Tough week for Christians in MENA; Good week for Jihadists in al-Hol; Jews blamed for everything.
Iran: Christian pastor begin 10-year sentence for
‘propaganda contrary to the religion of Islam’
SEP 20, 2023 1:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER
Iranian-Armenian pastor begins 10-year sentence for his ‘disturbing’ teachings
Checkmate in Nagorno-Karabakh? How Azerbaijan got Armenia
to back down
After more than 30 years of conflict, the battle between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh may soon conclude. Under the guise of an "anti-terrorist operation" following the death of four soldiers and two civilians, Baku continued its efforts to reassert control over Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday.
Armenian separatists – who have mostly governed the disputed territory since 1994 – promptly agreed on Wednesday to surrender their weapons following Baku's lightning offensive, indicating they are open to talks on reintegrating the secessionist territory into Azerbaijan.
"An agreement has been reached on the withdrawal of the remaining units and servicemen of the Armenian armed forces ... and on the dissolution and complete disarmament of the armed formations of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defence Army," the Armenian separatist authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh said in a statement.
This announcement is a decisive victory for Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliev who has made the reunification of his country a priority.
Separated from Armenia and attached to Azerbaijan in 1921 by Stalin, the predominantly Armenian mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh has been a point of permanent tension between the two former Soviet republics since the collapse of the USSR.
In 1991, the territory declared itself the independent Republic of Artsakh but was never recognised by the international community. Then, in 1994, Armenia won the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, resulting in the de facto independence of the Republic of Artsakh which Azerbaijan refused to accept.
In the intervening years, the tables have turned, says Jean Radvanyi, geographer and professor emeritus at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO). Thanks to significant revenues from oil and natural gas, "Baku has taken advantage of the situation to rearm, with the support of allies such as Turkey, and the balance of power has continued to evolve", says Radvanyi.
This role reversal gave Azerbaijan the confidence to launch the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, which saw Baku's forces overpower the Armenian military.
In the wake of this defeat, Armenia was forced to cede territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. The ceasefire stipulated the presence of 2,000 Russian peacekeepers tasked with guaranteeing the safety of the Armenians but this measure failed to stop regular armed skirmishes on the border.
Taking advantage of a divided Armenia, Azerbaijan then launched the second phase of its plan: a war of attrition designed to cut off the enclave's 120,000 or so Armenians. Despite the presence of the Russian peacekeepers, beginning in December 2022, Azerbaijan blockaded the Lachin corridor, a narrow mountain road that links Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh.
It wasn't until September 18 – just one day before the offensive – that Red Cross trucks carrying food and medicine gained access to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Turkish support and Moscow’s declining influence in the Caucasus
In both the first and second Nagorno-Karabakh wars, Azerbaijan received support from Turkey.
On Tuesday, a Turkish defence ministry official said the country is using "all means", including military training and modernisation, to support its close ally Azerbaijan but it did not play a direct role in Baku's military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
For more on this story, please continue reading: Baku's success also appearsIraq repatriates Islamic State jihadists from Al Hol camp,
urges other countries to do the same
Deradicalization programs have long proven to be a complete failure. Jihadists are not merely criminals. They are fueled by religious zeal and Islamic tenets which command their actions and promise them rewards in the afterlife for waging war against infidels.
Islamic State jihadists are so dangerous that an Iraqi judge once said that he was sentencing jihadis from the UK to death in order to protect Britain. Abdul Sattar Beraqdar, spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council, stated that “British members of ISIS deserve to die…. The punishment, as much as it seems strong, will affect the security of your country….I am sure there are hundreds of people in Britain at this moment thinking of committing similar crimes.”
Incidents at Al Hol include Islamic State brides unleashing a “reign of terror,” slaughtering babies and dousing people with petrol; the murder of a Doctors Without Borders worker; a report that ISIS brides “live strictly according to IS ideology”; and testimony from Kurds that the camp is a “ticking time bomb” for Europe.
Iraq’s decision to repatriate these hardcore jihadists and their Cubs of the Caliphate from the infamous Al-Hol camp poses a serious security threat to the region and to Europe (which has, of course, adopted open-door immigration policies).
Iraq steps up repatriations from Islamic State camp in Syria, hoping to reduce militant threats,” by Qassum Abdul-Zahra and Bassem Mroue, Associated Press, September 15, 2023:
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq is stepping up repatriation of its citizens from a camp in northeastern Syria housing tens of thousands of people, mostly wives and children of Islamic State fighters but also supporters of the militant group.
It’s a move that Baghdad hopes will reduce cross-border militant threats and eventually lead to shutting down the facility.
After U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led fighters defeated the Islamic State group in Syria in March 2019 — ending its self-proclaimed Islamic “caliphate” that had ruled over a large swath of territory straddling Iraq and Syria — thousands of IS fighters and their families were taken to the camp known as al-Hol.
Many of them were Iraqi nationals.
Today, Iraqi officials see the facility, close to the Iraq-Syria border, as a major threat to their country’s security, a hotbed of the militants’ radical ideology and a place where thousands of children have been growing up into future militants.
It’s “a time bomb that can explode at any moment,” warned Ali Jahangir, a spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displaced. Since January, more than 5,000 Iraqis have been repatriated, from al-Hol, with more expected in the coming weeks, he said.
It is mainly women and children who are sent home. Iraqi men who have committed crimes as IS members rarely ask to go back for fear of being put on trial….
Tunisian President Blames Israel For Floods In Libya
The massive storm that devastated Libya’s Derna is somehow linked to Zionism because it was named “Daniel,” according to Tunisian President Kais Saied. In a conversation posted on social media on Tuesday, he can be heard making a series of comments about the storm and its name.
Storms are often named randomly in line with various methods of naming storms after women and men and using sequential letters of the alphabet. Nevertheless, Saied said the name “Daniel” was evidence of “Zionism’s growing influence.”
Though storms — hurricanes, typhoons, and so on — are named by such international bodies as the World Meteorological Association, Saied seems to believe that Israel was behind the naming of the storm that caused the floods that ravaged Derna, in Libya. It’s a preposterous idea. No doubt in the back of Saied’s mind is the belief that those diabolical Jews not only control the world’s banks and media, but apparently, in his view, also the weather.
And why stop with the floods in Derna? Perhaps the Zionists were behind the earthquakes in Turkey last year, and this year in Morocco, so that — do you put it past the Jews, knowing how diabolically clever they are? — they could then offer to help, sending search-and-rescue teams to Turkey, to great acclaim (the Israelis saved the lives of 19 Turks buried under the rubble) and having those same teams right now on standby, waiting for Morocco to invite them in to help locate earthquake victims, no longer alive, in the towns south of Marrakech. Thus do the Zionists present themselves as samaritans to the world, while all the while they are not only committing atrocities against the Palestinians, but are also behind the so-called “natural disasters” whose survivor they then offer to help.
One day they are 'apes and pigs', the next day they are controlling the climate. That's the logic of Islam.
It’s a preposterous notion, but more preposterous still is the suggestion that Israel may somehow have deliberately caused the storm and flood in Derna as part of its malevolent campaign against Muslim peoples. The damage in Derna was owed in large part to the two substandard dams that collapsed. Not even Kais Saied has suggested that Israelis built those dams.
President Saied’s comments have been mocked, even by fellow Arabs, who suggest that his remark that the name of the storm — “Daniel” — somehow suggests that Jews were behind the flood. was absurd. They point out that “Daniel” is not only a prophet for the Jews, but is also revered in Islam as well, mentioned in the hadith as one of God’s messengers.
Saied has been taking a more extreme line against the West, as Europe pressures his government to prevent the human-traffickers from leaving Tunisian ports, their unseaworthy boats loaded down with Arab and African economic migrants whom they smuggle into Europe. The Tunisian economy is in a downward spiral. With his people facing a world of woe, Kais Saied has chosen to direct their attention away from his country’s real problems that so far has been unable to deal with, and onto a fictional threat from the perfidious Jews, who “caused the disaster” they named “Daniel” — a “Jewish name” — in Derna.
Other Muslims have been critical of Saied’s remarks, claiming that his comments could only increase animus toward Jews in Tunisia, by crazily holding them “responsible for the flood in Derna.” Saied’s comment was particularly disquieting in the wake of the terror attack on Jews outside the synagogue in the island of Djerba this past May, in which five people were killed. Could Saied’s remarks blaming Jews for the massive deaths that resulted from floods in Derna, lead to retaliatory attacks on Jews in Djerba? Of course they could.
Kais Saied’s blaming of Israel for the Libyan storm and flood has, fortunately, not been echoed by other Arabs. Instead, there has been much criticism of his remarks, for their palpable absurdity has made not just President Saied himself, but also other Arabs subject to ridicule. Perhaps this episode, in which he was not applauded but mocked, will lead Kais Saied to bethink himself, and, for the good of his country, to shut up.
