Monday ,22-April-2024 {HMC} Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to reject any sanctions on the country’s military, after reports that the US plans to cut aid to one unit.

“I will fight it with all my strength,” the prime minister said on Sunday.

Earlier, the Axios news site said the US would target Israel’s Netzah Yehuda battalion over alleged human rights violations in the occupied West Bank.

The BBC understands any move would come under a US ban on aid to foreign units credibly implicated in violations.

When asked last week about reports that US military aid to the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) units could be cut over allegations of human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “I’ve made determinations; you can expect to see them in the days ahead”.

Washington – Israel’s main ally – has never suspended aid to an IDF unit before.

The Israeli military said Netzah Yehuda was operating in accordance with international law.

“Following publications about sanctions against the battalion, the IDF is not aware of the issue,” the military is quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. “The IDF works and will continue to work to investigate any unusual event in a practical manner and according to law.”

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called on the US to withdraw its intention to sanction Netzah Yehuda, saying the world was watching the ties between the US and Israel more closely than ever.

“Any attempt to criticise an entire unit casts a heavy shadow on the actions of the IDF,” a statement from Mr Gollant read, adding “this is not the right path for partners and friends”.

On Saturday, Axios cited three US sources with knowledge of the issue as saying that Mr Blinken was expected to announce measures against Netzah Yehuda within days.

It said the move would be over alleged abuses in the West Bank, including one incident in which a Palestinian-American man, 80-year-old Omar Assad, died after being bound and gagged by Israeli soldiers during a search in the West Bank in January 2022.

At the time the US called for a “thorough criminal investigation and full accountability” in the case.

The IDF later said it regretted Mr Assad’s death and that the Netzah Yehuda commander would be “reprimanded”over it. It added that two soldiers would barred from serving in senior positions for two years, but would not be prosecuted. It said Mr Assad’s death had been caused by a pre-existing medical condition.

Mr Assad’s family, many of whom are based in the US, condemned the decision to close the case.

All the alleged violations took place before the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Any decision to bar an IDF unit from US military assistance would be made under the “Leahy Law”, sponsored in 1997 by then-Senator Patrick Leahy. It prevents US funding or training being used for foreign military units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.

Last year, a group of US officials known as the “Israel-Leahy vetting forum” looked into at least a dozen allegations made against Israeli units, including the Netzah Yehuda battalion, a former senior US official told the BBC.

“We believed that in most cases, these were un-remediated – in other words, the perpetrators had not been properly held to account,” said Josh Paul, former director of the state department’s Political-Military Affairs bureau, which oversees US arms transfers.

“When we tried to advance these recommendations to the secretary [of state] we were never able to get them through the political level,” he added.

Mr Paul resigned from his position in November in protest at what he saw as a lack of accountability over weapons transfers to Israel. Asked whether the recommendations he mentioned had since reached Mr Blinken’s desk, he cited the recent media reports suggesting they had.

Formed in 1999, Netzah Yehuda is a special men-only unit where ultra-Orthodox Jews serve.

Earlier this week, the state department imposed sanctions on Israeli far-right activist Ben Zion Gopstein. It said his organisation, Lehava, had “engaged in destabilising violence affecting the West Bank”.

SOURCE BBC

Monday ,22-April-2024 {HMC} Drug seizures soared in the West African Sahel region according to figures released Friday in a new U.N. report, indicating the conflict-ridden region is becoming an influential route for drug trafficking.

In 2022, 1,466 kilograms of cocaine were seized in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger compared to an average of 13 kilograms between 2013 and 2020 , said the report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Cocaine is the most seized drug in the Sahel after cannabis resin, the report said. The analysis comes as Senegal, which borders on the Sahel, announced Sunday a record-breaking cocaine seizure of 1,137 kilograms – the most ever intercepted on land and valued at $146 million – near an artisanal mine in the east of the country. Incidents like this are becoming more common in the region: In one incident last year in December, the Senegalese navy seized a total of 3 tons of cocaine at sea.

The location of the Sahel, lying south of the Sahara desert and running from the Atlantic to the Arabian Ocean, makes it a natural transit point for the increasing amount of cocaine produced in South America and destined for Europe. The trafficking has detrimental impacts for both peace and health, locally and globally, said Amado Philip de Andrés, UNODC Regional Representative in West and Central Africa.

“The involvement of various armed groups in drug trafficking continues to undermine peace and stability in the region,” said Philip de Andrés. The report said the drug trade provides financial resources to armed groups in the Sahel, where Islamic extremist networks have flourished as the region struggles with a recent spate of coups.

Increased trafficking networks in the region is spilling out onto local markets and leading to higher drug consumption, said Lucia Bird, director of the West Africa observatory of illicit economies at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

“We’ve had reports of rising crack cocaine consumption in Agadez, Niger driven by payment in kind,” said Bird. “Smaller traffickers get paid in drugs and offload it onto local markets because they don’t have the contacts in more lucrative consumption destinations.”

A patrol in southwest Niger on Monday intercepted a shipment of cannabis and Tramadol, an opioid painkiller pill, worth $50,000, according to a national TV announcement.

Another significant trend in the region is the direct exchange of Moroccan hashish for South American cocaine via West Africa, said Bird. This arrangement – which has been developing since 2020 — bypasses the need for cash payments and exploits differences in the prices of drugs across continents, she explained, adding that this increases the amount of drugs trafficked overland which transit from West African ports across some of the most conflict-affected areas of the Sahel.

Corruption and money laundering are major enablers of drug trafficking and recent seizures and arrests revealed that political elite, community leaders and leaders of armed groups facilitate the drug trade in the Sahel, the UN report added.

“States in the Sahel region — along with the international community — must take urgent, coordinated, and comprehensive action to dismantle drug trafficking networks,” said Leonardo Santos Simão, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for West Africa.

SOURCE VOA

Monday ,22-April-2024 {HMC} Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will arrive in neighboring Pakistan on Monday for official meetings with the host nation’s leaders amidst Iran-Israel tensions.

An announcement from Islamabad’s foreign ministry Sunday stated that the talks will provide an “important opportunity” to strengthen bilateral ties and cooperation in trade, connectivity, energy, and agriculture.

It said Raisi’s high-level delegation would include the Iranian foreign minister, other Cabinet members, and business representatives.

During his three-day stay in Pakistan, the Iranian president is scheduled to meet his counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, among others.

The Pakistani statement said without elaborating, “They will also discuss regional and global developments and bilateral cooperation to combat the common threat of terrorism.”

Iran and Pakistan share a 900-kilometer border, which is prone to militant infiltration, smuggling, and other illegal crossings. The countries accuse each other of not preventing militant groups from sheltering on their respective lands and launching cross-border terrorist attacks.

In January, Iranian security forces launched missile strikes against what they said were anti-Iran militant hideouts in the southwestern Pakistani border province of Baluchistan. Islamabad condemned Iran’s violation of Pakistan’s territorial integrity and retaliated with strikes on bases of anti-Pakistan militants operating from Iranian soil.

The unprecedented exchange of so-called counterterrorism strikes raised concerns about a larger conflict between the two Muslim countries and of wider regional instability after Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out an October 7 terror attack on Israel.

Tehran and Islamabad urgently undertook diplomatic efforts to defuse bilateral tensions, renewing pledges to enhance counterterrorism cooperation and respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Raisi’s visit is part of those mutual efforts to mend relations between Iran and Pakistan.

Gas pipeline

Analysts said this week’s meetings in Islamabad are also expected to focus on financial and legal issues related to constructing a gas pipeline between Iran and Pakistan. The two countries signed an agreement in June 2009 for the proposed pipeline to export Iranian natural gas to Pakistan.

While Tehran has since claimed to have completed construction of 1,100 kilometers of the pipeline on its side of the border, construction has not started on the Pakistani side because Islamabad fears it would invite U.S. sanctions for importing Iranian gas.

Iran’s energy sector is under sanctions from Washington for its nuclear program.

Iranian officials have repeatedly threatened to sue Pakistan in international arbitration and impose a penalty of around $18 billion for breach of contract.

The U.S. State Department has recently renewed its warning to Islamabad, advising against proceeding with the project in order to avoid sanctions.

Iran’s recent direct attack on Israel, with more than 300 drones and missiles, has made it even more difficult for Pakistan to build the pipeline, said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at Washington’s Wilson Center.

On social media platform X, Kugelman wrote, “Any possibility of the U.S. giving Pakistan a sanctions waiver for the gas pipeline it claims it plans to build with Iran is essentially nonexistent. And that possibility was practically nil even before the Iranian attack on Israel.”

The Iranian strikes were in response to Israel’s apparent destruction on April 1 of an Iranian consular building in Syria in which seven members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, including two generals, were killed.

“The visit was planned weeks before the current hostilities, and Pakistani officials likely had no estimates that the visit would coincide with a full-blown regional crisis involving Iran,” said Ahmed Quraishi, a Pakistani expert on Middle Eastern affairs.

“Coming on the heels of Israel-Iran tensions, the Iranian government is likely to use this visit to suggest regional support for Iran’s position,” Quraishi said.

SOURCE VOA

Monday ,22-April-2024 {HMC}  TikTok on Sunday raised free speech concerns about a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would ban the popular social media app in the U.S. if its Chinese owner ByteDance did not sell its stake within a year.

The House passed the legislation on Saturday by a margin of 360 to 58. It now moves to the Senate where it could be taken up for a vote in the coming days. President Joe Biden has previously said he will sign the legislation.

The step to include TikTok in a broader foreign aid package may fast-track the timeline on a potential ban after an earlier separate bill stalled in the U.S. Senate.

“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans,” TikTok said in a statement.

Many U.S. lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties and the Biden administration say TikTok poses national security risks because China could compel the company to share the data of its 170 million U.S. users. TikTok insists it has never shared U.S. data and never would.

Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Sunday said TikTok could be used as a propaganda tool by the Chinese government.

“Many young people on TikTok get their news (from the app), the idea that we would give the (Chinese) Communist Party this much of a propaganda tool as well as the ability to scrape 170 million Americans’ personal data, it is a national security risk,” he told CBS News.

Some progressive Democrats have also raised free speech concerns over a ban and instead asked for stronger data privacy regulations.

Democratic U.S. Representative Ro Khanna said on Sunday that he felt a TikTok ban may not survive legal scrutiny in courts, citing the U.S. Constitution’s free speech protections.

“I don’t think its going to pass First Amendment scrutiny,” he said in an interview to ABC News.

The House voted on March 13 to give ByteDance about six months to divest the U.S. assets of the short-video app, or face a ban. The legislation passed on Saturday gives a nine-month deadline which could be further extended by three months if the president were to determine progress toward a sale.

TikTok was also a topic of conversation in a call between Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping earlier this month. The White House said Biden raised American concerns about the app’s ownership.

SOURCE VOA

Sunday ,21-April-2024 {HMC}  At least 50 al-Shabab militants, including top commanders, were reportedly killed in an attack by ISIS/Daesh on al-Shabab positions in Puntland regional State, Al-Naba TV reported.

According to the TV report, Daesh claimed to have seized army weapons and several army positions from al-Shabab in the mountains of Al Miskaad in the Bari region of Puntland.

The attacks reportedly occurred during the holy month of Ramadan and at the end of February.

The two militant groups have secret positions in Puntland, particularly in the Bari region, where they vie for control over territory and resources. Both groups are known to extort money from local businesses in the area.