Region

TEHRAN — Supporters of Iran's government poured into central Tehran on Monday for a massive rally to condemn days of "rioting" that the Islamic republic blames on its foreign foes.

Waving the Iranian flag and banners that read "Death to America", they descended on Enghelab (Revolution) Square from all directions.

In a shock announcement on November 15, Iran raised the price of petrol by up to 200 per cent, triggering nationwide protests in a country whose economy has been battered by US sanctions.

Officials say the demonstrations turned violent because of the intervention of "thugs" backed by royalists and Iran's arch-enemies — the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The square filled up quickly on Monday with young and old, including clerics carrying portraits of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"Countries like America, Israel... don't want to see us make progress, develop and have security," said a housewife at the rally.

"We support our leader and, for these reasons, they tried to put a spoke in our wheel," she told AFP.

The rally was addressed by Major General Hossein Salami, head of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which helped to put down the unrest.

"This war is over," Salami told the huge crowd that covered the square and spilled into side streets.

"You have defeated the power of the arrogance," he said, referring to America. "The coup de grace has been delivered."

'Red lines' 

Long-fraught links between Tehran and Washington plunged to a new low in May last year when the US unilaterally withdrew from an international accord that gave Iran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.

In his speech, Salami issued a warning for the United States and its allies Britain, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

“You have received a strong slap in the face”, Salami told them. “If you cross our red lines, we will destroy you.”

Chants of “Death to the USA” and “Death to Israel” rang out as some in the crowd set fire to American flags.

On the eve of the rally, an SMS had been sent to citizens urging them to attend the demonstration, amid an ongoing Internet outage imposed during the unrest.

The near-total internet blackout came at the height of the street unrest in a step seen as aimed at curbing the spread of videos of the violence.

Connectivity has returned to much of the country except for its mobile telephone networks, said NetBlocks, a site that monitors internet disruptions.

NetBlocks said connectivity on Irancell was running at 100 per cent, but two other key mobile service providers — MCI and RighTel — were down at one and 24 per cent respectively.

The unrest erupted hours after a midnight announcement that the price of petrol would be immediately raised by 50 per cent for the first 60 litres and 200 per cent for any extra fuel after that each month.

President Hassan Rouhani said the proceeds would allow his government to provide welfare payments to the needy.

During the violence, dozens of banks, petrol pumps and police stations were torched across Iran.

Officials have confirmed five people were killed, but the death toll from clashes with security forces is thought to be much higher.

The United Nations said it feared that dozens died, while Amnesty International said more than 100 were believed to have been killed.

Authorities say they arrested 180 ringleaders.

The total number of people detained remains unclear, but the UN human rights office put it at more than 1,000 last Tuesday.

Rear-Admiral Ali Fadavi, deputy commander in chief of the guards, warned on Sunday that Iran would severely punish “mercenaries” arrested over the violence.

Iran has blamed the unrest on the Pahlavi royal family ousted in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and armed opposition group the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, which it considers a “terrorist” cult.

DOHA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Qatar Monday on his first official trip to an Arab country since Ankara's forces intervened in northeast Syria last month against Kurdish fighters.

Ankara and Doha have grown closer since Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with their former Gulf ally more than two years ago.

However, Erdogan’s visit comes at a critical time amid signs of a possible breakthrough in the crisis between Qatar and its neighbours — in what could be pushing Ankara to further bolster its political and economic relations with Doha.

Erdogan will attend the fifth meeting of the Qatar-Turkey Higher Strategic Committee at the invitation of Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, the Qatar News Agency reported.

The two countries are expected to sign a number of deals during Erdogan’s third visit to Qatar since the Saudi-led blockade began in June 2017, which led to rising Turkish influence in Doha.

Erdogan is also expected to visit a Turkish military base where around 5,000 troops have been stationed since the Saudi-led blockade amid reports that Qatar intends to buy 100 Turkish tanks.

The burgeoning relationship saw Turkey’s military presence in Qatar increase and Doha pledge economic support to Ankara during last year’s currency crisis.

Doha declared its support for Ankara after it launched an offensive on October 9 against a Syrian Kurdish militia, but Arab countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt have condemned Turkey’s “aggression”.

Andreas Krieg, a professor at King’s College London, said the Qataris were put in a “tough situation” when Turkey launched its operation against Syrian Kurdish forces, considered by Ankara to be “terrorists”.

