The road to Brexit : Britain is leaving the European Union

Britain will officially depart from the European Union, 1,317 days after voting in favor of leaving the bloc in a referendum that plunged the country into a three-year-long debate over its future. While this will be the official end of 47 years of Britain’s membership in what became the European Union, very little is set to change immediately. It’s the beginning of a transition period, scheduled to end on Dec. 31, during which London and Brussels must hash out the details of Britain’s future relationship with its European neighbors. Still, the moment carries enormous legal and symbolic weight. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his cabinet began their day with a meeting in Sunderland, the city in northern England that was the first to announce it had voted in favor of leaving the European Union on the night of the 2016 referendum. It was the first of a handful of celebratory, but noticeably muted, official events to mark the day, suggesting that a pro-Brexit government is seeking to avoid the appearance of gloating. In the referendum, 48 percent of voters wanted to remain part of the European Union, and later polls suggest that number may have grown since.

Flags will line Parliament Square and The Mall, the ceremonial avenue leading to Buckingham Palace, and government buildings will be lit up in the red, white and blue of the Union Jack. A countdown clock will be projected onto the front of 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence, along with a commemorative light display to “symbolize the strength and unity” of the four nations of the United Kingdom, the government said.

Courtesy : NY Times

Lebanon security forces clash with protesters

The 2019–2020 Lebanese protests are an ongoing series of civil protests in Lebanon, initially triggered by planned taxes on gasoline, tobacco and online phone calls such as through WhatsApp,  but quickly expanding into a country-wide condemnation of sectarian rule, stagnant economy, unemployment, endemic corruption in the public sector, legislation (such as banking secrecy) that is perceived to shield the ruling class from accountability and failures from the government to provide basic services such as electricity, water and sanitation. The protests first erupted on 17 October 2019.

As a result of the protests, Lebanon entered a political crisis, with Prime Minister Saad Hariri tendering his resignation and echoing protestors’ demands for a government of independent specialists. Other politicians targeted by the protests have remained in power. On 19 December 2019, former Minister of Education Hassan Diab was designated the next prime minister and tasked with forming a new cabinet. Protests and acts of civil disobedience have since continued, with protestors denouncing and condemning the designation of Diab as prime minister. On January 22, Lebanon named Hassan Diab as its prime minister to lead the new cabinet of 20 members, after three months of mass protests. Diab was appointed with the support of Hezbollah, its allies, and the Free Patriotic Movement led by Gebran Bassil.

Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani killed in U.S. air strike

On 3 January 2020, amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran, the U.S. launched a drone strike against a convoy traveling near Baghdad International Airport that was carrying several passengers, including Iranian Major General and IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The attack came after the U.S withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and after the 2019-2020 Persian Gulf crisis. In the week before the attack, an Iraqi airbase was attacked, killing a U.S. contractor. Days later, the U.S. embassy in Iraq was vandalized during protests. The U.S. blamed Iran for these incidents.

 The attack sharply escalated tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Iranian leaders vowed to take revenge on the U.S. and U.S. officials said that they would preemptively attack any Iran-backed paramilitary groups in Iraw that they perceived as a threat. Republicans in the U.S. largely supported the attacks, as did Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu. Democrats in the U.S. acknowledged Soleimani’s culpability in the killing of Americans, but questioned the wisdom of such a provocative attack that would raise tensions in the Middle East. Syrian and Russian officials condemned the attack and representatives from China, India, Pakistan, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom urged restraint and diplomacy.

The United States intervened in Iraq in 2014 as a part of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the United States–led mission to degrade and combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terror organization, and have been training and operating alongside Iraqi forces as a part of the anti-ISIL coalition. ISIL was largely beaten back from Iraq in 2017 during the Iraqi Civil War, with the help of primarily Iran-backed Shia militias—Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), reporting to the Iraqi prime minister since 2016—and the United States-backed Iraqi Armed Forces. Tensions rose between Iran and the United States in 2018 when United States President, Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions against Iran, which “led to a sharp downturn in Iran’s economy”. In the ensuing 2019–2020 Persian Gulf crisis, attacks on several oil tankers and on Saudi oil fields were considered by Western powers to be among Iran’s responses to the sanctions, although Iran denied responsibility.

