Criminals cash in on Syria's chaos with kidnappings and ransoms

Not all of the kidnappings in Syria are politically driven. In lawless areas not held by either the government or opposition, kidnappers are increasingly driven by cold cash.

By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor – 1 hr 55 mins ago

Alaa’s uncle was a prominent figure in his community and although, as a matter of self-preservation, he has not advertised his political beliefs since Syria's uprising began, he was widely known as a friend of the opposition.

So when a group of men claiming to be part of the Free Syrian Armyarrived at his house, asking him to come to their headquarters for questioning about his support for the regime, he was immediately suspicious, but went with them anyway, hoping to clear up the matter.

It was the start of a kidnapping that would last three weeks and cost the family roughly $10,000 and three cars before the uncle was released. His abductors had no discernible connection to the FSA unit they claimed to represent and Alaa now assumes they were simply criminals.

“I found out this wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s happening all over Syria,” says Alaa, who asked to use only his first name due to security concerns. “It’s the lawless Wild West. No one really listens to anyone and everyone has their own way of doing things. A lot of the kidnappings are people who are profiteering. Some of them are ex-cons turned out by the government to prove that without [the government] you won’t have a peaceful place to life, and others are just self-proclaimed military council leaders profiteering from the war.”

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A kidnapping-and-ransom industry often emerges from unstable situations. Some estimate that thousands of Iraqis were kidnapped and ransomed during the peak of the most recent Iraq war.

Now, throughout much of northwestern Syria, particularly Idlib province, Syrians say they’re dealing with a kidnapping epidemic. In some of the worst affected areas, residents report people going missing daily.

Throughout Idlib province, locals say there has been a dramatic spike in the number of kidnappings in recent months. Many residents say the fear of abduction now keeps them from leaving their neighborhoods. Though most outside attention is focused on the abduction of foreigners like American reporter James Foley, who has been missing since November, the problem is far more common and pervasive for Syrians.

The kidnapping threat has brought daily life to a standstill in many areas.

“The problem is growing daily. People are afraid to leave the city because they’re afraid they’ll get taken hostage,” says Yazan Khader, a media activist from Idlib who spoke from Turkey. “It’s really affected our daily lives. We don’t get water in my area any more because the water main broke and the people who can fix it don’t want to come here because they’re afraid of getting taken. Truck drivers who deliver goods also no longer want to pass through this area.”

It remains difficult to determine who is behind the kidnappings, but they are driven in large part by criminal opportunism, as people take advantage of the lawlessness now plaguing large swaths of Syria that are neither completely under opposition or government control. In Syria’s northwest Idlib province, rebels have made a number of recent gains, but serious fighting continues and the opposition has not yet established government institutions like police and courts as they have inAleppo.

“The number of kidnappings in Idlib has grown compared to what it used to be,” says Shadi Zydani, a former member of Idlib’s Revolutionary Security force who says the problem has grown dramatically. He adds, “When they kidnap activists, they deliver them to the security forces for sure, but there are others who are taking advantage of the situation to make money.”

The Syrian opposition blames those loyal to the government for the majority of kidnappings and say they have released convicts from jail and encouraged pro-government militias to kidnap and terrorize the local population to make it appear that rebels are incapable of providing security and stability.

There remains some hope that the situation will improve in Idlib. Opposition members say that the situation was much the same in Aleppo shortly after they began gaining ground there. It was not uncommon to have multiple kidnappings daily. But now large swaths of Aleppo province are under opposition control, which has allowed rebels to create their own civilian courts, police stations, and other institutions to maintain law and order. Some Revolutionary Security units in Aleppo evenoperate intelligence gathering programs to monitor the conduct of the Free Syrian Army.

Residents of Aleppo say the efforts have played a crucial role in reducing kidnappings and crime in general.

In the summer, “isolated incidents of kidnappings started happening and then it increased dramatically because people started doing it as a job to get money,” says Tony al-Taieb, media activist in Aleppo. “Now that they have liberated Aleppo, they’ve started organizing the city. They’ve separated the military work from the civilian and political issues. They created police stations and courts, and other jobs.”

