Turkey’s defense ministry said at least 13 people were killed Saturday in a car bombing near a market in the northern Syrian border town of Tal Abyad.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the ministry blamed the attack on the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The ministry called on world leaders to take a stand against the YPG, describing it as a “cruel terror organization.”
Turkey has designated the YPG a terrorist group, but the U.S. considers it a key ally in the fight against the Islamic State group.
Ankara seized control of Tal Abyad last month after the Turkish military and its allied Syrian militia launched an incursion into northeastern Syria against the SDF, following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the region.
A 120-kilometer safe zone was established in Syria between the towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn as part of an Oct. 17 cease-fire agreement between Turkey and the U.S. that also required the YPG’s withdrawal from the area.
‘Legitimate defense operations’
The Syriac Military Council, which is part of the SDF, said Saturday without claiming responsibility that “the SDF continues its legitimate defense operations against the ongoing attacks of the Turkish army and its jihadi factions in the eastern and southern areas of Ras al-Ayn, especially in the Khabour area and the villages around Tal Tamr.”
On Friday, Turkish and Russian troops began patrolling northern Syria to ensure the withdrawal of Kurdish forces.
The U.N. has estimated that prior to the cease-fire, the incursion killed hundreds of people and displaced nearly 180,000 others.
Local doctors in northeast Syria told VOA that civilian deaths and injuries have continued since the cease-fire took effect.
“Although the cease-fire agreement has been signed between the U.S. and Turkey, as well as Russia and Turkey, the fighting has not stopped for a second,” said Hesen MI Memmed, the head of Tal Tamr Hospital. “On the contrary, attacks have become more fierce and violent.”
He expressed his concern that hospitals in the region were running out of medical supplies as the number of casualties continued to increase.
Egypt’s Islamic State affiliate, Sinai Province, has sworn allegiance to the new leader named by the group following the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the affiliate said on Telegram on Saturday.
Sinai Province, which has waged an insurgency against the Egyptian state, posted pictures of around two dozen fighters standing among trees, with a caption saying they were pledging allegiance to Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in April said he would give the U.S. until the end of the year to become more flexible on nuclear talks. Since then, he’s launched 12 missiles to back up that warning, including a launch on Thursday. So far, though, there is no evidence the U.S. is changing its stance, meaning the situation could soon get much more volatile, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Seoul.
His revolutionary fervor diminished by the years that have also turned his dark brown hair white, one of the Iranian student leaders of the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover says he now regrets the seizure of the diplomatic compound and the 444-day hostage crisis that followed.
Speaking to The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s 40th anniversary of the attack, Ebrahim Asgharzadeh acknowledged that the repercussions of the crisis still reverberate as tensions remain high between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal with world powers.
Asgharzadeh cautioned others against following in his footsteps, despite the takeover becoming enshrined in hard-line mythology. He also disputed a revisionist history now being offered by supporters of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that they directed the attack, insisting all the blame rested with the Islamist students who let the crisis spin out of control.
“Like Jesus Christ, I bear all the sins on my shoulders,” Asgharzadeh said.
At the time, what led to the 1979 takeover remained obscure to Americans who for months could only watch in horror as TV newscasts showed Iranian protests at the embassy. Popular anger against the U.S. was rooted in the 1953 CIA-engineered coup that toppled Iran’s elected prime minister and cemented the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The shah, dying from cancer, fled Iran in February 1979, paving the way for its Islamic Revolution. But for months, Iran faced widespread unrest ranging from separatist attacks, worker revolts and internal power struggles. Police reported for work but not for duty, allowing chaos like Marxist students briefly seizing the U.S. Embassy.
Iranians walk past anti-U.S. graffiti on the wall of the former U.S. Embassy, in Tehran, Iran, Oct. 15, 2019.
In this power vacuum, then-President Jimmy Carter allowed the shah to seek medical treatment in New York. That lit the fuse for the Nov. 4, 1979, takeover, though at first the Islamist students argued over which embassy to seize. A student leader named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who later became president in 2005, argued they should seize the Soviet Embassy compound in Tehran as leftists had caused political chaos.
But the students settled on the U.S. Embassy, hoping to pressure Carter to send the shah back to Iran to stand trial on corruption charges. Asgharzadeh, then a 23-year-old engineering student, remembers friends going to Tehran’s Grand Bazaar to buy a bolt cutter, a popular tool used by criminals, and the salesman saying: “You do not look like thieves! You certainly want to open up the U.S. Embassy door with it!”
“The society was ready for it to happen. Everything happened so fast,” Asgharzadeh said. “We cut off the chains on the embassy’s gate. Some of us climbed up the walls and we occupied the embassy compound very fast.”
Like other former students, Asgharzadeh said the plan had been simply to stage a sit-in. But the situation soon spun out of their control. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the long-exiled Shiite cleric whose return to Iran sparked the revolution, gave his support to the takeover. He would use that popular angle to expand the Islamists’ power.
“We, the students, take responsibility for the first 48 hours of the takeover,” Asgharzadeh said. “Later, it was out of our hands since the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the establishment supported it.”
He added: “Our plan was one of students, unprofessional and temporary.”
As time went on, it slowly dawned on the naive students that Americans wouldn’t join their revolution. While a rescue attempt by the U.S. military would fail and Carter would lose to Ronald Reagan amid the crisis, the U.S. as a whole expressed worry about the hostages by displaying yellow ribbons and counting the days of their captivity.
As the months passed, things only got worse. Asgharzadeh said he thought it would end once the shah left America or later with his death in Egypt in July 1980. It didn’t.
“A few months after the takeover, it appeared to be turning into a rotten fruit hanging down from a tree and no one had the courage to take it down and resolve the matter,” he said. “There was a lot of public opinion support behind the move in the society. The society felt it had slapped America, a superpower, on the mouth and people believed that the takeover proved to America that their democratic revolution had been stabilized.”
It hadn’t, though. The eight-year Iran-Iraq War would break out during the crisis. The hostage crisis and later the war boosted the position of hard-liners who sought strict implementation of their version of Islamic beliefs.
Seizing or attacking diplomatic posts remains a tactic of Iranian hard-liners to this day. A mob stormed the British Embassy in Tehran in 2011, while another attacked diplomatic posts of Saudi Arabia in 2016, which led to diplomatic ties being cut between Tehran and Riyadh. And Iran will commemorate the 40th anniversary of U.S. Embassy takeover on Monday by staging a rally in front of the Tehran compound where it was located.
However, Asgharzadeh denied that Iran’s then-nascent Revolutionary Guard directed the U.S. Embassy takeover, although he said it was informed before the attack over fears that security forces would storm the compound and retake it. Many at the time believed the shah would launch a coup, like in 1953, to regain power.
“In a very limited way, we informed one of the Guard’s units and they accepted to protect the embassy from outside,” Asgharzadeh said. “The claim (by hard-liners) on the Guard’s role lacks credit. I am the main narrator of the incident and I am still alive.”
In the years since, Asgharzadeh has become a reformist politician and served prison time for his views. He has argued that Iran should work toward improving ties with the U.S., a difficult task amid President Donald Trump’s maximalist campaign against Tehran.
“It is too difficult to say when the relations between Tehran and Washington can be restored,” Asgharzadeh said. “I do not see any prospect.”
Tens of thousands of Islamists remained in a protest camp in the heart of Pakistan’s capital on Saturday amid tight security, as authorities deployed additional shipping containers and riot police to block access to key government buildings.
The protest caravan rolled into Islamabad on Thursday led by firebrand cleric Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who heads the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party. He’s given Prime Minister Imran Khan until Sunday night to resign over the country’s economic hardships.
Khan says he won’t succumb to pressure.
Rehman has hinted he may try to force Khan to step down by staging a mass march on the “Red Zone,” where Parliament, the prime minister’s residence, government offices and foreign embassies are located.
Authorities in Islamabad were seen early Saturday moving more rows of massive shipping containers onto roads leading to the Red Zone. Paramilitary forces were also deployed.
“This mammoth crowd has the capacity to arrest the prime minister themselves from the prime minister’s house if he has not resigned within two days,” Rehman said Friday night, while asking Pakistan’s powerful military not to side with Khan.
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Rehman had initially denied female journalists access to his all-male encampment, which stretches over a kilometer (mile) along a highway and into an open area allocated by the government. His ban caused a storm on social media, and women reporters were eventually allowed into the camp.
The hard-line cleric has campaigned for regressive legislation targeting women, and opposed legislation to eliminate of violence against women. He has also refused to allow women members of his party to participate in the demonstration.