“They acknowledged Turkey’s right to defend itself while disagreeing about the means and ways used by Ankara in pursuit of this objective,” he told AFP.

“There has been a lot of rumours about this potential disagreement following Qatar-critical coverage in the Turkish press, but in reality there has been no rift in this relationship between Doha and Ankara that is mostly based on a personal relationship between Erdogan and Qatar’s Emir.”

After the Gulf crisis erupted, Turkey was at the forefront of nations supplying Qatar with food and services, bypassing the blockade imposed by the Saudi-led nations.

Qatar last year announced a $15-billion loan to Turkey’s fragile banking sector and also gave a luxury jumbo jet — reportedly worth around $400 million — as a “gift” to Ankara.

The two nations have similar policies over Islamist groups, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, the decision by football teams from the Saudi-led bloc to play at a tournament in Qatar could herald a rapprochement. 

The Saudi and UAE squads arrived on Monday to compete in the Arabian Gulf tournament in Doha from November 26, despite their nations’ two-year boycott of Qatar.

Bahrain also said it would take part.

Cinzia Bianco, Gulf Research Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Erdogan’s visit was “key” at this time.

“Erdogan is trying to make sure that a rumoured Gulf appeasement won’t come at the expense of Qatar-Turkey relations,” she told AFP.

SHARIA CAMP, Iraq — At only 18, Iman Abbas has overcome suffering that would break many — the Yazidi was repeatedly sold as a “slave” by extremists but escaped to become an award-winning advocate for fellow survivors.

“Because of what I’ve been through, I don’t consider myself a teenager,” the softly-spoken Abbas said in her family’s modest two-room tent in the Sharia displacement camp in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region.

The tall, dark-haired young woman recently returned from Mumbai, where she received the prestigious Mother Teresa Memorial Award on behalf of the region’s Yazidi Rescue Office (YRO), with whom she works. 

The YRO has helped rescue around 5,000 Yazidi girls taken captive when the Daesh terror group swept through the minority’s ancestral homeland in northwest Iraq in 2014.

Receiving the award was “emotional”, recalled Abbas, wearing a traditional Yazidi layered white robe and headpiece. 

“When I shared my story and the stories of other Yazidi female survivors, some attendees started crying,” she told AFP in an interview ahead of the International day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, marked on Monday.

“The ceremony lessened some of my pain, but it increased my responsibility of helping other women survivors.”

Abbas was just 13 when Daesh stormed through the rugged villages of Sinjar, forcing thousands of Yazidi women and girls into “sex slavery”, killing men en masse and taking the boys as child soldiers.

She was immediately separated from her family by the extremists, who proceeded to sell her and other Yazidi women on “slave markets” to Daesh members.

Abbas was sold three times, eventually ending up with a 40-year-old Iraqi Daesh doctor who pledged to set her free if she memorised 101 pages of the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

‘Painful stories’ 

Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority, so learning to recite new religious texts in Arabic was an enormous challenge for the terrified teenager. 

“Every day, he was asking me to sit in front of him and recite the Quran. I was able to memorise 101 pages in one month and four days,” she said.

Her captor promptly took her to a Daesh court in the group’s Iraqi bastion of Mosul to issue a formal document from its self-styled “caliphate”, declaring Abbas “a free Muslim girl”.

She found her away to Tal Afar in northwest Iraq, where the rest of her family had been put to work as Daesh slaves tending to flocks of sheep.

In 2015, they were rescued by YRO and resettled in Sharia, a sprawling camp now home to over 17,000 displaced Yazidis.

Now, Abbas spends half her days in school and the other half working with the very same office that rescued her.

Daesh lost its Iraqi strongholds in 2017 and was ousted from its last shred of territory in neighbouring Syria in March.

Hundreds of Yazidis who had been held captive for years streamed out as the last vestiges of the extremists’ “caliphate” crumbled.

But several thousand remain unaccounted for, according to the YRO.

Some have converted to Islam and still live with Muslim families, too afraid, ashamed or “brainwashed” to come home, Yazidi officials say.

Abbas said part of her mission at YRO, where she started working just under a year ago, is to coax these women and girls into returning to their original families.

She has also interviewed more than 50 rescued girls to document their stories in the organisation’s archives, a job which she says makes her “sad and happy at the same time”. 

“I have to hear all these horrible stories, each one different from the other. They’re all very painful, some even more painful than my own,” she said.

But she is also proud of the work she does: “I’m glad to be part of the process of rescuing women survivors.”

Only the beginning 

Her path has echoed that of Nadia Murad, the Yazidi survivor who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her advocacy work.

Since her Mumbai trip, Abbas has herself become something of a mini-celebrity, especially within the camp where she lives.

Her parents field phone call after phone call expressing congratulations and thanks for their daughter’s activism.

“I noticed Iman has become happier and stronger since she started to share her story publicly,” said her father Abdullah, proudly telling AFP she has already swayed his opinions on the power of storytelling.

“At first, whenever she talked about her captivity, I used to turn my back to her because it was very painful for me to listen to her face-to-face,” he said.

But now he wants every Yazidi survivor to speak out, believing it will both help the individual and the broken minority.

Abbas is now taking English courses — but they’re only the beginning of her activist ambitions. 

“In the future, I want to become a lawyer to get familiar with Iraqi and international law so I can defend the rights of Yazidi female survivors as well as other Daesh victims,” she said.

NASIRIYAH, Iraq — Six protesters were killed Sunday in Iraq's south where angry demonstrations turned up the heat on a paralysed government facing the country's largest grassroots movement in decades.

Three demonstrators died and around 50 were wounded in clashes with security forces near the key southern port of Umm Qasr, the Iraqi Human Rights Commission reported.

An AFP correspondent said security forces had fired live rounds at protesters trying to block access to the port, a vital lifeline for food and medicine imports as well as energy exports.

Hours earlier, before dawn, three protesters were shot dead and at least 47 wounded by security forces in Nasiriyah, some 300 kilometres south of the capital Baghdad, medical sources said.

Protesters there blockaded five main bridges over the Euphrates River, shut down schools and burned tyres outside public offices.

They blocked access to oilfields and companies around the city, torching as well its Shiite endowment centre, a government body that manages religious sites.

Since October 1, Iraq's capital and majority-Shiite south have been swept by mass rallies against corruption, a lack of jobs and poor services that have escalated into calls for a complete overhaul of the ruling elite.

Top leaders have publicly acknowledged the demands as legitimate and promised measures to appease protesters, including hiring more civil servants, reforming the electoral system and reshuffling the cabinet.

But the rallies have continued, waning on some days but swelling again, despite the bloodshed, when demonstrators have felt politicians are stalling.

“We are not afraid of threats,” said one protester, Salem Hassan, in the southern city of Amara.

“We cannot remain silent in the face of the barbarism of the leaders and the time they take to satisfy our demands.”

Live rounds fired 

An estimated 350 people have been killed and thousands wounded since October 1, according to a tally compiled by AFP as authorities no longer provide updated figures.

Iraq’s south, a rural area where tribal allegiances are strong, has carried the torch of the movement for weeks, with students and teachers leading rallies outside schools and public offices.

The education ministry issued a directive for schools to open normally on Sunday, the first day of the work week in Iraq, but protesters in Nasiriyah defied the order and shut down schools anyway, AFP’s correspondent said.

In the oil-rich southern city of Basra, demonstrators blocked main roads, including those leading to the ports of Umm Qasr and Khor Al Zubair.

Clashes also pitted protesters against security forces overnight in Karbala, one of Iraq’s two Shiite holy cities.

The two sides lobbed Molotov cocktails at each other from behind barricades set up in small alleyways.

“They’re throwing Molotov cocktails at us and at midnight they started shooting live rounds,” one demonstrator said about the security forces.

In the night-time clashes, the streets were lit only by fires from the makeshift incendiary weapons, and by green laser pointers used by demonstrators to harass riot police.

“Our demands are clear,” said a demonstrator, his face wrapped in a black scarf.

“The downfall of this corrupt government.”

Budget talks 

Iraq is the 12th most corrupt country in the world, says Transparency International, a key driver of the popular anger behind the mass protests.

The activists accuse elites of awarding public sector jobs based on bribes, nepotism or sectarianism, while ignoring a painful youth unemployment rate of 25 per cent.

Iraq’s Cabinet is currently discussing the 2020 budget before it is submitted to parliament and government sources say it is expected to be one of the country’s largest yet.

Sunday’s violence came a day after the surprise visit of US Vice President Mike Pence to Iraq, where he dropped in on American troops stationed in the country’s west and met top leaders in the Kurdish region in the north.

He did not, however, meet officials in Baghdad, with officials citing “security reasons”.

Washington and Baghdad have been close allies since the US-led 2003 invasion that toppled ex-dictator Saddam Hussein, but ties are now at their coldest in years, officials from both countries have told AFP.

TEHRAN — Iran vowed Sunday to severely punish "mercenaries" arrested over nationwide street unrest sparked by a fuel price hike, as much of the country came back online after a week-long Internet blackout.

Authorities say calm has been restored and they have announced plans to hold a pro-government demonstration to condemn the "rioters" at Tehran's Enghelab Square on Monday afternoon.

The protests broke out on November 15, hours after a surprise announcement that petrol prices were being raised by as much as 200 per cent with immediate effect.

Highways were blocked, banks and petrol stations set ablaze and shops looted as the demonstrations turned violent and spread to dozens of urban centres across the country.

Citing law enforcement officials, Fars news agency said on Sunday that 180 ringleaders had been arrested over the street violence, which it has blamed on enemies abroad.

“We will certainly respond in accordance to the viciousness carried out by them,” said Rear-Admiral Ali Fadavi, deputy commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“We have arrested all stooges and mercenaries who have explicitly made confessions that they have been mercenaries of America, of Monafeghin and others.”

Monafeghin is a term Iran uses to refer to the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, an exiled opposition group it considers a “terrorist” cult.

The government said the fuel price hike would allow it to provide welfare payments to the needy in Iran, where many have struggled to make ends meet since the US reimposed sanctions after withdrawing from a landmark nuclear deal.

‘Coalition of evil’ 

Fadavi said “we have arrested all” protest leaders.

“God willing, the judiciary will give them maximum punishments,” he added.

The Guard commander was speaking at a gathering of female members of the Basij, a militia loyal to Iran’s establishment.

On Friday, a Basij commander said the unrest triggered by the fuel price hike amounted to a “world war” against Iran that had been thwarted.

Brig. Gen. Salar Abnoosh said interrogations had revealed a “coalition of evil” of Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia was behind the “sedition”, according to ISNA news agency.

Officials have confirmed five deaths in the unrest, while Amnesty International said more than 100 demonstrators were believed to have been killed and that the real toll could be as high as 200.

The total number of people arrested over the unrest remains unclear, but the UN human rights office put it at more than 1,000 on Tuesday.

Mobile networks offline 

At the height of the unrest, a near-total internet blackout was imposed in a step seen as aimed at curbing the spread of videos of the violence.

The outage had helped to “disrupt the complicated” plans by Iran’s enemies, Abnoosh said on Friday.

Connectivity was back on Sunday for much of the country except for its mobile telephone networks, said NetBlocks, a website that monitors global internet disruptions.

“In the 186th hour of #Iran’s national internet shutdown, mobile connectivity remains scarce while fixed-line/wifi is still shut in several regions,” it tweeted at 2:13pm (1043 GMT).

NetBlocks later said Internet connectivity on Irancell was back up at 98 per cent, although two other key mobile service providers — MCI and RighTel — were down at zero and one percent respectively.

Iran’s arch-enemy the United States on Friday slapped sanctions on the Islamic republic’s telecommunications minister over the outage.

It issued a call Saturday for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to suspend the accounts of Iranian government officials until coverage is reestablished across the country.

Since May last year — when the US unilaterally pulled out of the multilateral 2015 nuclear deal, ahead of reimposing biting sanctions — the Iranian rial has plummeted and inflation has soared.

The International Monetary Fund expects the country’s economy to contract by 9.5 per cent this year.

BEIRUT — Lebanese security forces briefly arrested five youths, including three minors, for allegedly pulling down a sign for the president's political party, sparking outrage Sunday on social media.

Defence lawyers said the five were taken into custody on Saturday evening in the town of Hammana east of Beirut over claims they tore down a sign for President Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement.

Security forces released them after midnight after taking a statement from them, the Committee of Lawyers for the Defence of Protesters said.

The army said two of the children were 15 years old and the third was 12.

The news sparked indignation on social media, the latest outcry in a country gripped by spontaneous anti-government protests since October 17.

"Down with the regime that arrests children," said one user.

"When a 12-year-old child manages to shake the state's throne, you know the state is corrupt," another wrote.

During the first month of demonstrations, security forces arrested 300 people including 12 minors who were released within the following 24 or 48 hours, according to the lawyers' committee.