With these institutions, Mr. Taieb says he believes kidnapping will soon disappear as a problem in Aleppo. Still, Taieb’s optimism is not universally shared. Despite progress reported by activists, the problem is far from gone in Aleppo. There are reports of increased abduction threats to foreigners working in the area and many worry that kidnapping could be a problem that afflicts the region as long as instability persists.

Afghan police officer drugs, kills 17 colleagues

KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan police officer drugged 17 colleagues and shot them dead on Wednesday with the aid of the Taliban, police said, the latest in a series of so-called "insider", or green-on-blue, attacks involving Afghan security forces and the Taliban.

The attacks have undermined trust between coalition and Afghan forces who are under mounting pressure to contain the Taliban insurgency before most NATO combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

The killings, the worst in a string of similar attacks in recent months, occurred at a remote Afghan Local Police (ALP) outpost in the eastern province of Ghazni.

"An infiltrated local policeman first drugged all 17 of his comrades, and then called the Taliban and they together shot them all," the chief police detective for Ghazni, Mohammad Hassan, told Reuters.

Seven of the dead were new recruits still undergoing training, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

The rapidly growing ALP program is an American-designed initiative designed to recruit local men as security officers for their area.

The force has been beset by allegations of abuse and widespread corruption.

In September, Afghanistan suspended the training of new ALP recruits following a spate of insider attacks on foreign soldiers.

(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Mustafa Andalib; Writing by Dylan Welch; Editing by)

Hagel: Time to 'turn the page' on decade of war

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chuck Hagel was sworn in Wednesday asdefense secretary — President Barack Obama's third in just over four years and the first who really wanted one of Washington's toughest jobs.

Introducing himself to Pentagon workers shortly after taking the oath of office, Hagel said he was humbled by the opportunity and ready for the challenge. He survived a contentious confirmation process in which some Republican senators questioned his suitability for the job and suggested he lacked the character to lead the military.

"I'll be honest, I'll be direct, I'll expect the same from you," he told a standing-room-only audience of several hundred civilian Defense Department workers and members of the military. "I'll never ask anyone to do anything I wouldn't do."

He called the automatic budget cuts due to take effect on Friday — to include $46 billion in Pentagon reductions — "a reality" that "we need to deal with."

He'll also have to deal with the complexities of winding down the war in Afghanistan. U.S. combat troops are to fully withdraw by the end of next year, but Obama has yet to announce how many troops may stay to continue training and advising the Afghan army and targeting al-Qaida and affiliated extremist groups.

Hagel made no explicit mention of Afghanistan, but in a written statement to Pentagon employees he mentioned that 34,000 U.S. troops will come home over the coming year.

"As we turn the page on more than a decade of grinding conflict, we must broaden our attention to future threats and challenges," he said, citing cyber warfare as an example. He also emphasized the importance he places on alliances like NATO.

Hagel succeeds Leon Panetta, who had hoped to retire from public service after serving as Obama's first CIA director but was talked into taking over last July for Robert Gates, a holdover from President George W. Bush's Pentagon. Gates made a point of carrying a "countdown clock" tracking the time until he could retire.

Panetta had already retreated to his home in California last weekend to follow the outcome of Senate votes Tuesday that granted Panetta his wish not to have to return to Washington. He had packed his bags, boxed up his office and said his final farewells days earlier.

Hagel was confirmed on a Senate vote of 58-41, with four Republicans joining the Democrats in backing him. Hagel's only GOP support came from former colleagues Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Dick Shelby of Alabama and Mike Johanns of Nebraska — all three had announced their support earlier — and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

The vote came just hours after Republicans dropped their unprecedented delay of a Pentagon choice and allowed the nomination to move forward on a 71-27 vote.

Hagel, 66, has said he did not ask for the Pentagon job but has embraced the opportunity.

"I will do everything in my power to be the kind of leader that you expect and you deserve, also, the kind of leader the country expects and deserves," the Vietnam combat veteran said in 15 minutes of remarks in which he struck a tone of humility.

A two-term Republican senator from Nebraska, Hagel was introduced to his Pentagon audience by a fellow Nebraskan — Sgt. 1st Class John Wirth, of Gordon, Neb., an 11-year Army veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq.

Wirth was a reminder that Hagel is one of only a few defense secretaries who served in the military's enlisted ranks. He was an Army sergeant in 1967-68 and was wounded in Vietnam. He served in the Senate from 1997-2009 and more recently was chairman of the Atlantic Council, a prominent think tank in Washington.

With a touch of humor, Hagel alluded to his days in the enlisted ranks, where grunts rarely come in contact with four-star generals like Ray Odierno, the Army's top general, who was among the military brass sitting in Hagel's audience.

"He makes me shake a little, being an old Army sergeant," Hagel said with a chuckle.

Hagel said that after taking the oath of office he spent a few minutes walking through an outdoor memorial to victims of those killed at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. He recalled that he was on Capitol Hill at the moment a hijacked American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon not far from the defense secretary's suite, killing 125 people inside the building and all aboard the plane.

He said he "reflected a bit on what happened that day," when nearly 3,000 people were killed in New York City, Washington and in rural Pennsylvania. Quoting the late British leader Winston Churchill, Hagel called the terrorist attack a "jarring gong." It set in motion dynamics "that we are living with today," Hagel said.

Hagel said he felt it important to take time out of his first day as defense secretary to tell the entire workforce that he looks forward to leading in tough times.

"Now I've got to go to work," he said.

___

China closes porn, content sharing websites

China closes pornographic, content sharing, gaming sites in latest Internet crackdown

BEIJING (AP) -- China says it has closed scores of websites for offering pornography, video sharingand online gaming.

The official Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday said a new crackdown led to the shuttering of 225 websites and more than 30,000 blogs and Twitter-like microblog accounts found to be offering obscene or improper content. They included sites offering photo and video sharing as well as online gaming, Xinhua said, citing a statement from the State Internet Information Office.

It said the office was working with police and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to investigate those running the sites and how they got online.

China's Communist authorities heavily police the Internet for content deemed obscene or politically subversive. Twitter, Facebook, and other Western social media sites are blocked.

Syrians fleeing war likely to soon pass million soon: U.N.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - More than 40,000 people a week are fleeing war-torn Syria and the total number of refugees will likely pass 1 million in less than a month, a senior U.N. official told the Security Council on Wednesday.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said the U.N. agency as of Tuesday had registered 936,000 Syrians across the Middle East and North Africa, nearly 30 times as many people as April last year.

"We expected to have 1.1 million Syrian refugees by June. If things continue to accelerate like this, it will take less than a month to reach that number. Just last night, and just into Jordan, 4,585 fled the country," he told the 15-member council.

"The refugee numbers are staggering, but they cannot convey the full extent of the tragedy. Three-quarters of the refugees are women and children. Many of them have lost family members. Most of them have lost everything," he said.

Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt have been flooded with the bulk of the refugees.

The United Nations says nearly 70,000 people have died during the revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which began two years ago with peaceful protests but turned violent when Assad's forces tried to crush the demonstrations.

U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos, who also briefed the Security Council, appealed for countries that pledged money at a January 30 donor conference in Kuwait to pay up. She said only $200 million of the more than $1.5 billion pledged had been received so far.

"This is a crisis that is completely stretching our capacity," Amos told reporters. "I am extremely concerned by the rising costs of this. We asked for $1.5 billion for our response for the next six months. Those figures are already out of date."

"The first two months of this year have been a real game-changer," she said. "It demands more of us ... but even with us working full-tilt, the scale is outpacing whatever we do on the response side."

Zainab Hawa Bangura, the special representative of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on sexual violence in conflict, said there had been systematic use of sexual violence in Syria, but added that her agency could not get information from most of the areas controlled by armed opposition groups.

"Sexual violence against women, against men, against boys and girls, it's widespread," she told reporters after briefing the council. "Sexual violence, especially against men and boys, it's a way of soliciting information when people detained."

She said victims who had been detained by the government had told U.N. agencies that sexual violence was used as "a technique to get information."

Syria's U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja'afari, said the Syrian government would ensure that the perpetrators of sexual crimes would face justice. He also described the pledging conference as a "humanitarian bazaar" for Gulf states to show off to the media "that they care a lot about the dramatic situation of Syrian refugees."

The Security Council has been deadlocked on Syria since 2011 over Russia and China's refusal to consider sanctions against Assad's government. They have vetoed three resolutions condemning Assad's attempts to crush the revolt.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)