  HIGHLIGHTS SOUTH AFRICA – LEGAL You'll pay, US lawyer tells SA government Six apartheid victims, including the mother of a teenager shot dead in the 1976 Soweto riots, are seeking $20-billion dollars (about R140-billion) in a lawsuit targeting the South African government and major corporations, their lawyer said on Monday. The suit was filed in New York District Court on Saturday, demanding at least $10-billion for "genocide, expropriation and other wrongful acts" by international companies under apartheid, American lawyer Ed Fagan told a news conference. The plaintiffs are also seeking another $10-billion in damages because President Thabo Mbeki's government "continued to allow companies to exploit victims without protecting them, allowing industry to violate people's rights. " 'These companies were strategic partners of the apartheid government' The full amount would be paid into what Fagan termed a "humanitarian fund. " "At the end of the day these companies were strategic partners of the (apartheid) government," Fagan said. The post-apartheid government set up in 1994 was targeted in the case "because of its failure to fulfil its obligations and its conspiracy with specific companies to violate these people's rights," he added.
Apart from Mbeki, the suit targets mining giants Anglo American and Goldfields; United States computer giant IBM; UBS Bank of Switzerland and South African petroleum giant Sasol. Among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is Dorothy Molefi, the mother of 13-year-old Hector Petersen, who was shot dead in Soweto in June 1976 when police opened fire on schoolchildren and teenagers who had gathered to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans - seen as the language of the white oppressors - in schools. 'South African matters resolved in South Africa' The picture of Petersen being carried away by two teenagers became iconic of black South Africa's struggle against racist oppression. Mbeki's spokesperson Bheki Khumalo said the government would defend its case, but wanted "South African matters resolved in South Africa. " "If Ed Fagan has decided to do this and he has indicated that he is doing it, well, the government will have to go to court and defend itself. We are convinced that we have a winable case.
" Mbeki has in the past condemned any moves to sue major companies in the US, arguing that many of the companies were now assisting in South Africa's development. Fagan said the civil action was separate to that of a class action on behalf of apartheid victims already before a New York court, and from which South African lawyers claimed Fagan had been dismissed. This was disputed by the flamboyant US lawyer: "I was never fired. I merely took a back seat. It was them who were fired. " He has also drawn scathing criticism from civic groups for raising the expectations of poor and mainly black victims of apartheid.
Fagan became prominent when he won a $1.2-billion compensation claim by Holocaust survivors against Swiss banks, including UBS and Credit Suisse, in 1998. Fagan said his clients would give the South African government two weeks to respond to a "proposal" - without divulging details - before the case would go ahead. "Make no mistake about this. This is not a game, it is not a procedural play, it is not a show. It is a deadly serious lawsuit, it has legal legs, it has legal precedent. "If our allegations are true, you are going to pay," he said.
Fagan said he did not want to comment on the other case already before the New York courts - in which judgment had been reserved - were 34 companies were being sued for billions of dollars. Source; Sapa-AFP, June 04 Write; by Jan Hennop - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SYRIA – LAW Syria preparing sanctions against United States Syria is preparing a law that would prohibit trade dealings with the United States in response to U.S. sanctions imposed on the Arab country last month, Syrian legislators said Saturday. More than 130 members of the 250-seat legislature have prepared a draft of the "America Accountability Act" that would impose "strict sanctions" on American interests in Syria. In a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Damascus, parliament officials said the draft law is a response to "Washington's policy in the region and its unlimited support and bias for Israeli policies and practices and to the Syria Accountability Act. " The Syria Accountability Act is a U.S. law passed last year that calls for sanctions against Syria for its alleged support of terrorism. Syria denies the U.S. claims and says the sanctions are political.
Muhammad Habash, a lawmaker with moderate Islamic affiliations who is one of the campaigners for the draft law, said the law was meant to maintain the dignity of Syrians. "We are not simple-minded to the degree that we imagine we can affect the great American economy," he said. "But we are able to maintain our dignity and slap the Americans so they know that if they continue with their arrogant policies, people everywhere around the globe will spit at them. " In May, President Bush banned all U.S. exports to Syria except for food and medicine, and banned Syrian flights to and from the United States after long-standing complaints that Syria was supporting terrorism and undermining U.S. efforts in Iraq. The sanctions were based on the Syria Accountability Act. The parliament statement said lawmakers would submit the draft law for a vote June 27 during a Parliament session in which Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara will explain the Syrian government's rationale for imposing the sanctions.
The statement said the law was expected to pass overwhelmingly. It would have to be ratified by President Bashar Assad before becoming law. The statement did not give details on the nature of the sanctions Syria will impose. Lawmaker Suleiman Haddad said the sanctions may be in the form of boycotting American goods but would not be a complete boycott of the United States, though he said some members of parliament supported that option. "We in Syria believe that there is still a thread between us and America," Haddad said in a telephone interview Saturday. He said the sanctions would not impose restrictions on U.S. companies working in his country.
Trade between the United States and Syria amounts to $300 million a year. Several U.S. companies operate in Syria, which in the last year has signed oil-exploration deals with American companies worth a total of $34 million. The U.S. sanctions imposed under the Syria Accountability Act also authorize the Treasury Department to freeze the assets of Syrian nationals and entities involved in terrorism. They also restrict relations between U.S. banks and the Syrian national banks. Source; The Associated Press, June 04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CECENIA – RUSSIAN AFFAIRS Mujahideen attack Russian military bases in Ingushetia Chechen and Ingush Mujahideen armed with grenade and rocket-launchers have seized government buildings in Ingushetia, a region bordering warring Chechnya. An Ingushetia Interior Ministry official said the attack on the ministry building in the city of Nazran began late on Monday.
The official also said police buildings in Ordzhonikidzevskaya, just over the border from Chechnya, and in Karabulak have been seized by other attackers. There is no official word on casualties, but witnesses said that dozens bodies are lying around the Interior Ministry building. Ingush sources reported that Interior Minister of Ingushetia Murad Kostoev was dead. Dozens of Russian occupation solders and FSB servicemen's were kill when Mujahideen attack Russian military bases in Ingushetia. In an interview on Radio Liberty last week, Chechnya's president Aslan Maskhadov said that Chechen solders were preparing to undertake new offensives. "We are planning to change tactics.
Before, we concentrated our efforts on acts of sabotage, but soon we are planning to start active military actions," he said. A three-man crew from Russia's NTV television came upon some of the attackers at a border crossing as they tried to reach Nazran from neighboring North Ossetia. "Out of the dark, a voice says 'Stop, put your hands on the hood,' said NTV correspondent Maxim Berezin. "A man carrying an automatic weapon came up. 'Who are you? ' 'We're from NTV.
' He took a few steps back, as if to shoot us. "Then he said, 'Say that we are the Martyr's Brigade,' I don't remember of whom, Abu, Alyua, I don't remember what he said. 'We have shot everyone here. Go and announce that. '" The town of Karabulak and village of Sleptsovskaya also came under attack. Mujahideen killed many Russian occupation solders on military base in Troickaya village near airport.
Reports say a multiple rocket launcher was being fired in Nazran and other towns of Ingushetia, and people were sheltering in cellars. Reports also say that 30 solders of Interior Ministry of Ingushetia were dead. At 3 a.m. 22 June Mujahideen are begin leave villages and towns of Ingushetia. Source; Russian media, June 04 Write; by LuisB - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - INTERNATIONAL – SEMITISM Annan Sees 'Alarming Resurgence' of Anti-Semitism Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared on Monday there was an "alarming resurgence" of anti-Semitism in the world and called for U.N. bodies to adopt resolutions and investigate the ancient scourge. Greeted with a standing ovation, Annan opened the first U.N.- organized seminar dedicated to anti-Semitism in response to charges that the world body dwelled on Palestinian rights and deliberately ignored injustices to Israelis and Jews. "When we seek justice for the Palestinians - as we must - let us firmly disavow anyone who tries to use that cause to incite hatred against Jews, in Israel or elsewhere," Annan told the gathering, which included a wide spectrum of American Jewish groups and representatives of other religions.
Annan said it was hard to believe that 60 years after the Holocaust that anti-Semitism was rearing its head. "But it is clear that we are witnessing an alarming resurgence of this phenomenon in new forms and manifestations," he said. "This time the world must not, cannot be silent. Annan called on U.N. member states to adopt a resolution to combat anti-Semitism, similar to one approved in April by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Fifty-five nations said the Middle East conflict could never justify anti-Semitism and attacks on Jews. He also said the Geneva-based Commission on Human Rights, should examine anti-Semitism with the same diligence it looked into racism against Muslims in various parts of the world.
"Are not Jews entitled to the same degree of concern and protection? " Annan asked. Jewish leaders pointed to dissent in the Arab world they say is descending into expressions of extreme anti-Semitism and a flurry of incidents in Europe, especially in France and Russia, they felt had not been addressed properly. Only Germany came in for praise for its education system and tough laws to combat anti-Semitism, despite rising fears among the Jewish community there. There was little discussion of anti-Semitism in the United States where there are about 5 million Jews, slightly more than in Israel. Author Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, said he thought anti-Semitism had perished in the Auschwitz death camp, but "only the Jews perished there.
" Wiesel, the keynote speaker, said that discriminating against Jews often translated into hatred against all minorities and "those who are different. " "When we urge you to fight anti-Semitism, it is because we want to save other people as well," he said. Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, demanded Annan appoint an official charged with combating anti-Semitism, an annual report on the subject and a resolution to "unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism. " The United Nations came in for heavy criticism, especially from Anne Bayefsky, a professor and fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, who said Israel was demonized on a regular basis while Arab nations got away with redrawing the map of the Middle East. To cheers from the audience, she castigated the United Nations as well as Annan for an "inability to confront the corruption of its agenda. " Felice Gaer, a human rights and U.N. expert from the American Jewish Committee, said there were enough U.N. resolutions on the books against racism and intolerance but U.N. officials appeared afraid to activate them.
But she called Annan's address "forthright and unique in U.N. history. "It's as good as it gets," she said. Write; by Evelyn Leopold, June 04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - IRAN - UK – DEFENSE Iran – UK naval dispute Communications with three Royal Navy vessels and eight sailors seized by Iran have been lost. A British military spokesman said the craft, which entered Iran's territorial waters, cannot be contacted. Eight British sailors have been arrested by Iran. The seacraft were detained near the Iraqi border after, said Iran, they had entered its waters without permission.
A spokesman for the officially appointed Iranian Revolutionary Guards said: "We got news that a number of foreign vessels entered Iranian waters without permission. "Three boats were guided to Iranian shores and more than five crew were arrested. " Iranian naval sources told the country's media eight British crew were arrested after their vessels were found to contain weapons and maps. One station said the crew had confessed to making "a mistake" and that the Iranian navy had confiscated the three vessels. The confrontation was said to have taken place in the Shatt al Arab stretch of water between Iraq and Iran. Sky News' Foreign Editor Tim Marshall said: "Iran is making a point to Britain probably, and that point is 'back off'.
" He added that Iran may be using the incident as a bargaining tool against British-backed UN demands on its nuclear programme. A spokesman for the British Ministry of Defence said it was investigating the reports. Royal Navy boats patrol the waterway - a highly disputed boundary between Iraq and Iraq - to prevent smuggling. Source; Sky News, June 04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - U.S.A. – INTERNAL AFFAIRS San Francisco proposes limited non-citizen voting A plan is being considered that allow non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote in San Francisco school board elections. The San Jose Mercury News said Monday the proposed November ballot measure was aimed at getting more parents involved in their children's education by waiving California's requirement that voters be U.S. citizens. San Francisco has long been a home to a large Asian immigrant community as well as growing numbers of Latinos.
Only those non-citizens with children in public school would be allowed to vote, and only in school board elections. The Mercury said a similar proposal that would have allowed immigrants to vote in all municipal elections was rejected in 1996 by a judge who ruled the move would require an amendment to the state constitution. If passed, the measure would be the first in California, although similar laws have been enacted in New York, Chicago and Maryland. Source; San Jose Mercury News, June 04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - MEDIA – MILITARY CONFLIT COVERAGE Beheading a tool for propaganda Islamic militants record gruesome killings and post them on Web to get media coverage There has been a progression in the terrorists' exploitation of images to announce and dramatize their killings. Beheading has been adapted widely by Muslim radicals for killing enemies in recent conflicts in Algeria, Bosnia and Chechnya, experts said. But the executioners of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002, Pennsylvania businessman Nick Berg in Iraq on May 11 and aviation engineer Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia on Friday have turned the act into propaganda by using digital cameras to record the spectacle.
On Friday, the grisly images were posted on the Web for a global audience, including Westerners for whom decapitation is particularly shocking. The Site Institute - a Washington organization which tracks terrorist groups - located on Friday an Arabic-language communiqué about Mr. Johnson's killing accompanied by grim photographs of the murder on a website set up recently using the free service provided by Geocities, a subsidiary of Yahoo!. Said Site analyst Josh Devon: 'Terrorism doesn't work unless the media is involved. Shooting someone isn't necessarily terrorism. Beheading someone and posting it on the Web is terrorism. ' In Mr. Pearl's case, video footage of the murder was delivered to the US consulate in Karachi.
Only later was it posted on the Internet and aired in part by CBS News. The video of Mr. Berg's killing was posted immediately on the Web, provoking a storm of grief and outrage. Mr. Johnson's killers managed to draw even more attention by announcing in their Web posting on Tuesday that he would be killed in 72 hours if their demands were not met. 'Here, we had the countdown: This guy was alive, but yet we knew he was doomed as the 72-hour countdown went on,' said Mr. Robert Thompson, a media and culture expert at Syracuse University in New York. The combination of ritual murder with digital communications 'is this bizarre collision of worlds'. He said the Internet had a powerful pull for terror groups because it allowed instant, international distribution to groups that otherwise could not broadcast their message through traditional media.
He said terror groups had been savvy enough to recognise, however, that only the most violent, most graphic events will draw attention. 'You can't put just anything on the Internet and expect people to pay attention,' he said. 'I can think of few things other than a beheading that is able to singularly focus people's attention. ' Mr. Marc Sageman, a former CIA officer and author of Understanding Terror Networks, said militants in Algeria, Chechnya and Bosnia had used decapitation widely. 'This has become the ritual way of slaughtering infidels,' he said. 'That's the way you slaughter animals, so I suppose it's a way of saying infidels are no better than animals.
' While beheading went out of use long ago in the West, the Saudi government still uses it for executing men and occasionally women for serious crimes, occasionally including religious crimes such as blasphemy. The government's senior executioner, Mr. Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, gave several media interviews last year, bragging that his sword is 'very sharp. People are amazed how fast it can separate the head from the body'. Source; LAT-WP, June 04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - COLOMBIA – NARCOTICS Colombian drug dealers set up cocaine supply bases in Balkans Colombian drug clans set up bases in the Balkans to penetrate into Eastern Europe, Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, said on Friday. We discovered bases of Colombian drug dealers in the Balkans, in particular, in Albania, he noted. They promote Colombian cocaine to Eastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine.
According to Antonio Maria Costa, formerly Colombian cocaine was coming to Europe via Spain. However, Asia, first of all, Afghanistan, remains Europe's main source of cocaine and heroin. Meanwhile, the UN report on cocaine production in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia says that illegal cocaine crops reduced by 20% in these countries. All in all, 200,000 families live by cocaine crops in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, the report proceeds. According to UN experts, big illegal military units in Colombia initiate cocaine production in the Andes. Source; RIA Novosti's, June 04 Write; by Mikhail Belyat - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BOSTWANA – GEOPOLITICAL San want their day in Bostwana court The fate of one of southern Africa's oldest nomadic tribes, the San or Bushmen, could be sealed when the Botswana High Court hears argument on the issue of ancestral land rights.
The court case, which commences on July 5 with an in loco inspection, could decide the future of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen communities. Two hundred and forty-eight Bushmen and Bakgalagadi adults are taking the Botswana government, including President Festus Mogae, to court over the government's forced eviction of them and their families from their ancestral land, in what could be a test case for Bushman rights across southern Africa. The in loco inspection is supposed to visit settlements from which the San were allegedly forcibly removed from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to settlements outside the reserve. 'Expected to become farmers overnight' The Bushmen want the government to recognise their right to return to their land and live there without fear of further eviction, and to hunt and gather freely. The original case of forced removal from their ancestral land was dismissed on a technicality in April 2002. However, the Bushmen appealed and won the right to have the case re-heard on its merits.
The Botswana government had initially apparently terminated all services, including water, because it claimed that it could not afford the monthly cost of Botswana pula 55 000. The first wave of removals took place in 1997, and most of the community has since been relocated to settlements outside the park. In exchange for their traditional hunting-gathering existence, the Botswana government claims the San have been granted title deeds to plots, a mere 40 by 40 meters, in a conservation area - the Central Kalahari Game Reserve - about the size of Belgium. The displaced tribesmen have also allegedly been given goats and cattle. "People as old as 80 years and older who have been hunter-gatherers all their lives were expected to become farmers overnight", a South African spokesperson for the applicants said on Monday. But the Botswana action has drawn strident opposition from Survival International, a British organization supporting tribal communities and their rights to their land and to decide their own future.
The organization has been at the forefront of an awareness campaign; organizing petitions across the world against the removal of the San and even suggesting that diamond prospecting could be behind the relocation. Survival International also accuses the Botswana authorities of harassment of the San, saying they have been "tortured, beaten up or arrested for supposedly over-hunting, or hunting without correct licenses. " The Botswana government has vehemently denied these allegations, as well as that diamond prospecting was at the root of the relocation. Source; Sapa, June 04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FOCUS GEOPOLITICAL – INTERNATIONAL Some lessons from nations that won the war on terror At the Observatory of Human Rights in Algiers, the Algerian capital, a visitor is shown a chart indicating the course of almost a decade of terrorist war waged in the name of Islam. The chart does not give the number of victims. Different sets of figures have circulated for years.
In 1994 the Interior Ministry cited a figure of 11, 000. In 1996, Socialist opposition leader Hocine Ait-Ahmed estimated the number of those killed at almost half a million. In1999 Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika, then a presidential candidate, put the number at "over 100, 000". My estimate, based on information collected from many sources since 1994, produces a figure of around 28,000. But we still need years of painstaking research to establish the full facts. There is more accurate information about the numbers and the frequency of terror attacks.
The chart mentioned above shows that terror attacks reached their peak between 1994 and 1996. At some point, in 1995, the various terror groups were able to launch up to 30 more or less simultaneous attacks each day. In some cases, the terrorists killed hundreds of people in a day, the record being reached with the massacre of an estimated 500 people in the village of Ben-Talha. In March 1994 during a visit to Algiers it was hard to avoid the impression that the Algerian state was on the verge of collapse and that the terrorists would soon ride into the capital to seize power. The nation had suffered human and physical losses on the scale of a conventional war. The damage done to its economic and administrative infrastructure by the terrorists ran into billions of dollars.
Thousands of municipal buildings, schools, clinics, libraries and private homes had been destroyed. Dozens of villages had been turned into desert, their inhabitants driven out or massacred. By 1996, however, the tide had begun to turn against the terrorists and within a year it was clear that Algeria was no longer in mortal danger. By 1999 Algeria had won its war against terrorism. A similar story could be told of Peru, the Latin American nation most affected by terrorist war. At one point, the main terrorist organization known as Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path) was capable of striking anywhere and anytime it wished.
Over almost two decades, the terrorist war claimed the lives of at least30, 000people, mostly civilians. By seizing control of a good chunk of the illicit narcotics trade, the terrorist groups had access to an almost endless source of cash to finance their campaign. And, yet, by 1999 Peru, too, seemed to be emerging from its ordeal. With Sendero Luminoso flushed out of its safe havens and its leadership in the can, the Peruvian state was able to reassert its authority even in the deepest jungles of the hinterland. Algeria and Peru are not the only nations to have faced and defeated modern terrorism. Egypt and Turkey have had similar experiences with exceptionally brutal terrorist movements.
Today no fewer than 22 countries are affected by terrorism of one form or another. In some, like India, the Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar, the state has succeeded in containing the terrorist threat without fully defeating it. In others, like Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, terrorism has transformed into low- intensity warfare that could continue for years. Elsewhere, as in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast and Uganda terror groups have organized themselves into mini-armies that control large chunks of territory and threaten the central state. But all these experiences reveal one important fact: No terrorist movement in the past two decades has succeeded in overthrowing the state and seizing power for itself. This is in contrast with the experience of the previous decades that saw several terrorist movements, often disguised as revolutionary guerrilla movements, come to power on a wave of violence.
How did Algeria, Peru and other nations that have defeated terrorism managed to do so in the face of heavy odds? The question is of interest to the latest victims of terrorism, including Saudi Arabia. While Algerian, Peruvian and other experiences in fighting terrorism show important differences, they all have several key features in common. The first of these is a psychological determination on the part of the ruling elites to stay the course. One central aim of the terrorist, of course, is to instill fear in society in general and the elite in particular. By refusing to be frightened, society and its leaders achieve their first victory against the terrorists.
This, of course, is easier said than done. In Algeria, for example, the terrorists launched a campaign of murdering university teachers and students, especially girls. Scores were killed, mostly by having their throats slit. The immediate effect was dramatic. More than half of the students of the Algiers University stayed away for weeks and months. By 1995, however, the authorities had provided enough security to persuade the students, and their teachers, to return.
This was still an act of daily courage on the part of tens of thousands of young people who were prepared to risk their lives but not to allow terrorists to close the universities. In both Peru and Algeria the authorities started by grouping key personalities of the system in fortified neighborhoods so as to protect them against assassination attempts. But they soon realized that this made the task of the terrorists easier. The terrorists, using a few people for surveillance, could chart the movements of all the key people to and from a small area. This gave them fixed targets while they themselves enjoyed maximum mobility. The terrorists achieved spectacular successes by killing many top people.
Dozens of ministers, governors, mayors, trade union leaders, political party personalities, prominent media men and women were murdered in Peru and Algeria. In Algeria they even assassinated the head of state. Later, both countries decided to spread their key personnel widely, beyond the terrorists' capacity to organize surveillance operations leading to assassinations. The second lesson to learn is to understand the difference in the rhythm and tempo of the terrorist organization and the state security forces. The terrorist is almost always capable of running the100 - meter course faster than his state adversaries. He aims at achieving big victories quickly and with a few spectacular operations.
The state security forces, on the other hand, must be prepared to draw the terrorist into a marathon course. They need to slow things down as much as possible and to make sure that even the most spectacular attacks fail to produce the results desired by the terrorists. The third lesson to learn is the strategy of forcing the terrorists into fixed positions before moving against them. The terrorist constantly seeks anonymity, like fish in water. But he also needs safe havens, hospitals, recreation centers, places to hide his bigger weapons, and facilities to train new recruits or imprison potential defectors. All this means a loss of mobility, which is the terrorist's key advantage over the state.
In both Algeria and Peru, and to some extent even in Turkey and Egypt, the state decided to actually help the terrorists become fixed targets. In Algeria, for example, the anti-terror units deliberately stayed out of some areas, notably the Mitidja plain and the town of Blida, thus shooing the terrorists there. On some occasions the security forces even refused to intervene to stop terrorist operations that took place under their noses, so to speak. The idea was to convince the terrorists that they had a safe haven. In time this meant that the terrorists became fixed targets while the security forces enjoyed the advantage of mobility and the choice of the time to attack. Counterterrorism experts know the fourth lesson as "the onion principle.
" This means treating the terrorist organizations as bodies constituted by numerous layers. The classical counter terrorist method is to look for the core of the "onion" in the hope of eliminating it. But in both Peru and Algeria, it soon became clear that it was more efficient to deal with the outer layers first. These outer layers provide finance, information, surveillance, espionage and a variety of logistical support for the core groups. Thus disrupting or destroying them would have a direct impact on the efficiency of the core groups. Dealing with the outer layer is also important because they offer opportunities for misinformation campaigns and, more importantly, infiltration.
This method was most successfully used in Egypt where the authorities managed to infiltrate virtually all terror groups, at times right to the highest levels of their leadership. Write; by LB-Yuumei, June 04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PALESTINA – INTERNAL AFFAIRS Babes and Bombs Why do Palestinian children become human bombs, willingly strapping on suicide belts and slipping into Israel to kill as many Jews as possible? That's the key question, which the New York Times has once again failed to answer, this time in an otherwise informative story by Greg Myre ("Israel Says Children Enlist Children as Suicide Bombers", June 13,2004). While Myre pulls no punches when it comes to telling readers how Palestinian children are now recruiting their classmates and cousins to become suicide bombers, he shies away from telling readers why Palestinian kids have taken up this grisly task. In Myre's rendition the child recruitment is a mystery - he reports only that "some Palestinian leaders have condemned the use of teenagers, and opposition to the practice is widespread among ordinary Palestinians..." Could the Palestinian kids have been indoctrinated in their schools? Myre casts doubt on this, reporting at face value the claims of one Palestinian school official that he tries to keep politics out of the classroom, "This place is for education and we don't want to talk about politics.
" Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Far from being opposed to child suicide bombers, Palestinian society and Palestinian leaders revel in child "martyrdom," and the Palestinian media and schools do all they can to encourage a cult of death among children. The paramount Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, for example, stated in an interview on Palestinian TV that: "... this child who is grasping the stone, facing the tank, is it not the greatest message to the world when that hero becomes a shahid [martyr]? We are proud of them..." (PATV, Jan. 15, 2002 cited in Ask for Death, Palestinian Media Watch. ) While Arafat's words certainly carry weight among Palestinian children, perhaps the most effective recruitment tool has been music videos, which are broadcast for hours on end by official Palestinian television (there is no independent television under Arafat's rule). The videos are a call to death and martyrdom for Palestinian children, promising the glories and pleasures of heaven to the young "warriors for Allah": "How sweet is the fragrance of the shahids, how sweet is the scent of the earth, its thirst quenched by the gush of blood flowing from the youthful body.
" (Quoted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook in the Jerusalem Post, January 29, 2004) Another music video also aimed at children and broadcast repeatedly told young viewers that: "Oh, young ones: Shake the earth, raise the stones. You will not be saved, O Zionist, from the volcano of my country's stones. You are the target of my eyes, I will even willingly fall as a shahid [martyr for Allah]. Allahu akbar [god is great]! Oh, young ones! " (Quoted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook in the Jerusalem Post, June 2, 2004).
Yet another music video shown repeatedly on Palestinian TV centered on a Palestinian child who had been killed at the start of the present violence in October 2000. A young actor portrays the child in paradise, flying a kite and running on the beach, and encouraging other Palestinian children to follow him in martyrdom, "I am waving to you not in parting, but to say, 'Follow me. ' " (Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook in the National Post, April 8, 2004). As for the claim that Palestinian parents oppose such suicide bombings, news reports, including in the Times, indicate the opposite. For example, a few months ago Myre's colleague James Bennet reported that "Many Palestinian parents have praised their sons and daughters for carrying out suicide attacks, hailing them as heroes and martyrs. " (New York Times, March 25, 2004) Palestinian support and encouragement for child suicide bombers is an ugly reality.
The Times' reluctance to deal with this ugly reality will help only to perpetuate it. Source; Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, June 04 Write; by Alex Safian - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
