Syria’s conflict is drawing a motley crew of adventure-seekers and
adrenaline with murky motivations—and little experience with surviving
in war zones.
When
Tyler Smith visited northern Syria this January, he found himself in a
dance-off with Syrian rebels at a training area near al-Bab. “I tried to
show them how to do the worm,” the 20-year-old American chuckles. “They
taught me how to disassemble and reassemble an AK-47.”
Two young Syrian refugees pose with toy guns in Kilis, Turkey, a town within sight of the Syrian border. (Ben Taub)
The
trip was Smith’s first-ever venture to the Middle East, a five-day
jaunt to a war-ravaged village in rebel territory north of Aleppo with
his two friends, Joe Alencar and Karar Mousa. The guys all attended
different colleges, so they timed the trip to align with a break between
semesters.
“Most
people on their holiday go out partying, but we decided to do something
a little different for once,” says Smith. They had “no contacts or
anything like that” in southern Turkey or the northern part of Syria
controlled by opposition forces. Nonetheless, they flew to Istanbul,
hopped on a bus, and made their way to Kilis, a small, dusty town barely on the Turkish side of the Syrian border, the last safe stop on the road to Aleppo.
Smith
is pale and gangly, sporting a flop of dirty blond hair and a
strikingly deep voice. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and loves
his dog Eddie, who climbs on Smith’s lap and showers him in licks.
Freshly
out of his teens, Smith’s bent towards idealism and revolution drew him
to follow the sweeping changes of the so-called Arab Spring. He watched
horrific video footage of the Syrian war online, and his life began to
feel increasingly incongruous.
In
late 2012, his friend Mousa—who now lives in Chicago, but who was born
in Iraq and lived in Syria for five years—lost a friend to the war in
al-Zabadani, a village near the Syrian capital of Damascus. The conflict
was now personal. Smith felt compelled to action.
“I
wanted to help out in any way I could,” he says, especially in refugee
camps and hospitals. Though he lacked medical training, Smith decided to
go to Syria himself, without contacting any of the numerous NGOs that
operate official and makeshift refugee camps on both sides of the
border.
He
floated the idea with Alencar, a 24-year-old Brazilian who grew up in
Miami and describes himself as “militant.” For Alencar, who “wanted to
experience what it would be like in a war,” the notion was appealing,
and they agreed to head to Syria. Their objectives were vague, and they
had no concrete plans on how to achieve them.
Mousa
decided to tag along, for reasons he wouldn’t disclose. “Seventy
percent of my whole purpose of being in Syria—even Tyler and Joe
themselves know nothing about this,” he told me. “It’s really personal.”
In one photo, Smith is on his knees, hands in the air, while a rebel
points a Kalashnikov at his head. The caption reads “I figured this
would be a good postcard to send home.”
When
the trio got on the bus heading southeast from Istanbul, they began
asking random Syrians for help crossing the border into the war zone.
When this elicited suspicion and accusations of espionage, they decided
instead to seek out war correspondents at the border for advice.
Predictably
enough, the three young men spotted a few journalists nursing beers at
Kilis’s only bar, where the mustachioed proprietor sometimes raises
prices if he thinks a patron might be drunk.
Journalists
who cover war grow quickly accustomed to the strange assembly of
characters who show up in border towns looking for a battle. In the past
six months alone, Kilis has housed a French woman armed with boxes of
antidepressants to hand out to refugees; a Japanese man who went to
Aleppo several times a week just to do a bit of shooting; an Italian
woman whose fixer claims she went searching for alien DNA on the front
lines; numerous foreign jihadists; and amateur photographers whose
blunders have created extremely dangerous circumstances for locals on
the ground.
After
a brief exchange to decipher why Smith, Alencar, and Mousa wanted to go
to Syria, the journalists told them to go home. “Tyler’s heart was in
the right place, but he didn’t know what he was doing,” recalls one of
the journalists. “And he really seemed to be under Joe’s influence.”
“I
wanted to prove to myself that I can handle this with my own bravado,”
said Alencar, “that I can throw myself into the ring and survive.”
Though
the three young men recognized that the journos “had been to multiple
conflicts,” they “kind of put them to the side” and decided they’d go in
anyway, help or no help. “We didn’t come thousands of miles to have
some people at the last minute tell us not to do it,” says Smith.
The
following day, they encountered a Syrian “fixer” living in Kilis, who
said he could make arrangements for them to cross the border, as he had
done for many journalists before. “I asked why they wanted to go inside,
you know, it’s crazy,” the fixer recollects over a cigarette. “They
told me they want to be like Matthew Van Dyke.”
The name Matthew Van Dyke
often triggers eye-rolls among journalists covering recent conflicts in
the Middle East. Though he no longer identifies himself as a reporter,
Van Dyke entered Libya in 2011 as a freelancer, but quickly took up arms
and fought alongside Libyan rebels in the revolution. The next year he
fought with the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo, while simultaneously making a
short documentary on the conflict.
Van
Dyke became something of a spectacle, garnering praise from idolizing
fans—adulation that he evidently treasures enough to painstakingly
aggregate and post on his website in the form of over 700 endorsement
tweets and comments along the lines of “u r a true hero.” But Van Dyke
has also been the target of blistering criticism from those who see him
as less freedom fighter and more war tourist.
An explosion in northern Syria this August, as seen from a hotel in Kilis, Turkey. (Ben Taub)
As
it turns out, Alencar was a big fan of Van Dyke’s, and also wanted to
fight on the front lines of Aleppo for “altruistic reasons.” They even
had a brief correspondence over email, in which Van Dyke cautioned “What
you are planning to do is a very bad idea and is not what the rebels
need at this time… The three of you are going to look like spies for
sure… You guys are just walking into a disaster if you go there now.”
Alencar
interpreted this as envy or condescension, asserting that “Either [Van
Dyke] didn’t want other Westerners stealing his fame” or he “thought we
were naïve adventure-seekers with no idea what we were getting ourselves
into.” At any rate, the three friends had already made up their minds.
Though
Smith insists that the extent of their humanitarian efforts was limited
by being “on a dollar and a dime for everything,” they paid the fixer
$1000 to bring them into Syria for five days under the supervision of a
man who called himself General Abu Hassan. Contrary to his claims and
the fixer’s charismatic assertions, Abu Hassan is not in fact a general
in the Free Syrian Army, but a driver with a dubious record of
punctuality with journalists. The back seats in his banged-up white
Mercedes are bloodstained from transporting wounded soldiers to field
hospitals away from the frontlines.
Smith,
Alencar, and Mousa wanted to go to Aleppo, but instead General Abu
Hassan dropped them off at a Free Syrian Army training facility near
al-Bab, far from the fighting. The supervising rebel brigade, Liwa
al-Tawhid, gave them a tour of the town, showing them bombed-out
hospitals and schools, and introducing them to civilians.
A
life-long Catholic, Alencar converted to Islam on his second day in
Syria. “What better place to do it?” he says with a laugh. He’s now been
a practicing Muslim for ten months. “A lot of people convert, but not
actually in the struggle.”
But
Alencar’s biggest struggle ended up being with the rebels who were, in
the words of his Kilis-based fixer, “babysitting him.” He found al-Bab
too safe, too boring. All he really wanted to do —all he had paid to
do—was go shooting on the frontlines of battle-torn Aleppo. But that
never happened because the supervising FSA brigade swiftly took the guns
away and told them they couldn’t go.
Alencar
had handled guns a few times before, and Mousa had fired occasional
celebratory shots at weddings (as is customary in much of the Middle
East), but when the rebels handed Smith a Kalashnikov for a few practice
shots, his inexperience outed the group.
“Tyler
was shitting his pants when he first got the gun,” chuckles
Alencar. “He couldn’t even cock it. He was kind of trembling … and then
this 10-year-old kid just snatched it from his hands and chk-chk!” No more guns for the three of them, much to Alencar’s chagrin.
Not
that the rebels ever intended to let them fight, as the whole trip was
arranged by the fixer as an expensive tour. Save for a bit of target
practice, they only got to hold guns when posing for pictures with
opposition forces, which Smith and Alencar uploaded to Facebook. In one
photo, Smith is on his knees, hands in the air, while a rebel points a
Kalashnikov at his head. The caption reads “I figured this would be a
good postcard to send home.”
Before
long, the three claim, they had had a brush with Jabhat al-Nusra, a
jihadist group with connections to al-Qaeda, which has reportedly kidnapped Westerners in northern Syria.
Alencar
says the Nusra fighters responded well to his recent conversion to
Islam, but were “messing with [Tyler] a little bit to see if he
flinches.” One fighter allegedly told Smith that Osama bin Laden was his
father. Smith believed him, prompting raucous laughter from the
Islamists. The guys say another one grilled Smith on whether he wanted
to “go to paradise,” to which Smith says he responded “Yeah… but not
now.”
Having
proved themselves sufficiently entertaining to the Nusra fighters,
Smith claims the trio earned an invitation to tea. He says about half
of the Islamists were wearing explosive suicide vests, but overall he
did not feel threatened. Smith says the Islamists left him with a
parting gift of the black flag that marks territory under jihadist
control in Syria, which he keeps in his closet at his parents’ house
near Chicago.
Around
this time, the three young men again asked about going to the
frontlines, and again they were belittled by the supervising brigade. No
matter, says Smith, “I had fun. [The rebels] were singing and dancing a
lot.” He enjoyed their more traditional dance moves, but also tried to
show them some moves he’d learned in Chicago, and let the children play
war video games on his computer.
General
Abu Hassan reappeared in his old white Mercedes on day five to drive
them back to Turkey. They say he tried to extort more money from them on
the way out of Syria, but Mousa engaged him angrily in Arabic. Within
an hour they arrived safely in Turkey, Smith and Alencar crossing
legally while Mousa slipped through illegally, since he only had a
single-entry visa for Turkey.
Tyler Smith kneeling while a Syrian rebel holds a Kalashnikov to his
head. Smith uploaded it to Facebook with the caption. "I figured this
would be a good postcard to send home." (Ben Taub)
Was
their trip a failure? Smith says it was because they didn’t end up
helping anybody, but then recalls that he led a successful post-trip
“public relations campaign” convincing his family and neighbors that the
rebels were actually “pretty cool.” Yet undoing all his previous
assertions about idealism and revolution, he admits that they picked the
Free Syrian Army because “the rebels will take us to war and the regime
won’t.” Nine months after the trip, Smith released a short video
documentary on Youtube with his footage from Syria.
“I
hate to say it, but it [was] almost like war tourism,” Alencar
concedes. Having the guns taken away castrated his entire objective. He
wanted to “get involved in the fight,” he stresses, “out of humanitarian
concern for the Syrians.”
Mousa
was disappointed that they never made it through the 180 miles of
violently disputed territory separating Aleppo and Damascus, as he hoped
to visit his friends back in al-Zabadani, as well as his father’s
grave. Today, he is sick of Syria talk, and asserts that all warring
sides are guilty of perpetuating the violence. But for him, the trip
was still worthwhile because while in Syria they learned the secret of
“how the revolution was born.”
“Honestly
what we discovered is, like, the opposite of what they’re telling us,”
Mousa says. In “the real story,” that “the media isn’t showing,” he says
young men in the southern city of Dara’a posted anti-Assad graffiti in
early 2011 only to be arrested and tortured, prompting protests à la
Egypt and Libya, which invited brutal crackdown and thereby sparked a
nationwide revolt.
Yes, that is the real story, but no, it is not hidden. Hundreds of prominent articles in top publications
covered the Dara’a protests, and Wikipedia’s page on the Syrian Civil
War mentions them as well. News organizations ran profiles of the Dara’a
boys who started the war with a paint can.
Smith,
Alencar and Mousa went to see what Syria was like in war time, and
returned home unscathed. But not everyone is so fortunate. Many
foreigners crossed the border this summer without professional reasons
for doing so—some for war-tourism, others to fight jihad.
Among
others, an elderly Italian woman cried her way to the frontlines hoping
to retrieve the body of her son, who had gone to Syria, joined an
al-Qaeda linked group called the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, and
died for jihad. According to her fixer, she converted to Islam in the
presence of the Islamic State, while her son’s body rotted, unfetchable,
in an area surrounded by at least three government snipers. And a
recent spike in kidnappings of foreigners, orchestrated by jihadist
groups and criminal gangs, has made it clear that this war is no place
for curious bystanders.
Rebel-held
territory in northern Syria has grown untenable for professional
journalists and aid workers as well. The Committee to Protect
Journalists reports that at least 18 journalists are currently missing
in Syria, but the actual figure is likely higher because kidnapping
cases are often kept under media blackout at the request of the families
involved. American freelancers Austin Tice and James Foley were
abducted last August and November respectively, and are still missing.
French journalists Didier Francois and Edouard Elias were kidnapped
from their fixer’s car by armed gunmen in June on the road to Aleppo.
Polish photographer Marcin Suder disappeared from the Idlib Media Center
in July, but escaped his captors a few days ago and is now recovering at home.
This August I shared beers with a journalist in Kilis who was abducted
on the road to Aleppo a few days later, and is still being held. Sky
News Arabia lost contact
with a three-man reporting team in Aleppo last week, and Mohammad
Saeed, a journalist working for the Saudi-owned news network Al-Arabiya,
was executed by a hooded gunman
with a silenced pistol this Tuesday. At least 50professional and
citizen journalistshave been killed since the start of the war in 2011.
Back
in Kilis, the Syrian fixer who arranged the tour of al-Bab for Smith,
Alencar, and Mousa still laughs about it today. “I get people like that
coming to me for help all the time,” he says. “Kilis is a zoo. But now I
tell them tourism season is over.”
Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and
follow us on Twitter for updates all day
long.
Ben Taub is a journalist and philosophy student at Princeton University, and a member of the Frontline Freelance Register.
He spent seven weeks in Kilis this summer doing research for a book on
unusual people and happenings on the fringe of war. Prior work has
appeared in The Guardian, CNN, and Vice UK.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey and Iran, on opposing sides of the civil war in Syria,
signaled a thaw in relations on Friday, asserting that they shared
concerns about the rise in sectarianism there and could collaborate to
bring peace to their neighbor.
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey and Iran, on opposing sides of the civil war in Syria,
signaled a thaw in relations on Friday, asserting that they shared
concerns about the rise in sectarianism there and could collaborate to
bring peace to their neighbor.
The softening, reflected in the Iran foreign minister’s visit to Turkey,
came as the international community was working toward talks to end the
Syrian conflict. Turkish officials appeared to be trying to position
themselves as a bridge between the West and Iran on Syria, as Turkey has
done on the Iranian nuclear issue.
In an afternoon meeting here between Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian
foreign minister, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, Mr.
Erdogan made clear that he still believes that President Bashar
al-Assad of Syria must go. A senior Turkish official who spoke on the
condition of anonymity said that Turkey was willing to support a plan in
which some institutions of the Syrian state remained intact, and that
Turkey was pressuring Iran to abandon Mr. Assad.
Privately, Turkish officials say that despite the diplomatic push,
Turkey will continue to support rebel fighters in Syria even as peace
talks appear to be looming. Turkish officials say that in their meetings
with Western officials they argue that the rebels need to fight on so
they are not negotiating with Mr. Assad from a position of weakness.
The Iranian visit highlighted a difficult reality for Turkey: that its
policy of robust support for the rebel fighters has not only failed to
topple Mr. Assad’s government, but has led to a rising threat from
extremists linked to Al Qaeda who dominate the Syrian battlefield.
Turkey has recently been criticized, by American officials and others,
for enabling these extremists by allowing weapons and fighters to cross
its southern border into Syria.
Turkish officials privately blame the United States for the rise of
these extremist groups by not doing more to support moderate fighters at
the outset of the conflict, and by designating one of the Qaeda-linked
groups, the Nusra Front, as a foreign terrorist organization late last
year. That designation, opposed by Turkey, energized the Nusra Front,
and it became a jihadist magnet, several Turkish officials said.
Turkey, like Saudi Arabia, has publicly stated its disaffection with the
United States and the international community for not giving more
support to the Syrian opposition, and for retreating from a threat of
military action against Syria in favor of a pact to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons and a diplomatic path to end the conflict.
Yet Turkey is limited in its ability to pursue a more independent
policy, and has fallen in line behind the international community’s
diplomatic effort.
Appearing at a security conference in Istanbul on Friday morning, the
foreign ministers of Turkey and Iran spoke in language that belied the
many disagreements between the two Middle Eastern powers — in Syria, but
also in Iraq, where Iran is a strong supporter of the Shiite-led
government and Turkey has long supported the Sunni opposition.
Mr. Zarif, the Iranian minister, told reporters that the growing
sectarian strife in Syria, abetted by Qaeda operatives and their Sunni
jihadist associates, was a contagious threat.
“If the flames of sectarianism rage in the Middle East, you will see the
results in the streets of London, New York, Rome and Madrid,” he said.
Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, said, “Sitting here
together with the Iranian foreign minister, you can be sure we will be
working together to fight these types of scenarios, which aim to see a
sectarian conflict.”
The appearance of the two diplomats on the same stage also highlighted
the international charm offensive that Iran has undertaken since the election in June
of President Hassan Rouhani. A relative moderate, Mr. Rouhani has
signaled that he wants to pursue warmer relations with the West, raising
the possibility of a deal over Iran’s disputed nuclear program, as well
as a diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict.
Later, at an evening news conference here in Turkey’s capital, Mr. Zarif
told reporters that Turkey and Iran were working for an end to the war
in Syria. “We think people should be making their decisions at the
ballot box, and that the tragedy there should come to an end with the
help of neighboring countries, so these are the issues that we agree
upon,” he said.
