Eight people were killed and three injured Monday in an attack by gunmen on an Iraqi village previously held by the Islamic State extremist group, officials said.
The attack took place in the village of Albu Bali northwest of Fallujah in Iraq.
Uday al-Khadran, commissioner of the al-Khalis district where the attack occurred said “a group of terrorists riding motorcycles” had attacked the village at around 8:30 p.m. and that dozens of residents, some of them unarmed, had rushed to confront the attackers, the official Iraqi News Agency reported.
Security forces are searching for those responsible, he said.
The violence came a day after an explosive device went off in northern Iraq, killing at least nine members of the Iraqi federal police force who were on patrol. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the village of Ali al-Sultan in the Riyadh district of the province of Kirkuk.
On Wednesday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed when a bomb exploded during a security operation in the Tarmiyah district, north of Baghdad. Among the dead was the commander of the 59th Infantry Brigade.
No one claimed responsibility for that attack either, but remnants of the militant Islamic State group are active in the area and have claimed similar attacks in Iraq in the past.
BERLIN — This year, the number of refugees arriving to Germany is almost as high as it was in 2015 and 2016 — when the government nearly fell apart over it.
When civil war broke out in Syria, refugees came in masses to Europe. Between the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, tens of thousands arrived in Germany. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “Wir schaffen das” — “We got this.” Merkel’s government allowed migrants to enter Germany even though, under the EU’s framework, other countries in the bloc would also have been responsible for them. The massive influx led to friction both within Germany and between European capitals.
Germany saw nearly 1.2 million applications for asylum in 2015 and 2016. At first, many Germans applauded the Syrians arriving at train stations and offered support — coining the term Willkommenskultur. But as cities and towns were overwhelmed, with gyms and container villages being set up to house the influx of refugees, the political mood soon soured.
Fast-forward to 2022: The number of refugees from Ukraine amounted to just more than 1 million people receiving temporary protection. Add to that around 214,000 applications by asylum-seekers with no connection to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the German interior ministry. That means that this year, more people have sought refuge in Germany than in 2015 and 2016 combined.
But things are different this time around. While authorities on the ground still fear being overwhelmed, the situation has changed, including how EU countries handle refugees. Here are three key points:
1. Refugees from Ukraine form a distinct category
First of all, Germany is not going it alone now, as the EU has activated the so-called Temporary Protection Directive for refugees from Ukraine. This means that they automatically receive temporary asylum status and can claim social benefits in any EU country, spreading the burden across countries in the bloc.
Within Germany, a new distribution system known as “FREE,” in place since July, considers family ties and other factors. This has created a steering effect, as distribution can be linked and tracked. Furthermore, when able to privately organize accommodation themselves, refugees from Ukraine may choose where to settle. Only if they apply for social welfare or housing may they be allocated throughout Germany like other refugees.
Almost three-quarters of refugees from Ukraine live in private apartments and houses, according to the study “Refugees from Ukraine in Germany” (conducted between August and October this year). Of these, around 25 percent live with relatives or friends in Germany. Only 9 percent live in shared accommodation for refugees.
In contrast, refugees not coming from Ukraine are spread among German states via the so-called “EASY” system. After an initial period at regional reception centers, migrants are distributed at random to municipalities across the country.
That system does not take individual preferences into account; it only grants a higher probability of assigning refugees to facilities in the same region if family members have been registered in the region — and if there is capacity.
2. Not all cities and towns are overwhelmed — yet
“Reception capacities are exhausted in many places, tent shelters and gymnasiums already have to be used,” Burkhard Jung, the mayor of Leipzig and vice president of the German Association of Cities, said in November.
Plenty of déjà vu with 2015 on this front.
“We don’t know a concrete number, but we are getting feedback from very many federal states that the municipalities are reaching their limits,” Alexander Handschuh, a spokesperson for the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, confirmed earlier this month. He pointed out that large cities such as Berlin or Munich are more popular among refugees from Ukraine — a trend that is ongoing.
“Meanwhile, however, heavy burdens are being reported from all over Germany,” Handschuh added.
While many refugees from Ukraine were initially welcomed into private accommodation “with overwhelming willingness to help,” this is becoming increasingly difficult the longer the war continues. Thus, German municipalities are now calling for help from the federal government, demanding full reimbursement for the costs of handling refugees and calling for higher reception capacity at the regional level.
Migration researcher Hannes Schammann of the University of Hildesheim says he is hearing mixed signals from local authorities. “There are isolated hot spots where we have this situation with gymnasiums and the like. But there are also municipalities where this can still be managed quite well,” Schammann told POLITICO.
The newly arriving refugees are not the problem, he believes. Rather, he said, the issue is German bureaucracy, as the distribution system itself causes delays and uncertainty.
3. Although the situation is tense, it is not surprising
Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) confirmed that migration pressure is currently “increasing significantly” not only in Germany, but also at the EU’s external borders. “Although the numbers have increased every year … the current influx of arrivals has a higher dynamic compared to previous years,” it said. As to why, the BAMF cited a catch-up effect after pandemic travel restrictions were lifted, and economic and political situations in transit states such as Turkey, Tunisia and Libya.
Yet, the number of refugees now arriving from countries other than Ukraine is within the expected range, Schammann said. This becomes a problem, however, when that flow comes up against any uneven distribution of Ukrainian refugees.
In addition, many municipalities held on to both physical and policy infrastructure built up during the situation in 2015 and 2016. “Those who maintained it did quite well,” Schammann pointed out.
The main countries of origin for asylum-seekers besides Ukraine continue to be Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq — as in previous years. “There are currently no noticeable developments in individual countries of origin,” a spokesperson from the interior ministry told POLITICO. Nevertheless, he confirmed a somewhat tense situation in terms of the ability to receive refugees.
Schammann expects the debate to heat up because of bottlenecks that may arise due to the distribution of refugees already in Germany. He described it as a difficult situation and definitely a source of strain on the system. “But it’s not collapsing. It will continue to function regardless,” he said.
Without a magic crystal ball, the ministry declined to provide an outlook for the months to come.
Today is Monday, Dec. 19, the 353rd day of 2022. There are 12 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Dec. 19, 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached by the Republican-controlled House for perjury and obstruction of justice. (Clinton was subsequently acquitted by the Senate.)
On this date:
In 1777, during the American Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington led his army of about 11,000 men to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to camp for the winter.
In 1907, 239 workers died in a coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.
In 1946, war broke out in Indochina as troops under Ho Chi Minh launched widespread attacks against the French.
In 1950, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was named commander of the military forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
In 1960, fire broke out on the hangar deck of the nearly completed aircraft carrier USS Constellation at the New York Naval Shipyard; 50 civilian workers were killed.
In 1972, Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific, winding up the Apollo program of manned lunar landings.
In 2001, the fires that had burned beneath the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York City for the previous three months were declared extinguished except for a few scattered hot spots.
In 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared Iraq in “material breach” of a U.N. disarmament resolution.
In 2003, design plans were unveiled for the signature skyscraper — a 1,776-foot glass tower — at the site of the World Trade Center in New York City.
In 2008, citing imminent danger to the national economy, President George W. Bush ordered an emergency bailout of the U.S. auto industry.
In 2011, North Korea announced the death two days earlier of leader Kim Jong Il; North Koreans marched by the thousands to mourn their “Dear Leader” while state media proclaimed his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, a “Great Successor.”
In 2016, a truck rammed into a crowded Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 12 people in an attack claimed by Islamic State. (The suspected attacker was killed in a police shootout four days later.) A Turkish policeman fatally shot Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov at a photo exhibit in Ankara. (The assailant was later killed in a police shootout.)
Ten years ago: Four State Department officials resigned under pressure, less than a day after a damning report blamed management failures for a lack of security at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, where militants killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Park Geun-hye (goon-hay), daughter of late South Korean President Park Chung-hee, was elected the country’s first female president.
Five years ago: A bus carrying cruise ship passengers on an excursion to Mayan ruins in southeastern Mexico flipped over on a narrow highway, killing 11 travelers and their guide and injuring about 20 others; eight Americans were among those killed. U.S. health officials approved the nation’s first gene therapy for an inherited disease, a treatment that improves the sight of patients with a rare form of blindness. David Wright, a Massachusetts man who was convicted of leading a plot inspired by the Islamic State to behead conservative blogger Pamela Geller, was sentenced in Boston to 28 years in prison.
