Entire Indian Army cannot defend Kashmir against terrorists, dialogue only option, says Farooq Abdullah

Entire Indian Army cannot defend Kashmir against terrorists, dialogue only option, says Farooq Abdullah

Jammu: Dialogue is the only way forward for a resolution to the Kashmir issue, former chief minister Farooq Abdullah on Saturday said even as he held that nothing has been done to reclaim Pakistan-occupied Kashmir from the neighbouring country while reiterating views that have invited criticism.

"The only way left is to hold dialogue and find a solution (to the Kashmir issue)," the National Conference leader said at a function in Jammu.

"Ever since I came into politics, I have always said that this state (PoK and J-K) can never become one. Neither do we have the power to take back their part (PoK) nor have they (Pakistan) the power to take our part; we are a nuclear power and they, too, are," he said at a discussion by civil society to explore the ways for bringing peace and reconciliation between the two countries.

"How much can the army defend us; even if the entire army of India came to our rescue, they cannot defend us against terrorists or militants. The only way left is to hold dialogue and find a solution," he stressed.

He said he was hopeful that the Kashmir issue would be solved during the tenure of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but that did not happen.

In the wake of his comments on Friday, he blamed the media for hyping up his statement and said his views about Pakistan continuing to hold PoK and India keeping J&K could not be the only scenario and he would accept any decision which was acceptable to the majority of people in India, Pakistan and J&K.

"I never said it was the ultimate solution that they keep their part and we keep ours. If you have a better solution acceptable to a majority of Indians, Pakistanis and J&K citizens, it is also acceptable to us," he said while urging that dialogue has to be started for reaching a resolution.

Referring to the 1994 Parliament resolution on PoK, Farooq said nothing has been done following its adoption unanimously to reclaim area under Pakistani occupation.

"They say there is a resolution in Parliament; but tell me what the Parliament has done so far to reclaim that part.

"You passed the resolution, tell me how many resolutions are there in United Nations regarding Kashmir; have any of those been implemented. People on both sides are suffering due to the cross-border firing," he said.

Meanwhile, BJP on Saturday sought an apology from Abdullah for his remarks that "PoK is part of Pakistan" and said he was "deliberately raking up" the issue in order to remain in news for his political survival.

"For how many years have we been saying that it (PoK) is part of India. What have we done so far, have we ever taken it back," he had said on Friday.

The former J&K chief minister said that even though Nawaz Sharif was heading the government in Pakistan, the real power was in the hands of the army there.

Further, claiming that if Pakistan army wanted, it would not take more than two minutes for it to get Sharif removed, he said, "The day problems between India and Pakistan are resolved, Pakistan army will lose its significance."

He said that a former Pakistan external affairs minister had told him that before the Prime Ministers of the two nations decide to meet, all roadblocks that may impede any meaningful dialogue need to be removed.

On the issue of the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits, he said that the country has till date not been able to accomplish that.

"When I tried to do it, the very same day two massacres took place in Ganderbal and Budgam in which innocent and unarmed Kashmiri Pandits were killed.

"How will the situation improve till the time Pakistan does not understand that this part of J&K will never become their part," he said.

Recalling that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had tried to find a way out in Egypt's Sharm-al-Sheikh, Abdullah said that the attempt had evoked a backlash in the country and within Congress.

"There was a hue and cry in India and even in his own party which said that if you talk friendship with Pakistan we will lose elections. Let these elections go to hell which divide the people," he said.

"Every election makes India weak and does not strengthen it", he said, adding that "we get divided into religions and even divide religion into small parts".

Seeking to caution India and Pakistan against America, he claimed that the country was a friend of neither of the two South Asian neighbours and was only interested in selling its weapons to both.

Talking about the Kashmir problem, he said that it was not an economic but a political one.

"We are saying we have got a Rs 80,000-crore package, now we will do everything. This is not an issue of development. It is a political issue which has to be resolved. If it was only about money, then the country has already spent billions on this state, but the issue still lingers," he said.

Meanwhile, in an apparent attack on PDP, he charged that "they (PDP) claim Abdullah used to say that we will drop bombs; ask them, when our houses were being blown, when our hospitals and schools were being blown, when our people were being fired upon because they were the ones who were carrying Tricolour, what was their fault.

"They were killed inside their houses. What should have Farooq Abdullah said, to keep quiet."

Without taking any names, he further said that "man was being made an enemy of another man and now they are ruling and saying such things... they don't have a conscience. God knows what attraction they have with each other."

Turning to Pakistan, he stressed that he was proud to be an Indian and an Indian Muslim.

"I want friendship but I don't want to be their slave. I am for sure a Muslim, but I am not a Chinese, Pakistani or an English Muslim; I am an Indian Muslim, I am born an India, live as an Indian and will die as an Indian," he said.

