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Commander US Forces in Afghanistan General John W Nicholson calls on Gen Qamar at GHQ

Commander Resolute Support Mission and US Forces in Afghanistan calls on COAS at GHQ. PHOTO: ISPR

Army chief General Qamar Javed expressed concerns on Monday at the efforts by some quarters inAfghanistan and the US against Pakistans rolein waragainst terrorism.

COAS raised concern over the blame game perpetrated by some quarters in Afghanistan and USA to undermine Pakistans contributions towards war on terror, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement.

General John W Nicholson, Commander Resolute Support Mission (RSM) and US Forces in Afghanistan called on COAS at GHQ.

Regional security situation and border management issues were discussed, the communique added.

Three FC personnel martyred in Balochistan, Khyber Agency

Gen Qamar noted its not a coincidence that this theme is being played at a time when policy review is being undertaken in the US.

Despite provocations, Pakistan will continue to act positively as we consider defeat of terrorism as a national interest, he remarked.

The militarys media wing said Gen Nicholson reiterated his appreciation of the professionalism of Pakistan Army and his admiration for the resilience of people of Pakistan.

Both agreed on the need for continuous engagement and coordination for peace and stability in the region, it added.

US Ambassador David Hale was also present during the meeting.

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Some quarters in Afghanistan, US undermining efforts against terrorism: COAS - The Express Tribune

By aligning the U.S. with Saudi Arabia, President Donald Trump is foolishly looking only to the short term. Iran is already the most influential country in Iraq. Its ally, Hezbollah, is the greatest force in Lebanon. Together, they are the primary reason why Bashar al-Assad is holding on in Syria.

Iran is behind the rebellion in Yemen. Its influence is growing in Afghanistan. Irans vision of the future as no longer dependent on oil has already won over the leaders of Qatar. Even the Trump administration has twice certified that Iran is complying with the nuclear agreement and many countries have renewed trade with it since the agreement took effect. Iran is destined to dominate the Middle East.

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The American public needs to better understand why many Iranians mistrust the United States. It was the CIA that overthrew Irans popular leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. It was the U.S. that installed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who ruled for 25 years in an increasingly cruel and despotic manner. When he was overthrown in 1979, the Shah fled to the United States. We tried unsuccessfully to bribe some of the revolutions leaders to assure continuing U.S. influence. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, we sided with Iraq and eventually furnished it with intelligence and arms. Over 2 million Iranians were killed or wounded in that war but Iran won. By 2003, the U.S. had occupied the two major countries on either side of Iran Afghanistan and Iraq and impliedly threatened Iran as a member of the Axis of Evil. Some Iranians remain convinced that the U.S. continues to have designs on control of Irans internal affairs.

Nevertheless, Irans anti-U.S. actions have been measured. Some Iranian students and leaders have called America the Great Satan and street crowds have chanted Death to America but we should judge the country and its people by their actions, not a few politically inspired words. Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979, but, unlike subsequent events in Benghazi and Nairobi, no embassy personnel was killed or seriously injured in Tehran. Although Saddam Husseins Iraq used poison gas against Iranians, Iran refused to do so because such weapons were considered unacceptable under the Koran. There were eight Saudis among the eleven terrorists that brought down the World Trade Centers; no Iranians.

No Iranian has been implicated in any terrorist attack in Western countries except a hard-to-believe allegation that an Iranian-American tried to hire a drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. According to U.S. and Israeli intelligence reports, Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, when the Supreme Leader of Iran said the use of such weapons violates the Koran. Iran supplied arms and training for Shia militants in Iraq and Lebanon. Americans were killed in those countries, but we put our soldiers at risk when we foolishly invaded the countries in the first place.

Ironically, Iranians mistrust Russia as much or more than they mistrust America. Russia or the Soviet Union has occupied Iran on at least three occasions. Russia now fears Irans growing power. The limited cease-fire in southwest Syria is more about Russia wanting to limit the influence of Hezbollah and Iran over Assad than about peace.

