhood, which are banned by law in Syria since 1980. We will announce a programme for a democratic change in Syria that will include all the topics and the issues to be handled by the opposition in the next stage.
We are working round-the-clock to set an executable plan to achieve our targets and to benefit from the blunders committed by the regime in recent years. The regime has handcuffed itself through a chain of fatal mistakes which will help the opposition overthrow the totalitarian regime and launch a democratic era.
Khaddam also beat the anti-Iran and anti-Shi’a drum in 2007—a worrisome combination for Assad, who as a member of a small Shi’a-esque minority sect, the Alawites, reigns over a Sunni majority (an interesting inversion of the situation in Bahrain--Sunni sheiks lording it over disgruntled Shi'a majority):
Khaddam speculated that Assad's regime was being infiltrated by Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with Iranian intelligence agents having penetrated the Syrian political and security circles. He pointed to an agreement between Syrian and Iranian security organs, a mutual defence agreement signed in 2006 between Tehran and Damascus and a "broad co-ordination between the security organs in the two countries which covers Lebanon and Syria".
Khaddam accused the Iranian ambassador to Damascus of leading the Shi'itisation process in Syria, saying: "Shi'itisation is a political phenomenon carried out by the Iranian ambassador to Damascus with the objective of creating a political situation that is tied to Iran, and this activity is dangerous as it lays the ground for sectarian strife in Syria".
At the very least, Khaddam showed more message discipline that an organization called the Reform Party of Syria. The only conspicuous achievement of the group mentioned on its Wikipedia page was an endorsement of Nicolas Sarkozy for President (of France).
The RPS, although referred to by the World Tribune (itself the perhaps less than authoritative mouthpiece of the politically-wired Soka Gakkai cult in Japan) as "authoritative", appears to have jumped the shark with its recent backgrounder. It stated:
Iran has deployed its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria to bolster Syria's defense. The Washington-based opposition group said the IRGC contingent in Syria includes 10,000 troops, with headquarters in the northern province of Homs.
"In essence, the IRGC now occupies Syria and has become its de facto ruler," RPS spokesman Farid Ghadry said. "Syria has become the 32nd province of Iran."
Leaving levity aside, the references to Abdul Halim Khaddam caught my eye because of a sad, sober post by Josh Landis, one of America’s premier Syria-watchers, on his blog, Syria Comment:
The Syrian revolution struck home yesterday. My wife, Manar Qash`ur [Kachour], burst into tears last night as she read the Facebook page that has kept her updated on events in her hometown, Latakia. Lt. Colonel Yasir Qash`ur, who was Manar’s cousin and 40 years old, was shot in Banyas on Sunday. He was one of two Lt. Colonels and 10 military personnel killed – more were wounded. Yasir’s funeral was held in the village this morning – Monday. My brother-in-law, Firas, and father-in-law, Shaaban, both attended.
...
My father-in-law said on the phone this morning that it seemed that supporters of ex-Vice President Khaddam, who was from Banyas, were behind the attack. It is said that they had set a trap for the military unit. All this is speculation, however. We know precious little about who is killing whom in Syria. Allegations are numerous. Real knowledge is scarce.
There is a widespread enthusiasm for acknowledging the popular character of the demonstrations against Assad.
There is intense unease about exploring the role of armed provocateurs in trying to foment more extreme anti-government unrest.
Al Jazeera—which appears an enthusiastic cheerleader for the Syrian protests, even as it seems to show a willingness to hew to the Saudi line in downplaying reporting on the anti-Shi'a crackdown in Bahrain—did run a video segment on Inside Story, Syria: Conspiracies and Condemnation.
Judging from the version on Youtube, it was originally called Conspiracy over Syria Protests; perhaps that title was considered to give excessive credence to the government’s claims.
To an almost ludicrous extent, the moderator, Nick Clark, tried to get his three panelists to comment on video footage aired on Syrian state TV that showed a white Honda riding down a street in some Syrian town with guys firing automatic weapons out the window.
The panelists admitted in passing that it was plausible that gunmen had joined the anti-government protests.
Nobody was willing to discuss the implications, preferring to treat the footage of gunmen—true or not—as simply an attempt by the government to misdirect attention away from the genuine protests. The panelists critiqued the lack of evidentiary meat on the reportorial bones, and used their lack of interest in the clip to emphasize that the Syrian state media—and by implication, the government—had lost credibility.
That white car, with “a chap hanging out firing a machine gun”, as Clark put it...zero traction.
The possibility that the gunmen were pro-government irregulars has subsequently been floated in the media courtesy of pro-demonstrator spokespeople.
A similar vow of omerta seems to apply to the ambush of the Syrian Army patrol that killed Josh Landis's in-law.
One would think the death of nearly a dozen soldiers in an ambush would be considered a remarkable development, considering that the death of equivalent numbers of demonstrators is a world media event.
It’s also rather shocking that, in an acknowledged authoritarian state like Syria, somebody could come up with the wherewithal to mount a successful attack on a rather sizable military patrol.
But even in news for Banyas, the reports of an ambush are virtually a non-story, as the media concentrates on the crackdown instead.
On Josh Landis’ site, a pro-demonstrator commenter advanced the story that one member of the unit had killed the rest of the soldiers in a fit of patriotism, rather than fire on demonstrators.
If reports in Syrian media are truthful, this would have been a remarkable display of determination and marksmanship. In addition to nine dead, twenty three were wounded. Admittedly, Nidal Malik Hasan killed and wounded more at Fort Hood, but those victims were on base and unarmed; the Syrian soldiers were on patrol and presumably within reach of their weapons.
The pro-democracy slaughter line seems less likely than the story of one of the survivors:
Mazin Fittimi reported that he was sitting in the front part of the convey when armed men ambushed and rained them with bullets and grenades from nearby buildings and water sewage canals at 'Al-Qwz Bridage'.
In the Arab press, Khaddam asserted that his home town of Banyas had a long history of repression, persecution, discrimination and marginalization and “don’t need anyone to guide them”.
We’ll see.
Whether or not Khaddam is Saudi Arabia’s Chalabi for Syria doesn’t get a lot of airing in the regional press.
Whether or not he has assets in his home town that would mount an attack on a government convoy is apparently not a matter of widespread interest.
And that doesn’t even go into the matter of Rifaat Assad, Hafez Assad’s brother—and Bashar Assad’s uncle—who tried to take over in a coup and was exiled to France. Rifaat is also married to one of King Abdullah’s sisters.
So that means that the former Number 2 and Number 3 in the Syrian regime are both eager to see Bashar fall on his behind; and both are close to Saudi Arabia, which now appears to be, more than ever, willing to take positive action to sideline its enemies.
Of course, the Assad regime, as the al Jazeera panel pointed out, has been counterproductively coy and vague about the conspirators it claims are dead-set on undermining the government.
Is the Syrian government just blowing smoke? Trying to build a persuasive case before they name names? Afraid to provoke an open breach with the Saudi and Jordanian governments by publicly accusing Khaddam and Rifaat Assad?
Is Syria trying to get the word out indirectly through the willing, eager, but less than respectable outlet of Iran and Press TV instead?
These questions might be worthy of some more media attention.
The October 13 BBC headline read: Clashes in Syria leave 19 dead – rights activists.
That gives the impression that the brutal Syrian army killed 19 Syrian demonstrators.
Not quite. The story continues:
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people died when government troops attacked the northern town of Banash.
In the southern town of Haara, armed men killed at least nine soldiers.
That’s nine Syrian government soldiers. According to Syrian government reports, 1100 Syrian government forces have been killed since the uprising began.
Anti-government violence by armed groups is one of the inconvenient truths about the Syrian uprising.
Democracy activists don’t want to admit it; sympathetic media outlets don’t want to report it.
Now that the issue is becoming unavoidable, the new tactic is to excuse it as the response of incensed deserters, while deploring the “slide toward civil war.”
Not so.
The issue of “armed gangs” has been there from the beginning.
It took a willful abdication of journalistic responsibility to suppress it—and to continue to misrepresent it in order to evade responsibility for the simple-minded (and single-minded) pro-democracy media cheerleading that characterized most reporting on Syria.
Now that the non-violent anti-government protests are sputtering into futility, center stage is taken by the advocates of violent struggle.
For the West and Sunni states to breathe more life into the anti-Assad movement, violence has to be portrayed as inevitable, principled response, not escalating provocation seeking to obscure the failure of a political movement.
I expect the media to cover the issue of anti-government violence with same dishonest, guilty evasiveness it has displayed in the past.
Here’s a piece I wrote in April 2011 about one of the first incidents—an attack on a government convoy near Banyas that killed almost a dozen soldiers, confirmed by a source that I consider impeccable: the family of Josh Landis, the Syria watcher at University of Oklahoma.
It also describes the state of play around a key anti-Assad figure: Abdul Halim Khaddam.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Does Abdul Halim Khaddam Have Anything to Do with What's Going on in Syria?
Is Saudi Arabia Showing George W. Bush How to Run the Regime-Change Table in the Middle East?
Saudi Arabia has engaged in some extremely public and forceful pushback against Middle East unrest in general and Iran in particular. In some quarters, it’s being called the Saudi counter-revolution.
Is the pro-Iran/pro-Hezbollah Assad government in Syria the next Shi'a domino?
Iran’s Press TV certainly thinks so.
In an op-ed entitled Saudi Arabia, Jordan Behind Syria Unrest, the authors write:
Saudi Arabia, which often bows to US and Israel's policies in the region, tried to destabilize Bashar al-Assad's government by undermining his rule.
To this end, Saudi Arabia paid 30 million dollars to former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam to quit Assad's government.
Khaddam sought asylum in France in 2005 with the aid of Saudi Arabia and began to plot against the Syrian government with the exiled leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Khaddam, who is a relative of Saudi King Abdullah and former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, used his great wealth to form a political group with the aim of toppling Bashar al-Assad.
The triangle of Khaddam-Abdullah-Hariri is well-known in the region as their wives are sisters.
Khaddam's entire family enjoys Saudi citizenship and the value investment by his sons, Jamal and Jihad, in Saudi Arabia is estimated at more than USD 3 billion.