"Today Farooq Abdullah is sitting amongst you, he might not be there tomorrow. Tomorrow, some terrorists will kill me but I am not afraid. I am only afraid of Allah," he added.

He said that the need of the hour was to strengthen the unity amongst the different religions in the country.

"We have to strengthen the bond between Hindu, Muslims, Sikhs and other religions and our survival is not possible without the survival of
India," he said.

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/entire-indian-army-cannot-defend-kashmir-against-terrorists-dialogue-only-option-says-farooq-abdullah-2525330.html

Watch live TV debate: Can an independent Jammu and Kashmir survive? My guests are Professor Rafiq Bhatti, Major Saeed Ul Hassan and Ch Dil Pazeer

Watch live TV debate: Can an independent Jammu and Kashmir survive?

My guests are Professor Rafiq Bhatti, Major Saeed Ul Hassan and Ch Dil Pazeer

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBb6BOTesH4

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZrqnHiTATY&feature=youtu.be

It’s time for working solution on Kashmir

It’s time for working solution on Kashmir

In the past ten days or so we have had an Army colonel killed in Kashmir and a lieutenant colonel injured in a fight with terrorists. Both incidents occurred in northern Kashmir in the Kupwara area. The year had begun with a colonel losing his life at Tral in south Kashmir. It is evident that the incursions from the Pakistan side have been intense throughout the year, and attempts to push in armed extremists to spread mayhem in the Valley have gained in urgency of late as it is time for the winter snows to impede cross-border passage.

Commanding officers laying down their lives in the line of duty speaks of their dedication and this will inspire younger officers and also junior commissioned officers (JCOs) not to flinch. There has been a loss of JCO lives as well, and they are a critical link between the officers and the men. But officers dying is a clear sign that the fighting is regular and in proximity of where the Army is. The Army casualties are in addition to paramilitary and police casualties.

Given its current geopolitical situation, Pakistan believes it is in a sweet spot. For their own ends the Chinese have promised to spend billions of dollars in infrastructure-building in Pakistan. The Americans have offered Islamabad primacy in their political calculus in the Afghan context. These have acted as signals for the policymakers in Pakistan, especially the Deep State, to act against India with abandon.

This largely explains the rise in militancy in Kashmir in the past year and upping the ante by Islamabad. There appears to be insufficient realisation of this in India. It is time Parliament discussed Kashmir and Pakistan threadbare and asked the government about its proposed line of action and held it accountable.

It has been quite obvious that the Modi government has not come up with anything approaching a working solution. Its domestic politics in respect of J&K seems barren. The only significant announcements seem to be about return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley without ascertaining if they really wish to go back. For the rest, the government appears to suffer from complacency about the fact that it is sharing power in J&K for the first time since independence.

It is precisely when terrorist incursions are on a sustained high, and the men of our security forces are having to make the supreme sacrifice on a too frequent basis, even among the higher ranks, that we need to have the politics on the ground right so that the terrorist elements coming from the other side do not find a receptive environment in the Valley, and the new generation being lured toward extremism can be weaned away.

http://www.asianage.com/editorial/it-s-time-working-solution-kashmir-953

PoK is in Pakistan and will remain, J&K is in India and will remain. We need to understand this-Farooq Abdullah

PoK is in Pakistan and will remain, J&K is in India and will remain. We need to understand this-Farooq Abdullah

NEW DELHI: Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah has said the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) would remain with Pakistan, while Jammu and Kashmir would be with India.

"PoK is in Pakistan, and will remain. J&K is in India, and will remain. We need to understand this," news agency ANI reported Abdullah as saying to reporters. "War is not the solution, only lives are lost. Dialogue is the only option," he added.

The controversial statement, seen as endorsing the Pakistan line on Kashmir, immediately triggered an angry rebuttal from many leaders. "The 1994 Parliament resolution clearly said that Pakistan Occupied Kashmir is constitutionally a part of India," Jammu and Kashmir's Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh said. 

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence and partition in 1947, two over Kashmir. The disputed frontier is one of the world's most heavily militarised regions.

Border clashes and ceasefire violations at the Line of Control also pose a constant risk of escalation of tension between the two countries.

As relations between the two neighbours continue to remain tense, Pakistan's insistence that Kashmir is central to any talks has only made it worse. New Delhi has maintained that Kashmir remains an integral part of India.