Rehman has been accusing the military of influencing the 2018 parliamentary elections that saw Khan’s Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party come into power. Rehman’s seven-party political alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, could secure only 16 seats in the 342-member National Assembly, the lower house of parliament. Khan received 155.
Rehman, without naming the army, said Friday that: “If it is felt that state institutions were behind the rigged elections and protecting these incompetent and illegitimate rulers, we won’t be able to stop ourselves from forming an opinion about these institutions.”
Khan made clear he would not resign or hold early elections, after discussing the situation with Cabinet members and party leaders on Saturday, said Defense Minister Pervez Khattak. The minister, who heads the government committee that’s negotiating with Rehman’s protesters, said they can continue to assemble as long as they want. But he warned them not to violate a deal signed before the protest caravan set off for the capital, in which the demonstrators agreed to stay in the designated area while the government promised not to hinder their protests.
Khan had told a gathering Friday in the northern city of Gilgit that he “will continue to hold the corrupt accountable,” and that he’s not afraid of Rehman’s threats to his government.
The mass rally comes after Pakistani businesses observed a nationwide strike earlier this week against recently enacted taxes, which the opposition says were imposed as part of the International Monetary Fund’s $6 billion bailout package for Pakistan.
Also Friday, military spokesman Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor told a local television station that “Chaos is not in the interest of the country … all democratic issues should be dealt with in a democratic manner.” He said the opposition should understand that the army is impartial and supports the democratically elected government, not political parties.
Martin Scorsese’s crime epic “The Irishman” landed in theaters Friday, but not nearly enough of them for theater owners.
John Fithian, president and chief executive of National Association of Theater Owners on Friday lamented Netflix’s rollout of one of the year’s most acclaimed films, from one of cinema’s top filmmakers.
“Martin Scorsese deserved better,” Fithian said in a statement.
Netflix was unable to come to terms with the largest movie theater chains on “The Irishman.” The traditional theatrical window is 90 days, something Netflix has declined to follow.
That has left Netflix films essentially boycotted by the majority of multiplexes. Netflix has instead carved out a roughly three-week exclusive run in independent theaters.
“The point of an exclusive theatrical window is for movies to reach their full commercial potential. Netflix chose to artificially limit `The Irishman’s’ theatrical release,” Fithian said. “That sends a message to filmmakers who are not Martin Scorsese. If you want a full theatrical release, take your film to their competitors.”
Netflix and theater chains, including AMC and Cineplex, negotiated extensively earlier this year on a compromise but ultimately failed to reach agreement.
Netflix declined comment Friday evening. A company executive who spoke to The New York Times about its “Irishman” strategy said the company cares about box office, but also wants viewers to watch films the way they want.
“The Irishman” is opening this weekend on eight screens in New York and Los Angeles, including Broadway’s Belasco Theatre. It begins streaming on Nov. 27.
The World Trade Organization said Friday that China could impose tariffs on up to $3.6 billion worth of U.S. goods over the American government’s failure to abide by anti-dumping rules with regard to Chinese products.
The move hands China its first such payout at the WTO at a time when it is engaged in a big dispute with the United States. The two sides have recently imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of goods, but did not do so through the WTO, which helps solve trade disputes.
Friday’s announcement from a WTO arbitrator centers on a case with origins long before the current trade standoff: a Chinese complaint filed nearly six years ago seeking over $7 billion in retaliation.
The decision means China can impose higher tariffs against the United States than China is currently allowed under WTO rules, and will be given leeway as to the U.S. products and sectors it would like to target.
2017 ruling
Parts of a WTO ruling in May 2017 went in favor of China in its case against some 40 U.S. anti-dumping rulings, involving trade limits on Chinese products that the United States says are or were sold below market value.
However, the WTO arbitrator narrowed the award to base it on 25 Chinese products — including diamond sawblades, furniture, shrimp, solar panels, automotive tires and a series of steel products — that were affected by U.S. anti-dumping measures. That explains why the award was less than the sum China had sought.
The decision comes as the United States is fresh off a high-profile WTO award against the European Union over subsidies given to European plane maker Airbus, which has let Washington slap tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of EU goods including Italian cheese, Scottish whiskey and olives from Spain.
That was a record award from a WTO arbitrator in the trade body’s nearly quarter-century history. The award announced Friday ranks as the third largest.
Techniques at issue
In the Chinese anti-dumping ruling, the WTO faulted two techniques that the United States uses to set penalties for dumping. Its so-called “zeroing methodology” — long a problem for the trade body — involves cherry-picking violators and neglecting law-abiding producers in a way that lets U.S. officials artificially inflate the penalties imposed.
The other technique involves treating multiple Chinese companies of a product as a single entity, in essence penalizing some producers that do not violate anti-dumping rules along with those that do.
While these tariffs are allowed by the WTO under international trade law, the Trump administration has in its disputes with China and other commercial partners exchanged tariffs unilaterally, without any green light from the WTO.
The U.S. and China have filed a number of complaints with the WTO against each other’s tariffs, but dispute resolution can take years.
Thirty-five soldiers were killed Friday in a “terrorist attack” on a Mali military post in the northeast of the country, the army said.
“The provisional death toll has risen to 35 deaths,” it said on Facebook late Friday, adding that the situation was “under control.”
An investigation into the attack on the outpost in Indelimane in the Menaka region was continuing, it said.
The attack came a month after two jihadist assaults killed 40 soldiers near the border with Burkina Faso, one of the deadliest strikes against Mali’s military in recent Islamist militant violence.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for Friday’s assault.
The Malian government earlier condemned the “terrorist attack,” saying it had left numerous dead or wounded but without giving a precise toll.
It said reinforcements had been rushed to the area to boost security and track down the attackers.
Northern Mali came under the control of al-Qaida-linked jihadists after Mali’s army failed to quash a rebellion there in 2012. A French-led military campaign was launched against the jihadists, pushing them back a year later.
But the jihadists have regrouped and widened their hit-and-run raids and land-mine attacks to central and southern Mali.
The violence has also spilled over into Burkina Faso and Niger where militants have exploited existing intercommunal strife.
Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters descended on the capital of Islamabad Friday, determined to send the sitting prime minister home. The leader of the protests threatened dire consequences if his demands were not met within two days. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem was at the protest and has this story from Islamabad.
Backed by tens of thousands of protesters, Pakistan’s opposition parties Friday demanded the country’s prime minister resign within two days.
Demonstrators in Islamabad accused Prime Minister Imran Khan of destroying Pakistan’s economy and stealing the last election with the help of the military.
“Poor mothers are forced to sell their children for money. Young men are committing suicide. … Can we leave the people at the mercy of this incompetent government?” said Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a cleric and leader of the Islamist political party Jamiat e Ulema e Islam Fazl (JUI-F) leading the protest.
Fazal-ur Rehman, president of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F) waves to supporters during what participants call Azadi March (Freedom March) to protest the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan, in Islamabad, Nov. 1, 2019.
March from Karachi
Friday’s peaceful demonstration was the culmination of a long march Rehman started Sunday in the port city of Karachi to draw attention to Pakistan’s issues.
Support from Pakistan’s biggest opposition parties, Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), seemed tepid at first. But the party’s senior leadership, including Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of ousted former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, joined Rehman on stage Friday to make fiery speeches.
“Our prime minister is selected, he does not represent the people, he is incompetent, he is inept,” Bhutto Zardari said.
Sharif savaged the prime minister’s economic performance.
“Imran Khan Niazi, you promised 10 million additional jobs. Instead, you’ve made hundreds of thousands jobless,” he said.
Supporters of religious and political party Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F) chant slogans during what participants call Azadi March (Freedom March) to protest the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan in Islamabad, Nov. 1, 2019.
Senior members of both opposition parties are being investigated for corruption, allegedly carried out during previous governments. Both say the cases are politically motivated.
Meanwhile, Khan and his ruling party call the protests a ruse to compel the government to back off on the inquiries.
“People know what they really want. … The truth is, their cases are now public. With the massive corruption they carried out, all of them are scared they will be arrested,” Khan said while addressing a rally.
The opposition leaders did not spell out consequences if Khan does not step down, only hinting they may move to paralyze the government by blocking a main road leading to Parliament and other buildings.
The government said such a move would be forcefully repelled, prompting fears of possible violent clashes between security forces and demonstrators.
The protest has also increased tension between the opposition and Pakistan’s powerful military, which has directly ruled the country for half of its history.
“If we feel that our establishment [the military] is supporting this illegal government, then we are issuing a two-day ultimatum. After that, don’t stop us from making up our own minds,” Rehman said.
Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor said opposition leaders should not drag the military into Pakistani politics.
“The army is an impartial institution. We believe in the constitution and law and our support is for a democratically elected government, not for any political party,” he said.