One year ago: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he could not support his party’s signature $2 trillion social and environment bill, dealing a seemingly fatal blow to President Joe Biden’s leading domestic initiative. (Congress would approve a smaller but still substantive compromise measure in August 2022.) The NHL and its players association temporarily clamped down on teams crossing the Canadian border and shut down operations of two more teams in hopes of salvaging the season as COVID-19 outbreaks spread across the league. Gabriel Boric, a leftist millennial who rose to prominence during anti-government protests, was elected Chile’s next president. Despite rising concerns over the omicron variant, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” achieved the third best opening of all time; studio estimates showed that the Sony and Marvel blockbuster grossed $253 million in ticket sales in North America.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Elaine Joyce is 79. Actor Tim Reid is 78. Musician John McEuen is 77. Singer Janie Fricke is 75. Jazz musician Lenny White is 73. Actor Mike Lookinland is 62. Actor Scott Cohen is 61. Actor Jennifer Beals is 59. Actor Robert MacNaughton is 56. Magician Criss Angel is 55. Rock musician Klaus Eichstadt (Ugly Kid Joe) is 55. Actor Ken Marino is 54. Actor Elvis Nolasco is 54. Actor Kristy Swanson is 53. Model Tyson Beckford is 52. Actor Amy Locane is 51. Pro Football Hall of Famer Warren Sapp is 50. Actor Rosa Blasi is 50. Actor Alyssa Milano is 50. Actor Tara Summers is 43. Actor Jake Gyllenhaal (JIH’-lihn-hahl) is 42. Actor Marla Sokoloff is 42. Rapper Lady Sovereign is 37. Journalist Ronan Farrow is 35. Actor Nik Dodani is 29.
BERLIN — On a balmy September evening last year, an Azeri man carrying a Russian passport crossed the border from northern Cyprus into southern Cyprus. He traveled light: a pistol, a handful of bullets and a silencer.
It was going to be the perfect hit job.
Then, just as the man was about to step into a rental car and carry out his mission — which prosecutors say was to gun down five Jewish businessmen, including an Israeli billionaire — the police surrounded him.
The failed attack was just one of at least a dozen in Europe in recent years, some successful, others not, that have involved what security officials call “soft” targets, involving murder, abduction, or both. The operations were broadly similar in conception, typically relying on local hired guns. The most significant connection, intelligence officials say, is that the attacks were commissioned by the same contractor: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In Cyprus, authorities believe Iran, which blames Israel for a series of assassinations of nuclear specialists working on the Iranian nuclear program, was trying to signal that it could strike back where Israel least expects it.
“This is a regime that bases its rule on intimidation and violence and espouses violence as a legitimate measure,” David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said in rare public remarks in September, describing what he said was a recent uptick in violent plots. “It is not spontaneous. It is planned, systematic, state terrorism — strategic terrorism.”
He left out one important detail: It’s working.
That success has come in large part because Europe — the staging ground for most Iranian operations in recent years — has been afraid to make Tehran pay. Since 2015, Iran has carried out about a dozen operations in Europe, killing at least three people and abducting several others, security officials say.
“The Europeans have not just been soft on the Islamic Republic, they’ve been cooperating with them, working with them, legitimizing the killers,” Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-American author and women’s rights activist said, highlighting the continuing willingness of European heads of state to meet with Iran’s leaders.
Alinejad, one of the most outspoken critics of the regime, understands better than most just how far Iran’s leadership is willing to go after narrowly escaping both a kidnapping and assassination attempt.
“If the Islamic Republic doesn’t receive any punishment, is there any reason for them to stop taking hostages or kidnapping or killing?” she said, and then answered: “No.”
Method of first resort
Assassination has been the sharpest instrument in the policy toolbox ever since Brutus and his co-conspirators stabbed Julius Caesar repeatedly. Over the millennia, it’s also proved risky, often triggering disastrous unintended consequences (see the Roman Empire after Caesar’s killing or Europe after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo).
And yet, for both rogue states like Iran, Russia and North Korea, and democracies such as the United States and Israel — the attraction of solving a problem by removing it often proves irresistible.
Even so, there’s a fundamental difference between the two spheres: In the West, assassination remains a last resort (think Osama bin Laden); in authoritarian states, it’s the first (who can forget the 2017 assassination by nerve agent of Kim Jong-nam, the playboy half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, upon his arrival in Kuala Lumpur?). For rogue states, even if the murder plots are thwarted, the regimes still win by instilling fear in their enemies’ hearts and minds.
That helps explain the recent frequency. Over the course of a few months last year, Iran undertook a flurry of attacks from Latin America to Africa. In Colombia, police arrested two men in Bogotá on suspicion they were plotting to assassinate a group of Americans and a former Israeli intelligence officer for $100,000; a similar scene played out in Africa, as authorities in Tanzania, Ghana and Senegal arrested five men on suspicion they were planning attacks on Israeli targets, including tourists on safari; in February of this year, Turkish police disrupted an intricate Iranian plot to kill a 75-year-old Turkish-Israeli who owns a local aerospace company; and in November, authorities in Georgia said they foiled a plan hatched by Iran’s Quds Force to murder a 62-year-old Israeli-Georgian businessman in Tbilisi.
Whether such operations succeed or not, the countries behind them can be sure of one thing: They won’t be made to pay for trying. Over the years, the Russian and Iranian regimes have eliminated countless dissidents, traitors and assorted other enemies (real and perceived) on the streets of Paris, Berlin and even Washington, often in broad daylight. Others have been quietly abducted and sent home, where they faced sham trials and were then hanged for treason.
While there’s no shortage of criticism in the West in the wake of these crimes, there are rarely real consequences. That’s especially true in Europe, where leaders have looked the other way in the face of a variety of abuses in the hopes of reviving a deal to rein in Tehran’s nuclear weapons program and renewing business ties.
Unlike the U.S. and Israel, which have taken a hard line on Iran ever since the mullahs came to power in 1979, Europe has been more open to the regime. Many EU officials make no secret of their ennui with America’s hard-line stance vis-à-vis Iran.
“Iran wants to wipe out Israel, nothing new about that,” the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told POLITICO in 2019 when he was still Spanish foreign minister. “You have to live with it.”
History of assassinations
There’s also nothing new about Iran’s love of assassination.
Indeed, many scholars trace the word “assassin” to Hasan-i Sabbah, a 12th-century Persian missionary who founded the “Order of Assassins,” a brutal force known for quietly eliminating adversaries.
Hasan’s spirit lived on in the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the hardline cleric who led Iran’s Islamic revolution and took power in 1979. One of his first victims as supreme leader was Shahriar Shafiq, a former captain in the Iranian navy and the nephew of the country’s exiled shah. He was shot twice in the head in December 1979 by a masked gunman outside his mother’s home on Rue Pergolèse in Paris’ fashionable 16th arrondissement.
In the years that followed, Iranian death squads took out members and supporters of the shah and other opponents across Europe, from France to Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In most instances, the culprits were never caught. Not that the authorities really needed to look.
In 1989, for example, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, a leader of Iran’s Kurdish minority who supported autonomy for his people, was gunned down along with two associates by Iranian assassins in an apartment in Vienna.
The gunmen took refuge in the Iranian embassy. They were allowed to leave Austria after Iran’s ambassador to Vienna hinted to the government that Austrians in his country might be in danger if the killers were arrested. One of the men alleged to have participated in the Vienna operation would later become one of his country’s most prominent figures: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president from 2005 until 2013.
Not even the bad publicity surrounding that case tempered the regime’s killing spree. In the years that followed, the body count only increased. Some of the murders were intentionally gruesome in order to send a clear message.
Fereydoun Farrokhzad, for example, a dissident Iranian popstar who found exile in Germany, was killed in his home in Bonn in 1992. The killers cut off his genitals, his tongue and beheaded him.
His slaying was just one of dozens in what came to be known as Iran’s “chain murders,” a decade-long killing spree in which the government targeted artists and dissidents at home and abroad. Public outcry over the murder of a trio of prominent writers in 1998, including a husband and wife, forced the regime hard-liners behind the killings to retreat. But only for a time.
Illustration by Joan Wong for POLITICO
Then, as now, the dictatorship’s rationale for such killings has been to protect itself.
“The highest priority of the Iranian regime is internal stability,” a Western intelligence source said. “The regime views its opponents inside and outside Iran as a significant threat to this stability.”
Much of that paranoia is rooted in the Islamic Republic’s own history. Before returning to Iran in 1979, Khomeini spent nearly 15 years in exile, including in Paris, an experience that etched the power of exile into the Islamic Republic’s mythology. In other words, if Khomeini managed to lead a revolution from abroad, the regime’s enemies could too.
Bargaining chips
Given Europe’s proximity to Iran, the presence of many Iranian exiles there and the often-magnanimous view of some EU governments toward Tehran, Europe is a natural staging ground for the Islamic Republic’s terror.
The regime’s intelligence service, known as MOIS, has built operational networks across the Continent trained to abduct and murder through a variety of means, Western intelligence officials say.
As anti-regime protests have erupted in Iran with increasing regularity since 2009, the pace of foreign operations aimed at eliminating those the regime accuses of stoking the unrest has increased.
While several of the smaller-scale assassinations — such as the 2015 hit in the Netherlands on Iranian exile Mohammad-Reza Kolahi — have succeeded, Tehran’s more ambitious operations have gone awry.
The most prominent example involved a 2018 plot to blow up the annual Paris meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an alliance of exile groups seeking to oust the regime. Among those attending the gathering, which attracted tens of thousands, was Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer.
Following a tip from American intelligence, European authorities foiled the plot, arresting six, including a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat who delivered a detonation device and bombmaking equipment to an Iranian couple tasked with carrying out an attack on the rally. Authorities observed the handover at a Pizza Hut in Luxembourg and subsequently arrested the diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, on the German autobahn as he sped back to Vienna, where he enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
Assadi was convicted on terror charges in Belgium last year and sentenced to 20 years is prison. He may not even serve two.
The diplomat’s conviction marked the first time an Iranian operative had been held accountable for his actions by a European court since the Islamic revolution. But Belgium’s courage didn’t last long.
In February, Iran arrested Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele on trumped-up espionage charges and placed him into solitary confinement at the infamous Evin prison in Tehran. Vandecasteele headed the Iran office of the Norwegian Refugee Council, an aid group.
Following reports that Vandecasteele’s health was deteriorating and tearful public pleas from his family, the Belgian government — ignoring warnings from Washington and other governments that it was inviting further kidnappings — relented and laid the groundwork for an exchange to trade Assadi for Vandecasteele. The swap could happen any day.
“Right now, French, Swedish, German, U.K., U.S., Belgian citizens, all innocents, are in Iranian prisons,” said Alinejad, the Iranian women’s rights campaigner.
“They are being used like bargaining chips,” she said. “It works.”
Amateur hour
Even so, the messiness surrounding the Assadi case might explain why most of Iran’s recent operations have been carried out by small-time criminals who usually have no idea who they’re working for. The crew in last year’s Cyprus attack, for example, included several Pakistani delivery boys. While that gives Iran plausible deniability if the perpetrators get caught, it also increases the likelihood that the operations will fail.
“It’s very amateur, but an amateur can be difficult to trace,” one intelligence official said. “They’re also dispensable. They get caught, no one cares.”
Iranian intelligence has had more success in luring dissidents away from Europe to friendly third countries where they are arrested and then sent back to Iran. That’s what happened to Ruhollah Zam, a journalist critical of the regime who had been living in Paris. The circumstances surrounding his abduction remain murky, but what is known is that someone convinced him to travel to Iraq in 2019, where he was arrested and extradited to Iran. He was convicted for agitating against the regime and hanged in December of 2020.
One could be forgiven for thinking that negotiations between Iran and world powers over renewing its dormant nuclear accord (which offered Tehran sanctions relief in return for supervision of its nuclear program) would have tamed its covert killing program. In fact, the opposite occurred.
In July of 2021, U.S. authorities exposed a plot by Iranian operatives to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn as part of an elaborate plan that involved taking her by speedboat to a tanker in New York Harbor before spiriting her off to Venezuela, an Iranian ally, and then on to the Islamic Republic.
A year later, police disrupted what the FBI believed was an attempt to assassinate Alinejad, arresting a man with an assault rifle and more than 60 rounds of ammunition who had knocked on her door.
American authorities also say Tehran planned to avenge the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of its feared paramilitary Quds Force who was the target of a U.S. drone strike in 2020, by seeking to kill former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, among other officials.
Through it all, neither the U.S. nor Europe gave up hope for a nuclear deal.
“From the point of view of the Iranians, this is proof that it is possible to separate and maintain a civilized discourse on the nuclear agreement with a deceptive Western appearance, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to plan terrorist acts against senior American officials and citizens,” Barnea, the Mossad chief said. “This artificial separation will continue for as long as the world allows it to.”
Kremlin’s killings
Some hope the growing outrage in Western societies over Iran’s crackdown on peaceful protestors could be the spark that convinces Europe to get tough on Iran. But Europe’s handling of its other favorite rogue actor — Russia — suggests otherwise.
Long before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, much less its all-out war against Ukraine, Moscow, similar to Iran, undertook an aggressive campaign against its enemies abroad and made little effort to hide it.
Russian police investigators stand near the body of killed Russian opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov | Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images
The most prominent victim was Alexander Litvinenko. A former KGB officer like Vladimir Putin, Litvinenko had defected to the U.K., where he joined other exiles opposed to Putin. In 2006, he was poisoned in London by Russian intelligence with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope that investigators concluded was mixed into his tea. The daring operation signaled Moscow’s return to the Soviet-era practice of artful assassination.
Litvinenko died a painful death within weeks, but not before he blamed Putin for killing him, calling the Russian president “barbaric.”
“You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price,” Litvinenko said from his deathbed.
In the end, however, the only one who really paid a price was Litvinenko. Putin continued as before and despite deep tensions in the U.K.’s relationship with Russia over the assassination, it did nothing to halt the transformation of the British capital into what has come to be known as “Londongrad,” a playground and second home for Russia’s Kremlin-backed oligarchs, who critics say use the British financial and legal systems to hide and launder their money.
Litvinenko’s killing was remarkable both for its brutality and audacity. If Putin was willing to take out an enemy on British soil with a radioactive element, what else was he capable of?
It didn’t take long to find out. In the months and years that followed, the bodies started to pile up. Critical journalists, political opponents and irksome oligarchs in the prime of life began dropping like flies.
Europe didn’t blink.
Angela Merkel, then German chancellor, visited Putin in his vacation residence in Sochi just weeks after the murders of Litvinenko and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and said … nothing.
Even after there was no denying Putin’s campaign to eradicate anyone who challenged him, European leaders kept coming in the hope of deepening economic ties.
Neither the assassination of prominent Putin critic Boris Nemtsov just steps away from the Kremlin in 2015, nor the poisoning of a KGB defector and his daughter in the U.K. in 2018 and of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020 with nerve agents disabused European leaders of the notion that Putin was someone they could do business with and, more importantly, control.
‘Anything can happen’
Just how comfortable Russia felt about using Europe as a killing field became clear in the summer of 2019. Around noon on a sunny August day, a Russian assassin approached Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen with Georgian nationality, and shot him twice in the head with a 9mm pistol. The murder took place in a park located just a few hundred meters from Germany’s interior ministry and several witnesses saw the killer flee. He was nabbed within minutes as he was changing his clothes and trying to dispose of his weapon and bike in a nearby canal.
It later emerged that Khangoshvili, a Chechen fighter who had sought asylum in Germany, was on a Russian kill list. Russian authorities considered him a terrorist and accused him of participating in a 2010 attack on the Moscow subway that killed nearly 40 people.
In December of 2019, Putin denied involvement in Khangoshvili’s killing. Sort of. Sitting next to French President Emmanuel Macron, Merkel and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following a round of talks aimed at resolving the conflict in Ukraine, the Russian referred to him as a “very barbaric man with blood on his hands.”
“I don’t know what happened to him,” Putin said. “Those are opaque criminal structures where anything can happen.”
Early on October 19 of last year, Berlin police discovered a dead man on the sidewalk outside the Russian embassy. He was identified as Kirill Zhalo, a junior diplomat at the embassy. He was also the son of General Major Alexey Zhalo, the deputy head of a covert division in Russia’s FSB security service in Moscow that ordered Khangoshvili’s killing. Western intelligence officials believe that Kirill Zhalo, who arrived in Berlin just weeks before the hit on the Chechen, was involved in the operation and was held responsible for its exposure.
The Russian embassy called his death “a tragic accident,” suggesting he had committed suicide by jumping out of a window. Russia refused to allow German authorities to perform an autopsy (such permission is required under diplomatic protocols) and sent his body back to Moscow.
Less than two months later, the Russian hitman who killed Khangoshvili, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Russia recently tried to negotiate his release, floating the possibility of exchanging American basketball player Brittney Griner and another U.S. citizen they have in custody. Washington rejected the idea.
The war in Ukraine offers profound lessons about the inherent risks of coddling dictators.
Though Germany, with its thirst for Russian gas, is often criticized in that regard, it was far from alone in Europe. Europe’s insistence on giving Putin the benefit of the doubt over the years in the face of his crimes convinced him that he would face few consequences in the West for his invasion of Ukraine. That’s turned out to be wrong; but who could blame the Russian leader for thinking it?
Iran presents Europe with an opportunity to learn from that history and confront Tehran before it’s too late. But there are few signs it’s prepared to really get tough. EU officials say they are “considering” following Washington’s lead and designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a vast military organization that also controls much of the Iran’s economy, as a terror organization. Last week, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spearheaded an effort at the United Nations to launch a formal investigation into Iran’s brutal crackdown against the ongoing protests in the country.
Yet even as the regime in Tehran snuffs out enemies and races to fulfil its goal of building both nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach any point on the Continent, some EU leaders appear blind to the wider context as they pursue the elusive renewal of the nuclear accord.
“It is still there,” Borrell said recently of the deal he has taken a leading role in trying to resurrect. “It has nothing to do with other issues, which certainly concern us.”
CHIBAYISH, Iraq (AP) — Abbas Hashem fixed his worried gaze on the horizon — the day was almost gone and still, there was no sign of the last of his water buffaloes. He knows that when his animals don’t come back from roaming the marshes of this part of Iraq, they must be dead.
The dry earth is cracked beneath his feet and thick layers of salt coat shriveled reeds in the Chibayish wetlands amid this year’s dire shortages in fresh water flows from the Tigris River.