Abdullah, a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, had also served as a Union minister during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/PoK-will-remain-with-Pakistan-Jammu-and-Kashmir-with-India-Farooq-Abdullah/articleshow/49946593.cms

Class War And David Cameron, Keep our Country Safe Military Action against ISIS”

Class War And David Cameron, Keep our Country Safe Military Action against ISIS”

British Prime Minister David Cameron has said it is time for Britain to join air strikes against Islamic State in Syria (ISIS). After the killing of 130 people in Paris, he feels the tide has now turned in favour of military action against ISIS. Cameron has told the British public that such action is vital to protect Britain from similar attacks.

Although in 2013 Cameron lost a vote in parliament on air strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces (based on the lie that government forces had used chemical weapons), he is now arguing that Britain does not have the luxury of being able to wait any longer to launch attacks on Syrian territory, this time supposedly on ISIS.  Some anticipate that Cameron might push for a vote on the matter in parliament within the coming week.

However, any talk about attacking Syria to make Britain ‘safer’ is based on hollow rhetoric, as Graham Vanbergen writes:

“In the 12 years preceding the Invasion of Iraq, 65 people in Europe were killed by various ‘terrorist’ attacks, mainly in France, Italy and Greece. In the 12 years since that fateful invasion, the terrorists kill rate has increased by nearly 600%. Far from making its citizens safer, politicians have achieved the opposite.”

For all Cameron’s seemingly high-minded utterances about protecting Britain by attacking the territory of a sovereign state thousands of miles away, it is worth reflecting on Felicity Arbuthnot’s observation that what he is advocating is wholly illegal:

“David Cameron is morphing in to his pal, alleged war criminal Tony Blair and is attempting to persuade Parliament that Britain must join those illegally in Syrian air space and equally illegally drop its own bombs with no UN mandate for such action. The Cameron backing media is beating the war drums along with America’s partisan hacks…”

Like Blair before him, Cameron is using a good old dose of fear mongering and a grab for the moral high ground in an attempt to disguise the illegal nature of what he is advocating. The hypocrisy is palpable.

Earlier this year, in response to Syrian refugees arriving in Europe, Cameron said that he felt deeply moved by the image of a Syrian boy dead on a Turkish beach. As pressure mounted on Britain to take in more of those fleeing to Europe, he added that the country would fulfil its moral responsibilities.

Anyone who had been following the Syrian conflict at that point could not have failed to detect the hypocrisy. Former French foreign minister Roland Dumas has stated that Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009. He told French TV:

“I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business… I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria.”

Writing in The Guardian in 2013, Nafeez Ahmed discussed leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials, that confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within.”

According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years,” starting with Iraq and moving on to “Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region’s vast oil and gas resources.

In 2009, Syrian President Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets in direct competition with Russia and in the hope of further undermining and helping to break the energy-dependent Russian economy. Russian ally Assad refused to sign and instead pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran crossing Iraq and into Syria that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe. Thus Assad had to go.

Last year, Cameron told the United Nations that Britain was ready to play its part in confronting “an evil against which the whole world must unite.” He also said that that “we” must not be so “frozen with fear” of repeating the mistakes of the 2003 Iraq invasion. He was attempting to drum up support for wider Anglo-US direct military action against the Syria under the pretext of attacking ISIS.

A year on, it’s the same story with added impetus due to the attacks in Paris. Cameron is again trying his hand again at pushing Britain into war: one that it is already covertly involved up to its neck in and one that Britain has already ‘subcontracted’ out to a bunch of anti-Assad terror groups, the foot soldiers of US-led imperialism in the region.

Cameron’s call for an urgent military response by Britain comes on the back of the events in Paris, which occurred at a highly convenient time as Russia’s (wholly legal and UN-backed) actions in Syria were severely undermining the anti-Assad militias – trained, funded and supported by the West, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others (see the forthcoming book ‘The Dirty War on Syria’ by Tim Anderson). Russian intervention has turned the tide against the West’s proxy forces in the region, including ISIS.

David Cameron is manipulating a war-fatigued public into getting behind yet another military intervention disguised as yet another component of the bogus ‘war on terror’. Whether it involves rhetoric about ‘Russian aggression’ or it involves a US-backed coup in Ukraine, the destruction of Libya or NATO-Saudi-backed terror in Syria, these components are not for one minute to be regarded by the public as the planned machinations of empire with the aim of destroying or at least severely weakening Russia. The public must be kept confused and most of all fearful of the designated bogeyman of Washington’s choice.

If Cameron is serious about defeating ISIS, he would do better to join with Russia and help sever the logistics that enable ISIS to function as a fighting force in Syria. All roads lead to Turkey (quite literally) and Saudi Arabia. But Cameron’s role is to dance to the neocon’s tune in Washington, to deceive the public, to lie to it and to push the world ever closer to a major conflict with Russia.

His sidekick, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon is also on cue. Speaking on Britain’s Radio 5, he stated the need

“to spend less on some things like the welfare system and to spend more on things that really matter to keep our country safe.”

With a £12 billion saving on cuts to the welfare budget, Fallon was attempting to justify a £12 billion increase to the military budget to help pay for eight BAE warships, nine Boeing maritime patrol crafts, surveillance drones and Lockheed Martin jets.

Add on the cost replacing the Trident nuclear programme put at around £31 billion, with another £10 billion being set aside for contingencies, and it is clear where Britain’s priorities lie: not with ordinary people whose jobs have been sold to the lowest bidder abroad and who now see their liberties and welfare state being dismantled under the lies of ‘austerity’ (a manifestation of ‘class war’, as Noam Chomsky correctly states) and tackling terrorism but with arms companies and militarism.

Cuts to welfare, increases in military spending and events in Syria form part of an ongoing war on working people. That’s because militarism is but one arm of a neoliberal agenda that seeks to bend all working people and regional elites – whether Assad, Putin, Saddam or Gaddafi – to the will of Western capital. It is ordinary working people who ultimately pay the price, whether refugees fleeing from conflict, civilian deaths in war zones or those subject to the types of structural violence that ‘austerity’ or other forms of economic warfare brings courtesy of the IMF, World Bank, WTO or trade agreements like NAFTA, TPA and TTIP. And, ultimately, it is the Lockhead Martins, the Blackwaters (XE Services) and the BAEs, the Chevrons and Occidental Petroleums, the Halliburtons and Monsantos and the financial interests on Wall Street and in the City of London that benefit.

As the media get ready to cheer lead Cameron into war with the unstated aim of removing Assad from power, this fact should not be lost on anyone, not least the British public.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/class-war-and-david-cameron-keep-our-country-safe-military-action-against-isis/5491884

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Colin Todhunter, Global Research, 2015

The ISIS Rockefellers, How Islamic State Oil Flows to Israel

The ISIS Rockefellers, How Islamic State Oil Flows to Israel

Oil produced by the Islamic State group finances its bloodlust. But how is it extracted, transported and sold? Who is buying it, and how does it reach Israel?

Oil produced from fields under the control of the Islamic State group is at the heart of a new investigation by al-Araby al-Jadeed. The black gold is extracted, transported and sold, providing the armed group with a vital financial lifeline.

But who buys it? Who finances the murderous brutality that has taken over swathes of Iraq and Syria? How does it get from the ground to the petrol tank, and who profits along the way?

The Islamic State group uses millions of dollars in oil revenues to expand and manage vast areas under its control, home to around five million civilians.

IS sells Iraqi and Syrian oil for a very low price to Kurdish and Turkish smuggling networks and mafias, who label it and sell it on as barrels from the Kurdistan Regional Government.

It is then most frequently transported from Turkey to Israel, via knowing or unknowing middlemen, according to al-Araby’s investigation.

The Islamic State group has told al-Araby that it did not intentionally sell oil to Israel, blaming agents along the route to international markets.

Oil fields

All around IS-controlled oil fields in northern Iraq and eastern Syria, there are signs that read: “Photography is strictly forbidden – violators risk their safety.” They have been signed in the name of the IS group.

These oil fields are in production between seven and nine hours a day, from sunset to sunrise, while production is mostly supervised by the Iraqi workers and engineers who had previously been running operations, kept on in their jobs by IS after it captured the territory.

IS is heavily dependent on its oil revenues. Its other income, such as from donations and kidnap ransoms has slowly dwindled. Workers in IS oil fields and their families are well looked after, because they are very important to the group’s financial survival.

IS oil extraction capacity developed further in 2015 when it obtained hydraulic machines and electric pumps after taking control of the Allas and Ajeel oil fields near the Iraqi city of Tikrit.

The group also seized the equipment of a small Asian oil company that was developing an oil field close to the Iraqi city of Mosul before IS overran the area last June.

IS oil production in Syria is focused on the Conoco and al-Taim oil fields, west and northwest of Deir Ezzor, while in Iraq the group uses al-Najma and al-Qayara fields near Mosul. A number of smaller fields in both Iraq and Syria are used by the group for local energy needs.

According to estimates based on the number of oil tankers that leave Iraq, in addition to al-Araby‘s sources in the Turkish town of Sirnak on the border with Iraq, through which smuggled oil transits, IS is producing an average of 30,000 barrels a day from the Iraqi and Syrian oil fields it controls.

The export trek

Al-Araby has obtained information about how IS smuggles oil from a colonel in the Iraqi Intelligence Services who we are keeping anonymous for his security.

The information was verified by Kurdish security officials, employees at the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, and an official at one of three oil companies that deal in IS-smuggled oil.

The Iraqi colonel, who along with US investigators is working on a way to stop terrorist finance streams, told al-Araby about the stages that the smuggled oil goes through from the points of extraction in Iraqi oil fields to its destination – notably including the port of Ashdod, Israel.

“After the oil is extracted and loaded, the oil tankers leave Nineveh province and head north to the city of Zakho, 88km north of Mosul,” the colonel said. Zakho is a Kurdish city in Iraqi Kurdistan, right on the border with Turkey.

“After IS oil lorries arrive in Zakho – normally 70 to 100 of them at a time – they are met by oil smuggling mafias, a mix of Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, in addition to some Turks and Iranians,” the colonel continued.

“The person in charge of the oil shipment sells the oil to the highest bidder,” the colonel added. Competition between organised gangs has reached fever pitch, and the assassination of mafia leaders has become commonplace.

The highest bidder pays between 10 and 25 percent of the oil’s value in cash – US dollars – and the remainder is paid later, according to the colonel.

The drivers hand over their vehicles to other drivers who carry permits and papers to cross the border into Turkey with the shipment, the Iraqi intelligence officer said. The original drivers are given empty lorries to drive back to IS-controlled areas.

According to the colonel, these transactions usually take place in a variety of locations on the outskirts of Zakho. The locations are agreed by phone.

Before crossing any borders, the mafias transfer the crude oil to privately owned rudimentary refineries, where the oil is heated and again loaded onto lorries to transfer them across the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing into Turkey.

The rudimentary refining, according to the colonel, is performed because Turkish authorities do not allow crude oil to cross the border if it is not licensed by the Iraqi government.

The initial refining stage is conducted to obtain documents that would pass the oil off as oil by-products, which are allowed through the border.

According to the intelligence officer, border officials receive large bribes from local Iraqi smuggling gangs and privately owned refineries.

Once in Turkey, the lorries continue to the town of Silopi, where the oil is delivered to a person who goes by the aliases of Dr Farid, Hajji Farid and Uncle Farid.

Uncle Farid is an Israeli-Greek dual national in his fifties. He is usually accompanied by two strong-built men in a black Jeep Cherokee. Because of the risk involved in taking a photo of Uncle Farid, a representative drawing was made of him.

Once inside Turkey, IS oil is indistinguishable from oil sold by the Kurdistan Regional Government, as both are sold as “illegal”, “source unknown” or “unlicensed” oil.

The companies that buy the KRG oil also buy IS-smuggled oil, according to the colonel.

The route to Israel

After paying drivers, middlemen and bribes, IS’ profit is $15 to $18 a barrel. The group currently makes $19 million on average each month, according to the intelligence officer.

Uncle Farid owns a licensed import-export business that he uses to broker deals between the smuggling mafias that buy IS oil and the three oil companies that export the oil to Israel.

Al-Araby has the names of these companies and details of their illegal trades. One of these companies is also supported by a very high-profile Western official.

The companies compete to buy the smuggled oil and then transfer it to Israel through the Turkish ports of Mersin, Dortyol and Ceyhan, according to the colonel.

Al-Araby has discovered several brokers who work in the same business as Uncle Farid – but he remains the most influential and effective broker when it comes to marketing smuggled oil.

A paper written by marine engineers George Kioukstsolou and Dr Alec D Coutroubis at the University of Greenwich tracked the oil trade through Ceyhan port, and found some correlation between IS military successes and spikes in the oil output at the port.

In August, the Financial Times reported that Israel obtained up to 75 percent of its oil supplies from Iraqi Kurdistan. More than a third of such exports go through the port of Ceyhan, which the FT authors describe as a “potential gateway for IS-smuggled crude”.

Kioukstsolou told al-Araby al-Jadeed that this suggests corruption by middlemen and those at the lower end of the trade hierarchy – rather than institutional abuse by multinational businesses or governments.

According to a European official at an international oil company who met with al-Araby in a Gulf capital, Israel refines the oil only “once or twice” because it does not have advanced refineries. It exports the oil to Mediterranean countries – where the oil “gains a semi-legitimate status” – for $30 to $35 a barrel.

“The oil is sold within a day or two to a number of private companies, while the majority goes to an Italian refinery owned by one of the largest shareholders in an Italian football club [name removed] where the oil is refined and used locally,” added the European oil official.

“Israel has in one way or another become the main marketer of IS oil. Without them, most IS-produced oil would have remained going between Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Even the three companies would not receive the oil if they did not have a buyer in Israel,” said the industry official.

According to him, most countries avoid dealing in this type of smuggled oil, despite its alluring price, due to legal implications and the war against the Islamic State group.

Delivery and payment

Al-Araby has discovered that IS uses a variety of ways to receive payments for its smuggled oil – in a manner similar to other international criminal networks.

First, IS receives a cash payment worth 10 to 25 percent of the oil’s value upon sale to the criminal gangs operating around the Turkish border.

Second, payments from oil trading companies are deposited in a private Turkish bank account belonging to an anonymous Iraqi person, through someone such as Uncle Farid, and then transferred to Mosul and Raqqa, laundered through a number of currency exchange companies.

Third, oil payments are used to buy cars that are exported to Iraq, where they are sold by IS operatives in Baghdad and southern cities, and the funds transferred internally to the IS treasury.

IS responds

Hours before this investigation report was concluded, al-Araby was able to talk via Skype to someone close to IS in the self-acclaimed capital of the “caliphate,” Raqqa, in Syria.

“To be fair, the [IS] organisation sells oil from caliphate territories but does not aim to sell it to Israel or any other country,” he said. “It produces and sells it via mediators, then companies, who decide whom to sell it to.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-isis-rockefellers-how-islamic-state-oil-flows-to israel/5491897?utm_source=Global+Research+Newsletter&utm_campaign=f178558e9c-Newsletter_27_11_1511_27_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0ec9ab057f-f178558e9c-81307689&ct=t(Newsletter_27_11_1511_27_2015)&mc_cid=f178558e9c&mc_eid=469d48f9a5

THE INDIA PAKISTAN CONFRONTATION

THE INDIA PAKISTAN CONFRONTATION

The Pakistani military strategists rely on its nuclear arsenal as a main counter-measure against the possible Indian aggression. On October 19, Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Aizaz Chaudhry officially confirmed that Islamabad has plans to use low-yield nuclear weapons to impede advancing Indian troops in case of a military conflict. The Pakistan’s attitude is a response to a new Indian military doctrine, named “Cold Start”. New Delhi denies the existence of Cold Start as a concept, attributing the terminology to off-the-cuff remarks by Indian officers. Nonetheless, India has been implementing a strategy that has greatly alarmed Pakistan, driving Islamabad to invest in tactical nuclear weapons and alter its own nuclear posture.

Indeed, it’s nothing new in a new Indian military doctrine. New Delhi started to develop it after the conflict between countries in 2011. After the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian parliament building in New Delhi by suspected Kashmiri militants, India launched Operation Parakram which failed. It took India’s strike corps nearly three weeks to reach the Pakistani border, by which time Pakistan had effectively mobilized its own defenses. The very same time, international pressure on India became acute and India was pushed to abandon the plans of intervention.

Subsequently, the Indian military has adopted a far more proactive strategy relying on immediate offensive operations against Pakistan. The offensive will be spearheaded by eight cohesive operational maneuver groups with significant artillery and immediately air support. They are deployed close to the Pakistani border at a higher level of readiness and able to launch operations within 96 hours. The strategy aims to achieve shallow territorial penetrations in Pakistan — not exceeding 80 kilometers. If this occurs, Islamabad will be in a complicated situation to use nuclear weapons at own territory amid the knowledge that Indian battle groups would not aim to advance deeper into Pakistan.

Islamabad is aware of the widening gap in conventional military capabilities between itself and India and has taken an asymmetric approach to the new threat, building up and relying on an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, lower yield nuclear weapons designed for direct use on the battlefield against enemy forces. Pakistan is calculating that tactical nuclear weapons would essentially counter India’s conventional military superiority. Although it is a nuclear power, India does not operate or plan to develop tactical nuclear weapons. So, Pakistan will have an advance. In turn, this situation is conducting additional risks of a wider escalation into a strategic nuclear exchange that might include non-military targets such as cities.

Thus, India has adopted a quick-launch posture which will be hardly de-escalated by international diplomacy’s measures. It won’t be enough time for this. In turn, the Pakistani defense and deterrence capabilities are grounded on a usage of the tactical nuclear weapons. This is raising the possibility of a full-scale nuclear war on the South Asia in case of a potential conflict between Pakistan and India.

Furthermore, India’s rapid response doctrine can be triggered by a terrorist attack as, for instance, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s 2008 Mumbai attacks. Considering the fact that India and Pakistan actively use militant groups against each other, any terror attack could conduct a full-scale conflict.

Separately, Saudi Arabia is financing a major part of the Pakistani nuclear program. The Saudi authorities likely consider the Pakistani asymmetric strategy as a useful approach for themselves. Considering a low combat potential of the Saudi military forces, tactical nuclear weapons could become the only security guarantee for the current regime in Riyadh. At a later stage, the nuclear cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will probably lead to the Riyadh’s attempt to become a nuclear state without any additional exploration in the sphere.

http://southfront.org/foreign-policy-diary-the-india-pakistan-conflict-in-progress/

Why has the US invaded occupied or bombed 14 Muslim countries in 30 years? By Jeff Faux

Why has the US invaded occupied or bombed 14 Muslim countries in 30 years? 

TO PLACATE their pique at his effort to get a non-proliferation agreement with Iran, Barack Obama met last Thursday at Camp David with Saudi royals and leaders of the other five feudal dictatorships of the Persian Gulf.

He reaffirmed the United States “ironclad” commitment to their security and promised even more military aid and cooperation. After the personal dust-up between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu settles, we can expect the Administration and Congress to add even more steel to our commitment to protect and subsidize Israel by adding more to its already vast store of sophisticated weapons.

Thus, we take another step deeper into the tragedy of US intervention in the Middle East that has become a noxious farce.

Consider just one of the head-spinning subplots: We are allied with our declared enemy, Iran, against the bloody Islamic State, which was spawned from the chaos created by our own earlier decisions to invade Iraq and to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, which has us fighting side-by-side with jihadist crazies financed by Saudi Arabia, whom we are supporting against the Houthis in Yemen, the bitter rivals of Al Qaeda — the perpetrators of 9/11!

Since 1980, we have invaded, occupied and/or bombed at least 14 different Muslim countries. After the sacrifice of thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars, the region is now a cauldron of death and destruction. Yet, we persist, with no end in sight. As a former Air Force General Charles F. Wald remarked told the Washington Post, “We’re not going to see an end to this in our lifetime.”

Democrats and Republicans snipe over tactics, but neither wants to discuss the question of whether we should be there in the first place. Even liberals counseling caution, like the New York Times editorial board, hasten to agrees that the US must play a “leading role” in solving the Middle East’s many problems. In other worlds, stay the course.

The ordinary citizen trying to make sense of all this might reasonably ask: why? The president’s answer is that the war is in our “national interest.” Congress says, Amen. The phrase causes politicians and pundits on talk shows to synchronize the nodding of their heads, signaling that the national interest should not have to be explained — and certainly not debated.

When pressed for more specifics, our governing class offers four rationales for this endless war:

1.    Fighting terrorism

2.    Containing Iran

3.    Securing oil

4.    Defending Israel.

But when the citizen in whose vital interest the war is supposedly being fought takes a close look, he/she will find that none of these arguments — or all of them together — justifies the terrible cost, or even makes much sense.

Terrorism

The claim is that we will prevent another 9/11 by killing terrorists and keeping them offshore. But by now it is obvious that our interventions are counter-productive, i.e., they have vastly enlarged the pool of American-hating fanatics, willing to kill themselves in order to hurt us.

Americans are appalled when shown ISIS’s public beheadings on TV. What they are not shown is the beheadings routinely performed by the Saudi Arabian government and our “moderate” allies. Nor are they told that militias allied to the US-backed government in Iraq have killed prisoners by boring holes in their skulls with electric drills.

This is the way bad people behave in that part of the world. ISIS is a symptom, not a cause, of Middle East fanaticism — a problem rooted in corruption, tyranny and ignorance, which the United States cannot solve. Meanwhile, Arab governments themselves have enough firepower to defeat ISIS if they can put aside their own differences to do it. If they can’t, it is not our job to save them from their own folly.

The rationale here is embarrassingly circular — we must remain in the Middle East to protect against terrorists who hate America because we are in the Middle East. George W Bush’s often echoed claim that “They hate us for our freedoms” is nonsense. They hate us because we are foreign invaders. The longer we stay, the most likely it is that we will see another 9/11. And as the Boston Marathon bombing demonstrates, the people who carry out the next attack are more likely to live here, than there.

Iran

Iran is not a threat to US security and will not be as far as one can see into the future. Its hostility to the US is a product of over 50 years of our active interference in its politics, beginning in 1953 when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected prime minister and replaced him with a king.

Barack Obama is right that stopping the spread of nuclear weapons should be one of our highest international priorities. But taking sides in the Middle East’s political and religious civil wars has undercut our credibility, making it look like we are more interested in checking Iran’s influence than nuclear proliferation. Why, the inquiring American citizen might ask, is it OK for Israel and Pakistan to refuse to sign international treaties and allow inspection of their nuclear facilities, but not Iran?

In any event, the leverage that brought Iran to the negotiating table was not the US military’s presence or saber rattling in Washington. It was the economic sanctions.

Oil

Oil is an international commodity. When it comes out of the ground it is sold on world markets. Producing countries need consumers. US consumers buy oil at world prices, and it is available to them as it is to everyone else who can pay for it. They get no special discount for having military bases in the area.