On 27 December 2019, the K-1 Air Base in Kirkuk province, Iraq—one of many Iraqi military bases that host Operation Inherent Resolve coalition personnel—was attacked by more than 30 rockets, killing a United States civilian contractor and injuring four United States service members and two Iraqi security forces personnel. The United States blamed the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah militia for the attack. A senior United States official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said there had been a campaign of 11 attacks on Iraqi bases hosting OIR personnel in the two months before 27 December incident, many of which the United States attributed to Kata’ib Hezbollah. On 29 December 2019, US airstrikes on Kata’ib Hezbollah’s headquarters killed 25 militia members.

 On 31 December 2019, after a funeral was held for the Kata’ib Hezbollah militiamen that were killed by the prior American airstrikes, an angry mob of dozens of Iraqi Shiite militiamen and their supporters marched through the perimeters of Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone and surrounded the United States embassy compound. According to the Associated Press, the Iraqi Security Forces did not attempt to stop the mob and permitted them to pass a security checkpoint. Dozens of the demonstrators then smashed through a main door of the checkpoint, set fire to the reception area, raised Popular Mobilization Units militia flags, left anti-American posters, and sprayed anti-American graffiti. United States president Donald Trump accused Iran of orchestrating the attack on the embassy and added that they would be held “fully responsible”. Iran’s foreign ministry denied they were behind the protests at the U.S. embassy and warned against any retaliation. Supreme leader of Iran Ali Khameini tweeted “If Iran wants to fight a country, it will strike directly.” Eric Trump made a suggestive tweet foreshadowing 3 January attacks, then deleted it afterward.

Iranian Major General and IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and Popular Mobilization Units militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed in a US airstrike on 3 January 2020 while traveling in a convoy on an access road near Baghdad International Airport. Several missiles fired from a drone struck the convoy and at least seven people are thought to have died. According to Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s office, among them were several commanders who defeated Islamic State terrorists. The United States Department of Defense issued a statement that said the American strike was carried out “at the direction of the president” and was meant to deter future attacks. He asserted that Soleimani had been planning further attacks on American diplomats and military personnel and had approved the attacks on the American embassy in Baghdad. Soleimani’s body was identified using a ring he wore on his finger. DNA results regarding the identification of the victims is still pending, however a senior Pentagon official stated that there was “high probability” that Soleimani is identified. PMU spokesman Ahmed al-Assadi confirmed both of their deaths to Reuters.

Soleimani’s death has raised tensions between the United States and Iran. A spokesman for the Iranian government said the country’s top security body would hold an extraordinary meeting shortly to discuss the “criminal act of attack”. Global oil prices soared more than four percent in the wake of the strike, pushing oil stocks (of BP and Royal Dutch Shell) on the London stock exchange higher.  U.S. equity futures and Asian stocks reversed their gains for the day and investors moved towards “safe haven” assets such as gold, treasury bonds, and the Japanese Yen. In the wake of the attack, World War III became a trending topic on Twitter,  as did Franz Ferdinand. After the attack, on the night of 2 January 2020 (US time), several planes with U.S. service members took off from bases in the eastern United States.  According to online plane tracking software, they traveled due east, with U.S. Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers concurrently taking off from RAF Mildenhall in the UK.  The US embassy in Baghdad urged Americans to leave Iraq immediately “via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land.” The French embassy in Tehran sent a Twitter message urging its citizens to stay away from public gatherings and to behave with prudence and discretion and abstain from taking pictures in public spaces.

Courtesy : Wikipedia

Who was Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed in US airstrike?

Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and from 1998 until his death, commander of its Quds Force, a division primarily responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations. Soleimani began his military career in the beginning of the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s, during which he commanded the 41st Division. He was later involved in extraterritorial operations, providing military assistance to anti-Saddam Shia and Kurdish groups in Iraq, and later Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. In 2012, Soleimani helped bolster the Syrian government, a key Iranian ally, during the Syrian Civil War, particularly in its operations against ISIS and its offshoots. Soleimani also assisted in the command of combined Iraqi government and Shia militia forces that advanced against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2014–2015. Soleimani was killed in a targeted U.S. airstrike on 3 January 2020 in Baghdad, Iraq. Also killed were Popular Mobilization Forces members. His rank was promoted to lieutenant general posthumously. Soleimani was suceeded by Esmail Ghaani as commander of the Quds force.

Early Life

Soleimani was born on 11 March 1957 in the village of Qanat-e Malek, Kerman Province, to an impoverished peasant family. In his youth, he moved to the city of Kerman and worked as a construction worker to help repay a debt his father owed. In 1975, he began working as a contractor for the Kerman Water Organization When not at work, he spent his time lifting weights in local gyms and attending the sermons of a traveling preacher, Hojjat Kamyab, a protege of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Military Career

On 22 September 1980, when Saddam Hussein launched an invasion of Iran, setting off the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988), Soleimani joined the battlefield serving as the leader of a military company, consisting of men from Kerman whom he personally assembled and trained. He quickly earned a reputation for bravery, and rose through the ranks because of his role in the successful operations in retaking the lands Iraq had occupied, eventually becoming the commander of the 41st Sarallah Division while still in his 20s, participating in most major operations. He was mostly stationed at the southern front. He was seriously injured in Operation Tariq-ol-Qods. In a 1990 interview, he mentioned Operation Fath-ol-Mobin as “the best” operation he participated in and “very memorable”, due to its difficulties yet positive outcome. He was also engaged in leading and organizing irregular warfare missions deep inside Iraq carried out by the Ramadan Headquarters. It was at this point that Suleimani established relations with Kurdish Iraqi leaders and the Shia Badr Organization, both of which were opposed to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

Command of Quds Force

The exact date of his appointment as commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force is not clear, but Ali Alfoneh cites it as between 10 September 1997 and 21 March 1998. He was considered one of the possible successors to the post of commander of the IRGC, when General Yahya Rahim Safavi left this post in 2007. In 2008, he led a group of Iranian investigators looking into the death of Imad Mughniyah. Soleimani helped arrange a ceasefire between the Iraqi Army and Mahdi Army in March 2008. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, Ryan Crocker, a senior State Department official in the United States, flew to Geneva to meet with Iranian diplomats who were under the direction of Soleimani with the purpose of collaborating to destroy the Taliban, which had targeted Shia Afghanis. This collaboration was instrumental in defining the targets of bombing operations in Afghanistan and in capturing key Al-Qaeda operatives, but abruptly ended in January 2002, when President George W. Bush named Iran as part of the “Axis of evil” in his State of the Union address.

Death

Soleimani was killed on 3 January 2020, after missiles shot from American drones targeted his convoy near Baghdad International Airport. He had just left his plane, which arrived in Iraq from Lebanon or Syria. His body was identified using a ring he wore on his finger, with DNA confirmation still pending. Also killed were four other Popular Mobilization Forces members, including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iraqi-Iranian military commander who headed the PMF. The airstrike followed attacks on the American embassy in Baghdad by supporters of an Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militia and the 2019 K-1 Air Base attack. The United States Department of Defense issued a statement that said the U.S. strike was carried out “at the direction of the President” and asserted that Soleimani had been planning further attacks on American diplomats and military personnel and had approved the attacks on the American embassy in Baghdad in response to U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on 29 December 2019 and was meant to deter future attacks.

Courtesy : Wikipedia

Inside the Nato’s 70th anniversary summit

The 29-member military alliance gathered near London for a summit acrimonious even by the standards of the Trump era, aiming to tackle sharp disagreements over spending, future threats including China and Turkey’s role in the alliance. A NATO summit is a summit meeting that is regarded as a periodic opportunity for heads of state and heads of government of NATO member countries to evaluate and provide strategic direction for Alliance activities. NATO summits are not regular meetings like the more frequent NATO ministerial meetings, but rather are important junctures in the alliance’s decision-making process on the highest level. Summits are often used to introduce new policy, invite new members into the alliance, launch major new initiatives, and build partnerships with non-NATO countries.

