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Shooting in Tunisia Museum

On Wednesday, March 16, gunmen entered and open fired on The Bardo Museum in Tunisia killing 19 people and injuring at least 20 more.

The museum, according to CNN, is housed in a 19th century palace, and calls itself “a jewel of Tunisian heritage.” The museum hosts exhibits featuring art, culture and history, marble sculptures, furniture, jewels, and mosaics dating from the back to the Roman and Carthaginian era, including one of the widely known poet, Virgil.

imgresAccording to Reuters, a London based news agency, the gunmen, dressed in military uniforms, stepped off of a bus and began open firing on tourists. Two of the gunmen then fled inside the museum with hostages.The two gunmen inside the building were later killed and are believed to be Tunisians, while the other three gunmen are still believed to be at large. Their identities, as well as their motives remain unclear.

Among the dead were five Japanese tourists and visitors from Poland, Germany, Italy, and Spain, as well as at least one Tunisian native, according to Reuters. In addition to the deaths, there were another 20 tourists and two Tunisians wounded in the attack.

While there is no solid evidence linking ISIS to the attack, many factors are forming suspicion of the influence of the Islamic State. The biggest factor causing suspicion, according to The New York Times, was the celebration of the attacks by ISIS supporters via social media which cited a video released by supporters in December that claimed there were ‘more attacks to come.’ Boubakr Hakim, a Tunisian militant, urged for the support of the Islamic state and claimed responsibility for the assassinations of two liberal Tunisian politicians and warned authorities, “You will not live in safety as long as Tunisia is not ruled by Islam.”

Another one of the largest indicators of the Islamic State’s involvement with the shooting is, according to New York Times, it’s emergence as one of the largest sources of foreign fighters joining ISIS. According to The International Centre for the Study of Radicalization in London, “Up to 3,000 Tunisians are believed to have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight as jihadists, more than any other country.” While the country has not experienced as much violence as other nations that were part of the Arab Spring, it has experienced its share of outbreaks and protests. The Arab Spring, which took place in Tunisia, sparked protests throughout North Africa and the Middle East and was a revolutionary wave of non-violent and violent demonstrations, protests, and civil wars that took place in the Arab world.

Despite Tunisia’s transition from dictatorship to dictatorship, it’s recent completion of presidential and parliamentary elections, and “ a peaceful handover of political power from one governing party to another,” authorities have struggled to handle periodic attacks by Islamic extremists. According to CNN, in February 2015, Tunisia’s Interior Ministry announced the arrests of about 100 alleged extremists, and “published a video allegedly showing that the group possessed a formula for making explosives and a photograph of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

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ISIS Beheads Egyptian Christians

Last weekend, a video surfaced of the Jihadist group, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), showing the beheadings of 21 men. All of these men except one, according to National Public Radio (NPR), were Christian laborers from Egypt.

article-coptic16n-6-webBeheadings have not been uncommon for ISIS. On August 13, 2014 ISIS released a video showing the beheading of U.S. journalist and ISIS hostage, James Foley. On September 13, 2014, yet another video, this time showing the murder of British aid worker, David Haines, is released. Then once more on October 3 and once again November 16, 2014 ISIS released videos of the deaths of British minicab driver, Alan Henning, and U.S. aid worker, Peter Kassig.

This particular set of murders by ISIS differs than the previous. According to Abraham Bashr Aziz, who was present during the kidnapping and is also a brother of one of the deceased, ISIS was specifically looking hostages who were Christian. He said, “I heard them screaming, and I heard them asking about the Christians. They just came to kidnap the Christians.” The kidnapping, however, was not random. According to NPR, the gunmen who came to kidnap Aziz, along with his friends and relatives, had a list of names. Aziz was one of the names on the list.

Egypt’s response to the beheadings was one of violence and retaliation. According to CNN Sunday, Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi proclaimed his country “reserves the right of retaliation and with the methods and timing it sees fit for retribution for those murderers and criminals who are without the slightest humanity.” According to Reuters, an international news agency based in London, on Monday, February 16, Egyptian jet bombed Islamic State targets in Libya. An umbrella group of Islamists in Derna reported the bombing had killed women and children, and in addition warned Egypt of a “harsh and painful” response to come.

The terror from ISIS, however, did not stop there. According to CNN, an Iraqi official has recently confirmed that the town of al-Baghdadi, located in the province of Anbar, has been burned to the ground. With this town an additional 40 officers and tribesmen were burned alive. While the group has not posted photos of the murders on social media as they have in the past, there is reason to believe the Jihadist group is solely responsible for the murders and destruction. The proof comes from the social media updates bragging of their control of al-Baghdadi via photographs. These photographs included images of the recognizable government buildings in al-Baghdadi, along with corpses of the Iraqi joint forces located there.

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International News

Mass Death Sentence in Egypt

An Egyptian court on Monday, February 1st 2015, sentenced 183 Muslim Brotherhood supporters to death. The court proceedings were held over the killing of 11 police officers in the violence that had engulfed Egypt after the 2013 dismissal of the former Islamist president, President Mohammed Morsi.

The attack took place after Egyptian military forces cracked down on Islamist supporters of Morsi in July 2013. Egyptian security forces descended onto two pro-Morsi camps in July and August 2013, killing hundreds.

JoePoyfairAt the end of July and beginning of August 2013, hundreds of demonstrators were killed by Egyptian security forces. The Human Rights Watch said that this mass killing of protesters “probably amounts to crimes against humanity,” thus creating an international outcry that was quickly quieted by the Egyptian government.

The United Nations has called the trials “unprecedented.” Amnesty International’s Deputy Middle East and North Africa Program Director, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, said in a statement in response to Monday’s verdict.  “The death sentences are yet another example of the bias of the Egyptian criminal justice system.”

Sahraoui further stated that “issuing mass death sentences whenever the case involves the killing of police officers now appears to be near-routine policy, regardless of facts and with no attempt to establish individual responsibility.”

The original trial saw 377 people sentenced to life in prison in absentia, while not present at the event being referred to.  Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said it would be wrong to impose the capital punishment “when there are serious doubts hanging over the fairness of the trial which disregarded international law.”

The Egyptian court did not put 183 individuals to death lightly. The Egyptian government has been attempting to fight against terrorism in Egypt. Muslim extremism has seen an increase in central Egypt in the past decade, and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been fighting against these extremists.

Egypt’s current government, led by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has called for a ‘religious revolution’ and asked Muslim leaders to help in the fight against extremism. President el-Sisi has launched a war against terrorism, focusing particularly on the countries Sinai region, where an extremist group recently pledged allegiance to ISIS.

In an act of counter extremism, Egyptian authorities cracked down in 2013 on former supporters of Morsi, a longtime member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Egyptian government had officially declared a terrorist organization in December 2013

In a speech on New Year’s Day, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for a “religious revolution” in Islam that would displace violent jihad from the center of Muslim discourse. “Is it possible that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s population, [which] is 7 billion people, so that they themselves may live?” President el-Sisi asked.

“We have to think hard about what we are facing,” President el-Sisi said. “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing, and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible.”

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International Delegates Talk Syrian Peace

As international delegates arrived in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday, January 21, doubts persisted concerning whether they would be able to bring an end to Syria’s three-year-old civil war.

Courtesy of radioaustralia.net.au
Courtesy of
radioaustralia.net.au

Sponsored by the United States, Russia, and the United Nations, the peace accords, known as “Geneva 2,” will bring together officials from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government along with the Syrian National Council (SNC) an opposition bloc consisting of various groups seeking to overthrow the Assad regime. However, numerous groups engaged in the conflict have refused to attend, including many Islamist fighters who seek to turn Syria into an Islamic emirate. Complications further expanded as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, under the lobbying influence of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, withdrew an invitation to Iran, one of Assad’s main financial and materials supporters.

According to Reuters, Ban faced immense pressure from both Washington and the SNC, the latter threatening to boycott the talks and further obstruct any chances of conflict resolution. Moreover, Iran rejected the caveat that it had to accept the guidelines of a previous peace conference held in Geneva in 2012 that called for President Assad to step down and allow a transitional administration to take over. These peace talks failed after the U.S. and Russia could not agree on Assad’s post-conflict, political role. Washington Post reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said excluding Iran is not a “catastrophe,” and said Russia and the other countries at the conference will still push for a productive dialogue between the warring factions.

Further complications arising as peace talks begin include the revelation of widespread torture and systematic killing committed by the Assad régime against 11,000 detainees in Syrian government custody. Al-Jazeera reports that thousands of photographs smuggled out of Syria and examined by a team of war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts show emaciated bodies marked with signs of brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture. The photographs were taken by a photographer for the military police who had secretly defected to the opposition. While both sides of Syria’s civil war have been accused of war crimes, this evidence is the most definitive proof of large-scale killing on the part of the régime to date. According to U.S State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, one reason “Geneva 2” needs to be fruitful is because “the situation on the ground is so horrific that we need to get a political transition in place and…we need to get the Assad régime out of power.” Reuters reports that the former chief prosecutor of a war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone, Desmond de Silva, commented that “some of the images we saw were absolutely reminiscent of people who came out of Belsen and Auschwitz.” It is not yet known how the revelations of these photographs will influence the demands of other negotiators, such as Russia, or the SNC.

Meanwhile, as “Geneva 2” begins, warfare continues in Syria. It is estimated that 130,000 people have died along with 22 million being displaced. Spillover from the conflict has also affected neighboring countries. In Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, a suicide bombing occurred in front of the headquarters of Hezbollah, a Shi’a group that actively assists Assad and militarily adheres to the Alawite offshoot of Shi’a Islam. Meanwhile, Iraq faces political strife as al-Qaeda-linked groups seek greater influence amongst the country’s Sunni population.  Currently, Iraqi government forces and tribal fighters are trying to expel al-Qaeda fighters, staunchly opposed to Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated government, from the Sunni enclave in the country’s west. Consequently, as the conflict between Sunni-backed rebels in Syria and the Alawite-majority government continues, sectarian divides deepen further throughout the Middle East.