The economic motivation for the invasion of Iraq was not to assure that we Americans would have gas for our cars and oil for our furnaces, but to assure that American-based oil companies would be the ones to bring it here.

Today, we get less than 10 percent of our oil from the Persian Gulf. The US is now projected to pass both Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s largest oil producer in the next two years. By 2020 North America, and likely the US alone, will be self-sufficient in oil and gas.

The claim that Americans need to be in the Middle East for the oil has gone from dubious to implausible.

Israel

The United States does not need Israel to protect its security. Nor does Israel need the US

Israel has by far the most powerful sophisticated military in the entire region. Its arsenal includes nuclear and chemical weapons that, because Israel has refused to ratify international nonproliferation treaties banning, it can continue to develop with no outside interference. The surrounding Arab states are dysfunctional, disorganized and caught in the brutal quasi-religious war between Sunnis led by Saudi Arabia and Shiites led by Iran that is likely to drag on for decades. Hezbollah, which arose in Lebanon as a result of Israel’s 1982 invasion, can harass, but is certainly no threat to Israel’s existence.

Even if Iran eventually builds a bomb, Israel would still have the capacity to blow that country back to the Stone Age, and there is no evidence that Iran’s political establishment is suicidal.

The security problem for Israel comes from within the territory it controls: the status of the conquered, embittered Palestinians, who in 1948 and 1967 were driven out of their homes and herded into the ghettos of the West Bank and Gaza in order make room for the Jewish state.

The Palestinians are militarily powerless. They can throw stones and occasionally talk some lost soul into becoming a suicide bomber. From Gaza they can lob wobbly mortars over the Israel border. But always at the cost of harsh retaliation. Two thousand Gazans were killed in the Israeli punitive attacks of August 2014. It will take them ten years to rebuild their homes and infrastructure.

Yet the Palestinians will not give up their own dream of an independent homeland — at least on the territory occupied by the Israel army since 1967. So for almost a half century, our governments have pushed both sides to negotiate a permanent solution, pouring billions in aid to Israel, and lesser, but substantial amounts to placate the Palestinians and to bribe Egypt and Jordan into recognizing Israel. We have paid a huge political price; our role as collaborator in the Palestinian oppression is a major source of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.

The US effort has failed. Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis — both driven by anger, mutual distrust and historical grievances — have behaved well. But, Israel is the one in control of the West Bank. So any credible solution requires that it end the apartheid system they have imposed, either by giving Israeli citizenship to the Palestinians (One-State) or by permitting the establishment of an independent Palestine (Two-States).

The Israelis will never accept a one state solution with the Palestinians. Among other reasons is a widely shared fear of the faster Palestinian birthrate. The re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu in March after he promised Israeli voters he would never accept two states, has buried that idea as well. The real Israel solution is already in motion on the ground — pushing Jewish settlements further and further into the Palestinians’ territory until there is no space left for a Palestinian state.

There are now about 600,000 people in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and their number is growing. No Israeli government in the foreseeable future will be capable of evicting a substantial share of them in order to give the Palestinians room to form an independent country. The only pressure on Israel is the fear that it might become an international pariah state — as South Africa did before it ended its apartheid. But so long as Israel is under the political protection of the US, it can, and will, ignore world opinion.

Our choice therefore is either to remain as enabler of Israel’s “settler” solution, or, as part of a general withdrawal from the region, to let the Israelis and Palestinians deal with the consequences of their own behavior. Indeed, US disengagement might be the political jolt needed to force a change.

Thus, the real answer to the question of why our country is stuck in the Middle East will not be found in the phrase, “national interest.” Rather it will be found among a much narrower group of special interests — military contractors, oil sheikdoms, the Israel lobby, and a media that hypnotizes the electorate into equating patriotism and war.

These interests are formidable. Their fallback argument is that we are in too far even to contemplate pulling out. Much too complicated. And America’s “credibility” is at stake.

Maybe. But our credibility as a democracy is also at stake. To maintain it, responsible citizens should at least demand clarity about why we are slogging deeper and deeper into this quagmire, putting lives at risk, wasting enormous resources and diverting the attention of the US government from the deterioration of our national economy — the fundamental source of national security.

America’s bi-partisan governing class has no intention of opening up their Middle East misadventure to such scrutiny. So it’s up to the citizenry.

The 2016 president election campaign will force candidates into forums, town meetings and question-and-answer sessions. It may be the last chance for citizens to pierce the veils of glib rhetoric that hide the reasons our rulers have pushed us into a part of the world where we have no real business and where our presence has only made things worse.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Stop the War Coalition

http://thelondonpost.net/why-has-the-us-invaded-occupied-or-bombed-14-muslim-countries-in-30-years/