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1. oktober 2006
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Eight Palestinians were killed and about 60 injured in clashes between Hamas and Fatah when a Gaza protest by civil servants and policemen turned violent.
In Gaza City, Hamas fighters with guns and clubs moved into a crowd of hundreds of civilian and police protesters gathered near the Palestinian parliament.
The Hamas forces began shooting in the air before a gunfight broke out between them and security forces considered loyal to Mr Abbas.
Of the four militiamen killed, one was from the interior ministry force that is loyal to Hamas and the other three were from those elements of the security fources traditionally seen as loyal to Fatah - among them, two members of the presidential guard.
Gunmen from both sides fired at each other from positions on rooftops near the building.
In Ramallah, supporters of Mr Abbas set the Hamas prime minister's office ablaze after marching through the city burning tires and shouting "Hamas, out, out".
I think this means the negotiations about a coalition government is just about over.
9:28:21 PM 
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Adam LeBor outlines the amazing incompetence, corruption and complacency of Kofi Annan's term as Secretary General of the United Nations. The list of disasters is long and tragic: Rwanda (before Annan became UN chief), Srebrenica, Darfur, massive sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers and UNSCAM, the world's largest financial scandal ever. Kofi Annan is about to leave an organisation that is thoroughly corrupt, incompetent and unable to play a constructive role in the world.
As an example, LeBor outlines Annan's actions (or lack thereof) in the Rwanda genocide, while he was head of the UN peacekeeping, a job that was handled so disastrously that he was obviously qualified to become the next Secretary General.
Unamir, the UN mission to Rwanda, was deployed in October 1993 to implement the Arusha peace accords, with the aim of ending the civil war between the Hutus and Tutsis. The Hutu government continued to plan a mass slaughter of Tutsis. By January 1994, ethnic tension was at boiling point. The 2,500 Unamir troops were under-equipped. Dallaire lacked everything from intelligence-gathering capability to batteries for troops’ torches.
By January 1994, Dallaire had received detailed information about the planned mass murder from a source inside the Hutu militia known as “Jean-Pierre”. The general asked the DPKO for authorisation to raid the arms caches and offer sanctuary to Jean-Pierre and his family. On January 11, 1994, he cabled New York: “Since Unamir mandate, he [Jean-Pierre] has been ordered to register all Tutsis in Kigali. He suspects it is for their extermination. Example he gave was that in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1,000 Tutsis.” He said he planned to raid the arms caches within the next 36 hours. He concluded: “Peux ce-que veux. Allons-y” – “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Let’s go.”
There was no will and no way. Annan’s office replied, in a cable signed by his deputy, Iqbal Riza: “We must handle this information with caution.” Dallaire warned of mass slaughter, but Annan counselled prudence. “No reconnaissance or other action, including response to request for protection, should be taken by Unamir until clear guidance is received from headquarters.” Dallaire was furious. The next day his boss, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, replied to Annan, backing Dallaire, emphasising that Jean-Pierre only had a maximum of 48 hours before he was due to distribute the arms for the massacres. Annan’s reply, again signed by Riza, was negative. He ordered Dallaire not to proceed with the planned raid. It was, he said, beyond Unamir’s mandate under resolution 872. This was untrue. UN mandates were interpreted by DPKO officials as they saw fit. Resolution 872 mandated Unamir to “secure the city of Kigali” within “a weapons-secure area established by the parties in and around the city”. This was sufficient mandate. Dallaire was not even allowed to help Jean-Pierre. “The overriding consideration is the need to avoid entering into a course of action that might lead to the use of force and unanticipated repercussions,” Annan’s cable concluded.
Had Annan permitted Dallaire to carry out his raids, the genocide might never have taken place. Not only did Annan and Riza twice refuse this, they then sat on his fax. They neither alerted other UN departments nor brought Dallaire’s warnings to the attention of the security council. The council then downsized Unamir from 2,500 troops to around 250.
Between 800,000 and one million people were murdered in the Rwandan genocide.
Good riddance to the eternally gravely concerned Kofi Annan, who ends his term of chaos on December 31st.
Unfortunately, the record is unlikely to improve, whoever is appointed to succeed him. The UN has as a principle to appoint secretary generals that are incompetent, corrupt, or both.
1:19:25 PM
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The Sunday Times writes that it has obtained the martyrdom video of Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers. The video will be online by noon Sunday, GMT.
FILM of the ringleader of the September 11 hijackers reading his “martyrdom” will inside Afghanistan at Osama Bin Laden’s headquarters has emerged five years after the Al-Qaeda outrage.
It is the first time that a videotape has appeared of Mohammed Atta — who flew an American Airlines plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center — at a training camp in Afghanistan. It fills in a significant gap in the timing of the build-up to the attacks on the United States.
Dates on the tape show Atta was filmed on January 18, 2000, together with Ziad Jarrah, the pilot of United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers apparently stormed the flight deck.
The Sunday Times has obtained a copy of the video through a previously tested channel. The tape has no soundtrack and a US source said lip readers had tried without success to decipher what was being said.
Despite the deadly tasks the men had been assigned, they appear in high spirits, laughing and smiling in front of the camera. Only when Atta, with an AK-47 propped on a wall beside him, reads a document marked in Arabic “the will”, does he become solemn. Both are well groomed, without the haggard appearance of the identity mugshots issued after September 11.
The high quality, unedited film shows Bin Laden addressing his followers at the mud-walled complex near Kandahar. One of the main figures in the September 11 plot, Ramzi Binalshibh, is identifiable in the crowd, as is a bodyguard whose task was to kill Bin Laden with two bullets to the head if he faced capture.
It is just too bad the soundtrack is missing. But it is an interesting piece of evidence pointing to the missing months in Atta's whereabouts. It would be interesting to know how the paper obtained this evidence, and when and how it actually came into the hands of (I assume) British or US intelligence.
Another chilling reminder of how humans can rationalise any atrocity, if ideology or religion justifies it. It is worth realising that evil people (and I don't mean that in any metaphysical sense) almost always consider themselves good. Very few are the bad guy in their own manuscript, even those who murder thousands of random people to advance some cause.
4:25:33 AM
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I've said repeatedly that terrorism is essentially a media strategy. It's not a figure of speech. Al-Qaeda certainly thinks so.
For example, this past Sept. 11, Abu Omar said, a link sent to a jihadist e-mail list took him to a general interest Islamic Web site, which led him to a password-protected Web site, then onto yet another site containing the latest release from Al Qaeda: a lecture by its No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahri, threatening attacks on Israel and the Persian Gulf. Abu Omar said he then passed the video to friends and confidants, acting as a local distributor to other sympathizers.
In recent years, Al Qaeda has formed a special media production division called Al Sahab to produce videos about leaders like Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri, terrorism experts say. The group largely once relied on Arab television channels like Al Jazeera to broadcast its videos and taped messages.
Al Sahab, whose name means the cloud, has continued to draw on a video library featuring everything from taped suicide messages by the Sept. 11 hijackers to images of gun battles and bombings spearheaded by Al Qaeda and others, said Marwan Shehadeh, an expert on Islamist movements with the Vision Research Institute in Amman who has close ties to jihadists in Jordan and Syria.
But this year Al Sahab has released many more recordings than in previous years, said Chris Heffelfinger, a specialist in jihadi ideology at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, in what many analysts see as a new offensive focusing on the Muslim mainstream. Jihadi Web sites, meanwhile, have continued sprouting on the Internet, serving as a conduit for Al Qaeda’s propaganda.
There's no obvious solution in sight, unfortunately.
2:09:48 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.11.2006; 20:02:59.
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