Therefore, with the start of popular protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, the Saudi regime saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between Tehran, Damascus and Beirut axis.
Due to the direct influence of the Saudi Wahhabis on Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, the people of the cities of Daraa and Homs, following Saudi incitement and using popular demands as an excuse began resorting to violence.
It is reported that the United States, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia formed joint operational headquarters in the Saudi Embassy in Belgium to direct the riots in southern Syria. Abdul Halim Khaddam, who held the highest political, executive and information posts in the Syrian government for more than 30 years, is said to have been transferred from Paris to Belgium to direct the unrest.
The reason for this was that based on French law, political asylum seekers cannot work against their countries of origin in France and therefore Khaddam was transferred to Brussels to guide the riots.
Jordan equipped the Muslim Brotherhood in the two cities with logistical facilities and personal weapons.
Although, Bashar al-Assad promised implementation of fundamental changes and reforms after the bloody riot in the country, the Brotherhood followed continued to incite protesters against him.
The Syrian state television recently broadcast footage of armed activity in the border city of Daraa by a guerilla group, which opened fire on the people and government forces. It is said that the group, which is affiliated to Salafi movements, obtained its weapons from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Because Syria's ruling party is from the Alevi tribes associated with the Shias, the Brotherhood, due to its anti-Shia ideas, has tried for three decades to topple the Alevi establishment of the country.
Hence, the recent riots in Syria are not just rooted in popular demands and harbor a tribal aspect and Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the US are directing the unrest for their future purposes.
Press TV aside, Abdul Halim Khaddam--who used to be Hafez al-Assad's right hand man/fixer before coming up short in the succession struggle--is insisting he’s just letting human nature and pent-up demands for freedom drive events in Syria without any help from him.
In this recent picture, Khaddam looks quite comfortable in his plush Parisian digs, purportedly purchased through the generosity of his brother-in-law, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and/or acquired as the result of his own billionaire-level business acumen, so maybe he’s just kicking back and letting politics take its course inside Syria.
Of course, in his own words he’s “working around the clock to set an executable plan to achieve [his] targets”, but we’re led to believe that relates to the political struggle after popular unrest has kicked the props out from under the Assad regime.
He’s also willing to foment anti-Iranian and anti-Shi’a sentiment, something that would please his alleged patrons in Riyadh.
In 2006, Khaddam told had this exchange with an interviewer:
Q: What are you current priorities? Do you want to reform the regime, reform it, or topple it?
A: This regime cannot be reformed so there is nothing left but to oust it.
Q: But how will you oust it?
A: The Syrian people will topple the regime. There is a rapidly growing current in the country. Opposition is growing fast. I do not want to oust the regime by military coup. A coup is the most dangerous type of reform. I am working to create the right atmosphere for the Syrian people to topple the regime.
In another interview in 2006—the year he optimistically expected the Assad regime to fall-- Khaddam elaborated on the theme:
Gulf News: On January 14, you announced you would form a government-in-exile that would take over power when the government of President Bashar Al Assad collapsed, but nothing has happened since then. I have contacted opposition forces in London and Washington who welcomed your move but said they have not heard from you. What happened to the government-in-exile idea and are you going to cooperate with the existing opposition forces or form a government of your own supporters?
Abdul Halim Khaddam: I am working with different opposition forces which exist inside Syria and in exile. We are discussing the formation of a government-in-exile. Its main task will be to fill the power vacuum in the country and be in action after the collapse of the regime in Damascus.
I am discussing my proposal directly with the leaders of opposition factions or through mediators. We are looking to foster and strengthen cooperation among different opposition factions, including Muslim Brotherhood, which are banned by law in Syria since 1980. We will announce a programme for a democratic change in Syria that will include all the topics and the issues to be handled by the opposition in the next stage.
We are working round-the-clock to set an executable plan to achieve our targets and to benefit from the blunders committed by the regime in recent years. The regime has handcuffed itself through a chain of fatal mistakes which will help the opposition overthrow the totalitarian regime and launch a democratic era.
Khaddam also beat the anti-Iran and anti-Shi’a drum in 2007—a worrisome combination for Assad, who as a member of a small Shi’a-esque minority sect, the Alawites, reigns over a Sunni majority (an interesting inversion of the situation in Bahrain--Sunni sheiks lording it over disgruntled Shi'a majority):
Khaddam speculated that Assad's regime was being infiltrated by Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with Iranian intelligence agents having penetrated the Syrian political and security circles. He pointed to an agreement between Syrian and Iranian security organs, a mutual defence agreement signed in 2006 between Tehran and Damascus and a "broad co-ordination between the security organs in the two countries which covers Lebanon and Syria".
Khaddam accused the Iranian ambassador to Damascus of leading the Shi'itisation process in Syria, saying: "Shi'itisation is a political phenomenon carried out by the Iranian ambassador to Damascus with the objective of creating a political situation that is tied to Iran, and this activity is dangerous as it lays the ground for sectarian strife in Syria".
At the very least, Khaddam showed more message discipline that an organization called the Reform Party of Syria. The only conspicuous achievement of the group mentioned on its Wikipedia page was an endorsement of Nicolas Sarkozy for President (of France).
The RPS, although referred to by the World Tribune (itself the perhaps less than authoritative mouthpiece of the politically-wired Soka Gakkai cult in Japan) as "authoritative", appears to have jumped the shark with its recent backgrounder. It stated:
Iran has deployed its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria to bolster Syria's defense. The Washington-based opposition group said the IRGC contingent in Syria includes 10,000 troops, with headquarters in the northern province of Homs.
"In essence, the IRGC now occupies Syria and has become its de facto ruler," RPS spokesman Farid Ghadry said. "Syria has become the 32nd province of Iran."
Leaving levity aside, the references to Abdul Halim Khaddam caught my eye because of a sad, sober post by Josh Landis, one of America’s premier Syria-watchers, on his blog, Syria Comment:
The Syrian revolution struck home yesterday. My wife, Manar Qash`ur [Kachour], burst into tears last night as she read the Facebook page that has kept her updated on events in her hometown, Latakia. Lt. Colonel Yasir Qash`ur, who was Manar’s cousin and 40 years old, was shot in Banyas on Sunday. He was one of two Lt. Colonels and 10 military personnel killed – more were wounded. Yasir’s funeral was held in the village this morning – Monday. My brother-in-law, Firas, and father-in-law, Shaaban, both attended.
...
My father-in-law said on the phone this morning that it seemed that supporters of ex-Vice President Khaddam, who was from Banyas, were behind the attack. It is said that they had set a trap for the military unit. All this is speculation, however. We know precious little about who is killing whom in Syria. Allegations are numerous. Real knowledge is scarce.
There is a widespread enthusiasm for acknowledging the popular character of the demonstrations against Assad.
There is intense unease about exploring the role of armed provocateurs in trying to foment more extreme anti-government unrest.
Al Jazeera—which appears an enthusiastic cheerleader for the Syrian protests, even as it seems to show a willingness to hew to the Saudi line in downplaying reporting on the anti-Shi'a crackdown in Bahrain—did run a video segment on Inside Story, Syria: Conspiracies and Condemnation.
Judging from the version on Youtube, it was originally called Conspiracy over Syria Protests; perhaps that title was considered to give excessive credence to the government’s claims.
To an almost ludicrous extent, the moderator, Nick Clark, tried to get his three panelists to comment on video footage aired on Syrian state TV that showed a white Honda riding down a street in some Syrian town with guys firing automatic weapons out the window.
The panelists admitted in passing that it was plausible that gunmen had joined the anti-government protests.
Nobody was willing to discuss the implications, preferring to treat the footage of gunmen—true or not—as simply an attempt by the government to misdirect attention away from the genuine protests. The panelists critiqued the lack of evidentiary meat on the reportorial bones, and used their lack of interest in the clip to emphasize that the Syrian state media—and by implication, the government—had lost credibility.
That white car, with “a chap hanging out firing a machine gun”, as Clark put it...zero traction.
The possibility that the gunmen were pro-government irregulars has subsequently been floated in the media courtesy of pro-demonstrator spokespeople.
A similar vow of omerta seems to apply to the ambush of the Syrian Army patrol that killed Josh Landis's in-law.
One would think the death of nearly a dozen soldiers in an ambush would be considered a remarkable development, considering that the death of equivalent numbers of demonstrators is a world media event.
It’s also rather shocking that, in an acknowledged authoritarian state like Syria, somebody could come up with the wherewithal to mount a successful attack on a rather sizable military patrol.
But even in news for Banyas, the reports of an ambush are virtually a non-story, as the media concentrates on the crackdown instead.
On Josh Landis’ site, a pro-demonstrator commenter advanced the story that one member of the unit had killed the rest of the soldiers in a fit of patriotism, rather than fire on demonstrators.
If reports in Syrian media are truthful, this would have been a remarkable display of determination and marksmanship. In addition to nine dead, twenty three were wounded. Admittedly, Nidal Malik Hasan killed and wounded more at Fort Hood, but those victims were on base and unarmed; the Syrian soldiers were on patrol and presumably within reach of their weapons.
The pro-democracy slaughter line seems less likely than the story of one of the survivors:
Mazin Fittimi reported that he was sitting in the front part of the convey when armed men ambushed and rained them with bullets and grenades from nearby buildings and water sewage canals at 'Al-Qwz Bridage'.
In the Arab press, Khaddam asserted that his home town of Banyas had a long history of repression, persecution, discrimination and marginalization and “don’t need anyone to guide them”.
We’ll see.
Whether or not Khaddam is Saudi Arabia’s Chalabi for Syria doesn’t get a lot of airing in the regional press.
Whether or not he has assets in his home town that would mount an attack on a government convoy is apparently not a matter of widespread interest.
And that doesn’t even go into the matter of Rifaat Assad, Hafez Assad’s brother—and Bashar Assad’s uncle—who tried to take over in a coup and was exiled to France. Rifaat is also married to one of King Abdullah’s sisters.
So that means that the former Number 2 and Number 3 in the Syrian regime are both eager to see Bashar fall on his behind; and both are close to Saudi Arabia, which now appears to be, more than ever, willing to take positive action to sideline its enemies.
