By Johan Galtung
OSLO, Jan 12 2016 (IPS)

Baher Kamal, in … And All of a Sudden Syria!: “The “big five,” the United Nations veto powers, have just agreed United Nations Resolution 2254 of 18-12-2015, time to end the Syrian five-year long human tragedy; they waited until 300,000 innocent civilians were killed and 4.5 million humans lost as refugees and homeless at home, hundreds of field testing of state-of-the-art drones made, and daily U.S., British, French and Russian bombing carried out.” No Chinese bombing.

Johan Galtung

One term in the resolution, road map, already spells failure. There is another reason: missing issues. But something can be done. Roads twist, turn and may be far from straight. Traveling a road is a linear, one step or mile-stone after another, process, by the map. The West loves linearity; as causal chains, (falling dominoes,) from a root cause; as deductive chains from axioms; as ranks from high to low.

However, is that not how the world is, moving in time, causes-effects, axioms-consequences, rank, power, over others? Are roads not rather useful? They are. Is there an alternative to a road map? There is.

One step after the other in time is diachronic. An alternative would be synchronic; at the same time. Let us call it a cake map.

A cake is served, cut in slices, each party takes a slice, waits till all are served to start together. By the road map, first come first served first to eat. Or, highest rank eats first, down the line. The cake map stands for togetherness, simultaneity, shared experience. Not necessarily good: it was also used by the West to carve up Africa.

The cake is an issue; the slices are aspects. How it is defined, how it is cut, who are invited is essential. Basic to the cake map is equality among parties and slices: all get theirs at the same time.

For the Syria issue the Resolution lists the aspects on the road:
• 25 January 2016 (in two weeks) as the target date to begin talks;
• immediately all parties stop attacking civilians;
• within one month: options for a ceasefire monitoring mechanism;
• within 6 months “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance”;
• within 18 months “free and fair elections–by the new constitution”.

Kamal mentions many actors and crucial problems with this agenda. The focus here is on the linearity: ceasefire-governance-constitution-free and fair elections. Why stop attacking civilians who can become or are combatants? Why should actors agree to a ceasefire before their rights are guaranteed in a constitution? Why non-sectarian “governance” in a sectarian country? Each step presupposes the next. The “peace process” can be blocked, at any point, by any one party. Like a road.

Proposal: On 25 January, appoint four representative commissions– one for each of the four aspects–with mechanisms of dialogue for all six pairs and plenaries. Then report on all aspects on the agenda.

Back to the cake, “Syria.” Does “Syria” exist? Once much of the Middle East, the name was used for the French “mandate” carved out of the vast Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1916 when ended by Sykes-Picot. A commission on the Ottoman period, exploring millets for minorities, is indispensable. So is a commission on the Sykes-Picot trauma, also with Turkey as a member; hopefully with UK-France-Russia apologizing.

We have seen it before. The US was a major party to the conflict and the UN conference manager 2013-14. There are now more parties: Jordan has identified up to 160 terrorist groups (Kamal), probably not counting state terrorists. And today the UN is the conference manager.

This column at the time (27 Jan 2014) identified seven Syria conflicts:
1 Minority/majority, democracy/dictatorship, Assad/not Assad in Syria;
2 Sunni/Shia all over, also with “Sunni Islamic State Iraq-Syria ISIS”;
3 Syrians/minorities “like Turks and Kurds, Maronites and Christians”;
4 Syria/”those who, like USA and Israel, prefer Syria fragmented”;
5 Syria/Turkey with “neo-Ottoman expansionist policies”;
6 USA-UK-France/Russia-China “determined to avoid another Libya”;
7 Violent perpetrators of all kinds/killed-bereaved-potential victims.

All seven are still there. They have become more violent, like the second, between Saudi Arabia–also financing IS–and Iran. But the resolution focuses on the first and the last. All parties mentioned should be invited or at least consulted publicly. Last time Iran was excluded, defined as the bad one; this time IS(IS), today called Daesh.

A process excluding major process parties is doomed in advance.

However, imagine that the cake is defined as, “the conflict formation in and around Syria”; that the slices are the seven conflicts indicated with one commission for each; that around the table are the actors mentioned, some grouped together. The Resolution aspects are on their agendas; with commissions on the Ottoman Empire and Sykes-Picot.

What can we expect, what can we reasonably hope for, as visions?

“Mandate”, “colony”: there is some reality to Syria (and to Iraq). The borders are hopeless and should be respected, but not for a unitary state. For something looser, a (con)federation. Basic building-blocs would be provinces from Ottoman times, millets for smaller minorities, and cantons for the strip of Kurds along the Turkish border. The constitution could define a national assembly with two chambers: one territorial for the provinces, and one non-territorial for nations and faiths with some cultural veto in matters concerning themselves.

There is also the Swiss model with the assembly being based on territorially defined cantons, and the cabinet on nations-faiths: of 7 members 3 speak German, 1 Rheto-roman, 2 French and 1 Italian (4 Protestant and 3 Catholic?). Not impossible for Syria. With the Kurds as some kind of Liechtenstein (that is where con-federation enters).

In addition to parallel NGO fora. There is much to articulate.

Assad or not? If he is excluded as punishment for violence, there are many to be excluded. A conference only for victims, and China?

Better see it as human tragedy-stupidity, and build something new.

The violent parties will not get what they want. The victims can be accommodated peacefully in this looser Syria. Moreover, the perpetrators should fund reconstruction proportionate to the violence they wrought in the past four years. As quickly as humanly possible.

Syria offered a poor choice between a minority dictatorship with tolerance and a majority dictatorship–democracy–without. Violence flourished, attracting old suspects for proxy wars. “Bomb Syria” was the panacea, after “bomb Libya”. What a shame. Bring it to an end.

*Johan Galtung’s editorial originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 11 January 2016: TRANSCEND Media Service – TMS: Syria (Minding the Minds II)

Excerpt:

As the Somali government announced it would set up a coastguard to combat piracy in this Horn of African nation, insecurity is emerging as the biggest challenge that the government faces – and it is only getting worse.

Osman Aweis Dahir, director of the local Dr. Ismail Jimale Human Rights Organisation, said that the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab has renewed its campaign to bring instability to the country’s capital Mogadishu.

“The little stability that the city had experienced since the Al-Shabaab withdrawal appears to have been broken,” Dahir told IPS from Mogadishu. The Islamist extremist group was forced out of its bases in Mogadishu on Aug. 6, 2011 by Somali and African Union peace-keeping forces. Until the withdrawal, the government only controlled half of the city.

But in recent weeks there has been a rise in the number of ambushes, assassinations and suicide bombs in Somalia’s capital.“The city is like an open shop in a market which its owner has left [unattended].” -- Jama Ahmed Siad, local security expert

“The city has experienced its deadliest attacks in recent times during the past two weeks,” said Dahir. More than 60 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in several incidents across Mogadishu. This is a setback to the rising hopes of a return to relative security.”

On Tuesday, Jul. 30, an officer from Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) was assassinated by Al-Shabaab. His name was added to the growing list of government officials killed over the last three weeks. Included on that list is female deputy commissioner of Mogadishu’s Yaqshid district, Rahma Dahir Siad, who was killed outside her home on Jul. 17.

Even foreign diplomats are not safe in the city. On Jul. 27, Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for an attack on the Turkish embassy that killed three people.

It was the second that day. A few hours earlier a bomb planted inside a member of parliament’s vehicle exploded in the north of the city.

On Jul. 24, Sheikh Abdu Aziz Abu Musab, Al-Shabaab’s military spokesman, said that his group carried out over 100 attacks between Jul. 10 and 24. Half of these, he said, occurred in Mogadishu.

“If anything, the sharp rise in such coordinated attacks is a clear testament to the strength of the Mujahidin and their operational capacity,” he told a pro-Islamist radio station in Somalia.

Somali Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdoon acknowledged his disappointment at the government’s weak handling of the security situation in the country. “We are very concerned [about] the security matter and it was not handled the way we wanted,” Shirdoon told reporters in Mogadishu on Jul. 18. He promised to improve the city’s security.

But Jama Ahmed Siad, a security expert based in Mogadishu, said the government was negligent and lacked a clear strategy to counter the Islamist extremist group’s switch to guerrilla-style warfare.

“Security is the key to all problems in Somalia and when you solve it, you have solved half the problem,” Siad told IPS, adding that the government is yet to understand that.

“For instance, the NISA agents have reduced their presence on the roads entering Mogadishu for the past three months. They used to inspect the vehicles and people entering the city at these checkpoints, where they previously captured members of Al-Shabaab trying to infiltrate the city,” Siad added.

A senior officer at NISA told IPS that the agency had handed the control of these checkpoints to the Somali police and military “but there is a plan to deploy NISA’s agents back there very soon.”

Mohamed Elmi, a civil society activist in Mogadishu, said the government’s main challenge was how to combat the suicide car bombings. He told IPS that government forces did not have the advanced weaponry, technology and training for this.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told journalists on Monday, Jul. 29: “The security forces are at war…but it is not easy to find a suicide car moving around in a city of two million.”

The presidential spokesman, Abdirahman Omar Osman, and the prime minister’s spokesperson, Ridwan Haji Abdiweli, refused to comment to IPS on the security situation in the city.

But one government official told IPS that the government had, on the day of the Turkish embassy bombing, deployed a 1,000-strong counter-terrorism force on the streets in Mogadishu. “The elite force with unique uniforms armed with advanced weapons and their vehicles painted in a distinctive colour are assigned to cleaning up the city of Al-Shabaab members,” said the officer who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Siad said such a force was unlikely to counter the Islamists’ increasing terror attacks. “There is no single Islamist base in the city, but several secret bases that they use. Therefore, such deployment is unhelpful,” he said.

He said the government needed to concentrate efforts on gathering intelligence relating to these secret Al-Shabaab bases and the organisation’s leaders in the city.

Dahir said the government’s weak handling of the country’s internal security casts doubt on its ability to deliver its Six Pillar Policy – a policy framework that aims to secure progress in the areas of security, stability, justice, economic recovery, peace-building, and service delivery.

In a policy brief released in April, the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies (HIPS), the country’s first think tank, praised the government’s foreign policy and diplomatic successes.

Somalia has been gaining more visibility in the international arena, with Mohamud paying high-level visits to Washington, London, Ankara, Brussels, Cairo and several other countries to build his government’s image.

“However, there are disturbing signs of an imbalance between foreign policy priorities and domestic achievements,” the HIPS report said.

And until the issue of domestic security is resolved, Mogadishu’s occupants will remain vulnerable.

“The city is like an open shop that its owner has left,” Siad said.

A traditional ‘tray and cup’ gambling game in Kirkuk that extremists have been targeting. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By Karlos Zurutuza
KIRKUK, Iraq, Jul 31 2013 (IPS)

Two teams struggle to find an olive under one of the 11 cups displayed on a tray. The traditional game sin-u-serf  (tray and cup in Kurdish) is only played during the Muslim fasting month. In one of Iraq’s most violent cities, it is nothing less than a challenge to death.

“Every night we block the entrance of the street with our vehicles to protect ourselves against car bombs and the like. There are also several policemen in plain clothes among us,” says Haukar, the owner of this teahouse in Kirkuk’s northern district Sorja. Around 50 have gathered here to play the game after ending the daylong fast.

Disputed by Arabs and Kurds, this oil rich city 230 km northwest Baghdad remains in limbo between control from Erbil, administrative capital of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq, and Baghdad.

A referendum originally scheduled for November 2007 would have decided if Kirkuk was to integrate with the Kurdish north or stay under the Arab south. But measures meant to counterbalance the Arabisation campaigns under former president Saddam Hussein before the vote are yet to be taken."In Kirkuk we never get to know who will make you never make it home again.” -- Abu Bakr, local taxi driver

Suicide attacks and target killings continue meanwhile. On Jul. 12 a car bomb killed 38 people in a gambling place like this one. According to the Iraq Body Count database, July has been the deadliest month in 2013, with a death toll above 800.

“Of course I’m afraid of going out at night, but my choices are either to stay at home or to move somewhere else in Iraq. And I do not want to leave Kirkuk,” says Wasta, one of the players. His team-mates nod.

Violence always spikes in Iraq during the Muslim holy month, currently under way. Iraqis gather outside in the evenings, lounging in cafes and bazaars after praying in mosques, all easy targets for mass violence.

Some al-Qaeda affiliates believe that any violent activity will gain them spiritual benefits during the Ramadan fasting.

“Who cares? No one knows when their hour will come,” says Abu Ahmed, who has just found the olive only after a third attempt. Meanwhile, cups of tea and glasses of blackberry juice circulate among those watching, like Abdul Kadir Jiand.

“After the withdrawal of the Americans in December 2011, Kirkuk became a stronghold for both al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s loyalists,” says Jiand, local head of Goran, a political party that seeks to break the prevailing bipartisanship in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq and seek reforms of a system where tribal loyalties are dominant.

“Kirkukis and Iraqis as a whole are the plain victims of the struggle between political parties supported by foreign forces,” says Jiand, struggling to reise his voice above the back-up generator behind him.

“Iran is backing the Shia coalition in power in Baghdad while Sunnis are getting support from the Gulf countries. Suicide bombings are al-Qaeda’s clear signature but we also get roadside bombs and target killings.”

Kirkuk police commander Khabat Ali Ahmed also speaks of the hand of al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein’s loyalists in Kirkuk, he says, are grouped around Jaysh Rajal al-Tariqah al-Naqshbandia, an insurgent group that first announced armed operations in December 2006 in response to the hanging of Saddam Hussein.

“The political crisis in Iraq and the war in neighbouring Syria have turned Kirkuk into a stronghold for foreign jihadists and local Baathists who are supporters of the ousted regime,” Ahmed tells IPS. The officer confesses he is “far from optimistic” over Kirkuk’s security situation in the short term.

“We are already building a trench around Kirkuk to prevent further attacks, but the only realistic solution is to put this city under Kurdish administration and turn the trench into a high wall like the one around the Gaza strip.”

Back in Haukar’s teahouse there are more opinions about Kirkuk’s endemic violence than there is interest in the game.

“Both the opposition and the government are behind this [violence] – but not just Baghdad’s; Erbil’s too,” says a player who asks to be identified only as Mohamed. “Destabilising the city is the only way to prevent it from being under the control of a rival faction. This is a big game where nobody’s hands are clean.”

Mohamed, a former activist against Saddam Hussein, says he rejected a high-ranking position in the Kurdish administration due to “the rife corruption and dark manoeuvres” among many of his former colleagues who became Kurdish government officials over the last years.

Mohamed’s testimony matches that of Farid [not his real name]. This young man in his mid-twenties quit his career as a journalist after his colleague Soran Mama Hama was gunned down in July 2008. Hama had published an article on a prostitution scandal naming police officers and government executives.

“Soran and I would often work together,” recalls the young Kirkuki. “I quit after I received threats from the Kurdish Democratic Party, the leading coalition in Iraq’s Autonomous Region. He didn’t.”

Well after midnight, Haukar starts piling up cups and trays, after people start slowly leaving for home. Those heading for the Arafa neighbourhood, northwest of the city, look for alternative routes to the jam blocking Sorja’s main avenue.

Abu Bakr, local taxi driver, turns off the engine and lights a cigarette with resignation. “It can be anything,” he says. “From a routine police check to a car bomb. But worst of all is that in Kirkuk we never get to know who will make you never make it home again.”

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi has survived a bomb attack that targeted his convoy in central Damascus, Syrian state media report.

“The terrorist explosion in al-Mazzeh was an attempt to target the convoy of the prime minister. Doctor Wael al-Halqi is well and not hurt at all,” state television said on Monday.

Casualties have been reported.

State television showed footage of heavily damaged cars and debris in the area of the blast as firefighters fought to extinguish a large blaze caused by the explosion.

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon, said the attack on the prime minister’s convoy was “a very strong strike and blow to the Syrian government”.

“In the past few weeks we’ve seen the government making gains on the ground, so this seems more of a defiant move to show the government the rebels are not giving up,” she said.

‘Bodyguard killed’

A Syrian government official told The Associated Press that an improvised explosive device was placed under a car that was parked in the area and was detonated as al-Halqi’s car drove by.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group of activists with a network of sources in Syria, said one of al-Halqi’s bodyguards had been killed.

“A second bodyguard and the driver are in critical condition,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The government-run Al-Ikhbariya station said al-Halqi went into a meeting with an economic committee straight after the bombing.

A news bulletin quoted al-Halqi as saying “these types of attacks are nothing but proof of the discouragement and despair of the terrorist groups as a result of the actions of the Syrian army”.

Several government and military institutions are situated in the upper-scale neighbourhood of al-Mazzeh where many senior Syrian officials live.

Officials targeted

Al-Halqi was appointed to the position in August 2012 after his predecessor Riad Hijab defected to the opposition.

The attack was not the first targeting a high official in the Syrian capital over the past year.

On Jul. 18, a blast at the Syrian national security building in Damascus during a meeting of Cabinet ministers killed the defence minister and his deputy, who was President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law.

That attack also wounded the interior minister.

In December, a car bomb targeted the Interior Ministry in Damascus, killing several people and wounding more than 20, including Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar.

Initially, Syrian state media said al-Shaar was not hurt in the Dec. 12 blast.

News of his injuries emerged a week later, after he was brought to Lebanon for treatment of a serious back injury.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

A shrine to the victims of the Boston bombing. Credit: Vjeran Pavic/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 22 2013 (IPS)

Civil liberties and human rights groups are applauding the White House’s announcement Monday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the lone surviving suspect in last week’s bombing in Boston, will not be charged as an enemy combatant, as some conservative politicians here had been urging.

The widely debated legal designation would have allowed for a much lengthier detention – potentially indefinitely – and would also have imposed fewer qualifications on the government’s ability to interrogate Tsarnaev. Some have also suggested that the label could have shifted jurisdiction for the case to the military, though this would have conflicted with Tsarnaev’s rights as a U.S. citizen."There seems to be a false sense that somehow a military response is a stronger response, and that’s really off the mark." -- HRF's Raha Wala

Nonetheless, many groups are decrying the U.S. government’s decision to begin interrogating the 19-year-old Tsarnaev without reading him what are known here as his “Miranda rights”, a due process assurance that requires law enforcement to verbally explain a suspect’s legal rights. These include rights to legal representation and to refuse to answer officials’ questions.

“As to whether he’s an enemy combatant, this was not really a close decision at all,” Raha Wala, a senior counsel with Human Rights First (HRF), a Washington advocacy group, told IPS. “Here we have individuals engaged in criminal terrorist operations, and that should be handled by civilian authorities. It’s hard to see any connection here to ongoing armed conflict or even broader extremist operations.”

The announcement puts an end a fast-rising debate over how to deal with Tsarnaev, who was captured Friday.

“He will not be treated as an enemy combatant,” White House spokesperson Jay Carney told reporters Monday. “We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice … This is absolutely the right way to go and the appropriate way to go.”

Tsarnaev was charged Monday with using a weapon of mass destruction to injure and kill people, an accusation that could carry the death penalty. Last Monday, Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, allegedly killed three people and seriously injured more than 100 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, where they are said to have set off two homemade bombs made from pressure cookers packed with nails and other metal.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed Friday in a shoot-out with police, while his younger brother was captured, badly injured, after a massive police search.

Thereafter, some conservatives have cited Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s alleged links to militant Islam as a motivating rationale for designating him as an enemy combatant.

“You can’t hold every person who commits a terrorist attack as an enemy combatant,” Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most outspoken advocates of using the designation for Tsarnaev, admitted to the media over the weekend.

“But you have a right, with his radical Islamist ties and the fact that Chechens are all over the world fighting with Al Qaeda … to go down that road, and it would be a big mistake not to go down that road. If we didn’t hold him for intelligence-gathering purposes, that would be unconscionable.”

In Tsarnaev’s case, however, U.S. law appears to be straightforward, given that the suspect, although born in Kyrgyzstan, became a naturalised U.S. citizen last fall.

“Under U.S. law, United States citizens cannot be tried in military commissions,” Carney stated Monday, noting that Attorney-General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice and President Barack Obama’s entire national security team agree with the decision.

Systems that work

Rights groups have excoriated other elements of the administration’s handling of the Tsarnaev case, however. Particular concern is being paid to the decision to proceed with interrogations outside of the ambit of the suspect’s Miranda rights, with officials invoking a recently expanded exemption in cases involving public safety.

“The Miranda warnings were put in place because police officers were beating and torturing ‘confessions’ out of people who hadn’t even been formally accused of a crime. We cannot afford to repeat our mistakes,” Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a legal advocacy group, said in a statement, noting that this has been the longest such exemption to date.

“If officials require suspects to incriminate themselves, they are making fair trials and due process merely an option and not a requirement. To venture down that road again will make law enforcement accountable to no one.”

As of Monday evening, police reports suggested that Tsarnaev, suffering from a gunshot in the neck, could not speak but had begun initial questioning, reportedly writing down answers to basic questions.

Detainee rights in terrorism cases are particularly polarised today given the recently stepped-up debate over the U.S. military prison in GuantanamoBay. There, new reports suggest that around half of remaining detainees are on hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention, which scholars have repeatedly suggested violates international law.

CCR’s Warren explicitly linked the two issues, noting: “Like Obama’s expanded killing programme and his perpetuation of indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo, this is yet another erosion of the Constitution to lay directly at the president’s feet.”

Despite President Obama’s failure to follow through on 2008 pledges to close the prison at Guantanamo, the administration is seeing Monday’s announcement as being in line with a broader push against efforts to emphasise military over civilian justice in terrorism cases.

“It is important to remember that since [the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001], we have used the federal courts system to convict and incarcerate hundreds of terrorists,” White House spokesperson Carney noted Monday. “The effective use of the criminal justice system has resulted in the interrogation, conviction and detention of both U.S. citizens and non-citizens for acts of terrorism committed inside the United States and around the world.”