From the founding of NATO in 1949, there have been a total of thirty NATO summits; the last of which was the UK summit in Watford held in December 2019. Only the traditional summits have received an official number, thereby excluding the exceptional summit of 2001 in NATO headquarters.

Security forces crack down on Iraqi protesters

Protests in Iraq ramp up after security forces opened fire on protesters in Baghdad and several cities in southern Iraq, killing several people and wounding dozens of others in the largest demonstrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Standoff at Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Anti-government protesters holed up in a Hong Kong university were frantically searching for escape routes on Tuesday after more than two days of clashes with police and dramatic breakouts by rope and motorcycle. The siege of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is part of the 2019 Hong Kong protests occurring in the campus of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Protesters initially set-up a roadblock in areas close to the university to defend it from attack by the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) given HKPF action at Chinese University of Hong Kong days earlier. Certain citizens attempted to remove the roadblocks. The police shot tear gas and used water cannon to shower the protesters with blue-coloured water mixed with chemical irritants. The protesters responded by throwing bricks and gasoline bombs.Thereafter, the police blocked different campus exits and forbade protesters from leaving. Then police drove an armoured vehicle into campus, arrested first-aiders, medical service volunteers and reporters. The police have also launched extensive volleys of CS gas at the students and protestors in the University, which is located in a densely populated section of Kowloon, despite evidence that the gas can cause severe pulmonary damage and significantly damage the heart and liver of anyone who inhales it.

On November 18 the police launched 1,491 canisters of the gas at protesters as well as shooting 1,981 rounds of rubber bullets, bean bags, and sponge grenades. On November 19 the city’s hospitals were overwhelmed by the number of protestors needing urgent medical attention caused by the siege, and advised citizens not to use emergency rooms unless absolutely necessary.

Iraq, biggest protest since fall of Saddam

Tens of thousands of Iraqis thronged central Baghdad demanding the root-and-branch downfall of the political elite in the biggest day of mass anti-government demonstrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Tahrir Square, many waving Iraqi flags and demanding that the government resign and that parliament be dissolved. Several thousand protesters also blocked roads leading to the country’s main Gulf port of Umm Qasr, preventing trucks carrying goods from entering or leaving the area. Security forces used live rounds and tear gas against the crowds overnight in an effort to clear the blockade. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the Iraqi government should listen to the “legitimate demands” of protesters, adding that the country’s official investigation into deadly violence during the first round of protests “lacked sufficient credibility.” Since the first wave of protests began in early October, at least 250 people have been killed while an estimated 10,000 people have been injured by security forces.

Thousands protest against sentence of Catalan separatist leaders

Spain’s Supreme Court jailed nine Catalan separatist leaders for between nine and 13 years for their role in a 2017 failed independence bid, a decision that triggered mass protests in the region and left the future course of the dispute uncertain. Police have fired foam bullets and used batons against thousands of protesters who converged on Barcelona’s airport. Protesters fought back by throwing objects, spraying fire extinguishers and breaking windows during clashes that lasted into the night. Regional emergency service SEM said at least 75 people were treated for injuries, while Spain’s airport operator, AENA, said at least 108 flights were canceled. Protesters also blocked access to the city metro and airport train.

Earlier, the Spanish Supreme Court imposed prison sentences ranging from nine to 13 years on nine Catalan separatist leaders, prompting thousands to take to the streets of Barcelona to vent their anger. The prison terms were lower than demanded by the prosecution, which had requested up to 25 years behind bars for the former Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras.The court sentenced Junqueras to 13 years of prison on grounds of sedition and the misuse of public funds. It also handed 12-year terms to three other former regional ministers.

Hong Kong streets become protest battlefield

 A Hong Kong policeman shot a protester with live ammunition as thousands of protesters took to the streets to defy the city’s Chinese rulers on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic.