Robert Fisk: A New Truth Dawns on the Arab World

January 26, 2011 "The Independent" - -The Palestine Papers are as damning as the Balfour Declaration. The Palestinian "Authority" - one has to put this word in quotation marks - was prepared, and is prepared to give up the "right of return" of perhaps seven million refugees to what is now Israel for a "state" that may be only 10 per cent (at most) of British mandate Palestine.

And as these dreadful papers are revealed, the Egyptian people are calling for the downfall of President Mubarak, and the Lebanese are appointing a prime minister who will supply the Hezbollah. Rarely has the Arab world seen anything like this.

To start with the Palestine Papers, it is clear that the representatives of the Palestinian people were ready to destroy any hope of the refugees going home.

It will be - and is - an outrage for the Palestinians to learn how their representatives have turned their backs on them. There is no way in which, in the light of the Palestine Papers, these people can believe in their own rights.

They have seen on film and on paper that they will not go back. But across the Arab world - and this does not mean the Muslim world - there is now an understanding of truth that there has not been before.

It is not possible any more, for the people of the Arab world to lie to each other. The lies are finished. The words of their leaders - which are, unfortunately, our own words - have finished. It is we who have led them into this demise. It is we who have told them these lies. And we cannot recreate them any more.

In Egypt, we British loved democracy. We encouraged democracy in Egypt - until the Egyptians decided that they wanted an end to the monarchy. Then we put them in prison. Then we wanted more democracy. It was the same old story. Just as we wanted Palestinians to enjoy democracy, providing they voted for the right people, we wanted the Egyptians to love our democratic life. Now, in Lebanon, it appears that Lebanese "democracy" must take its place. And we don't like it.

We want the Lebanese, of course, to support the people who we love, the Sunni Muslim supporters of Rafiq Hariri, whose assassination - we rightly believe - was orchestrated by the Syrians. And now we have, on the streets of Beirut, the burning of cars and the violence against government.

And so where are we going? Could it be, perhaps, that the Arab world is going to choose its own leaders? Could it be that we are going to see a new Arab world which is not controlled by the West? When Tunisia announced that it was free, Mrs Hillary Clinton was silent. It was the crackpot President of Iran who said that he was happy to see a free country. Why was this?

In Egypt, the future of Hosni Mubarak looks ever more distressing. His son, may well be his chosen successor. But there is only one Caliphate in the Muslim world, and that is Syria. Hosni's son is not the man who Egyptians want. He is a lightweight businessman who may - or may not - be able to rescue Egypt from its own corruption.

Hosni Mubarak's security commander, a certain Mr Suleiman who is very ill, may not be the man. And all the while, across the Middle East, we are waiting to see the downfall of America's friends. In Egypt, Mr Mubarak must be wondering where he flies to. In Lebanon, America's friends are collapsing. This is the end of the Democrats' world in the Arab Middle East. We do not know what comes next. Perhaps only history can answer this question.

More foreign fighters seen slipping into Iraq

By Lara Jakes and Qassim Abdul-Zahra
-Associated Press





Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, standing next to a television display of six alleged foreign fighters, said in Baghdad on Sunday, Dec. 5, 2010, that security forces are on the lookout for the six, who allegedly helped launch attacks this year that killed more than 140 people. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

BAGHDAD (AP) — Intelligence officials say foreign fighters have been slipping back into Iraq in larger numbers recently and may have been behind some of the most devastating attacks this year, reviving a threat the U.S. military believed had been almost entirely eradicated.

It is impossible to verify the actual numbers of foreign insurgents entering the country, but one Middle Eastern intelligence official estimated recently that 250 came in October alone. U.S. officials say the figure is far lower, but they have acknowledged an increase since August.

At the same time, Iraqi officials say there has been a surge in financial aid to al Qaeda's front group in Iraq as the U.S. military prepares to leave by the end of 2011. They said it reflects fears by Arab states over the growing influence of Iran's Shi'ite-led government over Iraq and its Shi'ite-dominated government.

On Sunday, a security official, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said Iraqi forces are searching for six foreign fighters who are among Iraq's most wanted terrorists.

The six are suspected of involvement in the Oct. 31 siege of a Christian church that left 68 people dead and drew international outrage, Gen. al-Moussawi said. They also are suspected in two summertime attacks on an Iraqi army headquarters in central Baghdad that killed a total of 73 people.

"All who committed these attacks are (non-Iraqi) Arabs," he said. "This indicates the failure of al Qaeda leaders to recruit Iraqis to carry out [martyrdom-seeking] attacks."

Gen. al-Moussawi said five of the six suspects are hiding in two Sunni-Muslim-dominated provinces bordering Syria, while one has fled to Syria.

U.S. officials are playing down the threat.

Army Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said the military noticed a slight increase in foreign fighters starting in August, but he would not say how many. He said the number remains far lower than when insurgents were rushing in from other Arab states between 2005 and 2007.

"There were some indications of a flow of foreign fighters in," Col. Johnson said. "And that is often associated with [martyrdom-seeking] attacks, so we were anticipating something happening."

Last year, U.S. counterterrorism officials said the number of foreigners heading to Iraq had trickled from hundreds to "tens" in what they described as a severely weakened al Qaeda in Iraq.

But a Mideast counterterrorism official said an estimated 250 foreign fighters entered Iraq in October alone. He said they came through the Syrian city of Homs, a hub for Syrian Muslim fundamentalists that is run mostly by Tunisians and Algerians. Other fighters have come from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Yemen.

Additionally, the official said, tens of millions of foreign dollars annually are funding the Iraqi insurgency, which has received about $5 billion in aid since 2007. The money comes from al Qaeda leaders, Muslims who want the United States to leave, and so-called 'Arab nationalists' who are eager for Sunni Muslims to regain power in Shi'ite-dominated Iraq.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Even at the height of the war, foreign fighters were considered a small percentage of the total number of insurgents in Iraq. But their presence encouraged donations from overseas, and they made up some of the most hardcore jihadists who were willing to carry out [martyrdom-seeking] bombings.

Officials see the fingerprints of foreign fighters in a spate of recent attacks:

• Four of the church bombers were from Libya and Syria and carried fake ID cards that identified them as mutes to avoid talking in foreign accents to checkpoint guards, Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Abu Raghef told the Associated Press. He said $70,000 cash was seized from a western Baghdad home where their cell's leaders were operating.

• A Tunisian who also was pretending to be mute was arrested on terror charges in August in eastern Diyala province, according to an Iraqi security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

• A Moroccan fighter was captured and two non-Iraqi insurgents were killed in a raid Thursday in the northern city of Mosul, said Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, a Defense Ministry spokesman.

• Four Jordanian fighters were killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, according to a November claim by the Islamic State of Iraq, a front group for al Qaeda.

• A Nov. 2 string of rapid-fire blasts in Shi'ite neighborhoods across Baghdad killed 91. The Iraqi counterterrorism commander, Maj. Gen. Fadhel al-Barwari, said it must have been carried out with foreign financing to buy the explosives needed "to launch an attack with a big number of casualties."

U.S. officials and experts voiced doubt that the foreign aid is as high as Iraqi and Mideast authorities believe.

A senior U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the sensitive issue estimated about 10 foreign fighters enter Iraq each month.

Michael Knights, a Lafter fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, predicted there are only "small cells of experienced foreign fighters in ISI."

But an analysis by the private global intelligence firm Stratfor concluded that foreign help in the church siege signals that al Qaeda "may have found a new source for militants, and they may have more resources to carry out fresh attacks."

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana in Baghdad and Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.