He added, “There can be a difference of opinion among two brothers, but
our efforts are to breach these differences and reach a common
perspective.”
Turkey has long had strained and complicated relations with Iran,
although it has kept channels of communication open even as the two
countries have fought what amounts to a proxy war in Syria. Ties between
Turkey and Iran also have become more strained amid the rise in
sectarian frictions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims across the region.
As a Sunni power, Turkey and its government, led by the Islamist-rooted
Justice and Development Party, have been accused by critics of pushing a
foreign policy that favors Sunni interests, while Iran and its Shiite
clerical hierarchy have been guardians of Shiite Islam in the Middle
East, supporting the Shiite powers of Iraq and Hezbollah, the Lebanese
militant group.
A pivotal issue for the planned peace talks on Syria, referred to in diplomatic shorthand as Geneva II,
is whether Iran, which has been the most important ally to Mr. Assad’s
government, will participate. Turkey is pushing for Iran to have a seat
at the table, while Western powers like the United States have wavered
on that prospect.
Whether those talks can be convened by the middle of this month in
Geneva, a goal announced Sept. 27 by the United Nations secretary
general, Ban Ki-moon, remains unclear because so many questions are
unresolved, including the list of invitees. Mr. Ban’s special envoy to
Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said at a news conference in Damascus on Friday
that he remained hopeful that talks would take place but that Syria’s
fractious opposition would need to decide on how it intended to be
represented.
“In my personal opinion, Geneva II will not happen if no opposition
representatives attend,” Mr. Brahimi said, declining to specify a date.
“We hope it will take place in the next few weeks, not next year.”
Tim Arango reported from Ankara, and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul. Rick
Gladstone and Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from New York.
Saleh's resignation mixes with frustration when he later holds forth on his plight, blaming Yemen's
current government for failing to aid him and the 100,000 other
internally displaced people (IDP) living in the Al Mazrak camps in the
far northern ...
Purple: "Yes? Jonathan?"
Jonathan: "What is God really. You have lived millions of years in various times throughout this galaxy and others. You must have some idea of what God actually is?"
Purple: "Ahh. The Question all beings seek after. First of all there are theories of God and then there are forms of God."
Jonathan: "What's the difference really?"
Purple: "Theories of God are things people make up to tell their children not to be afraid at night when they go to sleep of dying and never waking up again."
Jonathan: "Then what are actual forms of God?"
Purple: "Well. There are potential forms of God. For example, every human being (and many other physical beings are potential forms of God."
Jonathan: "Okay. Then what are now forms of God?"
Purple: "That is the easiest question of all to answer. Within this galaxy the two most developed present forms of God are the Galactic Sentience and the being you spring from as one of the millions of incarnations of the original Galactic Sentience."
Jonathan: "Why is all that true?"
Purple: "Now that's a silly question, Jonathan. Because there is only theory and then there is reality. And I'm only answering this question in relation to this galaxy so you aren't confused by what I would say."
Jonathan:"So, there literally are almost an infinite set of forms of God?"
Purple: "Yes."
Jonathan: "Do they all agree?"
Purple: "They all agree that they exist. But further than that they have different points of view much like the atoms in every tree or person are different than each other even though because of the laws of physics at times they share atoms and electrons."
Jonathan: "So God's are individual throughout the universe."
Purple: "Yes. But they all agree on most things that correlate. You see, the physics of different Galaxies differ in that there are different amounts of different elements within every galaxy. So, the properties of different galaxies are different than each other. Even if I go to a different Galaxy I have to build my Purple Delta 7 bodies of the elements in that Galaxy so I don't have certain types of problems in new galaxies. Also, I have to learn from the Gods of that galaxy what is accepted and what is not."
Jonathan: "Does the Galactic Sentience have you go to these galaxies?"
Purple: "Yes. I am an emissary like an Ambassador to these surrounding Galaxies to the Milky Way Galaxy that you and I naturally live in."
MUNCIE
- Try feeding a family of three - including a growing teenage son -
with nearly $29 less than you had last month. Families receiving
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars - also known as food
stamps - will have to figure this out sooner ...
MUNCIE — Try feeding a family of three - including a growing teenage son - with nearly $29 less than you had last month.
Families
receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars - also
known as food stamps - will have to figure this out sooner than later as
decreases went into effect on Nov. 1.
“I
never thought I’d ever be on food stamps in the first place, but after
my divorce I didn’t know what else to do. I was broke. Now, it’s getting
harder by the month,” said Melinda Wright, a food stamp recipient with
two children, a 5-year-old and a 14-year-old. “I wish some of these
congressmen and the president would have to be on food stamps for a
month to see what it’s like. You’re not overflowing with money.”
The
estimated $5 billion decrease in the program is a result of the end of
the 2009 stimulus bill, which provided families with extra food stamp
dollars for the last four years.
In Delaware County, where 20,383 people receive benefits, that’s an estimated loss of $196,318 per month in SNAP benefits.
Each family doesn’t receive the same amount of food stamp dollars. Benefits are determined by family size and income.
The
Indiana Family and Social Service Administration, which oversees the
state’s food stamp program, estimates families will see a 5 to 10
percent decrease in their benefits beginning this month.
For
those not living paycheck to paycheck, 5 to 10 percent - or $29 for
Wright’s family - may not seem like a big deal. But for families
struggling to get by - including those with 40-hour a week jobs - that’s
enough of a drop to wonder where to go for help.
“I
understand the recession may be over, but not the hurts from the
recession,” said Kalani Kamakavivole, the program manager for Bridges
Community Services, a social service agency that helps families with
housing and government assistance program. “Most of our families - I’d
say 60 percent of them - may be able to work around the drop. But for
the rest of them, I’m not sure what they’ll do. We all know there isn’t
enough money to go around for every program, but what are families
supposed to do?”
Members
of the Pakistani Taliban are meeting to consider naming a replacement
for the group's leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, hours after he was killed in a
U.S.
Members of the Pakistani Taliban are meeting to consider naming a
replacement for the group's leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, hours after he
was killed in a U.S. drone strike in a northwest Pakistan tribal area.
Pakistani
and U.S. officials say Mehsud and three others were killed Friday when
four missiles from a CIA-operated drone struck his compound in North
Waziristan.
Saturday drones still hovered over the area, where
Mehsud's funeral was to take place. Witnesses said some of his
supporters fired light weapons in anger at the remote-controlled planes.
The 34-year-old leader had taken over the group in 2009 when its previous head was killed, also by a drone strike.
The
U.S. had a $5 million bounty on Mehsud. He is accused of involvement in
a deadly suicide attack on a CIA compound in Afghanistan in 2009 and a
failed bombing of New York's Times Square in 2010.
Mehsud's
cousin, uncle and a bodyguard, were also reported killed in the CIA
attack on the compound, which sources confirmed to VOA was used by the
Taliban leader.
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the U.S.
National Security Council, said the White House cannot confirm Mehsud's
death, but said it would be a "serious loss" for the Pakistani Taliban.
While
the strike could weaken the Taliban, it could also complicate the
Islamabad government's peace talks with the militant group, which is
blamed for the deaths of thousands of Pakistanis in recent years.
Just
hours before the strike, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
announced his government had begun negotiations with the Taliban, though
he offered few other details.
It is unclear whether those efforts will be affected, but Taliban officials have promised revenge attacks for Mehsud's death.
The
news received a mixed response elsewhere in Pakistan, where U.S. drone
strikes are deeply unpopular. Islamabad's foreign ministry condemned the
attack, though this was before reports emerged of Mehsud's death.
Pakistani
leaders say they strongly oppose the drone strikes, but some critics
believe the operations aimed at suspected al-Qaida and Taliban
operatives are part of a secret agreement under which Pakistan tacitly
approves the U.S. strikes.
This was the second drone strike
following Prime Minister Sharif's visit to the U.S. last month, when he
pushed for an end to the attacks. Most Pakistanis consider the drone
strikes to be a violation of the country's sovereignty.
Though
U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have slowed in recent months, the White
House has shown few signs it is willing to stop the attacks, which have
killed several high-ranking militants in recent years.
Thousands of fliers across the U.S. were delayed Friday after a morning
shooting at Los Angeles International Airport closed parts of the
airport. The prolonged shutdown at the nation's third largest airport
was particularly troublesome for those hoping to head to the East Coast
or across the Pacific Ocean.
Flights bound for Los Angeles that had not yet taken off were held at
their gates for hours by the Federal Aviation Administration. The
so-called ground stop was in effect until around 4 p.m. PDT. Some
flights already in the air were allowed to land at LAX, while others
diverted to nearby airports.
Throughout the day, an estimated 1,550 scheduled arriving and departing
flights with around 167,000 passengers were affected, the airport said
late Friday night. That included 86 arriving flights that were diverted
to other airports. The ripple effect was felt across the country.
Some passengers who landed at LAX after the shooting spent at least two
hours sitting on planes parked in a remote corner of the airport.
Even though the airport never fully closed, travelers trying to fly out
were unable to reach it because of massive road closures.
Gina Marie Lindsey, executive director of Los Angeles World Airports,
which operates the Los Angeles airport, said it will take "quite a deal
of time" to get operations back to normal. She said it will be a
"carefully orchestrated logistical ballet."
LAX's Terminal 3, where the shooting occurred, remained closed Friday evening as the forensics investigation continued.
A man carrying a note that said he wanted to "kill TSA" pulled a
semi-automatic rifle from a bag around 9:20 a.m. local time and shot his
way past a security checkpoint. One Transportation Security
Administration officer was killed and at least three other were wounded,
authorities said.
One security expert doubted much could be done to prevent similar incidents.
"I am not sure what can be done other than effectively banning most
types of guns as in the U.K. where there are minimal shootings," said
Kenneth J. Button, a public policy professor and director of the Center
for Transportation, Policy, Operations and Logistics at George Mason
University.
"This could just as well happened on a street in New York or at a
shopping mall," Button said in an email in which he also alluded to last
year's mass shootings in a Colorado movie theater and at a Connecticut
elementary school. He added that "airports are possibly one of the
safest places given the security there."
Los Angles is a major gateway for flights to Asia, Australia and New
Zealand. Domestically, the largest cities served are San Francisco, Las
Vegas, New York, San Jose, Calif., San Diego and Phoenix.
However, it is not a major connection point such as Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Minneapolis.
Most airlines issued waivers for people traveling through Los Angeles, allowing them to change flights without paying a fee.
JetBlue diverted flights from Boston, New York and Fort Lauderdale,
Fla., to nearby Long Beach airport. Southwest Airlines diverted at least
one flight — a trip from Chicago that landed in Denver.
Officials at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix said seven
flights to Los Angeles were canceled, including five on Southwest. Seven
flights from Sky Harbor to LAX were delayed and 10 flights headed to
Los Angeles from elsewhere were diverted to Sky Harbor.
Popular
Egyptian television satirist Bassem Youssef waves to is supporters as
he enters Egypt's state prosecutors office in Cairo, Egypt, March 31,
2013.
Egypt suspends satirist's show after he pokes fun at army chief
Channel says Bassem Youssef's last episode caused discontent on the street.
By
Reuters
|
Nov. 2, 2013 | 5:02 AM
Popular Egyptian television
satirist Bassem Youssef waves to is supporters as he enters Egypt's
state prosecutors office in Cairo, Egypt, March 31, 2013. Photo by AP
A supporter of Gen.
Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi holds a poster with the photo of Bassem Youssef,
the man known as “Egypt’s Jon Stewart,” during a protest in Cairo,
Egypt.Photo by AP
Egypt's top TV satirist was pulled off the air on Friday, a
week after he poked fun at the army chief who ousted Islamist President
Mohammed Morsi in July.
The
move is likely to raise further questions about authorities' commitment
to freedom in a country stumbling in its political transition since
autocrat Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising in 2011.
Just
before satirist Bassem Youssef's show The Program was due to start, an
anchor from the CBC channel said the last episode had caused discontent
on the street and violated editorial policy.
He said the channel had decided to suspend the show until editorial and commercial disputes with Youssef were resolved.
Youssef,
known for his fierce jabs at Morsi, returned to his show last Friday
following a summer break, poking equal fun at General Abdel-Fattah
al-Sissi.
Referring
to the ruler of the country, Youssef later displayed a projected image
of Sissi before quickly swapping it with the image of the interim
president, Adly Mansour.
He made extensive fun of the adulation of Sissi's admirers
"Sissi
has turned into ... chocolate!" said Youssef, joking about the
chocolate bars that have been molded into the defense minister's
likeness in confectionary stores.
Youssef's
criticism of Sissi was mild in comparison to the jokes he has aimed at
Morsi, Egypt's first democratically-elected president.
He
rose to fame with a satirical online show after the revolt that swept
Mubarak from power. His program, which was later broadcast on Egyptian
television, has been compared to the U.S. satirical comedy "The Daily
Show with Jon Stewart."
Political
tensions are running high in Egypt just before Morsi and 14 other
senior figures in the Muslim Brotherhood are due to face trial on Monday
on charges of inciting violence.
Sissi announced a roadmap that would lead to free and fair elections when he toppled Morsi after mass protests against his rule.
Critics
of the military say it is tightening its grip on power and returning
the country to Mubarak's era of iron-fisted rule, an allegation it
denies.
Hundreds
of Brotherhood members have been arrested and its top leaders are
behind bars. The movement, which won every election since Mubarak's
fall, says the army's July action cannot be described as anything other
than a coup.
The military says it was responding to the will of the people.
end quote from:
CAIRO
(AP) - Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi goes on trial starting
Monday on charges of inciting murder. Here are some key events from more
than two years of turmoil and transition in Egypt: - Jan. 25-Feb. 11,
2011: Egyptians stage ...
CAIRO
(AP) — Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi goes on trial starting
Monday on charges of inciting murder. Here are some key events from more
than two years of turmoil and transition in Egypt:
— Jan. 25-Feb.
11, 2011: Egyptians stage nationwide protests against nearly 30 years
of rule by autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Hundreds of protesters are killed as
Mubarak and his allies try to crush the uprising, but the 18-day
uprising ends with Mubarak's ouster. The military takes over, dissolving
parliament and suspending the constitution.
— Nov. 28, 2011-Feb
15, 2012 — Egypt holds multi-stage elections for the first post-Mubarak
parliament. In the lawmaking lower house, the Muslim Brotherhood wins
nearly half the seats, and ultraconservative Salafis take another
quarter. The remainder go to liberal, independent and secular
politicians. In the largely powerless upper house, Islamists take nearly
90 percent of the seats.
— May 23-24, 2012 — The first round of presidential elections
winnows down a field of 13 candidates, leaving two to face each other in
a runoff: the Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, the last
prime minister under Mubarak.
— June 14 — The Supreme
Constitutional Court orders the lower house of parliament dissolved on
grounds the election rules were unconstitutional.
— June 16-17 — Presidential runoff election held. Morsi defeats Shafiq with 51.7 percent of the vote.
— June 30 — Morsi takes oath of office.
— Nov. 19 —
Members of liberal parties and representatives of Egypt's churches
withdraw from the assembly writing the constitution, protesting attempts
by Islamists to impose their will.
— Nov. 22 — Morsi unilaterally
decrees greater powers for himself, giving his decisions immunity from
judicial review and barring the courts from dissolving the constituent
assembly and the upper house of parliament. The move sparks days of
protests. Islamists hurriedly finalize a draft constitution and Morsi
sets a Dec. 15 date for a referendum.
— Dec. 4 — More than 100,000 protesters march on the
presidential palace, demanding cancellation of the referendum. The next
day, Islamists attack an anti-Morsi sit-in, sparking street battles that
leave at least 10 dead.
— Dec. 15, Dec. 22 — Referendum is held,
and Egyptians approve the constitution, with 63.8 percent voting in
favor. Turnout is low.
— Jan. 25, 2013 — Hundreds of thousands
protest against Morsi on the second anniversary of the start of the
anti-Mubarak revolt. Protests rage over the next two months, with dozens
dying in clashes.
— April 7 — A Muslim mob attacks the main cathedral of the
Coptic Orthodox Church as Christians hold a funeral for four Christians
killed the day before. Pope Tawadros II blames Morsi for failing to
protect the building.
— June 30 — On Morsi's first anniversary in
office, millions of Egyptians begin days of massive demonstrations
demanding he step down. The military gives Morsi 48 hours to reach an
agreement with his opponents. On July 2, he delivers a speech vowing not
to step down.
— July 3 — Egypt's military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah
el-Sissi announces that Morsi has been deposed and that the chief
justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, will serve as
interim president. Tens of thousands of Morsi supporters camp out in
two mass sit-ins in Cairo's streets and launch mass protests demanding
his return to office.
— July 5 — Mansour dissolves the Islamist-dominated upper house
of parliament. At least 36 people are killed in clashes between pro-
and anti-Morsi groups and other violence.
— July 8 — Egyptian
soldiers fire on Morsi supporters protesting outside a military facility
in Cairo, killing more than 50. Each side blames the other for starting
the violence. Mansour sets a timeline for amending the constitution and
electing a new president and parliament by mid-February. The Muslim
Brotherhood refuses to participate in the process.
— July 9 —
Economist Hazem el-Beblawi appointed interim prime minister and
opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei as vice president.
— July 26 —
Millions nationwide rally after the military chief calls for gatherings
to give him a mandate to stop "potential terrorism" by Morsi
supporters.
— July 27 — At least 80 people are killed when
security forces and armed men in civilian clothes clash with Morsi
supporters near the larger of their two Cairo sit-ins, at the Rabaah
al-Adawiya mosque.
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