Day: April 6, 2005

Scratch some more bad guys, this time at the hands of the Saudis.

Another top terrorist was killed yesterday morning after security forces raided his hide-out in the south of the capital.

Abdul Rahman Al-Yaziji, terror suspect No. 15 on the list of 26 most wanted in Saudi Arabia, was shot dead in the Southern Industrial Area of Riyadh.

A source told Arab News that security forces had received information about the terrorist’s whereabouts from terror suspects who were apprehended in Al-Rass two days ago.

The source added that security officers surrounded an old building in which he was hiding at about 9 a.m. yesterday morning and blocked off all roads leading to the area.

Officers then raided the building and a gunbattle between the terror suspect and police ensued.

After a three-hour exchange of fire, the suspect tried to flee the building on foot in a desperate bid to escape. He was shot dead after he refused to give in and continued to fire at police officers, the source added.

[…]

The battle was the latest in ongoing clashes between suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists and security forces.

An intense 60-hour clash in the northern town of Al-Rass in the Qasim region, which broke out when security forces attempted to encircle a militant hide-out, ended late Tuesday with the deaths of 14 gunmen.

[…]

Meanwhile, a source told Arab News’ sister publication Asharq Al-Awsat that many of the terrorists who surrendered in Al-Rass two days ago told police that they did not know which city they were in because they were smuggled into the city disguised in black abayas.

The incident is not the first where terrorists have abused the Saudi female traditional dress to escape being searched at checkpoints and travel freely between cities in the Kingdom.

Last year in a raid that took place in Al-Jazirah district in Riyadh, some terrorists fled the scene in black abayas. And a large number of abayas were found in raids on terror cells in Makkah, Madinah, Taif and Qasim.

Yesterday’s killing put the number of terror suspects killed by security officers in the Kingdom in the past three days in a row to 15. They included Abdul Kareem Al-Majati and Saud Al-Otaibi, two most wanted terrorists.

With Al-Yaziji’s killing, the number of terrorists still on the run from the list of 26 is now down to three — Saleh Al-Aufi, the alleged Al-Qaeda commander in Saudi Arabia’s Talib Al-Talib, and Abdullah Al-Rashoud.

Imported cross-dressing terrorists — not that there’s anything wrong with that, except for the terrorist part.

A report released yesterday by the United Nations stated that no significant progress had been made in efforts to spread democracy through the Arab nations.

In a long-awaited report, intellectuals and reformers say they have seen no significant advances toward democracy in the Arab world in the past year.

The third Arab Human Development Report, released yesterday under United Nations auspices, says most measures have been “embryonic and fragmentary” and have not amounted to a serious effort to end repression in the region, which has some of the world’s most authoritarian governments.

The United States, which says it aims to promote democracy in the region, contributed to an international context that hampered progress through its policy toward Israel, its actions in Iraq and security measures affecting Arabs, according to the report.

The report, covering the year from October, 2003, was written before the election in Iraq and street protests in Lebanon that Washington cites as evidence of change.

[…]

“Some of the views expressed by the authors are not shared by UNDP or the UN . . . [but the report] clearly reflects a very real anger and concern felt across the region,” UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown wrote.

The most controversial sections describe the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the occupation of Iraq by the United States and its allies as violations of freedom and obstacles to development.

During the launch address, Ms. Khalaf said that more than 10 per cent of Arabs live under occupation. “Occupation is a confiscation of rights by violence.”

The report says occupation has given governments an excuse to postpone democratization, forces Arab reformers to divert their energies and strengthens groups that advocate violence.

It accuses the United States of undermining the international system by repeatedly using or threatening to use its UN Security Council veto, enabling Israel to build Jewish settlements and extend its barrier in the West Bank.

The U.S. response to the September, 2001, attacks on the United States added to the ambiguity in the Western attitude to human rights in the Middle East, it says.

“The ‘war on terror’ has cut into many Arab freedoms. . . . An unfortunate byproduct in some countries has been that Arabs are increasingly the victims of stereotyping, disproportionately harassed or detained without cause.”

As always, the failures of the Arab world are always spun to either be caused by or prolonged by the Israelis and the Americans. It’s never the fault of those actually opposing democracy.

It’s a sign of the interesting times we live in when a brand new report is already shown to be obsolete and in great need of revision after events on the ground in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere.