Terrorism & Security
A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
A file photo shows Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti speaking at a mosque. A blast at a mosque in central Damascus on Thursday killed Buti, a supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, state television said. (Courtesy of SANA/Reuters)
Assad lashes out after death of leading Syrian cleric and key Sunni ally
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Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad announced today that his troops would “wipe out” extremists after a suicide bombing killed a leading Sunni cleric who was a vital source of support for the Assad regime.
The blast in a downtown Damascus mosque yesterday killed 49 people, including Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti and his grandson, and injured 84, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).
Sheikh Buti was a supporter not only of Bashar al-Assad, but his father and predecessor as president, Hafez. As a Sunni, Buti's support for the predominantly Alawite Assad regime carried substantial weight, especially amid the predominantly Sunni-led uprising against the regime. He is also the most senior religious leader to be killed in the conflict, which has claimed more than 70,000 lives, the Associated Press reports.
The use of suicide bombings has become a common tactic in the Syrian war, but this was the first time a mosque has been the target.
It was also one of the biggest security breaches of the conflict, according to the AP. The New York Times reports that the military command and the Baath party headquarters are in the vicinity and the area is one of the most secured in Damascus.
No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing. A spokesman for the rebels' Free Syrian Army said the group did not take "any responsibility for this operation," reports BBC News. "We do not do these types of suicide bombings and we do not target mosques," Loay Maqdad told al-Arabiya television, according to BBC.
Abu Anas, who lives near the mosque, told the New York Times that he was surprised Buti was targeted, even if he did back Assad. “It is very bad and sinful to kill someone inside a mosque, whatever his background,” Mr. Anas said.
The support of Sheikh Buti, a Sunni, gave particularly important credibility to the regime, the Times reports.
Mr. Assad is a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and his closest advisers and loyalists are Alawites, but the president still claimed credibility as a unifier of Syria’s religious sects partly because of the backing of prominent spiritual figures like Sheik Bouti.
“He was the most important Sunni clerical supporter of the Assad regime,” said Joshua M. Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the author of the Syria Comment blog, which has tracked the conflict’s progression from a peaceful political uprising to a sectarian-tinged civil war. “It is a great blow to the regime and the remaining Sunni supporters of the president.”
Buti regularly preached on Syrian television, where his sermons were aired live and he had his own religious program. He encouraged the country to support Assad in his fight against the rebels.
According to the AP, earlier this month Buti gave a speech stating that there was "a religious duty to protect the values, the land, and the nation" of Syria. "There is no difference between the army and the rest of the nation," Buti said, endorsing Assad’s forces.
The Guardian reports that a former spokeswoman for the Syrian opposition, Bassma Kodmani, told the BBC that Buti was “widely despised.”
"He [Buti] was not a very popular figure in Syria. About a week ago he called on 'Good Muslims' to fight to defend the regime against gangs – as the regime usually describes the rebels. That probably provoked a lot of anger among the revolutionary groups who perceived him as corrupt and controlled entirely by the regime.
I am not justifying [the attack] … Obviously a new level of violence has been reached and there is no justification for something such as this inside a mosque."
(The Guardian notes that Ms. Kodmani may have confused Buti with Syria's Sheikh Ahmad Badr al-Dine Hassoun, who explicitly encouraged Syrians to join the Syrian Army.)
Some have pointed fingers at the regime itself for the suicide bombing, reports Agence France-Presse. Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, head of the Syrian National Coalition, said: "This is a crime, by any measure, that is completely rejected."
“Whoever did this was a criminal,” Mr. Khatib said. “And we suspect it was the regime."
The Syrian government deemed tomorrow, Saturday, a national day of mourning, and the airwaves are flooded with sermons today, the AP reports.
In his statement on state-run TV, Assad said Buti was a representation of true Islam in confronting "the forces of darkness and extremist" ideology.
"Your blood and your grandson's, as well as that of all the nation's martyrs will not go in vain because we will continue to follow your thinking to wipe out their darkness and clear our country of them," Assad said.
US President Barack Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (l.) review troops during an arrival ceremony at the Muqata Presidential Compound in the West Bank City of Ramallah March 21, 2013. (Larry Downing/REUTERS)
West Bank hosts Obama, Gaza sends rockets
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A pair of rockets launched from Gaza hit the southern Israeli town of Sderot today, amid President Obama's first state visit to Israel and just hours before he was due to meet with the Palestinian president in the West Bank.
The rocket attack is a reminder that even if the president manages to bring Israel and the Palestinian Authority to the negotiating table, he still has to contend with the more radical Hamas in Gaza, over which the Palestinian Authority has no leverage.
The Associated Press reports that the attacks caused no injuries, though one rocket did hit the courtyard of a house in Sderot, causing minor damage, while the other landed in a field. Two more launches were detected in Gaza, but the rockets landed in the Palestinian territory.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, AP adds.
Haaretz notes that a senior Hamas official earlier this week "threatened retaliation against Israel for what he called frequent violations of the ceasefire agreement, by Israel." Haaretz says he referred to "a number of incidents where IDF forces opened fire at Palestinians approaching the Gaza security fence." The newspaper adds that today's attack was the second rocket attack from Gaza in less than a month.
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Israeli officials told Haaretz that Israel was not expected to respond at this time. "The Israeli response will come at the right time and the right place," they said.
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, with whom Obama later met in the West Bank, criticized the attack, Reuters reports the official Palestinian Wafa news agency as saying.
"We condemn violence against civilians regardless of its source, including rocket firing," he said. "We are in favor of maintaining mutual and comprehensive calm in Gaza."
The attack highlights the difficult task facing Obama, who hopes to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. Even if Israel and the PA agree to meet and relaunch peace talks, the PA has no authority over Hamas-run Gaza, which could take steps to derail any progress. Any reconciliation between the two Palestinian factions seems far off, and even Palestinians in the West Bank are becoming impatient.
The Christian Science Monitor reports:
In Israel, there is cautious optimism that Obama's visit will nudge leaders back to the negotiating table. Many Palestinians are disillusioned by the lack of action after his Cairo speech, however, and recent unrest has sparked some speculation about a third intifada, or uprising.
Peace advocates on both sides say the window for a viable two-state solution is fast closing – at best, in two years – largely because of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Still, the first day of Obama's visit, spent in Israel and including appearances with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, went well. It appears to have shored up a US-Israeli relationship that had seemed tattered as recently as last year, reports the Monitor's Christa Case Bryant.
...Overall, Obama managed to sail right through the awkward moments and hit all the notes Israelis wanted to hear. He outlined his vision of a two-state solution as a strong Jewish state next to a sovereign Palestinian one, without mentioning anything about curbing Israeli settlements in the West Bank; promised continued foreign aid; insisted on calling Netanyahu by his nickname, Bibi; complimented his wife Sara, saying the Netanyahu boys must have gotten their good looks from her; and, in a more serious moment, recognized the sacrifice of Netanyahu's family, who lost his brother Yoni in the 1976 Entebbe operation to rescue more than 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers whose plane had been hijacked. ...
One senior Israeli official who was asked ahead of time about what Obama would have to do to make his visit a success, reportedly replied simply, "Land." Indeed, before Obama even addresses the Israeli public in a speech tomorrow; before he visits the Dead Sea Scrolls, thus implicitly acknowledging that Israel's right to exist here dates back thousands of years before the Holocaust; before he visits the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism ... in the eyes of many Israelis, his mission is already accomplished.
For the Palestinians, the feelings are quite the reverse.
The screen of an automated teller machine of Shinhan Bank shows a 'out of service' sign after a hacking attack, in central Seoul Wednesday. South Korean police were investigating a hacking attack on an Internet provider that brought down the servers at major South Korean banks and top TV broadcasters. (Lee Jae-Won/Reuters)
South Korea cyberattack: whodunit? (+video)
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South Korean officials are investigating what they say is a widespread cyberattack, responsible for shutting down the computer systems of at least three major news broadcasters and two banks. The Army has raised alert levels out of concern that the attacks are linked to the country’s increasingly hostile neighbor to the north.
"We do not rule out the possibility of North Korea being involved, but it's premature to say so," said a Defense Ministry spokesman.
Just hours before the network disruptions, the South Korean intelligence agency accused North Korea of “carrying out intensive cyber propaganda attacks against the South, designed to damage government policies and encourage social discord,” reports The Telegraph.
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Affected networks were “partially or entirely crippled,” according to the Korean Internet Security Agency (KISA), a state watchdog. The BBC reports that KISA has also reported accounts of hacked computers showing skulls on the screens “which could indicate that hackers had installed malicious code in the networks.”
Police said that at least some of the computers affected had files deleted, reports Reuters.
South Korean President Park Geun Hye has put together a cyber security team to look into whether North Korea is the culprit behind today’s attacks. The network disruption coincided with meetings in Seoul today between US and South Korean officials on how to best enforce United Nations-imposed sanctions on the North.
Tensions have been on the rise on the Korean Peninsula since the UN slapped Pyongyang with a fresh round of sanctions in February after its latest nuclear test.
In addition, the North has closely watched and warned against the joint military exercises taking place between the US and South Korea in the region. Last week, North Korea repeated a threat to no longer honor the 1953 armistice that effectively ended the fighting of the Korean War, and cut off a military hotline that connects the neighboring countries, reports The Christian Science Monitor.
“Partly for propaganda purposes and partly out of a kind of paranoia that makes them fear for their security, North Korea regards the exercises as a threat, even though they are defensive in nature,” Yonsei University Professor Moon Chung-in told the Monitor.
Reuters reports that just last week North Korea complained of being a victim of cyberattacks as well, pinning the blame on the US and its allies for attempted “sabotage.” To put that into perspective, less than 1 percent of North Korea's population has access to the Internet. Reports Agence France-Presse: "Access to the full-blown Internet is for the super-elite only, meaning a few hundred people or maybe 1,000 at most, analysts estimate."
Pyongyang has threatened to attack the US and posted a statement on its official state news agency saying “the hostile forces will never escape [North Korea’s] strong military counter-action” if the US continues to fly sorties over the peninsula.
According to Reuters banks have restored all operations today, however:
… TV stations could not say when they would be able to get their systems back up. Some workers at the stations could not boot their computer.
Broadcasts were not affected.
South Korea's military said it was not affected by the attack but raised its state of readiness in response. None of the country's oil refineries, power stations, ports or airports was affected.
“It’s hard to find who did it immediately but North Korea is the usual suspect,” Park Choon Sik, a Seoul Women’s University professor of cyber security who used to work for a government agency specializing in cyber security, told Bloomberg.
“Cyber attacks are much easier weapons for North Korea as they cost far less than missiles or nuclear tests, but they can send more people into a real panic,” Professor Park said.
In April 2011 South Korea blamed the North for similar computer stalls at Nonghyup Bank, disrupting ATM and online banking services for millions of clients for three days, reports Bloomberg. Reuters reports that the biggest cyberattack in the south was nicknamed “10 days of rain” by McAfee, the anti-malware firm.
North Korea has long been believed to have “hacker schools." An article on North Korean hacking was published by Al Jazeera English in 2011 with accounts from two defectors who reportedly attended the North’s “hacking schools.”
"There is a pyramid-like prodigy recruiting system, where smart kids from all over the country – students who are good at math, coding, and possess top analytical skills – are picked up,” one of the defectors told AJE.
Park told Bloomberg that South Korea is particularly “vulnerable to cyber terrorism” due to the high volume of businesses and transactions that take place online there.
“Broadcasters and banks were hit today, which itself is really a big concern, and the next target can be infrastructure, such as power, communication and transportation facilities,” Park said.
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Smoke rises from the site of a bomb attack in Baghdad's Sadr City Tuesday. A dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore into Shiite districts in Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. (Wissm al-Okili/Reuters)
Bombs rock Baghdad, ten years after Iraq invasion announced
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Bombs went off in food markets, residential neighborhoods, and checkpoints in and around Baghdad today, on the tenth anniversary of the US announcement of its invasion of Iraq.
The Wall Street Journal reports there were at least 15 attacks, mostly car bombs, between 8 and 9 am local time, primarily in Shiite neighborhoods of the capital and Iraqi Army locations. According to the Associated Press, at least 56 were killed and more than 200 were wounded.
No group has claimed responsibility yet, but the Journal reports that they bear similarities to previous violence claimed by Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which has accepted responsibility for a number of recent attacks, including one on March 17 that targeted the justice ministry. According to AP, AQI "favors spectacular, coordinated bombings intended to undermine public confidence in the Shiite-led government."
The attacks are not surprising, and would not be even if it was not an important anniversary. After declining, then leveling off from a peak in 2006 and 2007, sectarian violence in Iraq began rising once again last year. The rise in attacks came on the heels of the completion of the US troop withdrawal and as political infighting brought Sunni-Shiite tensions to the forefront.
As The Christian Science Monitor reports, the concrete walls surrounding the Iraqi parliament are going back up, only a year after they were taken down in a nod to improved security in the capital. For the most part, the attacks appear to be Sunni insurgent attacks attempting to destabilize the Shiite-led government, which has taken steps to block Sunni participation in politics.
Prior to the US invasion, predominantly Sunni Baathists, led by Saddam Hussein, dominated the government and security forces. Shiites have most power and influence now, and the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has consistently marginalized his Sunni Arab political opponents.
The country has also been rocked by nearly weekly Sunni protests demanding that Iranian influence in the country be curtailed and that their lack of standing in the post-war power-sharing government that increasingly does anything but distribute power among Shiites and Sunnis be mitigated. In 2012, Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi fled Baghdad prior to being sentenced to death on charges of leading a death squad that targeted Shiite leaders. He said the charges were fabricated for political advantage.
BBC journalist Jim Muir describes the forces that have left the unity government a hollow shell, both a reaction to attacks by Sunni groups and a catalyst for further attacks:
[Sunni leaders] charge that [Prime Minister Nour Maliki] has monopolised power by keeping control of the still-vacant defence and interior ministries, making himself almost entirely in charge of a security apparatus which they assert has been increasingly victimising Sunnis.
"The political process which is supposed to have brought democracy to Iraq, in fact brought one party and one person who are ruling Iraq," said Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak, another senior Sunni figure, referring to Mr Maliki and his Shia Daawa Party.
"There is no real participation by others, and the country is heading towards a harsh, backward dictatorship without a shred of wisdom."
As the Monitor reports:
"These multiple identities competing with each other is what fuels the crisis you see in Iraq's political landscape," says an Arab analyst with long experience in Iraq who asked not to be named. "In 2003 when the genie of ethno-sectarianism came out of the bottle it gave rise even to subsectarian divisions.... Communities live in fear of each other."
The New York Times reports that although Baghdad is flooded with foreign journalists covering the anniversary, it is barely a blip on the radar for most Iraqis – day-to-day life is still too unpredictable.
“If our situation were better than this, we would surely remember that day when the Americans came to free Iraq and gave us the chance to build a better future,” Mr. Shimari said. “But the Americans didn’t give us that chance. They did all the things possible to ensure that Iraq is going to be ruined.”
…
Another journalist, Sabah Sellawi, the editor of the newspaper Maysan, said, “The instability in Iraq is more important than this day.”
On the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, former and current Monitor journalists who covered the war are looking at where Iraq stands today and how things stood at the peak of the war:
* Ten years after invasion, Iraq remains dangerously divided – In the new Iraq, old sectarian fears remain. Around Baghdad's Green Zone, concrete walls pulled down a year ago are going back up.
* The day the conflict changed – Ten years after the Iraq invasion, reporter Scott Peterson recalls the day a suicide attack threw him out of bed in a formerly quiet Baghdad neighborhood – and blew a hole in any sense that the war was keeping its distance.
* On the road to Baghdad for 17 days – Andy Nelson, who photographed the US invasion of Iraq, recalls the pulling down of Saddam's statue – and early signs of chaos.
* The Iraq war: a timeline – A photo collection depicting the main events of the conflict.
In this undated photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and distributed last week, a rocket launcher is fired during a live drill by the Jangjae Islet Defense Detachment and the Mu Islet Hero Defense Detachment deployed in the southwestern sector of North Korea. KCNA reported North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guided the drill. (KCNA via Korea News Service/AP)
China warns US missile defense plan will antagonize North Korea
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China warned today that US plans to bolster its missile defense program in the Pacific following North Korea's recent nuclear threats will only antagonize Pyongyang, even as North Korea slammed Washington's "hostile policy" and refused to negotiate its nuclear capacity.
Reuters reports that the Chinese Foreign Ministry said today that the problem of North Korea's nuclear program would be best solved through diplomatic means, and that US missile defense plans did not help the situation.
"Actions such as strengthening anti-missile [defenses] will intensify antagonism and will not be beneficial to finding a solution for the problem," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. "China hopes the relevant country will proceed on the basis of peace and stability, adopt a responsible attitude and act prudently."
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China's comments come in response to Friday's announcement by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel that the US plans to beef up its missile defense system in Alaska and California. Mr. Hagel specifically cited North Korea's third nuclear test and its "irresponsible and reckless provocations" of recent weeks as reason for the upgrade, which will include 14 new interceptors in Alaska and a new early-warning radar system in Japan.
But the announcement brought further fierce criticism from North Korea, which said on Saturday that the US had "compelled [North Korea] to have access to nukes" because it "escalated the situation of the Korean Peninsula to an extreme phase," reports CNN.
"[North Korea's] nuclear weapons serve as an all-powerful treasured sword for protecting the sovereignty and security of the country," a foreign ministry spokesman said, according to the state-run KCNA news agency. "Therefore, they cannot be disputed ... as long as the U.S. nuclear threat and hostile policy persist."
Pyongyang also denied that its nuclear program was a "bargaining chip" for negotiating economic concessions from the US, which has spearheaded a series of UN sanctions against the North.
North Korea then warned on Sunday that it would target Japan, as an ally of the US, in the event of a war on the Korean peninsula. Japan had recently called for "independent additional sanctions" against Pyongyang, Voice of America reports.
North Korea's nuclear threat was a major topic on Sunday's Washington news shows. Rep. Mike Rogers (R) of Michigan told CNN that the political situation in North Korea made for a potentially explosive mix. "You have a 28-year-old leader who is trying to prove himself to the military, and the military is eager to have a saber rattling for their own self-interest, and the combination of that is proving to be very, very deadly," he said.
He added that the North Koreans "certainly have a ballistic missile that can reach US shores," though Agence France-Presse notes that Mr. Rogers did not specify whether he was referring to Alaska and Hawaii or to the continental US. The Pentagon and most experts agree that the continental US is outside the range of North Korea's missiles.
(For more background, read the Monitor's Steven Borowiec's article on propaganda and paranoia in the North)
The New York Times' David Sanger, appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, said the North's missile range is probably only half what they need to hit the lower 48 states, but the danger remains high.
"They've now conducted a third nuclear test, and by all the early indications, this time it really worked," Mr. Sanger said. "They have sent a missile as far as the Philippines. If you do the math on that, they're about halfway to being able to hit the Continental United States."
Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, added on Face the Nation that "just because a missile can't reach the United States doesn't mean that it can't reach our allies in Asia who look to us for their security..."
At least one regional ally is backing the expanded US missile defense plan. Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the Australian newspaper that he will endorse the plan when he meets with US officials during a 10-day visit to Washington that starts today. Mr. Carr called North Korea's threats "irresponsible and bellicose."
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Syrian refugees walk next of their tents at a small refugee camp, in Ketermaya village southeast of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday. Syria warned Lebanon today that it may attack if its neighbor continues to provide safe haven for rebels fighting in Syria's two-year-old civil war. (Hussein Malla/AP)
War draws closer to Lebanon with Syrian threat of attack
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Syria’s state news agency warned Lebanon today that it may attack if its neighbor continues to provide safe haven for rebels fighting in Syria’s two-year-old civil war. The threat comes as concerns intensify about the conflict's divisive impact on Lebanon's Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities, which maintain an uneasy coexistence.
"Syria expects the Lebanese side to prevent these armed terrorist groups from using the borders as a crossing point, because they target Syrian people and are violating Syrian sovereignty," a diplomatic cable from the Syrian foreign ministry to its Lebanese counterpart said, Reuters reports.
According to state-run SANA, the Syrian foreign ministry said rebels have been inflicting violence in Syria, then fleeing across the border into Lebanon.
"Syrian forces have so far exercised restraint from striking at armed gangs inside Lebanese territory," the cable said.
An estimated 70,000 people have been killed in Syria’s civil war. Lebanon has tried to keep the conflict at arm’s length, despite day-to-day reminders of the war’s impact, such as the nearly 350,000 Syrian refugees in the country, reports Lebanese news outlet The Daily Star. Lebanon has also seen rising levels of crime, which Prime Minister Najib Mikati has attributed to overflow from the conflict in Syria as well, according to a separate Reuters report.
Mr. Mikati said "700 Syrians were caught breaking the law [in Lebanon] in January, a high figure in a country of 4 million.”
"We need help. Lebanon is bearing the burden of the events in Syria," Mikati said in a plea for Arab states to contribute assistance and aid. Lebanon has requested $370 million to help the government and international agencies meet refugees' needs.
But Lebanon’s concerns go beyond the refugee crisis. It fought its own 15-year civil war that ended in the 1990s, and now observers fear the violence next door may be exacerbating long-running tensions between Christians, Druze, and Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.
The New York Times reports that “an increasingly aggressive rhetoric has found a more receptive audience” in Lebanon recently.
Many Lebanese Sunnis identify closely with the mostly Sunni rebels fighting against the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite. At the same time they feel deprived, forsaken by the state and subjugated by other factions. Building off this anger and inspired by the gains of Syria’s rebels, they have become more vocally hostile toward Hezbollah, the Shiite party; the government, dominated by Hezbollah; and the Syrian regime.
“I believe Sunnis are coming out of chains,” said Omar Bakri, a radical Sunni cleric who lives in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, after Beirut. “The blood of the innocents in Lebanon and Syria, we are not going to let it go without accountability.”
Any kind of cross-border attack, whether or not it is instigated by the Syrian government, could tip Lebanon into a larger conflict, according to the Times.
“Lebanon is already divided and it is just waiting for a spark, nothing more,” Bilal Masri, a Sunni militia leader, told the Times.
France and Britain this week are pressuring the European Union to once again discuss lifting the ban on supplying weapons to Syrian rebels, with both countries noting they may move forward on their own, reports the Washington Post.
Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in Beirut today that “The international community should recognize that the Syrian crisis represents an existential threat to Lebanon and should show Lebanon ... much stronger support than has happened until now.”
This file photo shows Italian marines Salvatore Girone, left, and Massimiliano Latorre, arriving at the office of Kochi's Police Commissioner, in Kochi, India. (AP/File)
India bars Italian envoy from leaving, escalating tensions over marines shooting incident
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India’s Supreme Court blocked the Italian ambassador from leaving the country today, further escalating a diplomatic dispute over two Italian marines accused of shooting two fishermen last year in the Arabian Sea, off the southwestern coast of India.
India wants the marines – who were allowed to leave briefly after Italy guaranteed in writing that they would come back – to be returned to face murder charges in a special court in Delhi. Italy, however, has refused to honor that request.
“Italy takes this opportunity to inform the Indian government that, given the formal acknowledgement of an international dispute between the two states, Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone will not be returning to India upon expiration of the leave granted them,” the Italian government said in a statement on Monday.
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In response, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told parliament on Wednesday that, "Our government has insisted that Italian authorities … respect the undertaking they have given to the Supreme Court and return the two accused persons to stand trial in India.
"If they do not keep their word, there will be consequences for our relations with Italy," Mr. Singh said. His response was met by cheers, reports The Wall Street Journal.
India says the shooting took place in Indian waters. Italy contends it took place in international waters, and thus the marines – who have said they thought the men were Somali pirates – should be tried at home.
A post on The New York Times India Ink blog notes that the situation is complicated by the fact that ruling Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi was born in Italy and thus is suspected by some of being in the pocket of the European country. London's Financial Times reiterates that point, reporting that opposition members in India have “accused the government of colluding with Italy to allow the marines to abscond and have suggested that Congress … is beholden to foreigners.”
And furthering tensions between the two countries is the fallout from recent corruption investigation by Italy into a Finmeccanica helicopter deal with India.
Today, India's Supreme Court told Italian Ambassador Daniele Mancini that he and the accused marines had until Monday to explain themselves, reports The Financial Times.
India government was 'naive'
In India, myriad editorials, tweets, and commentary largely condemned the government’s “naïveté” in allowing the marines to exit the country before trial.
An editorial in The Times of India states that “The incident will reinforce the impression of India being a soft state with foreigners, whether friend or foe, unable to take its commitment to the rule of law seriously.
"In the event there's little that New Delhi can do now. At best it can make a show of diplomatic anger and expel the Italian ambassador, but that will hardly serve the cause of justice for the fishermen. The misuse of paroles is rampant in India. But our government can't show the same apathy in the Italian marines' case. Their government has done an exemplary job of pursuing their interests. Fishermen plying some 3,00,000 fishing boats operating along the Indian coast deserve similarly robust defence. When they are mistaken for Somali pirates, shouldn't they be able to count on their government to champion them?"
And many Indians took to Twitter to denounce their government’s decision. “We could have at least sent the #ItalianMarines back in one of our AgustaWestland VVIP choppers,” tweeted @ShivAroor, alluding to the alleged kickback scheme in India over the manufacturing of the Anglo-Italian helicopters.
And a cartoon by Satya in The Times of India shows an image of Singh calling Italy asking for the marines to be returned. The Italian response?
“You think it's some pizza service? No home delivery!” A thought bubble next to the prime minister shows him noting that he must have called the wrong number.
An editorial entitled “An Italian Job” in The Hindu says that refusing to return Mr. Latorre and Mr. Girone may earn Italy “brownie points at home,” but the decision is “unbecoming of a responsible nation.
"The duo were permitted by the Supreme Court to visit Italy to cast their votes in the Feb. 22 national election, on a promise by the Italian government that they would return to India to face trial. Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi of the outgoing government spoke glowingly of the decision as “evidence of the climate of mutual trust and cooperation with Indian authorities.” Italy now stands in breach of that trust. The Italian foreign ministry says New Delhi did not heed its request for a diplomatic resolution, a curious statement considering all avenues for such resolution have already been tried and exhausted….
"While India-Italy ties will not be the same again, the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the two accused men to leave India is also curious…. another embarrassment for the UPA, which stands exposed for allowing itself to be taken for a ride so easily by a foreign government.
India's actions also came in for criticism from abroad. “The Indian government continues to embarrass itself through repeated diplomatic bunglings,” read an editorial in Gulf News entitled “Italian marines exploited India’s naïve diplomacy.”
According to Reuters, Indian officials say they are weighing their next steps, and may consider expelling the Italian ambassador if the men don’t arrive in court as scheduled on March 22.
"I am the envoy. I will represent the government of Italy until the very moment when [a competent authority] would declare me persona non grata," ambassador Mancini told reporters yesterday.
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Indian paramilitary soldiers take cover as they search a residential area during a gun battle in Srinagar, India, Wednesday. A team of militants stormed a paramilitary camp Wednesday morning in the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, leaving five soldiers and two militants dead and 10 more people wounded, a police official said. (Dar Yasin/AP)
Militant attack in Kashmir shatters years of calm
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Five members of an Indian paramilitary police force in the Kashmir city of Srinagar were killed today when a pair of gunmen entered their camp and opened fire.
Although the gunmen, who were killed by police, have yet to be identified, the attack is likely to stir up further unrest in Kashmir, which has been seething in recent weeks over the secret execution of a convicted terrorist and ongoing human rights abuses by Indian authorities.
Police are saying that the two attackers reportedly hid guns in some cricket gear and mixed with youth playing the game in a nearby field in order to approach the camp, reports Reuters. Once at the police camp, the attackers opened fire on the police, killing five, and injuring five police and three civilians. (Kashmiri media quotes one eyewitness as disputing that the gunmen posed as cricketers.)
BBC News notes that the attack is the first major attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in three years. The BBC also published a slideshow of the paramilitary police securing the camp after the attack.
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The Kashmiri militant group Hizbul Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for the attack, reports Kashmir Life. Indian Home Secretary Raj Kumar Singh earlier stated that the attackers were probably Pakistani, though he offered no evidence to that end.
"Both the terrorists who have been killed appeared prima facie to be not locals but from across the border, and the first impressions are that they are probably from Pakistan," he said, reports the Indo-Asian News Service.
Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir, but the region is divided along a military cease-fire line. Polling has found that the mostly-Muslim population of the Kashmir Valley currently ruled by India prefers independence. Other communities in the Kashmir region disagree, however.
Indian news website Firstpost notes that schools, colleges, and commercial establishments were closed today as part of a strike called to demand the return of the body of Mohammad Afzal Guru, a convicted member of the December 2001 terrorist attack on India's Parliament who was controversially executed last month. Firstpost speculates that the strike may have helped reduce the number of casualties in the attack today.
Mr. Afzal Guru's execution – which took place in secret on Feb. 9 – sparked widespread anger across Indian-controlled Kashmir, whose mostly Muslim population feels that he never received a fair trial and was hanged on weak evidence. The unrest prompted a broad crackdown by authorities, who ordered a curfew, cut off media and Internet services, and caused deep reservations even among those sympathetic to India, the Monitor reported:
The anger and hurt is so deep that many who had started veering toward a politics of reconciliation have begun to change course.
Raja Muzaffar Bhat, a young anticorruption activist who had joined the pro-India Peoples Democratic Party, resigned from the group, saying on Facebook, "...I feel that there is no space for working democratically within the Indian state.”
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, former Interior minister of India, also criticized the hanging, saying he regretted that Delhi would not allow the family a last meeting, or possession of the body. Mr. Sayeed, at one point Indian Kashmir’s chief minister, said in a statement: “This reduces Mahatama Gandhi’s country, the world’s largest democracy and a genuine candidate for superpower status, to a banana republic.”
Analysts say that the execution was an attempt by India's ruling Nationalist Congress Party, which has been racked by a series of corruption scandals, to win back public confidence ahead of India's 2014 elections. The Monitor noted last month that the execution came just before a parliament session – as did the execution of 2008 Mumbai attacker Ajmal Kasab in November. The executions were India's first in eight years.
The unrest in Kashmir is further fueled by accusations of widespread human rights abuses in the region by the Indian government. In December, two human rights groups released a report accusing 500 specific perpetrators of criminal abuses, including enforced disappearance, killings, rape, and torture. The accused include Indian military, paramilitary, and police officials, who the report says are protected from justice by the policies of the Indian government.
“Beyond naming the alleged perpetrators, the report explains that the Indian state has not failed but succeeded in its policy of maintaining control [over the disputed region] through absolute impunity accorded to perpetrators of crimes,” says Kartik Murukutla, an author of the report who has worked in a UN tribunal on Rwanda for five years....
Analysts say this latest report adds urgency to calls for an international legal intervention by bodies like the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as movement toward a political resolution for the long-running Kashmir dispute. “This report should be sent to the prosecutor of ICC who can take suo moto cognizance on the basis of the evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity it contains and persuade the court for proceedings on the subject,” says Professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain, who teaches international law at the Central University here.
RECOMMENDED: Kashmir 101: Decoding Kashmir's conflict
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (c.) confers with military officers at a long-range artillery sub-unit of KPA Unit 641 during his visit to front-line military units near the western sea border in North Korea near the South's western border island of Baengnyeong on Monday. (KCNA via KNS/AP)
Armistice dead? US and South Korea dismiss North Korea's edict (+video)
• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
The US has scoffed at North Korea's announcement that it was nullifying the 1953 armistice with South Korea, even as it has issued a stern warning to the North not to carry through with threats of a nuclear attack.
"North Korean officials have made some highly provocative statements. North Korea's claims may be hyperbolic, but as to the policy of the United States, there should be no doubt: We will draw upon the full range of our capabilities to protect against, and to respond to, the threat posed to us and to our allies by North Korea," National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said yesterday, according to the Guardian.
"This includes not only any North Korean use of weapons of mass destruction but also, as the president made clear, their transfer of nuclear weapons or nuclear materials to other states or non-state entities. Such actions would be considered a grave threat to the United States and our allies and we will hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences."
The skepticism about the armistice nullification is grounded in past experience – North Korea has declared the armistice void multiple times.
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North Korean state media said the US and South Korea "reduced the armistice agreement to a dead paper" when the two countries decided to carry out joint naval exercises that began yesterday, according to the Guardian. However, the exercises are an annual event point out US officials, and the latest round of sanctions against North Korea are the actual catalyst for the threats.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the North regularly portrays the military drills to its public as "a prelude to an invasion of the North" and threatens retaliation, but that its most recent threats are "higher pitched, reflecting Pyongyang's anger over United Nations sanctions."
The Christian Science Monitor's Steven Borowiec reports that despite the scrapping of the armistice and the cutting of the hotline, it may yet be bombast. Bong Young-shik, an analyst at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank in Seoul, says precedence shows this could be more of a theatrical move than a harbinger of hostilities:
“They’ve cut off communication before and it restarted. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to talk to South Korea forever. They cut off the line just to put pressure on the US and South Korea,” says Mr. Bong.
Time Magazine national security reporter Mark Thompson reports on the blog Military Intelligence that the exercises, known as Key Resolve 2013, are "designed to protect South Korea from an invasion from the North – the same way the Korean War began on June 25, 1950."
The exercises, which will last about 10 days, involve some 3,000 US troops and 10,000 South Korean troops. Mr. Thompson writes that US officials are concerned that Pyongyang will "seize upon" the exercises and sanctions as a "pretext for action."
But US military officials are betting that any North Korean-launched strike would be small, to avoid triggering a massive counter-offensive that could lead to a war that would likely mark the end of the North Korean government.
In 2010, a North Korean artillery barrage killed four South Koreans, and a suspected North Korean torpedo sank the 1,200-ton South Korean corvette ROKS Cheonan, killing 46 sailors. The North purportedly launched both military strikes, and didn’t pay a heavy price for doing so. Its leaders may be betting that they can do it yet again.
But one thing has changed. Despite diplomatic happy talk from [Army Gen. James Thurman, the top US commander in South Korea], the North has renounced the armistice. Legal niceties aside, that means – if South Korea and its US ally are provoked for a third time – they may be less reluctant to fire back.
Thompson highlights an intelligence assessment from Korean experts Victor Cha and Ellen Kim of the Center for Strategic and International Studies warning of an imminent "North Korean provocation." The two experts state that the North has carried out some sort of "military provocation" within weeks of every presidential inauguration in the South since 1992.
President Park Guen-hye, South Korea's first female president, was inaugurated on Feb. 25. "Not a good prospect at all," they write, according to Thompson.
South Korea has been under pressure to respond more forcefully than it did following the 2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, which resulted in the deaths of four South Koreans, reports the Monitor:
The government has pledged not to repeat that response. Kim Yong-hyun, operational director of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week: "If North Korea pushes ahead with provocations that would threaten the lives and safety of our citizens, our military will strongly and sternly punish the provocations' starting point, its supporting forces and corps-level commanding post."
And Seoul continues to push back on the North, insisting today that Pyongyang cannot legally end the armistice unilaterally, BBC reports.
"Unilateral abrogation or termination of the armistice agreement is not allowed under its regulations or according to international law," Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-Young said.
Seoul would "absolutely keep the armistice agreement as well as strengthen consultation and cooperation with the United States and China, who are also concerned parties of the armistice", he said.
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North Korean soldiers attend military training in an undisclosed location in this picture released by the North's official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang March 11, 2013. (KCNA/REUTERS)
North Korea leaves phone to South Korea off the hook (+video)
• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
As the United States and South Korea launched its two-week long "Key Resolve" war games today, North Korea followed through on two of its threatened responses – cutting off a hotline and "blowing apart" the armistice between North and South.
South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North, confirmed this morning that the hotline between Pyongyang and Seoul appears to have been cut off, reports Agence France-Presse. "The North did not answer our call this morning," a ministry official said.
And Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the North's ruling Communist Party, wrote Monday that the Korean War armistice, which ended hostilities between North and South but did not entail a formal peace agreement, was at a "complete end."
"With the ceasefire agreement blown apart... no one can predict what will happen from now on," the newspaper wrote.
Neither of today's moves are unexpected, or indeed new. AFP notes that the hotline has been cut off five times since its installation in 1971, most recently in 2010, and that the North has "voided" the armistice nearly a dozen times in the past 20 years, the last time in 2009.
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But the moves follow days of hyperbolic language from Pyongyang, which threatened last week both to end the armistice and to "exercise the right to a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors" like the US and South Korea. The threats, made both in response to new United Nations Security Council sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons test last month and in anticipation of today's war games, have increased tensions across the region. And with more than 10,000 South Korean and 3,500 American troops mobilizing for the annual "Key Resolve" simulations, there is concern about accidental escalation.
BBC News reports that there is a heightened sense of concern among portions of the South Korean population, particularly among older South Koreans, due to the newness of both North Korea's recently ascended leader Kim Jong-un and South Korea's President Park Geun-hye, who was sworn in two weeks ago.
"I didn't care about this issue until now," one South Korean told the BBC. "But I do worry this time around. The young North Korean leader is not strong, and I don't trust the new government here in the South."
Ms. Park's new government has been particularly vocal in its threats against the North – it said it would target the North's top command should any attacks be made against the South – in what John Delury, a professor of International Studies at Seoul's Yonsei University, told the BBC was a kind of "pre-emptive rhetorical deterrence."
The idea that strong words could act as a deterrent to North Korean actions has gained traction since the lethal shelling of South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island in 2010.
As a government, Prof Delury says: "You're always fighting the last battle, and the last battle for South Korea was Yeonpyeong. The perception then was that North Korea had got away with shelling the island."
By talking tough, he believes Park Geun-hye wants to avoid any initial attack by the North.
But, he said, "some South Koreans are worried that the wrong lessons have been learned, and that if something small happens, it could escalate because the South Korean government doesn't want to be accused of doing nothing."
But the Associated Press adds that despite tension over Pyongyang's posturing, there were signs of "business as usual" on Monday.
The two Koreas continue to have at least two working channels of communication between their militaries and aviation authorities.
One of those hotlines was used Monday to give hundreds of South Koreans approval to enter North Korea to go to work. Their jobs are at the only remaining operational symbol of joint inter-Korean cooperation, the Kaesong industrial complex. It is operated in North Korea with South Korean money and knowhow and a mostly North Korean work force....
"If South Koreans don't go to work at Kaesong, North Korea will suffer" financially, said analyst Hong Hyun-ik at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. "If North Korea really intends to start a war with South Korea, it could have taken South Koreans at Kaesong hostage."
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