But 11 people —  including two minors —  remain in detention accused of attacking a hotel in the southern city of Tyre during the first week of the uprising.

After nightfall on Sunday, hundreds gathered in protest centres in Beirut, the northern city of Tripoli and in Tyre.

In Beirut's Martyrs' Square, hundreds of women and men demanded their rights, some waving the national red and white flag or chanting "Revolution, Revolution!"

Lebanon's protests have brought together people of all ages from across the political spectrum, tired of what they describe as sectarian politics three decades after a civil war.

In the latest show of unity, a festive mood had reigned in the afternoon as Lebanese came together in public spaces across the country on the second day of the weekend.

North of the capital women prepared traditional salads to share, while a group of men danced on the beach south of the city, state television footage showed.

The demonstrators managed to bring down the government less than two weeks into the protests, but it remains in a caretaker capacity and no new cabinet has since been formed.

The Free Patriotic Movement Party that Aoun founded is now led by his son-in-law, outgoing foreign minister Gibran Bassil, one of the most reviled figures in the protests.

HAZANO, Syria — Crouched between olive trees in northwest Syria, Jumaa Al Mustayf cuts long metal tubes with an electric saw to make tent frames for families displaced by war.

With winter approaching in Idlib province, the man nicknamed "metalsmith of the camps" says his welding skills are in especially high demand.

"So far the orders keep on coming," says the skinny 34-year-old, his skin sunburnt from days working out in the open.

Idlib has come under repeated bombardment by the Damascus regime and its Russian ally this year, causing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee north towards the border with Turkey.

More than 3 million people live in the rebel-held region, and around half of them are already displaced from other parts of the country by fighting.

Mustayf says he once ran a successful metalwork business in southeast Idlib, but two years ago the war forced him and his family to flee their home.

"I had to build my own tent to live in it. People saw it and they started placing orders. So I got to work," he says.

On a patch of red earth near the village of Hazano, Mustayf has set up a makeshift workshop to supply residents in the nearby camp with sturdy frames to shelter them from a wet winter.

Two men unload dozens of long metal poles from a small truck, stacking them on the ground.

Hanging nearby, a modest cardboard sign reads: "Metalsmith of the camps".

A family business 

Barehanded and sandal-clad, Mustayf saws through metal, sending sparks flying as he prepares parts for his latest order.

The high-pitched screech of his saw temporarily drowns out the sound of a hammer banging on iron and the loud spluttering of nearby generators.

A woman dressed in a long red robe and headscarf watches from afar, sitting cross-legged on a mat in the shade of an olive tree.

The metalsmith welds the structure together with one hand, the other clutching a welder's mask to keep sparks off his face.

To help with the workload, he has enlisted the help of a few cousins and even his 13-year-old nephew, who quit school to help his family make ends meet.

In a month, Mustayf has sold 150 tents. Shelters handed out by non-governmental organisations are too small for large families, he says.

"They're good at withstanding rain and strong winds," he says of his own tent frames.

The smallest frame he sells covers four by four metres (yards) and costs almost $150, while the largest covers 36 square metres and goes for $320.

Customers then have to buy an outer shell of waterproof fabric from another supplier, and pay someone else to lay a cement base for the tent.

But despite the orders, Mustayf says his profits are slim.

"We make little — just enough to live off and cover the family's needs," he says.

 Indebted for a new tent 

Eight years into the Syrian civil war, Idlib is one of the last parts of the country to escape regime control.

Russia-backed regime forces pummelled the region for months over the spring and summer, killing around 1,000 civilians and displacing 400,000 people from their homes.

Russia announced a truce in late August, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group says sporadic bombardment and clashes continue.

Reslan Mohammed, his wife, and eight children fled their home three years ago and have been living outdoors ever since.

But this autumn, he decided it was time for a new dwelling.

"The tent we have is not made for winter," the 48-year-old says.

Scraping together enough money, he ordered Mustayf's smallest tent frame.

Dressed in a long beige robe and wearing a scarf on his head, he watches as men carry the finished product to his family's patch in the camp.

Small children swing excitedly from the metal bars before they are even set in place.

"I borrowed money from relatives and friends" to buy the new tent frame, Mohammed says.

The new frame in place, he covers it with a patchwork of old blankets. They roll a large woven plastic rug over the earth and lay a thin mattress on top.

Mohammed would also have liked a cement floor, but for the moment that luxury is too expensive.

By Aaref Watad