Of course, the Assad regime, as the al Jazeera panel pointed out, has been counterproductively coy and vague about the conspirators it claims are dead-set on undermining the government.
Is the Syrian government just blowing smoke? Trying to build a persuasive case before they name names? Afraid to provoke an open breach with the Saudi and Jordanian governments by publicly accusing Khaddam and Rifaat Assad?
Is Syria trying to get the word out indirectly through the willing, eager, but less than respectable outlet of Iran and Press TV instead?
These questions might be worthy of some more media attention.
Saudi Arabia, Jordan behind Syria unrest
Saudi Arabia, Jordan behind Syria unrest
The rise in anti-government protests and mounting political tension in Syria brings to mind the question about who is behind these deadly incidents.
A probe into the root causes of the latest events in Syria show that the revolt is mainly supported by Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The revolt began in the city of Daraa, 120 kilometers south of the capital Damascus and near the border with Jordan.
Daraa is the birthplace of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, which has close ties to the people in the Syrian city.
Undoubtedly, the Syrians, like other nations in the region, have some legitimate demands which have prompted the government to plan fundamental reforms. However, the protests have come with unjustifiable violence by some suspicious elements.
Similar protests were seen in 1982 against the government of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad in the cities of Hama and Daraa.
Hafez al-Assad -- the late father of current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- was president between 1970 and 2000 and was considered one of the powerful leaders in the Arab world.
Former Jordan King Hussein, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the then Saudi King Khalid incited Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood against Syria, when Hafez al-Assad backed Iran during the eight-year Iraqi-imposed war on Iran in the 1980s.
The fighting, which took place from 1982 to 1984, left more than 30,000 people dead, but the late Syrian president finally managed to end the crisis.
Saudi Arabia and Jordan continued their attempts to cause unrest in Syria after the death of Hafez al-Assad and his succession by his son.
Saudi Arabia, which often bows to US and Israel's policies in the region, tried to destabilize Bashar al-Assad's government by undermining his rule.
To this end, Saudi Arabia paid 30 million dollars to former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam to quit Assad's government.
Khaddam sought asylum in France in 2005 with the aid of Saudi Arabia and began to plot against the Syrian government with the exiled leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Khaddam, who is a relative of Saudi King Abdullah and former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, used his great wealth to form a political group with the aim of toppling Bashar al-Assad.
The triangle of Khaddam-Abdullah-Hariri is well-known in the region as their wives are sisters.
Khaddam's entire family enjoys Saudi citizenship and the value investment by his sons, Jamal and Jihad, in Saudi Arabia is estimated at more than USD 3 billion.
Therefore, with the start of popular protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, the Saudi regime saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between Tehran, Damascus and Beirut axis.
Due to the direct influence of the Saudi Wahhabis on Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, the people of the cities of Daraa and Homs, following Saudi incitement and using popular demands as an excuse began resorting to violence.
It is reported that the United States, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia formed joint operational headquarters in the Saudi Embassy in Belgium to direct the riots in southern Syria. Abdul Halim Khaddam, who held the highest political, executive and information posts in the Syrian government for more than 30 years, is said to have been transferred from Paris to Belgium to direct the unrest.
The reason for this was that based on French law, political asylum seekers cannot work against their countries of origin in France and therefore Khaddam was transferred to Brussels to guide the riots.
Jordan equipped the Muslim Brotherhood in the two cities with logistical facilities and personal weapons.
Although, Bashar al-Assad promised implementation of fundamental changes and reforms after the bloody riot in the country, the Brotherhood followed continued to incite protesters against him.
The Syrian state television recently broadcast footage of armed activity in the border city of Daraa by a guerilla group, which opened fire on the people and government forces. It is said that the group, which is affiliated to Salafi movements, obtained its weapons from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Because Syria's ruling party is from the Alevi tribes associated with the Shias, the Brotherhood, due to its anti-Shia ideas, has tried for three decades to topple the Alevi establishment of the country.
Hence, the recent riots in Syria are not just rooted in popular demands and harbor a tribal aspect and Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the US are directing the unrest for their future purposes.
In the eyes of these three, the removal of Syria's Alevi government would cause the Tehran-Damascus-Beirut axis to collapse and would be followed by the gradual weakening and elimination of Lebanon's resistance.
Therefore suadi and US efforts to topple Assad's government iare taking place with the aim of eliminating the last anti-Zionism resistance front.
This is while, considering the Syrian government's experience in resolving difficult crises, it is unlikely that Saudi Arabia and Jordan will succeed in weakening or toppling the Syrian ruling system.
HH/AKM/HN/HGH
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Press TV.
The rise in anti-government protests and mounting political tension in Syria brings to mind the question about who is behind these deadly incidents.
A probe into the root causes of the latest events in Syria show that the revolt is mainly supported by Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The revolt began in the city of Daraa, 120 kilometers south of the capital Damascus and near the border with Jordan.
Daraa is the birthplace of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, which has close ties to the people in the Syrian city.
Undoubtedly, the Syrians, like other nations in the region, have some legitimate demands which have prompted the government to plan fundamental reforms. However, the protests have come with unjustifiable violence by some suspicious elements.
Similar protests were seen in 1982 against the government of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad in the cities of Hama and Daraa.
Hafez al-Assad -- the late father of current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- was president between 1970 and 2000 and was considered one of the powerful leaders in the Arab world.
Former Jordan King Hussein, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the then Saudi King Khalid incited Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood against Syria, when Hafez al-Assad backed Iran during the eight-year Iraqi-imposed war on Iran in the 1980s.
The fighting, which took place from 1982 to 1984, left more than 30,000 people dead, but the late Syrian president finally managed to end the crisis.
Saudi Arabia and Jordan continued their attempts to cause unrest in Syria after the death of Hafez al-Assad and his succession by his son.
Saudi Arabia, which often bows to US and Israel's policies in the region, tried to destabilize Bashar al-Assad's government by undermining his rule.
To this end, Saudi Arabia paid 30 million dollars to former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam to quit Assad's government.
Khaddam sought asylum in France in 2005 with the aid of Saudi Arabia and began to plot against the Syrian government with the exiled leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Khaddam, who is a relative of Saudi King Abdullah and former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, used his great wealth to form a political group with the aim of toppling Bashar al-Assad.
The triangle of Khaddam-Abdullah-Hariri is well-known in the region as their wives are sisters.
Khaddam's entire family enjoys Saudi citizenship and the value investment by his sons, Jamal and Jihad, in Saudi Arabia is estimated at more than USD 3 billion.
Therefore, with the start of popular protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, the Saudi regime saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between Tehran, Damascus and Beirut axis.
Due to the direct influence of the Saudi Wahhabis on Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, the people of the cities of Daraa and Homs, following Saudi incitement and using popular demands as an excuse began resorting to violence.
It is reported that the United States, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia formed joint operational headquarters in the Saudi Embassy in Belgium to direct the riots in southern Syria. Abdul Halim Khaddam, who held the highest political, executive and information posts in the Syrian government for more than 30 years, is said to have been transferred from Paris to Belgium to direct the unrest.
The reason for this was that based on French law, political asylum seekers cannot work against their countries of origin in France and therefore Khaddam was transferred to Brussels to guide the riots.
Jordan equipped the Muslim Brotherhood in the two cities with logistical facilities and personal weapons.
Although, Bashar al-Assad promised implementation of fundamental changes and reforms after the bloody riot in the country, the Brotherhood followed continued to incite protesters against him.
The Syrian state television recently broadcast footage of armed activity in the border city of Daraa by a guerilla group, which opened fire on the people and government forces. It is said that the group, which is affiliated to Salafi movements, obtained its weapons from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Because Syria's ruling party is from the Alevi tribes associated with the Shias, the Brotherhood, due to its anti-Shia ideas, has tried for three decades to topple the Alevi establishment of the country.
Hence, the recent riots in Syria are not just rooted in popular demands and harbor a tribal aspect and Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the US are directing the unrest for their future purposes.
In the eyes of these three, the removal of Syria's Alevi government would cause the Tehran-Damascus-Beirut axis to collapse and would be followed by the gradual weakening and elimination of Lebanon's resistance.
Therefore suadi and US efforts to topple Assad's government iare taking place with the aim of eliminating the last anti-Zionism resistance front.
This is while, considering the Syrian government's experience in resolving difficult crises, it is unlikely that Saudi Arabia and Jordan will succeed in weakening or toppling the Syrian ruling system.
HH/AKM/HN/HGH
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Press TV.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Джамаа аль-Таухид Wal-джихад в Филиппин обратилось к Всемирному моджахедов, чтобы помочь джихаду в Филиппины
Джамаа аль-Таухид Wal-джихад в Филиппин обратилось к Всемирному моджахедов, чтобы помочь джихаду в Филиппины
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В последнее время, два видео выданных Джамаа аль-Таухид валь-Джихад, группа филиппинских была размещена в Джихад аль-Shumukh форуме. В первом видео, которое длится три минуты, человек, одетый в лицо покрытия и называл себя Абу-Джихад аль-Luzuni, обвинил Америку в оккупационных Филиппины, осуществляющих пытки и убийства мусульман. Он продолжал присягнуть на верность лидеру Аль-Каиды Айман аз-Шейх-Завахири и других групп, филиал Аль-Каиды.
Во второй записи, Абу Абдалла аль-Фарис Аль-Mulatham обратился к моджахедам во всем мире, чтобы оперативно оказывать помощь братьев-мусульман на Филиппинах, в которой он утверждал, что был убит и ограблен захватчика Америке и помогать моджахедам там с деньгами , армирование, знаний и подготовки.
Абу-Абдалла также присягнул на верность лидеры джихада во всем мире, в первую очередь с лидером Исламского Эмирата Афганистан мулла Мухаммад Омар, лидер Аль-Каиды Айман аз-Шейх-Завахири. Это видео длится около 11 минут, производится Аль-Ярмук СМИ.
Ниже приведены основные моменты и видео. Видео было выпущено до приезда госсекретаря США Хиллари Клинтон на Филиппины с официальным визитом, который продолжался в течение нескольких дней:
Абу-Джихад аль-Luzini в видеообращении, размещенном 7 ноября заявил, что нет никакого способа восстановить исламский халифат и освободить родину от kafireen за исключением пути джихада и мечи, которые оформлены в Аллаха.
Чтение трудов на арабском языке на листе бумаги в руке, Абу Джихада попросил всех мусульман, где бы они ни были, чтобы слова Аллаха Всевышнего, пока правда и справедливость нескрываемым, и он сказал, что единственным способом достижения этого является путем внедрения шариата Аллаха. Он подчеркнул, что мусульманская умма в настоящее время в состоянии унижения, под контролем врагов Ислама и мусульман, должны работать вместе, чтобы спасти умму от деградации и угнетения.
Выступая от имени моджахедов Филиппины, Аль-Luzuni сказал: "Мы, молодежь уммы, из различных племен острова Филиппин, озабочены тем, чтобы ответить на этот божественный вызов ... в рамках удалить горя и гнева со стороны сердца людей, кто имеет веру (т.е. мусульман), и защищать честь нашей угнетенных братьев и сестер, погибших и тех, кто были изгнаны из своих домов и земли, которые были украдены ... Мы призываем Вас помочь нам и подготовить нас с пути джихада ради Аллаха ... потому что нет никакого способа восстановить исламский халифат и славу ислама, для отражения врагов ислама, а также освобождение нашей родины от накипи других кафиров, кроме путем Джихад и обнаженные мечи ради Аллаха ".
В то время как Абу Абдулла начал видеозапись, подчеркнув, что Филиппины были исламские земли от древности, и что, хотя он был завоеван различными захватчиками на протяжении всей истории, мусульмане никогда не сдался им. Он обвинил Америку - у которого есть "оккупированных" Филиппинах более 100 лет - в пытках и убийствах мусульман и захватить их земли, вплоть до превращения мусульман стали беднейшие слои населения (на Филиппинах). Он обратился к исламской умме, чтобы не сидеть сложа руки, но, чтобы подняться и защитить свою религию, свою жизнь, свою честь, и их свойства.
Абу Абдалла затем присягнул на верность всех лидеров мирового джихада, говоря: "Мы заявляем о своей лояльности к Аллаху, Его Расул, верующих и их имамов сегодня, такие как мулла Омар Шейх Айман аз-Завахири, Абу Бакр аль-Багдади аль-Кураиши и эмир AQAP, AQIM, моджахеды Аш-Шабааб в Сомали и других фронтах джихада ".
Он сказал, что исламская умма будет взять на себя этот мир из Америки, потеряв силы, как мировой сверхдержавы, о чем свидетельствует потери, которые они испытывают в Афганистане. Он также отметил, крах американской экономики и падения жестоким правителям арабских стран, добавив, что правители в Йемене и Сирии могут быть обречены, как Муаммар Каддафи.
Абу Абдалла заключение выступающий призвал моджахедов во всем мире, чтобы помочь своим братьям на Филиппинах. "Мы действительно нуждаемся в вас, чтобы отправить нам специалист по взрывчатым веществам и производство оружия, как наши братья в Ираке и Афганистане ... или дать нам Львов (т.е. моджахедов), чтобы предоставить нам тренировки в стрельбе и инша Аллах и мы, и вы получите место в грядущем мире ".
(Arrahmah.com)
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В последнее время, два видео выданных Джамаа аль-Таухид валь-Джихад, группа филиппинских была размещена в Джихад аль-Shumukh форуме. В первом видео, которое длится три минуты, человек, одетый в лицо покрытия и называл себя Абу-Джихад аль-Luzuni, обвинил Америку в оккупационных Филиппины, осуществляющих пытки и убийства мусульман. Он продолжал присягнуть на верность лидеру Аль-Каиды Айман аз-Шейх-Завахири и других групп, филиал Аль-Каиды.
Во второй записи, Абу Абдалла аль-Фарис Аль-Mulatham обратился к моджахедам во всем мире, чтобы оперативно оказывать помощь братьев-мусульман на Филиппинах, в которой он утверждал, что был убит и ограблен захватчика Америке и помогать моджахедам там с деньгами , армирование, знаний и подготовки.
Абу-Абдалла также присягнул на верность лидеры джихада во всем мире, в первую очередь с лидером Исламского Эмирата Афганистан мулла Мухаммад Омар, лидер Аль-Каиды Айман аз-Шейх-Завахири. Это видео длится около 11 минут, производится Аль-Ярмук СМИ.
Ниже приведены основные моменты и видео. Видео было выпущено до приезда госсекретаря США Хиллари Клинтон на Филиппины с официальным визитом, который продолжался в течение нескольких дней:
Абу-Джихад аль-Luzini в видеообращении, размещенном 7 ноября заявил, что нет никакого способа восстановить исламский халифат и освободить родину от kafireen за исключением пути джихада и мечи, которые оформлены в Аллаха.
Чтение трудов на арабском языке на листе бумаги в руке, Абу Джихада попросил всех мусульман, где бы они ни были, чтобы слова Аллаха Всевышнего, пока правда и справедливость нескрываемым, и он сказал, что единственным способом достижения этого является путем внедрения шариата Аллаха. Он подчеркнул, что мусульманская умма в настоящее время в состоянии унижения, под контролем врагов Ислама и мусульман, должны работать вместе, чтобы спасти умму от деградации и угнетения.
Выступая от имени моджахедов Филиппины, Аль-Luzuni сказал: "Мы, молодежь уммы, из различных племен острова Филиппин, озабочены тем, чтобы ответить на этот божественный вызов ... в рамках удалить горя и гнева со стороны сердца людей, кто имеет веру (т.е. мусульман), и защищать честь нашей угнетенных братьев и сестер, погибших и тех, кто были изгнаны из своих домов и земли, которые были украдены ... Мы призываем Вас помочь нам и подготовить нас с пути джихада ради Аллаха ... потому что нет никакого способа восстановить исламский халифат и славу ислама, для отражения врагов ислама, а также освобождение нашей родины от накипи других кафиров, кроме путем Джихад и обнаженные мечи ради Аллаха ".
В то время как Абу Абдулла начал видеозапись, подчеркнув, что Филиппины были исламские земли от древности, и что, хотя он был завоеван различными захватчиками на протяжении всей истории, мусульмане никогда не сдался им. Он обвинил Америку - у которого есть "оккупированных" Филиппинах более 100 лет - в пытках и убийствах мусульман и захватить их земли, вплоть до превращения мусульман стали беднейшие слои населения (на Филиппинах). Он обратился к исламской умме, чтобы не сидеть сложа руки, но, чтобы подняться и защитить свою религию, свою жизнь, свою честь, и их свойства.
Абу Абдалла затем присягнул на верность всех лидеров мирового джихада, говоря: "Мы заявляем о своей лояльности к Аллаху, Его Расул, верующих и их имамов сегодня, такие как мулла Омар Шейх Айман аз-Завахири, Абу Бакр аль-Багдади аль-Кураиши и эмир AQAP, AQIM, моджахеды Аш-Шабааб в Сомали и других фронтах джихада ".
Он сказал, что исламская умма будет взять на себя этот мир из Америки, потеряв силы, как мировой сверхдержавы, о чем свидетельствует потери, которые они испытывают в Афганистане. Он также отметил, крах американской экономики и падения жестоким правителям арабских стран, добавив, что правители в Йемене и Сирии могут быть обречены, как Муаммар Каддафи.
Абу Абдалла заключение выступающий призвал моджахедов во всем мире, чтобы помочь своим братьям на Филиппинах. "Мы действительно нуждаемся в вас, чтобы отправить нам специалист по взрывчатым веществам и производство оружия, как наши братья в Ираке и Афганистане ... или дать нам Львов (т.е. моджахедов), чтобы предоставить нам тренировки в стрельбе и инша Аллах и мы, и вы получите место в грядущем мире ".
(Arrahmah.com)
Attention Deficits after Traumatic Brain Injury
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) frequently produces impairments of attention in humans. These can result in a failure to maintain consistent goal-directed behavior. A predominantly right-lateralized frontoparietal network is often engaged during attentionally demanding tasks. However, lapses of attention have also been
associated with increases in activation within the default mode network (DMN).
Here, we study TBI patients with sustained attention impairment, defined on the basis of the consistency of their behavioral performance over time.Weshow that sustained attention impairments in patients are associated with an increase inDMNactivation, particularly within the precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex. Furthermore, the interaction of the precuneus with the rest of theDMNat the start of the task, i.e., its functional connectivity, predicts which patients go on to show impairments of attention. Importantly, this predictive information is present before any behavioral evidence of sustained attention impairment, and the relationship is also found in a subgroup of patients without focal brain damage.
TBI often results in diffuse axonal injury, which produces cognitive impairment by disconnecting nodes in distributed brain networks. Using diffusion tensor imaging, we demonstrate that structural disconnection within the DMN also correlates with the level of sustained attention. These results show that abnormalities inDMNfunction are a sensitive marker of impairments of attention and suggest that changes in connectivity within theDMNare central to the development of attentional impairment after TBI.
Functional connectivity analysis. For the functional connectivity analyses,
we used an independent component analysis (ICA)-based approach
(using multivariate exploratory linear decomposition into independent
components) (Beckmann and Smith, 2004) in combination with a “dual
regression technique” (Filippini et al., 2009; Zuo et al., 2010; Leech et al.,
2011). This involved an initial ICA decomposition of the data, followed
by further functional connectivity analysis of the output of the ICA. This
approach has a number of advantages over the use of seed voxel-based
approaches and has been used to probe behavioral and pathology-related
differences in multiple populations (Damoiseaux et al., 2008; Filippini et
al., 2009).
Temporal concatenation ICA was first used to define 25 reference
network maps common to task performance in patients and controls
(Beckmann et al., 2005). We then selected a single reference component
that captured the previously described DMN, and a set of anticorrelated
brain regions described previously as being part of both an executive
control network (including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and a salience
network (including the anterior cingulate and anterior insular
cortices) (Seeley et al., 2007). We refer to this network as the executive
control/salience network (EC/SN) (see Fig. 4A). To dissociate the respective
effect of DMN and EC/SN functional connectivity, this component
was split into its positive (DMN) and negative (EC/SN) parts.