Although President Obama did make early attempts to have some high-profile terror suspects tried in the federal court system, public backlash scuppered the plan. In March, however, the administration decided to have Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a former Al-Qaeda spokesperson and son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, put on trial in New York City.

Rights groups have suggested the move offers a new precedent for terrorism-related trials.

“The big dynamic following the Abu Ghaith decision is that the Obama administration is now clearly pushing in the right direction – towards using systems that work,” HRF’s Wala told IPS.

“There seems to be a false sense that somehow a military response is a stronger response, and that’s really off the mark when you look at how terrorism cases have proceeded. Fortunately, the U.S. criminal justice system has made lots of advances since 9/11 in handling terrorism cases and avoiding the uncertainties of detention at Guantanamo.”

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents have said the Boston Marathon bombing was carried out with kitchen pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails and other lethal shrapnel, but said they still didn’t know who did it and why.

An intelligence bulletin issued to law enforcement and released late on Tuesday included a picture of a mangled pressure cooker and a torn black bag the FBI said were part of a bomb.

Earlier, law enforcement officials said they had recovered forensic evidence that suggested the two explosive devices which ripped through participants of the marathon on Monday may have been inside heavy black nylon bags.

The FBI and other prominent law enforcement agencies repeatedly pleaded for members of the public to come forward with photos, videos or anything suspicious they might have seen or heard.

Barack Obama, the U.S. president, branded the attack an act of terrorism but said officials didn’t know “whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organisation, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual”.

Speaking at a joint law enforcement news conference on Tuesday, Richard DesLauriers, the FBI special agent in charge of the case, said that investigators had received “voluminous tips” and were interviewing witnesses and were analysing the crime scene.

DesLauriers pledged “we will go to the ends of the Earth” to find whoever carried out the deadly attack on one of the city’s most famous civic holidays, Patriots Day.

Authorities served a warrant on a suburban Boston home and appealed for any images or audio of the blasts that killed three people and injured 176.

Following the bombings, major cities across the U.S. have been placed on high alert.

Amid heightened security across the country, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said a letter containing ricin or another poision had been sent to the office of Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

Hundreds gathered Tuesday around Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common for a vigil that aimed to bring peace to a community shaken by the bombings that shook the city’s marathon on Monday.

In the quiet crowd visitors fought back tears and then embraced friends and loved ones in the gathering to honour the victims of the Boston Marathon explosion that has taken three lives and wounded 176 others.

“I think it’s a good showing. It’s nice to see people in this community right here,” said Kate Bergstrom, a Boston resident.

Friends were seen crying on a caring shoulder as others held each other as they sang songs of hope and love to honour and remember the victims of Monday’s horrific events.

Dozens lit candles and laid flowers on the ground during the quiet and somber event.

Pressure cookers

The explosions at the marathon took place about 10 seconds and about 90 metres apart, knocking spectators and at least one runner off their feet.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Boston, said such a bomb was set to explode by using a mobile phone and had been used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The police were saying that there were traces of pressure cooker found at the site,” he said. “The suggestion is that the pressure cooker was put in a backpack and placed on the ground, and that is why we’ve got so many lower body injuries.”

Our correspondent said that would explain why there was a small blast which caused a great deal of damage to the people nearby, as the shrapnel spread over a wide area.

Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts, said that no unexploded bombs were found at the marathon. He said the only explosives were the ones that went off on Monday.

On Monday, the Massachusetts state police confirmed that a search warrant related to the investigation into the explosions was served in Revere, but gave no further details.

Some investigators were seen leaving the Revere house early on Tuesday carrying brown paper bags, plastic trash bags and a duffel bag.

Dr Stephen Epstein of the emergency medicine department at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre said he saw an X-ray of one victim’s leg that had “what appears to be small, uniform, round objects throughout it – similar in the appearance to BBs”, referring to ball bearings.

Police said three people were killed. Eight-year-old Martin Richard was among the dead. The boy’s mother, Denise, and six-year-old sister, Jane, were badly injured in the blasts.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said 17 people were in a critical condition.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Despite the government’s insistence that the purpose of the agreement struck with Iran is merely to investigate the 1994 bombing of the Jewish institution AMIA, as the Argentine parliament voted its ratification, discussions focused on geopolitics and the country’s position in the changing international scenario.

Following the Senate’s approval last week, Argentina’s House of Representatives voted early Thursday to adopt a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with Iran to unblock the judicial inquiry into the terrorist attack against the Argentine-Israelite Mutual Aid Association (AMIA), which left 85 people dead and more than 300 injured.

After much debate, the agreement was finally ratified without the support of any legislators from the opposition.

The Iranian parliament still has to ratify the agreement, which will allow Argentine federal judges to travel to Tehran to question five Iranian nationals accused of planning the bombing, for whom at Argentina’s request Interpol had issued red notices (arrest warrants) in 2007.

The opposition’s greatest objection to the agreement is the establishment of a truth commission that will be formed by five independent legal experts, none of them from Argentina or Iran, to examine the legal proceedings conducted in Argentina and issue a non-binding opinion to the parties.

Among victims and relatives of the victims, positions are divided between those who see the agreement as a step back and those who view it as an opportunity, however uncertain, to move forward in a case that is at a standstill due to lack of cooperation from Iran.

Tehran has challenged the evidence allegedly found by Argentine prosecutors against the Iranian nationals and refuses to extradite the suspects.

One of the suspects is Iran’s current Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi, who, despite the Interpol red notices against him, travelled to Bolivia in 2010 to meet with President Evo Morales.

As she announced the MoU, Argentina’s central-left president, Cristina Fernández — who in the past had taken a firm stand before the United Nations General Assembly demanding that Iran comply with the extraditions– vowed she “would never allow the AMIA tragedy to be used as a pawn in a geopolitical game of chess played out by foreign interests.”

With this move, however, Argentina distances itself from the Western powers that are pressuring Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment programme through economic sanctions, but without ruling out military actions, which is what Israel is openly proposing.

“Argentina is not taking a neutral stance with this agreement. On the contrary, to Western eyes the memorandum constitutes an implicit alliance with Iran,” Argentine political scientist Andrés Malamud, a researcher at the University of Lisbon’s Institute of Social Sciences, told IPS.

According to Malamud, the foreign policy pursued by Fernández and her predecessor, her late husband Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), had been marked until now by a tacit understanding with the United States.

Under that agreement, Washington backed Argentina’s efforts in multilateral financial institutions in exchange for Buenos Aires’ support in the fight against terrorism. “The AMIA case served as a kind of guarantee for that non-written pact,” Malamud said.

“From now on, though, Argentina’s foreign policy will be viewed as anti-West. It’s not a position that can’t be reversed, and the consequences are not yet serious. But it’s no longer up to our country, which is now tied to decisions that will made in Washington, Tehran and Jerusalem,” the expert said.

For Malamud, the Fernández administration’s argument is simple: the investigation is blocked and the agreement is the only possibility it has of making any progress. But, “what is the leading consequence of this high risk move that has low chances of success?” he asked.

“The answer is Argentina’s realignment in the international scenario, distancing itself from the West and moving closer to the South or to emerging powers, in Argentina’s official version, or to pariah states, in the opposing Western version,” Malamud said.

The agreement would also seem to align Argentina more closely with its counterparts in South America, namely Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil.

In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez has always been clear in his support to the Iranian regime, as has been Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and to a lesser extent Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011).

In 2010, the government of then President Lula da Silva joined Turkey in an attempt to mediate with Iran in the controversy over Tehran’s nuclear programme, but the initiative was rejected by the United Nations Security Council by a “humiliating 12 votes against two,” Malamud recalled.

“Some see the alliance with Iran as beneficial for Argentina because it opens up markets, can be a source of technology or can give legitimacy to the country in the new international order that is being forged. But the most recent precedent in this sense, (the attempted mediation) by Brazil and Turkey, was not a positive one,” he said.

Brazil and Venezuela voted against Argentina’s request for red notices at Interpol’s General Assembly. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, however, adopted a less enthusiastic stance on this issue and did not meet with her Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when he attended the Rio+20 summit in 2012.

Legislators of Argentina’s governing party, such as Senator Daniel Filmus, insisted on highlighting that ratifying the agreement in no way entails supporting a regime that denies the Holocaust, refuses to recognise Israel’s right to exist as a state, or persecutes minorities.

But the agreement is trapped in an international scenario that forces its players to adopt positions. While the powers of the Western Hemisphere pressure Iran to drop its nuclear programme, Argentina offers Tehran a possibility for an understanding between the two countries, without any guarantee that it will bring results in the AMIA investigation.

As Argentina’s Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman cautioned, the agreement could fall apart if the suspects refuse to be questioned. Although he added that they would also have that right if the investigation was conducted in Argentina, and that has not been possible so far.

“The agreement will have to be judged based on its results,” Malamud said.

“If the inquiry commission achieves something substantial, the government will score a point. If the West sinks under an economic Armageddon, it also scores,” because Argentina will have forged ties with energy producing countries, he said.

“But if the United States or Israel bomb Iran and defeat it, Argentina will be forced to go back two spaces,” he said.

He does not rule out any of these possibilities or that the Argentine government will have to “pay a very high political price” if it fails.

When European Union foreign ministers discuss a proposal to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation, Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov will present his government’s case for linking two suspects in the Jul. 18, 2012 bombing of an Israeli tourist bus to Hezbollah.

But European ministers who demand hard evidence of Hezbollah involvement are not likely to find it in the Bulgarian report on the investigation, which has produced no more than an “assumption” or “hypothesis” of Hezbollah complicity.

Major revelations about the investigation by the former head of the probe and by a top Bulgarian journalist have further damaged the credibility of the Bulgarian claim to have found links between the suspects and Hezbollah.

The chief prosecutor in charge of the Bulgarian investigation revealed in an interview published in early January that the evidence available was too scarce to name any party as responsible, and that investigators had found a key piece of evidence that appeared to contradict it.

An article in a Bulgarian weekly in mid-January confirmed that the investigation had turned up no information on a Hezbollah role, and further reported that one of the suspects had been linked by a friendly intelligence service to Al-Qaeda.

The statement made Feb. 5 by Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov referred to what he called a “reasonable assumption” or as a “well-founded assumption”, depending on the translation, that two suspects in the case belonged to Hezbollah’s “military formation”.

Underlining the extremely tentative nature of the finding, Tsvetanov used the passive voice and repeated the carefully chosen formulation for emphasis: “A reasonable assumption, I repeat a reasonable assumption, can be made that the two of them were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah.”

The host of a Bulgarian television talk show asked Tsvetanov Feb. 9 why the conclusion about Hezbollah had been presented as “only a guess”. But instead of refuting that description, Tsvetanov chose to call the tentative judgment a “grounded hypothesis for the complicity of the Hezbollah military wing”.

