russian troops stationed in lebanon..

DEBKA Exclusive: Moscow posts two Chechen platoons in S. Lebanon, one headed by an ex-rebel commander, “to improve Russia’s image in the Arab world”

The Muslim commandoes of the Vostok (East) and Zapad (West) battalions of the Russian Army’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) (picture) are being sent to guard the 150 Russian military engineers. They arrived in Beirut this week to restore the roads in Lebanon damaged by Israeli bombing.

DEBKAfile reports: Moscow did not consult Israel before stationing Muslim Chechen troops on its border for the first time.

Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov said openly to Russian media that the deployment of former rebel Chechen troops in Lebanon aimed at “improving Moscow’s image in the Arab and Muslim world.”

DEBKAfile’s military sources: The Russian units are operating independently of the largely-European UN peacekeeping force. Their vehicles fly Russian and Lebanese flags. UNIFIL too was taken by surprise by the posting of Chechen troops to Lebanon. Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora was informed but omitted to notify Washington, Paris, Berlin, Rome or the UN.
The Kremlin’s rationale for making Russia the first nation to deploy a Muslim contingent in South Lebanon - albeit outside the UN force – is part of a hard-hitting foreign and domestic policy initiative, which is summed up by DEBKAfile’s sources:

1. The Putin administration wants to demonstrate to Russia’s teeming Muslim community its willingness to step into Middle East conflicts – on behalf of the Muslim-Arab interest. This straw in the wind indicates the Kremlin’s orientation on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
2. Moscow is building another bridge to Tehran through a joint, potentially interactive presence in Lebanon.
3. As a step to promote cooperation with Hizballah, with whom the Chechens, with their long record of extremist Muslim terrorist action against the Russian army, have much in common – in contrast to the European contingents of UNIFIL.
4. The Russian Chechen unit’s cooperation with Hizballah in the parts of Lebanon under its control will pave the way for a Russian Muslim military presence north of Israel which is independent of the UN and not bound by accords to which Israel is a party.

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the Israeli government and IDF high command were taken aback by the Russian step, which lends a different and inimical aspect to the international deployment on its northern border. When it signed off onto UN Security Council resolution 1701, Israel never envisaged the measure would open the door for Russian military intelligence to step in and camp on its border, using former Muslim terrorists involved in organized crime.
The Chechen Vostok and Zapad battalions are part of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division that is permanently deployed in Chechnya, in charge of the eastern and western regions. The Zapad battalion is led by Major Said-Magomed Kakiev, the Vostok’s commander is the former rebel Sulim Yamadaev.

This same Yamadaev, the former Chechen rebel commander who won an amnesty and the Hero of Russia award in 2004, is alleged by the Russian media with leading the robbery of the Samson-K meat-processing plant in St. Petersburg on September 15. He and up to 40 of his armed men stayed in the city’s Nevsky Palace Hotel, one of the most opulent in Europe, where he was seen embracing the leader of the local organized crime gang, Vladimir Kumarin.

syria to invade israel ??

DEBKAfile’s sources: Tehran and Damascus are gearing up for a pre-emptive attack on Israel to ward off a US strike on Iran’s nuclear sites

Our military and Washington sources read as preparatory justification the Syrian ruler Bashar Asad’s statement Saturday, Oct. 7, that he expects an Israeli attack.
He was speaking in an interview to Kuwaiti paper al-Anba.

Asad’s Iranian-backed war plan would serve the purpose of forcing the Americans to divide their military assets between a strike against Iran and the defense of their allies in the Persia Gulf, Israel and US forces in Iraq. Both are seriously looking at a Syrian attack on the Golan which would escalate into a full-blown Syrian-Israeli war and a second Hizballah assault from Lebanon.

Asad’s remark that during the Lebanon hostilities, he was under pressure from the Syrian population to go to war against Israel and liberate the Golan is the most direct threat of belligerency of all his four Golan statements in the last month. He is implying that he stood up to the pressure once but may not do so again. And for the benefit of the Americans, the Europeans, the Saudis and the Egyptians - all of whom are pretty fed up with him – Asad is posing as the picture of self-restraint; anyone else in his place, he implies, would have taken advantage of the Lebanon war and made a grab for the Golan. Therefore, he is saying, he deserves to be treated with the respect due to a strategic asset by Western and moderate Arab powers instead of being targeted for an ouster.

The Syrian ruler would not threaten war without guarantees from Iran. According to DEBKAfile’s sources, Asad and Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are prompted by the following motives:

1. Tehran is not prepared to wait passively for the Americans to build up their assault force in the Gulf and strike its nuclear facilities. A pre-emptive attack would suit them better.
2. Tehran and Damascus have not missed the debilitating crisis in which Israel’s political and military leadership are sunk since the Lebanon war. They do not propose to wait until the IDF pulls itself together enough to handle fresh aggression.

3. Both accept Israel’s deputy prime minister Shimon Peres’ assessment that Israel’s cities are not prepared for missile attack. Iran and Syria take it for granted that Israeli leaders understand they cannot afford to launch missiles against either one of them for fear of reprisal in kind.

4. Syria believes that if Hizballah could stand up to the Israeli army in Lebanon, its commandoes can capture sections of the Golan and walk off with an easy victory.

5. Tehran figures that the Bush administration is coming to the end of its patience in Iraq and preparing for a major review of its position there. The influential U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, John Warner, said Friday that Iraq's government had 60 to 90 days to control the violence that threatens civil war or the United States would have to reconsider its options. This gives the Maliki government in Baghdad up to December or January to de-escalate if not halt the sectarian war engulfing the country.

Iran, Syria and Hizballah would not be averse to disrupting the American Iraq timeline by attacking Israel and putting the Bush administration on the spot, forced to address three warfronts simultaneously.

more mahdi madness..

just because we think it's silly doesn't mean that millions of other people do..
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Waiting for the imam's return to Earth
THE followers of Moqtada al-Sadr believe that the US in
vaded Iraq to prevent the return to Earth of their sect’s messiah-like figure, the Mahdi, or 12th imam.

Hojatoleslam al-Sadr claims that his militia is preparing for the day when the Mahdi, the last direct descendent of the revered Shia figure Ali, reappears. Shia believe that the Mahdi, who disappeared in 868, will bring justice to Earth.

At a prayer service in the central Iraqi city of Kufa on September 15, the cleric told a crowd of thousands that the Americans were collecting a dossier on the Mahdi to prevent his return. “Did you ever ask yourself about why all of this, the bloodshed and the prisons? Why are the brothers fighting each other for a political game planned by the Americans? This all happened because they (the Americans) are waiting for the Mahdi. This planning started ten years ago. They have a big file for Imam Mahdi and they just need his picture to complete it.”

Hojatoleslam al-Sadr and his advisers are convinced that the Americans want to destroy Islam and stop the Mahdi. “The Americans are trying to hijack Islamic movements. They think that these are serving the Mahdi’s interests. Whatever they did in Afghanistan and Iraq are all attempts to hijack the Mahdi’s return.”