These two subcomponents were further analyzed separately.
Preprocessed functional data from each individual were split into three equal parts, allowing the analysis of the initial and last thirds of the CRT separately.
Subsequent functional connectivity analysis was performed using the
dual regression approach (Filippini et al., 2009). This approach allows
the derivation of the individual independent component (IC) time
courses and spatial maps corresponding to the DMN and EC/SN.
Dual regression proceeds in three steps. In step 1, all unthresholded
group maps from the ICA output are linearly regressed against the first
and the last third of the preprocessed functional data from each individual
(spatial regression). This produces subject-specific time courses of
signal fluctuation corresponding to each group-level IC. In step 2, the
time courses are variance normalized and then linearly regressed against
the corresponding fMRI data (temporal regression), converting each
time series into subject-specific spatial maps of the corresponding component
(in this case the EC/SN and DMN). This method reliably produces
subject-specific approximations to the unthresholded spatial ICs
in the group ICA output (Zuo et al., 2010). In step 3, these individuallevel
dual-regression components were subsequently used to evaluate
individual functional connectivity. We extracted functional connectivity
from ROIs within the DMN and EC/SN separately for T1 and T3. Three
Figure 1. Overview of the methods used to analyze behavioral and brain changes during the performance of the CRT.
13444 • J. Neurosci., September 21, 2011 • 31(38):13442–13451 Bonnelle et al. • Sustained Attention Deficits and the Default Mode Network
ROIs were defined using the peaks of functional connectivity local maxima
from the DMN and EC/SN components. They corresponded to
the two major DMN nodes (MNI coordinates, precuneus, 6, 62, 28;
vmPFC, 2, 54, 8) and a region of the EC/SN where patients with
sustained attention impairment showed increased activation over time
[anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), 2, 22, 40]. The measures derived
from this analysis index the strength of functional connectivity from each
region to the rest of its network during T1 and T3 separately. For instance,
the measure plotted on Figure 4B represents the functional connectivity
of the precuneus to the rest of the DMN during T1, controlling
for age. The average gray matter densities of the DMN and EC/SN were
extracted from individual gray matter density maps used previously as
confound regressors in the FEAT analysis. To control for individual variability
in gray matter density, these measures were regressed-out of the
functional connectivity analyses.
associated with increases in activation within the default mode network (DMN).
Here, we study TBI patients with sustained attention impairment, defined on the basis of the consistency of their behavioral performance over time.Weshow that sustained attention impairments in patients are associated with an increase inDMNactivation, particularly within the precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex. Furthermore, the interaction of the precuneus with the rest of theDMNat the start of the task, i.e., its functional connectivity, predicts which patients go on to show impairments of attention. Importantly, this predictive information is present before any behavioral evidence of sustained attention impairment, and the relationship is also found in a subgroup of patients without focal brain damage.
TBI often results in diffuse axonal injury, which produces cognitive impairment by disconnecting nodes in distributed brain networks. Using diffusion tensor imaging, we demonstrate that structural disconnection within the DMN also correlates with the level of sustained attention. These results show that abnormalities inDMNfunction are a sensitive marker of impairments of attention and suggest that changes in connectivity within theDMNare central to the development of attentional impairment after TBI.
Functional connectivity analysis. For the functional connectivity analyses,
we used an independent component analysis (ICA)-based approach
(using multivariate exploratory linear decomposition into independent
components) (Beckmann and Smith, 2004) in combination with a “dual
regression technique” (Filippini et al., 2009; Zuo et al., 2010; Leech et al.,
2011). This involved an initial ICA decomposition of the data, followed
by further functional connectivity analysis of the output of the ICA. This
approach has a number of advantages over the use of seed voxel-based
approaches and has been used to probe behavioral and pathology-related
differences in multiple populations (Damoiseaux et al., 2008; Filippini et
al., 2009).
Temporal concatenation ICA was first used to define 25 reference
network maps common to task performance in patients and controls
(Beckmann et al., 2005). We then selected a single reference component
that captured the previously described DMN, and a set of anticorrelated
brain regions described previously as being part of both an executive
control network (including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and a salience
network (including the anterior cingulate and anterior insular
cortices) (Seeley et al., 2007). We refer to this network as the executive
control/salience network (EC/SN) (see Fig. 4A). To dissociate the respective
effect of DMN and EC/SN functional connectivity, this component
was split into its positive (DMN) and negative (EC/SN) parts.
These two subcomponents were further analyzed separately.
Preprocessed functional data from each individual were split into three equal parts, allowing the analysis of the initial and last thirds of the CRT separately.
Subsequent functional connectivity analysis was performed using the
dual regression approach (Filippini et al., 2009). This approach allows
the derivation of the individual independent component (IC) time
courses and spatial maps corresponding to the DMN and EC/SN.
Dual regression proceeds in three steps. In step 1, all unthresholded
group maps from the ICA output are linearly regressed against the first
and the last third of the preprocessed functional data from each individual
(spatial regression). This produces subject-specific time courses of
signal fluctuation corresponding to each group-level IC. In step 2, the
time courses are variance normalized and then linearly regressed against
the corresponding fMRI data (temporal regression), converting each
time series into subject-specific spatial maps of the corresponding component
(in this case the EC/SN and DMN). This method reliably produces
subject-specific approximations to the unthresholded spatial ICs
in the group ICA output (Zuo et al., 2010). In step 3, these individuallevel
dual-regression components were subsequently used to evaluate
individual functional connectivity. We extracted functional connectivity
from ROIs within the DMN and EC/SN separately for T1 and T3. Three
Figure 1. Overview of the methods used to analyze behavioral and brain changes during the performance of the CRT.
13444 • J. Neurosci., September 21, 2011 • 31(38):13442–13451 Bonnelle et al. • Sustained Attention Deficits and the Default Mode Network
ROIs were defined using the peaks of functional connectivity local maxima
from the DMN and EC/SN components. They corresponded to
the two major DMN nodes (MNI coordinates, precuneus, 6, 62, 28;
vmPFC, 2, 54, 8) and a region of the EC/SN where patients with
sustained attention impairment showed increased activation over time
[anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), 2, 22, 40]. The measures derived
from this analysis index the strength of functional connectivity from each
region to the rest of its network during T1 and T3 separately. For instance,
the measure plotted on Figure 4B represents the functional connectivity
of the precuneus to the rest of the DMN during T1, controlling
for age. The average gray matter densities of the DMN and EC/SN were
extracted from individual gray matter density maps used previously as
confound regressors in the FEAT analysis. To control for individual variability
in gray matter density, these measures were regressed-out of the
functional connectivity analyses.
Friday, January 27, 2012
DEENUL ISLAM: THE MAMLUKS, WHO WERE THEY?
DEENUL ISLAM: THE MAMLUKS, WHO WERE THEY?: THE MAMLUKS, WHO WERE THEY? The word Mamluk means ‘owned’ and the Mamluks were not native to Egypt but were always slave soldiers, mainly ...
THE MAMLUKS, WHO WERE THEY?
THE MAMLUKS, WHO WERE THEY?
The word Mamluk means ‘owned’ and the Mamluks were not native to Egypt but were always slave soldiers, mainly Qipchak Turks from Central Asia. In principle (though not always in practice) a Mamluk could not pass his property or title to his son, indeed sons were in theory denied the opportunity to serve in Mamluk regiments, so the group had to be constantly replenished from outside sources. The Bahri Mamluks were mainly natives of southern Russia and the Burgi comprised chiefly of Circassians from the Caucasus. As steppe people, they had more in common with the Mongols than with the peoples of Syria and Egypt among whom they lived. And they kept their garrisons distinct, not mixing with the populace in the territories. The contemporary Arab historian Abu Shama noted after the Mamluk victory over the Mongols at Ayn Jalut in 1260 that, ‘the people of the steppe had been destroyed by the people of the steppe’.
Boys of about thirteen would be captured from areas to the north of the Persian empire, and trained to become an elite force for the personal use of the sultan or higher lords. The Arabic word Ghulam (boy) was sometimes employed for the bodyguards they would become. The boys would be sent by the caliph or sultan to enforce his rule as far afield as Spain (Venice and Genoa were major players in their transportation despite Papal interdictions) and sold to the commanders of the Islamic governments of the region. Under their new masters they were manumitted, converted to Islam, and underwent intensive military training.
The Mamluks ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 until 1517, when their dynasty was extinguished by the Ottomans. But Mamluks had first appeared in the Abbasid caliphate in the ninth century and even after their overthrow by the Ottomans they continued to form an important part of Egyptian Islamic society and existed as an influential group until the nineteenth century. They destroyed the Crusader kingdoms of Outremer, and saved Syria, Egypt and the holy places of Islam from the Mongols. They made Cairo the dominant city of the Islamic world in the later Middle Ages, and under these apparently unlettered soldier-statesmens’ rule, craftsmanship, architecture and scholarship flourished. Yet the dynasty remains virtually unknown to many in the West.
The dynasty had two phases. From 1250 to 1381 the Bahri clique produced the Mamluk Sultans; from 1382 until 1517 the Burgi Mamluks were dominant. These groups were named after the principal regiments provided by the Mamluks for the last Ayyubid sultan Al-Salih whom they served before overthrowing him in 1250; the Bahirya or River Island regiment, based on a river island in the centre of Cairo and the Burgi or Tower regiment.
The Mamluks, who had been taken from their families in their youth and had no ties of kin in their new homelands, were personally dependant on their master. This gave the Mamluk state, divorced as it was from its parent society, a solidity that allowed it to survive the tensions of tribalism and personal ambition, through establishment of interdependency between the lower orders and sergeants and the higher lords.
And at the centre Mamluk were not supposed to be able to inherit wealth or power beyond their own generation but attempts to create lineage did occur and every succession was announced by internecine struggles.
In theory a Mamluk’s life prepared him for little else but war and loyalty to his lord. Great emphasis was placed upon the Furusiyya – a word made up of the three elements: the ‘ulum (science), funun (arts) and adab (literature) – of cavalry skills. The Furusiyya was not dissimilar to the chivalric code of the Christian knight insofar as it included a moral code embracing virtues such as courage, valour, magnanimity and generosity; but it also addressed the management, training and care of the horses that carried the warrior into battle and provided him with leisure time sporting activities. It also included cavalry tactics, riding techniques, armour and mounted archery. Some texts even discussed military tactics: the formation of armies, the use of fire and smoke screens. Even the treatment of wounds was addressed.
The Mamluk dynasty carefully codified the Furusiyya, and beautiful illustrated examples were produced. These books also carry the mark of the Mongol influence; many pages are decorated with lotuses and phoenixes, motifs carried from China through the Pax Mongolica.
The Mamluks lived almost entirely within their garrisons, and their leisure activities show a striking correspondence to the much earlier comment of the military writer Vegetius that the Romans’ drills were bloodless battles and their battles were bloody drills. Polo was the chief among these for the Mamluks; with its need for control of the horse, tight turns and bursts of speed, it mimicked the skills required on the battlefield. Mounted archery competitions, horseback acrobatics and mounted combat shows similar to European jousting often took place up to twice a week. The Mamluk sultan Baybars constructed a hippodrome in Cairo to stage these games and polo matches.
The Mamluks’ opportunity to overthrow their masters came at the end of the 1240s, a time when the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, set up by Saladin in the 1170s, had reached a modus vivendi with the Crusader states; skirmishing, rather than outright war, was the order of the day in Syria and the Holy Land. However, events in the east were beginning to impact on the region. The Mongols on the eastern steppes were attacking western Chinese tribes and advancing into southern Russia, pushing other peoples west. In 1244 and with the tacit support of the Ayyubids in Cairo, Jerusalem fell to a wandering band of Khwarezmians, an eastern Persian group who were themselves fleeing the Mongol destruction of their fledgling empire. One of their first acts was to destroy the tombs of the Latin kings of Jerusalem. In response, Louis IX of France (St Louis; r.1226-70) called a crusade (the seventh) though neither the papacy nor any other major Christian monarch was stirred to action. Rather than directly attacking the Holy Land, Louis planned to wrest the rich lands of Egypt from Islam, hoping that control there would lead to the control of Syria.
Louis took Damietta in the Nile delta in June 1249 with an army of about 20,000 men. The Egyptian army withdrew further up the river. Louis started to march on Cairo in November and should have gained an advantage from the death of the last Ayyubid sultan, al-Salih. Despite chaos in Cairo during which the sultan’s widow, Shaggar ad Durr, took control – initially with Mamluk support – Louis and the Templars were roundly defeated by the Mamluk Bahirya commander Baybars at al-Mansourah (al-Mansur). Louis refused to fall back to Damietta and his troops starved, before a belated retreat during which he was captured in March 1250. He was ransomed in return for Damietta and 400,000 livres. Louis left for Acre where he attempted a long-distance negotiation with the Mongols (who he may have believed to be the forces of the mythical Christian king Prester John) to assist with him against the Muslims.
Louis took Damietta in the Nile delta in June 1249 with an army of about 20,000 men. The Egyptian army withdrew further up the river. Louis started to march on Cairo in November and should have gained an advantage from the death of the last Ayyubid sultan, al-Salih. Despite chaos in Cairo during which the sultan’s widow, Shaggar ad Durr, took control – initially with Mamluk support – Louis and the Templars were roundly defeated by the Mamluk Bahirya commander Baybars at al-Mansourah (al-Mansur). Louis refused to fall back to Damietta and his troops starved, before a belated retreat during which he was captured in March 1250. He was ransomed in return for Damietta and 400,000 livres. Louis left for Acre where he attempted a long-distance negotiation with the Mongols (who he may have believed to be the forces of the mythical Christian king Prester John) to assist with him against the Muslims.
Al-Salih had done much to promote the power of the Mamluks during his reign, perhaps too much, and the Mamluks eventually forced Shaggar ad Durr to marry their commander Aybeg. Louis’ crusade therefore proved the catalyst for the Mamluks to finally dispense with their Ayyubid overlords. The Bahri Mamluk dynasty was set up in 1250, with Aybeg as its first, though not uncontested, sultan.
However, Aybeg was later murdered in his bath on his wife’s orders. More political murders followed including the beating to death of Shaggar ad Durr until Qutuz, the vice-regent, brought the factions bloodily under his control.
In February 1258 the Mongol armies of Hulegu, grandson of Genghis Khan and the brother of Kublai, later the Great Khan and Emperor of China, took Baghdad. The Mongols undertook a wholesale massacre: at least 250,000 were killed, but the intercession of Hulegu’s wife spared the Nestorian Christians. Mongol troopers kicked al-Musta’sim, the last Abbasid caliph and spiritual leader of Islam, to death after having rolled him in a carpet – the Mongols did not wish to spill royal blood directly. Aleppo fell almost as bloodily soon after, and it was widely reported, though perhaps untrue, that the Mongols used cats with burning tails sent running into the city to end the siege by fire.
Damascus quickly capitulated, but one of those who escaped the Mongols was the Mamluk general Baybars (1223-77), who had been instrumental in the defeat of Louis in 1249. He fled back to Cairo.
The Mongols completed their conquest of Syria by the near-annihilation of the Assassin sects and by over-running the kingdoms of Anatolia. Only Egypt, a few isolated cities in Syria and the Arabian Peninsula were left to Islam in its historic heartland. The Mamluk sultanate, in power for less than a decade, had shown few signs of enduring. It was led by sultan Qutuz, who had seized power in November 1259 and was still consolidating his authority.
Hulegu sent envoys to Qutuz in Cairo demanding his surrender. Qutuz killed the envoys and placed their heads on the gates of the city, considering treaty with the Mongols to be impossible and that exile into the ‘bloodthirsty desert’ was equivalent to death. Qutuz mobilized and was joined by Baybars.
At this point news arrived that the Mongol Great Khan Mongke had died, and Hulegu returned to Karakorum to support his branch of the family’s claim on power. The remaining Mongol army in Syria was still formidable, numbering about 20,000 men under Hulegu’s lieutenant, Kit Buqa. The Mamluk and Mongol armies encamped in Palestine in July 1260, and met at Ayn Jalut on September 8th.
Initially, the Mamluks encountered a detached division of Mongols and drove them to the banks of the Orontes River. Kit Buqa was then drawn into a full engagement; Qutuz met the first onslaught with a small detachment of Mamluks; he feigned retreat and led the Mongol army into an ambush that was sprung from three sides. The battle lasted from dawn till midday. The Mamluks employed fire to trap Mongols who were either trying to hide or flee the field; Kit Buqa was taken alive and summarily executed by Qutuz. According to the Jama al-Tawarikh (a fourteenth-century Persian history) he swore his death would be revenged by Hulegu and that the gates of Egypt would shake with the thunder of Mongol cavalry horses.
As the Mamluks returned to Cairo, Baybars murdered Qutuz and seized the sultanate himself. This event set the pattern of succession in the Mamluk Empire: only a handful of Sultans ever died of natural causes and of these, one died from pneumonia brought on by permanently wearing armour to ward off assassination attempts. The average reign of the sultans was a mere seven years. Despite this the dynasty proved to be one of the most stable political entities of the medieval Middle East. After the Ottomans had hung the last Mamluk sultan in 1517, the loss of the Mamluks was universally lamented in Egypt, and many minor Mamluk functionaries remained to manage the Turks’ new province.
Baybars I proved thorough and ruthless, and a gifted exponent of realpolitik. Even though he was to follow his victory over the Mongols with an assault on the remaining Crusader cities in Syria, he maintained friendly relations with Norman Sicily; and even though he attempted to destroy what remained of Assassin power in Syria, he employed what was left of them to carry out political murders amongst both his domestic rivals and enemy leaders. Indeed the future king Edward I of England was fortunate to survive a Baybars’ sponsored Assassin attempt on his life in Acre in 1271 during the Eighth Crusade. For some years Baybars kept a member of the Abbasid family as a puppet caliph to engender legitimacy for the Mamluk dynasty – until the unfortunate man was packed off to North Africa; he was never heard of again. Baybars is said to have died in 1277 from drinking a cup of poisoned wine intended for a guest; the story is probably apocryphal but it fits well with the nature of his life.
It has been suggested that the Mongols, the invincible force of the time, were outclassed by the Mamluks on the battlefield; the Mongols were lightly armoured horse-archers riding small steppe ponies and carrying little but ‘home-made’ weapons for close combat, whereas the heavily armoured Mamluks, on larger Arab-bred horses, could match them in their mounted archery and then close and kill with the lance, club and sword. It has also been argued that the Mongols were lacking in organizational training whereas the Mamluks spent their lives in training. According to this view, the Mongols were most effective only in terms of their mobility and their rate of fire. The Mongols’ use of ‘heavy’ arrows, allied with the waves of galloping cohorts each of which would fire four or five arrows into the enemy would exhaust the opposition. Indeed, this together with outflanking manoeuvres, appears to have been the pattern of Mongol attacks. Each Mongol trooper had several fresh mounts ready to ensure the momentum of the attack was not lost.
The Mamluks could match the Mongols’ archery assault with their crafted bows and armour and, though they had just one horse each, they could use the larger size of these mounts to deliver a charge like that of Norman knights but with the addition of mobile archery and a ‘Parthian shot’ if required during withdrawal. The timing of the charge was all. The Mamluks were able to destroy the Mongol army at Ayn Jalut – and again at the second battle of Homs in 1281 – by a series of attacks; their command and control mechanisms must have been impressive.
The Mamluks themselves formed only the core of Syrian and Egyptian armies. Shortly after Ayn Jalut, the Mongols were defeated again at Homs in 1260 by an army combining Ayyubid levies and Mamluks. Islamic success against the Mongols was founded on the military abilities of the Mamluks, but it was Mamluk statecraft that ultimately defeated the invaders. As well as rapidly clearing Syria of Mongols, they began a process of fortification and improved communications and diplomacy with the Islamic princes of the region, thus consolidating Egyptian power in Syria. The protection of Syria was central to the Mamluk claim to be the defenders of Islam. Egypt’s resources were devoted to building and training the army for Syria, which was always mobilized at the slightest provocation from the Mongols.
As well as holding the Mongols at bay, Baybars destroyed the Christian lands of Outremer. In 1263 he captured Nazareth and destroyed the environs of Acre. In 1265 he captured Caesarea and Haifa. He then took the fortified town of Arsuf from the Knight Hospitallers and occupied the Christian town of Athlit. Safed was taken from the Knight Templars in 1266. He slaughtered the Christians if they resisted, and had a particular enmity for the military orders: the Templars and Hospitallers received no quarter. Qalawun, his general and a later sultan, led an army into Armenia in 1266. Sis, the capital, fell in September 1266. With the fall of Armenia the Crusader city of Antioch, first captured by Bohemond in 1098, was isolated. Baybars commenced its siege on May 14th, 1268 and the city fell four days later. All the inhabitants who were not killed were enslaved.
Baybars may have feared an alliance between the Mongols and Christian powers. The Mongols certainly tried to achieve this and in 1271 Edward Plantagenet, during the Eighth Crusade, was able to convince them to send a sizeable force into Syria to reduce the Mamluk pressure on the remaining Crusader cities. But after the failure of the Crusade the last cities soon fell: Tripoli was taken by the army of Sultan Qalawun, Baybar’s successor, in 1289 and the Crusader settlement of Acre fell in 1291. This effectively made the Syrian coast an impossible beachhead for Christians; there would be no more Crusader attempts to regain the Holy Land or Syria.
The Mamluk dynasty was now secure, and it lasted until the sixteenth century. Power struggles prevented continuity at the centre, and even after the Circassian Burji Mamluks seized power from the Bahri Mamluks in the mid-fourteenth century, factionalism and insecurity continued unabated. The Mamluks managed successfully to re-establish their Syrian powerbases following Timur’s brief but hugely destructive invasion in the early 1400s; but the dynasty had been left weakened by the Black Death which had made repeated onslaughts through the Middle East from the mid-fourteenth century and it soon lost the valuable trade revenues of Syria after the Portuguese had opened up Europe’s Ocean trade and the route to India in the later fifteenth century. In the end it took two only two brief battles for the Ottoman Sultan Selim I to decimate the last Mamluk army to take the field just outside Cairo near the Pyramids in 1517. The Ottoman army used firearms and artillery, but the Mamluks rode out to meet them with bow, lance and sword. History had caught up with them.
Selim I continued to employ a Mamluk as viceroy, however, and recruitment of Circassians as ‘tax farmers’ continued until the new age arrived in Egypt with Napoleon’s army in 1798. Indeed faction building and Mamluk infighting were still characteristic of Egyptian politics in the early nineteenth century.
Although warfare was the primary concern of these slave soldiers, their contribution to the Islamic arts and architecture was immense. Many of the sultans were remarkable builders, a fine example being Sultan Qalawun’s mausoleum complex in Cairo, which includes a mosque, a religious school and hospital. The dynasty’s achievements in the arts of the book, especially of the Qur’an, are also very fine. The importance of fighting and training meant that the art of the armourer was highly prized; Mamluk armour was decorated and intricate, helmets, leggings, spurs and shields often carried inscriptions such as:
The word Mamluk means ‘owned’ and the Mamluks were not native to Egypt but were always slave soldiers, mainly Qipchak Turks from Central Asia. In principle (though not always in practice) a Mamluk could not pass his property or title to his son, indeed sons were in theory denied the opportunity to serve in Mamluk regiments, so the group had to be constantly replenished from outside sources. The Bahri Mamluks were mainly natives of southern Russia and the Burgi comprised chiefly of Circassians from the Caucasus. As steppe people, they had more in common with the Mongols than with the peoples of Syria and Egypt among whom they lived. And they kept their garrisons distinct, not mixing with the populace in the territories. The contemporary Arab historian Abu Shama noted after the Mamluk victory over the Mongols at Ayn Jalut in 1260 that, ‘the people of the steppe had been destroyed by the people of the steppe’.
Boys of about thirteen would be captured from areas to the north of the Persian empire, and trained to become an elite force for the personal use of the sultan or higher lords. The Arabic word Ghulam (boy) was sometimes employed for the bodyguards they would become. The boys would be sent by the caliph or sultan to enforce his rule as far afield as Spain (Venice and Genoa were major players in their transportation despite Papal interdictions) and sold to the commanders of the Islamic governments of the region. Under their new masters they were manumitted, converted to Islam, and underwent intensive military training.
The Mamluks ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 until 1517, when their dynasty was extinguished by the Ottomans. But Mamluks had first appeared in the Abbasid caliphate in the ninth century and even after their overthrow by the Ottomans they continued to form an important part of Egyptian Islamic society and existed as an influential group until the nineteenth century. They destroyed the Crusader kingdoms of Outremer, and saved Syria, Egypt and the holy places of Islam from the Mongols. They made Cairo the dominant city of the Islamic world in the later Middle Ages, and under these apparently unlettered soldier-statesmens’ rule, craftsmanship, architecture and scholarship flourished. Yet the dynasty remains virtually unknown to many in the West.
The dynasty had two phases. From 1250 to 1381 the Bahri clique produced the Mamluk Sultans; from 1382 until 1517 the Burgi Mamluks were dominant. These groups were named after the principal regiments provided by the Mamluks for the last Ayyubid sultan Al-Salih whom they served before overthrowing him in 1250; the Bahirya or River Island regiment, based on a river island in the centre of Cairo and the Burgi or Tower regiment.
The Mamluks, who had been taken from their families in their youth and had no ties of kin in their new homelands, were personally dependant on their master. This gave the Mamluk state, divorced as it was from its parent society, a solidity that allowed it to survive the tensions of tribalism and personal ambition, through establishment of interdependency between the lower orders and sergeants and the higher lords.
And at the centre Mamluk were not supposed to be able to inherit wealth or power beyond their own generation but attempts to create lineage did occur and every succession was announced by internecine struggles.
In theory a Mamluk’s life prepared him for little else but war and loyalty to his lord. Great emphasis was placed upon the Furusiyya – a word made up of the three elements: the ‘ulum (science), funun (arts) and adab (literature) – of cavalry skills. The Furusiyya was not dissimilar to the chivalric code of the Christian knight insofar as it included a moral code embracing virtues such as courage, valour, magnanimity and generosity; but it also addressed the management, training and care of the horses that carried the warrior into battle and provided him with leisure time sporting activities. It also included cavalry tactics, riding techniques, armour and mounted archery. Some texts even discussed military tactics: the formation of armies, the use of fire and smoke screens. Even the treatment of wounds was addressed.
The Mamluk dynasty carefully codified the Furusiyya, and beautiful illustrated examples were produced. These books also carry the mark of the Mongol influence; many pages are decorated with lotuses and phoenixes, motifs carried from China through the Pax Mongolica.
The Mamluks lived almost entirely within their garrisons, and their leisure activities show a striking correspondence to the much earlier comment of the military writer Vegetius that the Romans’ drills were bloodless battles and their battles were bloody drills. Polo was the chief among these for the Mamluks; with its need for control of the horse, tight turns and bursts of speed, it mimicked the skills required on the battlefield. Mounted archery competitions, horseback acrobatics and mounted combat shows similar to European jousting often took place up to twice a week. The Mamluk sultan Baybars constructed a hippodrome in Cairo to stage these games and polo matches.
The Mamluks’ opportunity to overthrow their masters came at the end of the 1240s, a time when the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, set up by Saladin in the 1170s, had reached a modus vivendi with the Crusader states; skirmishing, rather than outright war, was the order of the day in Syria and the Holy Land. However, events in the east were beginning to impact on the region. The Mongols on the eastern steppes were attacking western Chinese tribes and advancing into southern Russia, pushing other peoples west. In 1244 and with the tacit support of the Ayyubids in Cairo, Jerusalem fell to a wandering band of Khwarezmians, an eastern Persian group who were themselves fleeing the Mongol destruction of their fledgling empire. One of their first acts was to destroy the tombs of the Latin kings of Jerusalem. In response, Louis IX of France (St Louis; r.1226-70) called a crusade (the seventh) though neither the papacy nor any other major Christian monarch was stirred to action. Rather than directly attacking the Holy Land, Louis planned to wrest the rich lands of Egypt from Islam, hoping that control there would lead to the control of Syria.
Louis took Damietta in the Nile delta in June 1249 with an army of about 20,000 men. The Egyptian army withdrew further up the river. Louis started to march on Cairo in November and should have gained an advantage from the death of the last Ayyubid sultan, al-Salih. Despite chaos in Cairo during which the sultan’s widow, Shaggar ad Durr, took control – initially with Mamluk support – Louis and the Templars were roundly defeated by the Mamluk Bahirya commander Baybars at al-Mansourah (al-Mansur). Louis refused to fall back to Damietta and his troops starved, before a belated retreat during which he was captured in March 1250. He was ransomed in return for Damietta and 400,000 livres. Louis left for Acre where he attempted a long-distance negotiation with the Mongols (who he may have believed to be the forces of the mythical Christian king Prester John) to assist with him against the Muslims.
Louis took Damietta in the Nile delta in June 1249 with an army of about 20,000 men. The Egyptian army withdrew further up the river. Louis started to march on Cairo in November and should have gained an advantage from the death of the last Ayyubid sultan, al-Salih. Despite chaos in Cairo during which the sultan’s widow, Shaggar ad Durr, took control – initially with Mamluk support – Louis and the Templars were roundly defeated by the Mamluk Bahirya commander Baybars at al-Mansourah (al-Mansur). Louis refused to fall back to Damietta and his troops starved, before a belated retreat during which he was captured in March 1250. He was ransomed in return for Damietta and 400,000 livres. Louis left for Acre where he attempted a long-distance negotiation with the Mongols (who he may have believed to be the forces of the mythical Christian king Prester John) to assist with him against the Muslims.
Al-Salih had done much to promote the power of the Mamluks during his reign, perhaps too much, and the Mamluks eventually forced Shaggar ad Durr to marry their commander Aybeg. Louis’ crusade therefore proved the catalyst for the Mamluks to finally dispense with their Ayyubid overlords. The Bahri Mamluk dynasty was set up in 1250, with Aybeg as its first, though not uncontested, sultan.
However, Aybeg was later murdered in his bath on his wife’s orders. More political murders followed including the beating to death of Shaggar ad Durr until Qutuz, the vice-regent, brought the factions bloodily under his control.
In February 1258 the Mongol armies of Hulegu, grandson of Genghis Khan and the brother of Kublai, later the Great Khan and Emperor of China, took Baghdad. The Mongols undertook a wholesale massacre: at least 250,000 were killed, but the intercession of Hulegu’s wife spared the Nestorian Christians. Mongol troopers kicked al-Musta’sim, the last Abbasid caliph and spiritual leader of Islam, to death after having rolled him in a carpet – the Mongols did not wish to spill royal blood directly. Aleppo fell almost as bloodily soon after, and it was widely reported, though perhaps untrue, that the Mongols used cats with burning tails sent running into the city to end the siege by fire.
Damascus quickly capitulated, but one of those who escaped the Mongols was the Mamluk general Baybars (1223-77), who had been instrumental in the defeat of Louis in 1249. He fled back to Cairo.
The Mongols completed their conquest of Syria by the near-annihilation of the Assassin sects and by over-running the kingdoms of Anatolia. Only Egypt, a few isolated cities in Syria and the Arabian Peninsula were left to Islam in its historic heartland. The Mamluk sultanate, in power for less than a decade, had shown few signs of enduring. It was led by sultan Qutuz, who had seized power in November 1259 and was still consolidating his authority.
Hulegu sent envoys to Qutuz in Cairo demanding his surrender. Qutuz killed the envoys and placed their heads on the gates of the city, considering treaty with the Mongols to be impossible and that exile into the ‘bloodthirsty desert’ was equivalent to death. Qutuz mobilized and was joined by Baybars.
At this point news arrived that the Mongol Great Khan Mongke had died, and Hulegu returned to Karakorum to support his branch of the family’s claim on power. The remaining Mongol army in Syria was still formidable, numbering about 20,000 men under Hulegu’s lieutenant, Kit Buqa. The Mamluk and Mongol armies encamped in Palestine in July 1260, and met at Ayn Jalut on September 8th.
Initially, the Mamluks encountered a detached division of Mongols and drove them to the banks of the Orontes River. Kit Buqa was then drawn into a full engagement; Qutuz met the first onslaught with a small detachment of Mamluks; he feigned retreat and led the Mongol army into an ambush that was sprung from three sides. The battle lasted from dawn till midday. The Mamluks employed fire to trap Mongols who were either trying to hide or flee the field; Kit Buqa was taken alive and summarily executed by Qutuz. According to the Jama al-Tawarikh (a fourteenth-century Persian history) he swore his death would be revenged by Hulegu and that the gates of Egypt would shake with the thunder of Mongol cavalry horses.
As the Mamluks returned to Cairo, Baybars murdered Qutuz and seized the sultanate himself. This event set the pattern of succession in the Mamluk Empire: only a handful of Sultans ever died of natural causes and of these, one died from pneumonia brought on by permanently wearing armour to ward off assassination attempts. The average reign of the sultans was a mere seven years. Despite this the dynasty proved to be one of the most stable political entities of the medieval Middle East. After the Ottomans had hung the last Mamluk sultan in 1517, the loss of the Mamluks was universally lamented in Egypt, and many minor Mamluk functionaries remained to manage the Turks’ new province.
Baybars I proved thorough and ruthless, and a gifted exponent of realpolitik. Even though he was to follow his victory over the Mongols with an assault on the remaining Crusader cities in Syria, he maintained friendly relations with Norman Sicily; and even though he attempted to destroy what remained of Assassin power in Syria, he employed what was left of them to carry out political murders amongst both his domestic rivals and enemy leaders. Indeed the future king Edward I of England was fortunate to survive a Baybars’ sponsored Assassin attempt on his life in Acre in 1271 during the Eighth Crusade. For some years Baybars kept a member of the Abbasid family as a puppet caliph to engender legitimacy for the Mamluk dynasty – until the unfortunate man was packed off to North Africa; he was never heard of again. Baybars is said to have died in 1277 from drinking a cup of poisoned wine intended for a guest; the story is probably apocryphal but it fits well with the nature of his life.
It has been suggested that the Mongols, the invincible force of the time, were outclassed by the Mamluks on the battlefield; the Mongols were lightly armoured horse-archers riding small steppe ponies and carrying little but ‘home-made’ weapons for close combat, whereas the heavily armoured Mamluks, on larger Arab-bred horses, could match them in their mounted archery and then close and kill with the lance, club and sword. It has also been argued that the Mongols were lacking in organizational training whereas the Mamluks spent their lives in training. According to this view, the Mongols were most effective only in terms of their mobility and their rate of fire. The Mongols’ use of ‘heavy’ arrows, allied with the waves of galloping cohorts each of which would fire four or five arrows into the enemy would exhaust the opposition. Indeed, this together with outflanking manoeuvres, appears to have been the pattern of Mongol attacks. Each Mongol trooper had several fresh mounts ready to ensure the momentum of the attack was not lost.
The Mamluks could match the Mongols’ archery assault with their crafted bows and armour and, though they had just one horse each, they could use the larger size of these mounts to deliver a charge like that of Norman knights but with the addition of mobile archery and a ‘Parthian shot’ if required during withdrawal. The timing of the charge was all. The Mamluks were able to destroy the Mongol army at Ayn Jalut – and again at the second battle of Homs in 1281 – by a series of attacks; their command and control mechanisms must have been impressive.
The Mamluks themselves formed only the core of Syrian and Egyptian armies. Shortly after Ayn Jalut, the Mongols were defeated again at Homs in 1260 by an army combining Ayyubid levies and Mamluks. Islamic success against the Mongols was founded on the military abilities of the Mamluks, but it was Mamluk statecraft that ultimately defeated the invaders. As well as rapidly clearing Syria of Mongols, they began a process of fortification and improved communications and diplomacy with the Islamic princes of the region, thus consolidating Egyptian power in Syria. The protection of Syria was central to the Mamluk claim to be the defenders of Islam. Egypt’s resources were devoted to building and training the army for Syria, which was always mobilized at the slightest provocation from the Mongols.
As well as holding the Mongols at bay, Baybars destroyed the Christian lands of Outremer. In 1263 he captured Nazareth and destroyed the environs of Acre. In 1265 he captured Caesarea and Haifa. He then took the fortified town of Arsuf from the Knight Hospitallers and occupied the Christian town of Athlit. Safed was taken from the Knight Templars in 1266. He slaughtered the Christians if they resisted, and had a particular enmity for the military orders: the Templars and Hospitallers received no quarter. Qalawun, his general and a later sultan, led an army into Armenia in 1266. Sis, the capital, fell in September 1266. With the fall of Armenia the Crusader city of Antioch, first captured by Bohemond in 1098, was isolated. Baybars commenced its siege on May 14th, 1268 and the city fell four days later. All the inhabitants who were not killed were enslaved.
Baybars may have feared an alliance between the Mongols and Christian powers. The Mongols certainly tried to achieve this and in 1271 Edward Plantagenet, during the Eighth Crusade, was able to convince them to send a sizeable force into Syria to reduce the Mamluk pressure on the remaining Crusader cities. But after the failure of the Crusade the last cities soon fell: Tripoli was taken by the army of Sultan Qalawun, Baybar’s successor, in 1289 and the Crusader settlement of Acre fell in 1291. This effectively made the Syrian coast an impossible beachhead for Christians; there would be no more Crusader attempts to regain the Holy Land or Syria.
The Mamluk dynasty was now secure, and it lasted until the sixteenth century. Power struggles prevented continuity at the centre, and even after the Circassian Burji Mamluks seized power from the Bahri Mamluks in the mid-fourteenth century, factionalism and insecurity continued unabated. The Mamluks managed successfully to re-establish their Syrian powerbases following Timur’s brief but hugely destructive invasion in the early 1400s; but the dynasty had been left weakened by the Black Death which had made repeated onslaughts through the Middle East from the mid-fourteenth century and it soon lost the valuable trade revenues of Syria after the Portuguese had opened up Europe’s Ocean trade and the route to India in the later fifteenth century. In the end it took two only two brief battles for the Ottoman Sultan Selim I to decimate the last Mamluk army to take the field just outside Cairo near the Pyramids in 1517. The Ottoman army used firearms and artillery, but the Mamluks rode out to meet them with bow, lance and sword. History had caught up with them.
Selim I continued to employ a Mamluk as viceroy, however, and recruitment of Circassians as ‘tax farmers’ continued until the new age arrived in Egypt with Napoleon’s army in 1798. Indeed faction building and Mamluk infighting were still characteristic of Egyptian politics in the early nineteenth century.
Although warfare was the primary concern of these slave soldiers, their contribution to the Islamic arts and architecture was immense. Many of the sultans were remarkable builders, a fine example being Sultan Qalawun’s mausoleum complex in Cairo, which includes a mosque, a religious school and hospital. The dynasty’s achievements in the arts of the book, especially of the Qur’an, are also very fine. The importance of fighting and training meant that the art of the armourer was highly prized; Mamluk armour was decorated and intricate, helmets, leggings, spurs and shields often carried inscriptions such as:
Father of the poor and miserable, killer of the unbelievers and the polytheists, reviver of justice among all.An offshoot of this artifice was high quality metalwork, such as candlesticks, lamps, ewers and basins, highly decorated with musicians and dancers, warriors and images of the hunt. Intricate decoration of Mamluk glassware can also be seen in mosque lamps, many carrying the Qu’ranic inscription,
The lamp enclosed in glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star’– a suitable testament to a dynasty that prevailed against the most powerful empire of the medieval age.
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