The reason why the senior official responsible for Bulgarian security used such cautious language became clear from an interview given by the chief prosecutor for the case, Stanella Karadzhova, who was in charge of the investigation, published by “24 Hours” newspaper Jan. 3.

Karadzhova revealed how little was known about the two men who investigators believe helped the foreigner killed by the bomb he was carrying, but whom Tsvetanov would later link to Hezbollah. The reason, she explained, is that they had apparently traveled without cell phones or laptops.

Only two kinds of information appear to have linked the two, according to the Karadzhova interview, neither of which provides insight into their political affiliation. One was that both of them had led a “very ordered and simple” lifestyle, which she suggested could mean that they both had similar training.

The other was that both had fake Michigan driver’s licenses that had come from the same country. It was reported subsequently that the printer used to make the fake Michigan driver’s licenses had been traced to Beirut.

Those fragments of information were evidently the sole basis for the “hypothesis” that that two of the suspects were members of Hezbollah’s military wing. That hypothesis depended on logical leaps from the information. Any jihadist organisation could have obtained fake licenses from the Beirut factory, and a simple lifestyle does not equal Hezbollah military training.

But Karadzhova’s biggest revelation was that investigators had found a SIM card at the scene of the bombing and had hoped it would provide data on the suspect’s contacts before they had arrived at the scene of the bombing. But the telecom company in question was Maroc Telecom, and the Moroccan firm had not responded to requests for that information.

That provenance of the SIM Card is damaging to the Hezbollah “hypothesis”, because Maroc Telecom sells its cards throughout North Africa – a region in which Hezbollah is not known to have any operational bases but where Al-Qaeda has a number of large organisations.

Morocco is also considered a “staunch ally” of the United States, so it is unlikely that the Moroccan government would have refused a request from the United States to get the necessary cooperation from Moroccan Telecom.

Senior Bulgarian officials have remained mum about the SIM Card, and
Karadzhova was sacked as chief prosecutor shortly after the interview was published, ostensibly because the interview had not been approved.

On Jan. 17, the sister publication of “24 hours”, the weekly “168 Hours”, published an article by its editor, Slavi Angelov, reporting that the Bulgarian investigators had failed to find any evidence of Hezbollah involvement.

Angelov, one of the country’s premier investigative journalists, also wrote that one of the two suspects whose fake IDs were traced to Beirut had been linked by a “closely allied intelligence service” to a wing of Al-Qaeda.

The story, which is not available on the internet but was summarised on the “24 Hours” website, earned a brief reference in a Jan. 17 story in the “Jerusalem Post”. That story referred to Angelov’s sources for the information about the Al-Qaeda link as unnamed officials in the Interior Ministry.

The Angelov story’s revelation that Bulgaria had no evidence linking Hezbollah to the bus bombing was also headlined by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on the same day.

By the time the investigation’s four-month extension was due to expire on Jan. 18, there was no question among investigators that they needed much more time to reach any meaningful judgment on who was responsible for the bombing. Chief prosecutor Karadzhova told “24 Hours” there was “no obstacle to the deadline being extended repeatedly”.

But by mid-January, international politics posed such an obstacle: the United States and Israel were already pointing to the Feb. 18 meeting of EU foreign ministers as an opportunity to get action by the EU on listing Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. Washington and Tel Aviv wanted a conclusion from the Bulgarians that could be used at that meeting to force the issue.

A meeting of Bulgaria’s Consultative Council for National Security to consider extending the investigation, originally scheduled for Jan. 17, was suddenly postponed.

Instead, on that date Foreign Minister Mladenov was sent on an unannounced visit to Israel. Israel’s Channel 2 reported after the meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror that Bulgaria had given Israel a report blaming Hezbollah for the bus bombing.

The office of the Bulgarian foreign minister and Prime Minister Boyko Borissov both issued denials Jan. 18. Borissov said there would be no comment on the investigation until “indisputable evidence has been discovered”, implying that it did not have the needed evidence yet.

Nevertheless, over the next three weeks, the Bulgarian government had to negotiate the wording of what it would say about the conclusion of its investigation.

The decision to call the conclusion an “assumption” or even the weaker “hypothesis” about Hezbollah was obviously a compromise between the preference of the investigators themselves and the demands of the United States and Israel.

The timing of that decision is a sensitive issue in Bulgaria. Prime Minister Borissov told reporters in Brussels Feb. 7 that he had decided to “name Hezbollah” after investigators had found the SIM card at the site of the bombing. That would put the decision well before Karadzhova gave her interview Jan. 1.

And in any case, the discovery of the SIM card could not have caused the investigators to veer toward Hezbollah but would have called that hypothesis into question.

Tsvetanov admitted that the Hezbollah “assumption” had been adopted only “after the middle of January”. That admission indicates that the decision was reached under pressure from Washington, not because of any new evidence.

*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov’s dramatic announcement Tuesday on the Bulgarian investigation of the July 2012 terror bombing of an Israeli tourist bus was initially reported by Western news media as suggesting clear evidence of Hezbollah’s responsibility for the killings.

But more accurate reports on the minister’s statement and the only details he provided reveal that the alleged link between the bomb suspects and Hezbollah was merely an “assumption” rather than a conclusion based on specific evidence.

Tsvetanov was quoted by various Western news outlets as saying, “We have established that the two were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah.” The minister also said, “There is data showing the financing and connection between Hezbollah and the two suspects,” according to the BBC and Jerusalem Post.

Those statements implied that the Bulgarian investigators had uncovered direct evidence of Hezbollah’s involvement in the Burgas bombing.

But the New York Times on Wednesday quoted Tsvetanov as saying, in remarks to a session of Bulgaria’s Consultative Council on National Security Tuesday, “A reasonable assumption, I repeat a reasonable assumption, can be made that the two of them were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah.”

That statement appeared to acknowledge that he was merely speculating on the basis of data that doesn’t necessarily support that conclusion.

In a report on Wednesday by Sofia News Agency, Bulgaria’s largest English-language news provider, Tsvetanov was quoted as saying that the investigation had led to a “well-founded assumption” that two of the perpetrators of the deadly attack belonged to what the Bulgarian government is calling the “militant wing of Hezbollah”.

In an interview with Bulgarian National Radio Wednesday, the Bulgarian chief prosecutor, Sotir Tsatsarov, emphasised that the investigation of the Burgas bus bombing had not been concluded and expressed concern about the term “well-founded assumption”.

The chief prosecutor implied that Tsvetanov’s conclusion about Hezbollah might have been swayed by political pressures. Tsatsarov said that the prosecutor’s office “could not be used to make political decisions or to justify them”, according to Sofia News Agency.

In a television interview for the morning broadcast of Bulgarian National Television, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov defended Tsvetanov’s use of the phrase “well-founded assumption”. Mladenov explained that it meant that Bulgaria had “good reason” to believe that the attack had been organised and inspired by members of the militant branch of Hezbollah at this stage of the investigation, Sofia News Agency reported.

But Mladenov did not claim that any of those “good reasons” consisted of hard evidence.

In an interview with Associated Press Tuesday, Europol Director Rob Wainright said, “The Bulgarian authorities are making quite a strong assumption that this is the work of Hezbollah.”

But Wainright also cited only the most general arguments in support of Tsvetanov’s “assumption”, declaring, “From what I’ve seen of the case – from the very strong, obvious links to Lebanon, from the modus operandi of the terrorist attack and from other intelligence that we see – I think that is a reasonable assumption.”

Europol had sent several investigators to help the Bulgarian authorities on the Burgas bombing investigation, Wainwright told Associated Press.

None of the details provided by Tsvetanov, according to press reports, involved evidence showing that two of the alleged conspirators belonged to Hezbollah or to Hezbollah financing of the terror plot.

The most important piece of evidence cited by Tsvetanov was the lengthy stays in Lebanon by two of the three alleged participants in the bombing and driver’s licenses that were forged in Lebanon.

Tsvetanov said the two alleged conspirators with Canadian and Australian passports who are believed to have helped the third member of the cell carry out the Burgas bombing lived in Lebanon between 2006 and 2010.

He also indicated that two of driver’s licenses used by the conspirators were “forged in Lebanon”, and that Bulgaria was able to piece together the movements of two of the suspects from Lebanon to Europe.

Those connections between the alleged conspirators and the bombing by themselves could hardly support an assumption of Hezbollah responsibility for the bombing. Al-Qaeda terrorist cells have been operating in Lebanon for years, and have the technical capability for such a bombing plot.

Members of one Al-Qaeda network of 13 men organised in different cells arrested in 2006 and 2007 confessed to having planned and carried out the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, although they retracted their confessions before trial.

Furthermore, Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist bombings involving Israeli tourists in the past, whereas there is no known case of a Hezbollah bombing of Israeli tourists, as a Hezbollah spokesman pointed out Wednesday.

In November 2002, Al-Qaeda carried out a terrorist attack on Israeli tourists in Mombasa, Kenya in November 2002 that involved an attempted shoot-down of an Israeli passenger aircraft and a triple suicide car bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel.

Two years later, an Al-Qaeda affiliate took responsibility for bombings at three Red Sea resorts, killing 34 Israeli tourists. And in July 2005, the same Al-Qaeda-related organisation took responsibility for suicide bomb attacks that killed at least 88 people at a shopping area and hotel packed with tourists, including Israelis, in the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm el Sheik.

Nevertheless, Tsvetanov offered no other specific evidence to support his conclusion.

Another aspect of the Bulgarian investigation suggesting that information about the alleged participants is still very limited is the fact, reported by the Bulgarian daily newspaper Sega, that the investigators had found no direct communication and only “indirect indications” of ties between the Arab holding an Australian passport and the perpetrator of the attack.

The Bulgarian charge of Hezbollah responsibility for the bombing based on little more than assumption has raised the suspicion in Bulgaria that the government was under pressure from the United States and Israel to reach a conclusion that aligned with the Israeli-American position.

Foreign Minister Mladenov denied that Bulgaria was pressured into issuing a statement on the progress of the investigation. But both Israel and the United States have given evidence of wanting such a statement.

Bulgaria is a member of NATO and has expanded military and intelligence ties with Israel since Israeli relations with Turkey soured in 2009.

Israel also played a key role in the Bulgarian investigation, as Interior Minister Tsvetanov acknowledged in his presentation Tuesday. He specifically thanked the Israeli government for its support in regard to the investigation and said Israel had provided “relevant expertise” in regard to one of the indicators implicitly cited as pointing to Hezbollah – the identification of the false driver’s licenses used by the alleged bomb cell.

Ha’aretz reported Tuesday that Israel and the United States had both feared that, “while the investigation’s finding would be clear, Bulgaria’s public statement would be ambiguous and would not name Hezbollah responsible.”

John Brennan, U.S. President Barack Obama’s primary adviser on homeland security and counter-terrorism, issued a statement that portrayed the Bulgarian investigation as having reached a definitive conclusion. Brennan praised the Bulgarian authorities for “their determination and commitment to ensuring that Hizballah is held to account for this act of terror on European soil”.

*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.