Hashem already lost five buffaloes from his herd of 20 since May, weakened with hunger and poisoned by the salty water seeping into the low-lying marshes. Other buffalo herders in the area say their animals have died too, or produce milk that’s unfit to sell.
“This place used to be full of life,” he said. “Now it’s a desert, a graveyard.”
The wetlands — a lush remnant of the cradle of civilization and a sharp contrast to the desert that prevails elsewhere in the Middle East — were reborn after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, when dams he had built to drain the area and root out Shiite rebels were dismantled.
But today, drought that experts believe is spurred by climate change and invading salt, coupled with lack of political agreement between Iraq and Turkey, are endangering the marshes, which surround the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq.
This year, acute water shortages — the worst in 40 years, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization — have driven buffalo herders deeper into poverty and debt, forcing many to leave their homes and migrate to nearby cities to look for work.
The rural communities that rely on farming and herding have long been alienated from officials in Baghdad, perpetually engaged in political crises. And when the government this year introduced harsh water rationing policies, the people in the region only became more desperate.
Oil-rich Iraq has not rebuilt the country’s antiquated water supply and irrigation infrastructure and hopes for a water-sharing agreement for Tigris with upstream neighbor Turkey have dwindled, hampered by intransigence and often conflicting political allegiances in Iraq.
In the marshes, where rearing of water buffaloes has been the way of life for generations, the anger toward the government is palpable.
Hamza Noor found a patch where a trickle of fresh water flows. The 33-year-old sets out five times a day in his small boat across the marshes, filling up canisters with water and bringing it back for his animals.
Between Noor and his two brothers, the family lost 20 buffaloes since May, he said. But unlike other herders who left for the city, he is staying.
“I don’t know any other job,” he said.
Ahmed Mutliq, feels the same way. The 30-year-old grew up in the marshes and says he’s seen dry periods years before.
“But nothing compares to this year,” he said. He urged the authorities to release more water from upstream reservoirs, blaming provinces to the north and neighboring countries for “taking water from us.”
Provincial officials, disempowered in Iraq’s highly centralized government, have no answers.
“We feel embarrassed,” said Salah Farhad, the head of Dhi Qar province’s agriculture directorate. “Farmers ask us for more water, and we can’t do anything.”
Iraq relies on the Tigris-Euphrates river basin for drinking water, irrigation and sanitation for its entire population of 40 million. Competing claims over the basin, which stretches from Turkey and cuts across Syria and Iran before reaching Iraq, have complicated Baghdad’s ability to make a water plan.
Ankara and Baghdad have not been able to agree on a fixed amount of flow rate for the Tigris. Turkey is bound by a 1987 agreement to release 500 cubic meters per second toward Syria, which then divides the water with Iraq.
But Ankara has failed to meet its obligation in recent years due to declining water levels, and rejects any future sharing agreements that forces it to release a fixed number.
Iraq’s annual water plan prioritizes setting aside enough drinking water for the nation first, then supplying the agriculture sector and also discharging enough fresh water to the marshes to minimize salinity there. This year, the amounts were cut by half.
The salinity in the marshes has further spiked with water-stressed Iran diverting water from its Karkheh River, which also feeds into Iraq’s marshes.
Iraq has made even less headway on sharing water resources with Iran.
“With Turkey, there is dialogue, but many delays,” said Hatem Hamid, who heads the Iraqi Water Ministry’s key department responsible for formulating the water plan. “With Iran, there is nothing.”
Two officials at the legal department in Iraq’s Foreign Ministry, which deals with complaints against other countries, said attempts to engage with Iran over water-sharing were halted by higher-ups, including the office of then-Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
“They told us not to speak to Iran about it,” said one of the officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss legal issues.
Iraq’s needs are so dire that several Western countries and aid organizations are trying to provide development assistance for Iraq to upgrade its aging water infrastructure and modernize ancient farming practices.
The U.S. Geological Survey has trained Iraqi officials in reading satellite imagery to “strengthen Iraq’s hand in negotiations with Turkey,” one U.S. diplomat said, also speaking anonymously because of the ongoing negotiations.
As the sun set over Chibayish, Hashem’s water buffalo never returned — the sixth animal he lost.
ERBIL, Iraq — Iranian missiles and drones struck an Iranian Kurdish opposition group’s bases in northern Iraq late Sunday night.
The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, a Kurdish Iranian group exiled in Iraq, said in a statement that Iranian surface-to-surface missiles and drones hit its bases and adjacent refugee camps in Koya and Jejnikan. The group also asserted that the strikes had hit a hospital in Koya.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The website of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Monday confirmed a “new round” of missile and drone attacks on “separatist and terrorist” groups in north of Iraq.
Some Kurdish groups have been engaged in a low-intensity conflict with Tehran since the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, with many members seeking political exile in neighboring Iraq where they have established bases.
Iran alleges that these groups are inciting anti-government protests in Iran and smuggling weapons into the country, which Kurdish groups have denied.
Tehran has periodically launched airstrikes against the Kurdish groups’ bases in Iraq. During a visit to Baghdad last week, Iran’s Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani threatened Iraq with a ground military operation in the country’s north if the Iraqi army does not fortify the countries’ shared border against Kurdish opposition groups, Iraqi and Kurdish officials said.
The U.S. condemned the latest Iranian strikes. Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, who heads U.S. Central Command, said in a statement: “Such indiscriminate and illegal attacks place civilians at risk, violate Iraqi sovereignty, and jeopardize the hard-fought security and stability of Iraq and the Middle East.”
Sunday’s Iranian strikes in northern Iraq come a day after Turkey launched deadly airstrikes over northern regions of Syria and Iraq, targeting Kurdish groups that Ankara holds responsible for last week’s bomb attack in Istanbul.
———
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Al Khor, Qatar and Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report
Turkey conducted air strikes against Kurdish militant bases in northern Iraq and Syria, the Turkish defense ministry announced early Sunday, a week after an explosion in Istanbul that killed six people and injured more than 80 others.
The targets were bases that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia were using to launch terrorist attacks on Turkey, the ministry said.
“Our aim is to ensure the security of our 85 million citizens and our borders, and to retaliate for any treacherous attack on our country,” Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said in a statement.
Ankara blames the PKK for the Istanbul blast, a charge the outlawed group has denied. In recent days, nearly two dozen people have been arrested in connection with the bombing, including five in Bulgaria on Saturday, according to Reuters.
The violence in Istanbul is also on course to inflame tensions beyond the immediate region.
Turkey is one of just two NATO member countries that have yet to ratify bids by Finland and Sweden to join the defense alliance. Ankara has accused the Nordic countries of harboring Kurdish militants.
Last week’s attack in Istanbul “proves even more that Turkey wants to raise these concerns about terrorism and this proves somehow that it’s a problem also inside the country,” Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told Bloomberg News on Saturday. “It’s a momentum that Turkey is using and of course they have all the rights to raise this issue during the NATO process.”
Haavisto urged that Finland not be lumped in with Sweden on the Kurdish issue, saying Sweden has a “much bigger Kurdish minority” that originates from Turkey.
BAGHDAD — An air strike on a convoy carrying fuel across the Iraqi border into Syria killed at least 10 people late Tuesday, members of paramilitary groups operating in the area said.
The strike hit a convoy of about 15 trucks that had crossed from Iraq into Syria near Al-Qaim, two paramilitary officials told The Associated Press.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack. It also was not immediately clear where the convoy was coming from, but the paramilitary officials said some of those killed were Iranian.
The strike came a day after a U.S. citizen, 45-year-old Stephen Edward Troell, was fatally shot in central Baghdad.
Troell, a native of Tennessee, was killed by unknown assailants in his car as he pulled up to the street where he lived with his family in Baghdad’s central Karrada district. It was a rare killing of a foreigner in Iraq in recent years, as security conditions have improved.
No group claimed responsibility for Troell’s killing. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, less than two weeks in office, ordered an investigation.
At a news conference Tuesday, Sudani insinuated that the attack may have been perpetrated by rivals intending on undermine his premiership, adding, “Those who want to test our government in terms of security will fail.”
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said it was closely monitoring the investigation by Iraqi authorities, but declined to comment further.
A US citizen was murdered in Baghdad on Monday, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Muhammad Shia al-Sudani.
A US State Department spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that American Stephen Edward Troell died in Baghdad, noting they “are closely monitoring local authorities’ investigation into the cause of death.”
“The timing of the murder of an American citizen in Baghdad puts question marks,” al-Sudani said on Monday, adding: “Security is a red line.”
Two armed people attacked a vehicle Troell was driving in downtown Baghdad, security sources told CNN. Troell sustained severe injuries in the attack and was transferred to a nearby hospital to receive medical care, but later succumbed to his injuries.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killing.
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said that investigations into the attack are ongoing by security authorities in Baghdad.
Troell had been living in Baghdad for two years and had worked for a civil society organization that taught English to Iraqis.
“With great sadness and sorrow, we bid farewell to our dear, Stephen Troell, who has always loved Iraq and its people and sought to serve them,” Global English Institute Baghdad, where Troell worked, said in a statement on Tuesday.
US Ambassador to Iraq Alina Romanowski expressed her thanks on Twitter Tuesday to “the Iraqi people for their supportive messages following the brutal murder of Steven Troell last night in Baghdad.”
“He was here in a private capacity doing what he loved – working (with) the Iraqi people. My deepest condolences to his wife & young children,” Romanowski wrote.
The State Department spokesperson said US officials “stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance” following the incident.
In October 2022, the European Parliament published its commissioned study concerning safety of journalists and media freedom globally which found the progressive erosion of media freedom around the world. The study concluded that “impunity remains unacceptably high, with most cases of killings remaining unresolved. Imprisonments are on the rise, while online spaces are becoming increasingly hostile and replete with gender-based hate speech.”
Pakistani journalists light candles during a vigil for Afghan journalists killed in a targeted … [+] suicide bombing, to mark World Press Freedom Day in Quetta on May 3, 2018. – Ten journalists were killed April 30, 2018, including Agence France-Presse chief photographer Shah Marai, in attacks in Kabul that sparked outrage around the world and underscored the dangers faced by Afghan media. (Photo credit: BANARAS KHAN / AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
The study cited data collected by the Committee to Protect Journalists indicating that a majority of killings between 2012 and 2021 occurred in 11 countries, including Syria (137 killings), Iraq (39), Somalia (35), Mexico (33), Afghanistan (31), India (27), Pakistan (22), Brazil (21), Yemen (19), Philippines (16) and Bangladesh (11). The study found that a majority of fatalities was due to journalists being killed by way of reprisal for their work, while some were killed in a battlefield or in a military context. “Among those killed because of their work, 28.8% were working on political journalism, 23.8% were war reporters, 15.8% were human rights reporters, while 10.7% were investigating crime and 9.6% corruption cases.”
Such killings are met with glaring impunity. The report refers to a data collected by the Committee to Protect Journalists which states that “from 224 cases of complete impunity during 2012-2021, 185 (82.6%) were recorded in 12 countries (…): Mexico (26 cases); Somalia (25); Syria (22); India (21); Afghanistan (17); Iraq (17); Philippines (14); Brazil (14); Pakistan (12); Bangladesh (7); South Sudan (5); and the Russian Federation (5).”
Apart from such targeted killings, journalists are also subjected to imprisonments and other methods to use and abuse law to silence journalists. In 2021 only, the Committee to Protect Journalists recorded 293 cases of imprisonment. The mostly used charges in such cases included: “accusations of anti-state activities dominate (61.5%), ‘no charge’ (14.8 %), retaliatory action (11.7 %), false news (7 %) and defamation (3 %).”
Other abuses of journalists include kidnappings and enforced disappearances. According to Reporters Without Borders, in 2021, at least 65 journalists and media workers were held hostage. Most hostage takings occurred in three countries: Syria (44); Iraq (11); and Yemen (9). One journalist was abducted in Mali. The Islamic State was responsible for 28 abductions, the Houthis in Yemen for 8 cases and the Syrian Jihadi group for 7 cases. According to Reporters Without Borders, 46 journalists disappeared between 2003 and 2021. The Committee to Protect Journalists recorded 69 journalist disappearances between 2002-2021 with Mexico topping the list with 15 cases (followed by Syria (10), Iraq (9) and Russia (7)).
Such targeting of journalists requires comprehensive responses.
On November 2, the U.N. marks the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, a day that the U.N. General Assembly established to urge states to “prevent violence against journalists and media workers, to ensure accountability through the conduct of impartial, speedy and effective investigations into all alleged violence against journalists and media workers falling within their jurisdiction and to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice and ensure that victims have access to appropriate remedies.” It calls upon member states to promote a safe environment, accommodating journalists in their work through legislative measures, raising awareness, carrying out adequate investigations, monitoring and reporting attacks committed against journalists, and by publicly condemning attacks.
However, despite some steps done in this direction, it is clear that the promises to provide better protection for journalists is still unfulfilled. Unfortunately, as in many cases, state actors are the perpetrators of such attacks against journalists, there is little, if any, hope that the situation will ever be addressed. However, protecting journalists we must as protecting journalists is protecting freedom of expression for all.
Archaeologists in northern Iraq have unearthed 2,700-year-old rock carvings featuring war scenes and trees, dating back to the Assyrian Empire
BAGHDAD — Archaeologists in northern Iraq last week unearthed 2,700-year-old rock carvings featuring war scenes and trees from the Assyrian Empire, an archaeologist said Wednesday.
The carvings on marble slabs were discovered by a team of experts in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, who have been working to restore the site of the ancient Mashki Gate, which was bulldozed by Islamic State group militants in 2016.
Fadhil Mohammed, head of the restoration works, said the team was surprised by discovering “eight murals with inscriptions, decorative drawings and writings.”
Mashki Gate was one of the largest gates of Nineveh, an ancient Assyrian city of this part of the historic region of Mesopotamia.
The discovered carvings show, among other things, a fighter preparing to fire an arrow while others show palm trees.
“The writings show that these murals were built or made during the reign of King Sennacherib,” Mohammed added, referring to the Neo-Assyrian Empire King who ruled from 705 to 681 BC.
The Islamic State group overran large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and carried out a campaign of systematic destruction of invaluable archaeological sites in both countries. The extremists vandalized museums and destroyed major archaeological sites in their fervor to erase history.
Iraqi forces supported by a U.S.-led international coalition liberated Mosul from IS in 2017 and the extremists lost the last sliver of land they once controlled two years later.
The territory of today’s Iraq was home to some of the earliest cities in the world. Thousands of archaeological sites are scattered across the country, where Sumerians, Babylonian and Assyrian once lived.
———
This story was first published earlier this week with a wrong photo linked to it. It is being resent to link the correct photo.
Archaeologists in northern Iraq have unearthed 2,700-year-old rock carvings featuring war scenes and trees, dating back to the Assyrian Empire
BAGHDAD — Archaeologists in northern Iraq last week unearthed 2,700-year-old rock carvings featuring war scenes and trees from the Assyrian Empire, an archaeologist said Wednesday.
The carvings on marble slabs were discovered by a team of experts in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, who have been working to restore the site of the ancient Mashki Gate, which was bulldozed by Islamic State group militants in 2016.
Fadhil Mohammed, head of the restoration works, said the team was surprised by discovering “eight murals with inscriptions, decorative drawings and writings.”
Mashki Gate was one of the largest gates of Nineveh, an ancient Assyrian city of this part of the historic region of Mesopotamia.
The discovered carvings show, among other things, a fighter preparing to fire an arrow while others show palm trees.
“The writings show that these murals were built or made during the reign of King Sennacherib,” Mohammed added, referring to the Neo-Assyrian Empire King who ruled from 705 to 681 BC.
The Islamic State group overran large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and carried out a campaign of systematic destruction of invaluable archaeological sites in both countries. The extremists vandalized museums and destroyed major archaeological sites in their fervor to erase history.
Iraqi forces supported by a U.S.-led international coalition liberated Mosul from IS in 2017 and the extremists lost the last sliver of land they once controlled two years later.
The territory of today’s Iraq was home to some of the earliest cities in the world. Thousands of archaeological sites are scattered across the country, where Sumerians, Babylonian and Assyrian once lived.
Russia’s General Sergei Surovikin is no stranger to mass murder and spreading terror.
In Chechnya, the shaven-headed veteran officer, who has the physique of a wrestler and an expression to match, vowed to “destroy three Chechen fighters for every Russian soldier killed.” And he’s remembered bitterly in northern Syria for reducing much of the city of Aleppo to ruins.
The 56-year-old air force general also oversaw the relentless targeting of clinics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in rebel-held Idlib in 2019, an effort to break opponents’ will and send refugees fleeing to Europe via neighboring Turkey. The 11-month campaign “showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly 3 million civilians in the area,” noted Human Rights Watch in a scathing report.
Now he is repeating his Syrian playbook in Ukraine.
Two weeks ago, Vladimir Putin appointed Surovikin as the overall commander of Russia’s so-called special military operation, to the delight of Moscow’s hawks. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov praised Surovikin as “a real general and a warrior.” He will “improve the situation,” Kadyrov added in a social media post.
But reversing a series of stunning battlefield Ukrainian victories and shifting the tide of the war may be beyond even the ruthless Surovikin. Ukrainians have shown throughout the year they’re made of stern stuff and aren’t going to be intimidated by war crimes — and they’ve endured bombing and bombardments before by equally unscrupulous Russian generals.
But Western military officials and analysts note there are already signs of more tactical coherence than was seen under his predecessor General Alexander Dvornikov. “His war tactics totally breach the rules of war but unfortunately they proved effective in Syria,” a senior British military intelligence officer told POLITICO. “As a war strategist he has a record of effectiveness — however vicious,” the officer added.
Surovikin and other officials point to the targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with a massive wave of attacks the past week. Strikes at the weekend resulted in power outages across the country leaving more than a million households without electricity, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said Saturday.
“These are vile strikes on critical objects,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “The world can and must stop this terror,” he said. “The geography of this latest mass strike is very wide,” Zelenskyy added. “Of course we don’t have the technical ability to knock down 100 percent of the Russian missiles and strike drones. I am sure that, gradually, we will achieve that, with help from our partners. Already now, we are downing a majority of cruise missiles, a majority of drones.”
Intercepting a majority of what’s being fired by the Russians at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, though, isn’t enough to halt the disruption Surovikin is endeavoring to provoke with the strikes. The scale of the damage caused to Ukraine’s power system at the weekend exceeded what was inflicted in the first wave of strikes on energy infrastructure on October 10, according to a Telegram post by Ukrenergo, the state grid operator.
Cheap shots
Around a third of the country’s power stations have been destroyed since the attacks started, Ukrainian authorities say.
And for Russia the cost of the aerial assault is cheap, relying as it does on Iran’s Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles, basically flying bombs nicknamed “kamikaze drones” because they are destroyed on impact.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with then-PM Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Surovikin in 2017 | Pool photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
The drones, which have a flying range of 2,500 kilometers, loiter over a target until ordered to attack. With a wingspan of 2.5 meters they can be difficult to identify on radar and cost only an estimated €20,000 to make, compared, say, to cruise missiles costing up to €2 million to produce.
Last week the White House said Iranian drone experts — trainers and tech support workers — have been deployed on the ground in Russia-annexed Crimea to help launch attacks on Ukraine. “Tehran is now directly engaged on the ground, and through the provision of weapons that are impacting civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine,” said national security spokesman John Kirby.
But turning to Iran for assistance also demonstrates a Russian weakness, says a Pentagon adviser. That they are using Iranian drones suggests they really are running out of missiles. “I don’t think their capabilities are anyway as good as they claim. I’ve always thought that the Russians were a bit of a hollow force. They don’t have depth in range with capabilities and they can’t really apply them very effectively. The fact that they’re going to Iranians for drone technology, that’s a pretty sad statement about the once vaunted Russian military-industrial or Soviet military-industrial complex,” the adviser told POLITICO.
And while the drones are helping to cause considerable damage, their light explosive payloads at 36 kilograms present the Russians with a problem – they are not powerful enough to cause “decommissioning” damage to big power stations and so are being aimed at smaller sub-stations instead. Eventually, too, Western and Ukrainian experts will find ways to jam the GPS system the drones depend on to shift them off target. So, they may have a short shelf life of effectiveness, say Western officials.
Not having sufficient depth in terms of capabilities isn’t the only problem facing Russian generals. One of the most debilitating problems for the Russians has been the lack of small-unit leadership and competent supervision on the battlefield.
Ukrainian servicemen and police officers stand guard in a street after a drone attack in Kyiv on October 17, 2022 | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
The Ukrainians since 2014 have been steeped in U.S. military doctrine and training, which focuses on building a professional corps of corporals and sergeants who understand the big picture and are given the delegated authority to make decisions on the battlefield as they lead their units, according to John Barranco, an analyst at the Atlantic Council who oversaw the U.S. Marines’ initial operations in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks and served in Iraq.
The failure of the Russians to build up such a cadre has plagued them in Ukraine and it isn’t a deficiency Surovikin has time to rectify. In fact, the situation is likely to worsen with the Kremlin now throwing into inadequately battle-trained conscripts from Putin’s partial mobilization order.
Russian retreat
After just a handful of days’ training, conscripts are already dying. And draftees are being sent to what is now the crucial front in this stage of the war — the southern port city of Kherson — where Russian authorities have ordered all residents to leave ahead of a closing advance by Ukrainian troops.
Kherson city is the only regional capital Russia has managed to seize since the invasion began. It was a key prize in establishing a land bridge between Crimea and Ukraine’s south, as well as opening the way for a potential assault on the major Black Sea port of Odesa.
But a Ukrainian counteroffensive that started in the summer is now bearing down on Kherson city. Russia’s tactical position in the area is highly compromised, with units of paratroopers dug in on the west bank of the Dnieper River, where they are highly vulnerable. “From a battlefield geometry point of view, it is a terrible position for the Russians,” Jack Watling, a land warfare expert at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, told POLITICO.
Watling, who’s been conducting operational analysis with Ukraine’s general staff, says the Russians on the west bank are among their most capable troops but can’t be resupplied reliably “at the scale needed to make them competitive” and they won’t be able to counterattack.
“The Ukrainians have the initiative and can dictate the tempo,” Watling said. “From a purely military point of view, the Russians would be much better off withdrawing from Kherson city and focusing on holding the river [from the east bank] and then putting the bulk of their forces on the Zaporizhzhia axis, but for political reasons they have been slow to do that and seem to ready to fight a delaying action.”
A view taken on October 19, 2022 shows a road sign reading “Kherson” in the town of Armyansk in the north of Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula bordering the Russian-controlled Kherson region in southern Ukraine | AFP via Getty Images
That seems in line with what Ukraine’s general staff reported at the weekend. Russian troop movements have been occurring in the Kherson region with some units preparing for urban combat, while others have been withdrawing.
In short, Surovikin is being forced to try to pull off one of the most difficult of military maneuvers — an orderly retreat to reposition forces, including draftees with scant training and units that have no cohesion. When more experienced Russian troops tried the same move near Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine last month, they suffered a rout.
Thuggery alone won’t save Russian conscripts from motivated and agile Ukrainian forces. Whether Surovikin has the tactical skills to navigate a dangerous retreat will be what counts.
Butcher wrote that the evidence itself is the least important factor in his decision to keep Costello in jail.
But, he added, “when taken together with the significant [prison] sentence Defendant faces if convicted, the Court finds Defendant has a serious incentive to flee.”
Costello’s lawyer Cindy Muro did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Costello, who has ties to Washington, Las Vegas and California, is due in San Diego court later Tuesday for another hearing related to his expected transfer to Washington state to face trial.
Among other allegations, Costello is accused of using social media sites to coordinate false claims about publicly traded stocks to manipulate their prices so he could profit.
As part of the alleged scams, Costello falsely claimed to be worth a billion dollars or more and to have served two tours in Iraq as a member of the special forces, where he purportedly was shot twice. He also claimed to have “managed money for wealthy individuals, including a Saudi sheikh,” and that “he had 14 years of experience on Wall Street,” the indictment said.
“None of that is true,” a press release by U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington said.
Prosecutors have said that Costello agreed through his then-lawyer to surrender in late September to face the indictment after being informed it was set to be filed. But he never showed up as agreed at the FBI’s office in San Diego, and went on the lam.
On Oct. 4, an FBI SWAT team found Costello in a remote area near San Diego, carrying a backpack containing tens of thousands of dollars in U.S. and Mexican currency, six one-ounce gold bars, banking cards and checkbooks and a Washington state driver’s license in the name of “Christian Bolter.”
Cash and gold bars as detailed in court filing in US District court in San Diego in case of former fugitive Justin Costello.
Source: US District Court
Prosecutors said the FBI was able to locate Costello by tracking him on his cell phone.
Costello pleaded not guilty during an arraignment in San Diego federal court a week later. He then appeared before Butcher on Oct. 18 for a detention hearing, where prosecutors asked the judge to keep him locked up.
Butcher in his order Monday said that prosecutors had “demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that [Costello] is an economic danger to the community and that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of any other person and the community.”
The judge cited Costello’s alleged possession of “multiple documents matching” the driver’s license bearing his photograph but the name of Bolter when he was nabbed, as well as other items that Costello could use to flee prosecution again.
A teenage dissident trailed behind a group of smugglers in the borderlands of western Iran. For three days, Rezan trekked a rocky mountain range and walked through minefields along a winding path forged by seasoned smugglers to circumnavigate the country’s heavily armed Revolutionary Guards. It was a trip too dangerous for respite of much more than a few stolen moments at a time.
“I knew that if an officer spotted us, we would die immediately,” said the 19-year-old Iran-Kurdish activist, whom CNN is identifying by her pseudonym Rezan for security purposes. She was traveling to the border with Iraq, one of Iran’s most militarized frontiers, where according to rights groups, many have been shot to death by Iranian security forces for crossing illegally, or for smuggling illicit goods.
She had fled her hometown of Sanandaj in western Iran where security forces were wreaking death and destruction on the protest sites. Demonstrators were arbitrarily detained, some were shot dead in front of her, she said. Many were beaten up on the streets. In the second week of the protests, security forces pulled Rezan by her uncovered hair, she said. As she was being dragged down the street, screaming in agony, she saw her friends forcefully detained and children getting beaten.
“They pulled my hair. They beat me. They dragged me,” she said, recounting the brutal crackdown in the Kurdish-majority city. “At the same time, I could see the same thing happening to many other people, including children.”
Sanandaj has seen the some of the largest protests in Iran, the biggest outside of Tehran, since the uprising began in mid-September.
Rezan said she had no choice but to take the long and perilous journey with smugglers to Iraq. Leaving Iran through the nearest official border crossing – a mere three-hour car ride away — could have led to her arrest. Staying in Sanandaj could have resulted in her death at the hands of the security forces.
“(Here) I can get my rights to live as a woman. I want to fight for the rights of women. I want to fight for human rights,” she told CNN from northern Iraq. After she arrived here earlier this month, she decided to change tack. No longer a peaceful protester, Rezan decided to take up arms, enlisting with an Iranian-Kurdish militant group that has positions in the arid valleys of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Rezan is one of multiple Iranian dissidents who fled the country in the last month, escaping the regime’s violent bid to quash demonstrations that erupted after the death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa “Zhina” Amini during her detention by Iranian morality police for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly.
The number of dissidents who have left Iran since the protests started is unknown. In the Kurdish-administered region of northern Iraq (KRG) — which borders the predominantly Kurdish west of Iran — many of the exiled activists keep a low profile, hiding in safe houses. They said they fear reprisals against their families back home, where mass detentions have become commonplace in Kurdish-majority areas.
According to eyewitnesses and social media videos, the people in those regions have endured some of the most heavy-handed tactics used by Iran’s security forces in their brutal campaign to crush the protest movement.
In Kurdish-majority regions, evidence of security forces indiscriminately shooting at crowds of protesters is widespread. The Iranian government also appears to have deployed members of its elite fighting force, the Revolutionary Guards, to these areas to face off with demonstrators, according to eyewitnesses and video from the protest sites.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards typically fight the regime’s battles further afield, namely in Iraq and Syria, propping up brutal dictatorships as well as fighting extremist groups such as ISIS.
For the Kurds, the intensified crackdown in the country’s west underscores decades of well-documented ethnic marginalization by Iran’s central government. These are grievances that Iran’s other ethnic minorities share and that precede clerical rule in Iran.
The nearly 10-million strong Kurdish population is the third largest ethnic group in Iran. Governments in Tehran — including the regime of the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was overthrown in 1979 — have eyed the group with suspicion because of their long-standing aspirations to secede from the state and establish a republic alongside Kurdish communities in neighboring countries.
Crouched under the shade of a tree in a dusty valley alongside her sisters-in-arms in northern Iraq, Rezan clasps her AK-47 rifle, her faltering voice betraying a lingering fear of Iranian reprisals. After she fled Iran, the authorities there called her family and threatened to arrest her siblings, she said.
But her family supports her militancy, she said, with her mother vowing to bury every one of her children rather than hand them over to the authorities. “I carry a weapon because we want to show the Iranian Kurds that they have someone standing behind them,” Rezan said from one of the bases of her militant group, the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK). “I want to protect the Kurds there because the Kurds are protecting themselves with rocks.”
Protesters across Iran are largely unarmed. Yet Iran blames Kurdish-Iranian armed groups in Iraqi Kurdistan for instigating unrest in Kurdish-majority areas. It has repeatedly struck Iranian-Kurdish targets in Iraq with drones and missiles since the protests began, killing scores of people.
Last Saturday, Iran’s Armed Forces chief accused the Iraqi Kurdistan region – which has a semi-autonomous government – of harboring 3,000 Iranian-Kurdish militants, and vowed to continue to attack their bases unless the government disarms the fighters.
“Iran’s operations against terrorists will continue. No matter how long it takes, we will continue this operation and a bigger one,” said Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces.
PAK and other Iraq-based Kurdish-Iranian armed groups say they have not supported the protests in any concrete way. But they have called on the United States to intervene on behalf of the demonstrators, and have said they are prepared to help Kurds in Iran take up arms in case of a further escalation in Iran’s crisis.
“What’s happening on the streets with the protesters was not engineered at my base,” PAK’s leader, Gen. Hussein Yazdanpanah, told CNN. He was speaking from one of the group’s barracks that was blown up by Iranian missiles and drones on September 28, killing eight militants.
“(Iran) is using us as a scapegoat for the protests in Iran and to distract media attention from Iran,” said Yazdanpanah, who believes that he was the target of that attack.
“I won’t hide the fact that I am a military support for my people,” he said, standing amid the destruction at his base near the town of Altun Kupri. The stench of two militants slain in the attack, but whose bodies have not yet been recovered, rises up from the rubble.
“For a revolution to succeed there has to be military support for the people,” he added. “(Iran) wanted people to question this principle. (By bombing the base) they wanted to say to them that there is no military support to protect you.”
Across the country, protesters with a variety of grievances — namely related to the dire state of Iran’s economy and the marginalization of ethnic groups — have coalesced around an anti-regime movement that was ignited by Amini’s death. Women have been at the forefront of the protests, arguing that Amini’s demise at the hands of the notorious morality police highlights women’s plight under Islamic Republic laws that restrict their dress and behavior.
Kurds in Iran also saw their grievances reflected in Amini’s death. The young woman’s Kurdish name — Zhina — was banned by a clerical establishment that bars ethnic minority names, ostensibly to prevent sowing ethnic divisions in the country. Amini also was crying for help in her Kurdish mother tongue when morality police officers violently forced her into a van, according to activists.
The first large protests in Iran’s current uprising erupted in Amini’s Kurdish-majority hometown of Saqqez in western Iran, which has also been subjected to a violent crackdown. “When we were in Iran, I joined the protests with friends. Two days later, two of my friends got kidnapped and one of them got injured,” said one man who fled Saqqez to Iraqi Kurdistan, who CNN is not naming for security reasons.
Seated on carpet under a tree to avoid any identification of their safe house, the man and his family said they worry about the long arms of Iran’s regime. The family cover their faces with medical masks, the man wears long sleeves to cover identifying tattoos and a plastic tarp is hung up to obscure them from the ever-present fear of incoming Iranian drones.
He and his family decided to leave Iran when he saw security forces kill his friend near a mosque in the first days of the uprising, the man said. “How can they claim to be an Islamic Republic when I saw them murdering my friend outside a mosque?” he asked in disbelief.
He said the community could not retrieve his friend’s body until night fell, after which they secretly buried their dead. His testimony is similar to multiple accounts CNN has heard since the start of Iran’s uprising. Many in the Kurdish areas of Iran report opting not to receive medical care for injured protesters in hospitals, for fear of arrest by authorities. Eyewitnesses also say some have even avoided sending their dead to morgues, for fear of reprisals against family members.
Since they fled, dissidents in Iraqi Kurdistan say they remain in contact with the loved ones they left behind. Every phone call to their families comes with news of an intensified crackdown, as well as reports of people defying security forces and continuing to pour into the streets.
“From what I know, my family is part of the revolution and the revolution continues to this day,” said Rezan. “They are ready to die to get our rights.”
SULIMANIYAH, Iraq — Anti-government demonstrations erupted Saturday in several locations across Iran as the most sustained protests in years against a deeply entrenched theocracy entered their fourth week. At least two people were killed.
Marchers chanted anti-government slogans and twirled headscarves in repudiation of coercive religious dress codes. In some areas, merchants shuttered shops in response to a call by activists for a commercial strike or to protect their wares from damage.
Later Saturday, hackers broke into the evening news on Iran’s state TV for 15 seconds, just as footage of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was being broadcast. The hackers flashed an image of Khamenei surrounded by flames. A caption read “Join us and stand up!” and “The blood of our youth is dripping from your claws,” a reference to Khamenei.
A song with the lyrics “Woman. Life. Freedom” — a common chant of the protesters — played in the background.
The protests erupted Sept. 17, after the burial of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who had died in the custody of Iran’s feared morality police. Amini had been detained for an alleged violation of strict Islamic dress codes for women. Since then, protests spread across the country and were met by a fierce crackdown, in which dozens are estimated to have been killed and hundreds arrested.
In the city of Sanandaj in the Kurdish-majority northern region, one man was shot dead Saturday while driving a car in a major thoroughfare, rights monitors said. The France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network and the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, said the man was shot after honking at security forces stationed on the street. Honking has become one of the ways activists have been expressing civil disobedience. Video circulating online showed the slain man slumped over the steering wheel, as distraught witnesses shouted for help.
The semi-official Fars news agency, believed to be close to the elite paramilitary force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, said Kurdistan’s police chief denied reports of using live rounds against protesters.
Fars claimed that people in Sanandaj’s Pasdaran Street said the victim was shot from inside the car without elaborating. But photos of the dead man indicate that he was shot from his left side, meaning he likely was not shot from inside the car. The blood can be seen running down the inside of the door on the driver’s side.
A second protester was killed after security forces fired gunshots to disperse crowds in the city and 10 protesters were wounded, the rights monitors said.
A general strike was observed in the city’s main streets amid a heavy security presence and protesters burned tires in some areas. Patrols have deterred mass gatherings in Sanandaj but isolated protests have continued in the city’s densely populated neighborhoods.
Demonstrations were also reported in the capital Tehran on Saturday, including small ones near the Sharif University of Technology, one of Iran’s premier centers of learning and the scene of a violent government crackdown last weekend. Authorities have closed the campus until further notice.
Images on social media showed protests also took place in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Other protests erupted at Azad University in northern Tehran, in other neighborhoods of the capital and in the city’s bazaar. Many shops were closed in central Tehran and near the University of Tehran.
President Ebrahim Raisi in a meeting with students from the all-female Al-Zahra University in Tehran alleged again that foreign enemies were responsible for fomenting the protests. He has made the claim without giving specifics or providing any evidence.
“The enemy thought that it can pursue its desires in universities while unaware that our students and teachers are aware and they will not allow the enemies’ vain plans to be realized,” he said.
Meanwhile, thousands of people in The Hague, Netherlands chanted and sang in a solidarity demonstration in support of the protesters in Iran.
SAN DIEGO, August 23, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Veteran Entertainment Television (VET Tv) announced today that it will be onsite at the 103rd National Convention of The American Legion, Aug. 29 through Sept. 1, 2022 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The streaming service dedicated to authentic storytelling of veterans by veterans will report on the most pressing and timely issues facing America’s veterans and their families.
VET Tv’s coverage will focus on employment and transition, The American Legion’s efforts to shape legislation favorable to veterans and their families, and suicide prevention – with special attention on The American Legion’s “Be the One” campaign. With dozens of key decision makers, policy experts, and national leaders attending the convention, VET Tv will be positioned to provide their veteran audience with information they need to know.
“We’re truly excited to help The American Legion reach a wider and more diverse audience, especially our active and engaged post-9/11 community,” said Waco Hoover, VET Tv’s chief executive officer. “With everything The American Legion has done for veterans across the nation, we really want to do our part to make sure the younger generation understands the impact The American Legion has made in support of those who’ve given so much in defense of America.”
With a current membership of nearly two million veterans, The American Legion was founded in 1919 on the four pillars of a strong national security, veterans’ affairs, Americanism and youth programs.
“The American Legion is known for tackling the most important issues facing veterans,” said Dean Kessel, Chief Marketing Officer for The American Legion. “We’re excited to have VET Tv at the convention covering topics our members feel are important and essential to every veteran in America.”
In addition to content created at the convention, VET Tv will offer a free one-month trial of their streaming service to every member of The American Legion in the run-up and aftermath of the national meeting.
###
About Veteran Entertainment Television – VET Tv
VET Tv is a mission-driven brand using entertainment as a vehicle to create community, connection and improve the mental health for those who served. The company is an U.S.-based, vertically-integrated, over-the-top media service that specializes in creating, producing, self-distributing, and marketing film and television series whose primary audience is the military and veteran community.
For VET Tv
Media contact: Mike Lavigne at mike.lavigne@veterantv.com or (571) 390-3480.
Education: Yale University, B.A., 1968; Harvard Business School, M.B.A., 1975
Military: Texas Air National Guard, F-102 fighter pilot, 1968-1970
Religion: Methodist
After John Quincy Adams, George W. Bush is the second president to be the son of a previous president.
His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a US senator from Connecticut. His younger brother, Jeb Bush, served as the governor of Florida and ran for president in 2016.
His interests include oil painting, golf, bicycling and baseball.
1968-1970 – Pilot, Texas Air National Guard.
1977-1986 – Founder/CEO of Arbusto Energy, an oil exploration firm. In 1982, the name is changed to Bush Exploration.
1978 – Runs for an open seat in the House of Representatives and loses to his Democratic challenger, Kent Hance.
1984 – Bush Exploration merges with Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. Bush is named CEO of the new company.
1986 – Harken Energy Corporation purchases Spectrum 7 and Bush is appointed to Harken’s board of directors.
1988 – Works on his father’s presidential campaign.
1989 – Along with a group of partners, purchases the Texas Rangers baseball franchise.
1989-1994 – Managing general partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
November 3, 1998 – Is elected to a second term as governor of Texas with 68.8% of the vote. He is the first governor in Texas history to be elected to consecutive four-year terms.
January 20, 2001 – Bush is sworn in as the 43rd president of the United States.
September 11, 2001 – During a morning visit to an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, Bush is told that two planes have flown into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack. He leaves the school and boards Air Force One as aides fear for his safety.
San Francisco, Calif., May 10, 2017 (Newswire.com)
– #ThaarJustice is a non-profit campaign aimed at raising awareness among people from all countries in the area of human rights, law and justice. It aims to help everyone who is subjected to injustice of any kind through social media participation. Per #ThaarJustice, published before 1/7/2017 (and if you follow @thaar on Twitter and @faristaie on Facebook), comments will be republished through all the social networking sites dedicated to this campaign to get more influence in the world public opinion.
Writing a simple sentence in the #thaarjustice will greatly benefit the support of justice, as it will be shared with us and their friends. It is an easy way to educate and raise awareness about injustice in the world, which will reduce crime, including terrorism, as the exchange of these messages on a large scale will force governments, including Iraq and its judicial systems to apply the principles and laws of justice in their countries and will force the countries to implement the law properly.
Over the last 30 days, London, St. Petersburg, Paris, Germany and many other cities around the world have been exposed to terrorism. This is the result of injustice and lawlessness in many countries. This calls for a serious and firm stand by respected journalists to push governments and judicial authorities around the world to act in accordance with the law and to apply law, justice and humanitarian regulations properly and in a complementary manner.
Thaar Al-Taiey, Owner
“Our goal is to involve society and encourage everyone to think about the important ideals of justice,” Thaar Al-Taiey said. If we succeed in activating #thaarjustice, we will publish a new website that seamlessly integrates social media tools into rich and effective social media pages and links them with international human rights organizations, UN organizations and human rights organizations to our community in a single location to promote digital communications to the community in new and innovative ways, and we hope that this will attract partners who may never have heard of “#thaarjustice” or who may not know what we are doing to our communities and allow us to communicate our message better to our current supporters.
Thaar said the idea of the campaign came after several countries were exposed to terrorist operations and after the outbreak of crime and non-accountability in many countries. The spread of crime and acts of terrorism in the world are all the result of injustice and the failure to apply law and justice correctly and the failure to apply the rules and regulations of human rights.
Over the last 30 days, London, St. Petersburg, Paris, Germany and many other cities around the world have been exposed to terrorism. This is the result of injustice and lawlessness in many countries. This calls for a serious and firm stand by respected journalists to push governments and judicial authorities around the world to act in accordance with the law and to apply law, justice and humanitarian regulations properly and in a complementary manner. This will help greatly in preventing the spread of crime Including terrorism in many countries of the world. We may not in the twenty-first century tolerate such a violation of human rights and justice.
The injustice and lack of applying the law by the Iraqi courts or in any other country are fundamental to the spread of crime, including the terror crimes in all countries of the world. Standing with the right applying of the law will reflect positively on all countries of the world. This is the real responsibility of the respected media by standing with truth, justice, human rights and humanity.
Thaar added that those who have been subjected to injustice do not leave the matter; “There is no right to be lost if the successor demands.” The oppressed must try once and twice and insist on their demands until they get their rights and publish them in newspapers and international satellite channels and social media.
About #Thaar_Majeed_Hassan
#Thaar_Majeed_Hassan holds a Master degree (MSc) in Computer Engineering (MSSE), Bachelor of Science degree (BSc) in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) and ITIL Certificate. He has more than 22 years of experience in the Automated System fields, and he is the author of a number of technical papers and books. He owns TW@thaar, FB@faristaie, inst@thaar_altaiey and YT@thaar taiey accounts to enforce the law, justice and human rights. Al_Taiey also holds several Geneva justice consultant certifications.
Forced to flee their homes, refugees in Brussels learn vital skills to gain employment in their new country.
Brussels, Belgium, June 11, 2016 (Newswire.com)
– The Churches of Scientology for Europe in Brussels, Belgium, hosted a Volunteer Minister seminar for a dozen Iraqi and Syrian refugees to help them adjust and survive in their new home.
In their own countries, most of these men held responsible, skilled positions in professional fields: They included engineers, business executives, a carpenter, a director and an optician. But as immigrants in a new and, to them, often confusion country, they have been unable to work in their fields or integrate into the local culture.
With the help of an Arabic translator, the men were taken through a seminar on communication skills from The Scientology Handbook, the textbook of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers, to help them overcome these untenable circumstances.
Tense and worried when they arrived at the Church, while doing the communication drills the men visibly relaxed, laughed and enjoyed the training.
After the communication training, a local nonprofit delivered a workshop to help them gain employment in Brussels. They learned how to compile a CV and how to procure the Belgian equivalent of the certification they had in the own countries. They also requested and received information on local customs and manners so they can feel certain and comfortable when they go for job interviews.
All agreed the tools they learned were highly beneficial and they were interested in having more training. They also wanted to set up these seminars for other refugees.
The Volunteer Ministers program was expressly intended for use by Scientologists and non-Scientologists alike. Anyone of any culture or creed may train as a Volunteer Minister and use these tools to help their friends and families and communities. And all are welcome to do so.
Equipped with effective technology to resolve virtually any difficulty, Volunteer Ministers live by the motto that no matter the problem, “Something can be done about it.”