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A common misconception about Iran is that it is not democratic. In fact, both local officials and members of parliament the Majlis are elected. Even the members of the Assembly of Experts that selects the Supreme Leader are elected. The current president, Hassan Rouhani, was elected with 50.9 percent of the vote in 2013 over five opponents largely because of his pledge of rapprochement with the world. He was re-elected in 2017. Iran has too few female candidates and too much influence from Muslim clerics to meet the U.S. ideal of democracy, but in comparison to some of its neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, it is a bastion of democracy.

Irans 79 million people compared to Saudi Arabias 32 million are generally well-educated, well-led and enterprising. They are a natural ally for America. There are bad actors in Iran, but the most effective way for America to affect that countrys direction in the future is as a friend to its people, not as an enemy. America should attempt to understand Iran by building on the nuclear agreement with that country and working for peace in the region not foolishly aligning itself with the ultimately losing side like Saudi Arabia of an internecine dispute within the Muslim community.

Bickerstaff is co-author of International Election Remedies and retired from teaching law at the University of Texas.

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Commentary: Why Iran is positioned to dominate the Middle East - MyStatesman.com

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's top judge called on the United States on Monday to release Iranians held in U.S. jails and billions of dollars in Iranian assets, days after Washington urged Tehran to free three U.S. citizens.

The statement by Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani capped a week of heightened rhetoric over the jailing and disappearance of Americans in Iran and new U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

"We tell them: 'You should immediately release Iranian citizens held in American prisons in violation of international rules and based on baseless charges'," Larijani said in remarks carried by state television.

"You have seized the property of the Islamic Republic of Iran in violation of all rules and in a form of open piracy, and these should be released."

On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Tehran to return Robert Levinson, an American former law enforcement officer who disappeared in Iran more than a decade ago, and release businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer, jailed on espionage charges.

Trump said Iran would face "new and serious consequences" if the three men were not released. U.S. authorities imposed new economic sanctions on Iran on Tuesday over its ballistic missile program.

Earlier this month, Iran said another U.S. citizen, Xiyue Wang, a graduate student from Princeton University, had been sentenced to 10 years in jail for spying.

According to former prisoners, families of current ones and diplomats, Iran sometimes holds on to detainees for use for prisoner exchanges with Western countries. Tehran has denied this.

In a swap deal in 2016, Iranians held or charged in the United States, mostly for sanctions violations, were released in return for Americans imprisoned in Iran.

Also that year, Iran filed an International Court of Justice complaint to recover $2 billion in frozen assets that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled must be turned over to American families of people killed in bombings and other attacks blamed on Iran.

Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; editing by John Stonestreet

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Iran top judge demands US release assets, jailed Iranians - Reuters

After the war with Iraq ended, Iranian prisoners returned home. Their families had been totally unaware of their whereabouts during the conflict. Photographer Sasan Moayyedi created a scene with a soldiers clunky blood stained boots alongside a dressy pair of womens shoes. There is a combat knife at the clean and neat home dining table war has become a part of everyday life.

These images are on display in the French town of Arles along with hundreds of others from more than 60 photographers from Iran. The exhibition is a part of the famous annual Les Rencontres dArles festival, taking place in the south of France since the 1970s. This presentation of Iranian modern photographers work is called Iran, Year 38 and aims to show Iran as it is now, 38 years after the Islamic revolution.

For centuries Iran has been known for its poetry, a way to say things that cannot be said directly. The modern version of poetry is photography, a visual poetry. It is not a coincidence that Iran has so many photographers- the curators of the exhibition, Anahita Ghabaian Etehadieh and Newsha Tavakolian, say.

Revolution and war prompted questions about the identity of Iranian society. Its a thousand-year-old civilisation that most recently has put on the shape of the Islamic Republic, with a stress on the religious dimension of Irans legacy. The sanctions and isolation the revolution provoked have also played a role. But now lifestyles are changing, exhibition contributors say. Young Iranians face a choice: follow tradition or adopt modernity. People have become more lonely than ever, states photographer Nazanin Tabataee Yazdi. In his works he shows the young Iranians who try to overcome their loneliness by owning a pet. The practice that is frowned upon by religious authorities. But in the big cities, it is now common to see people walking dogs that was unimaginable just after the revolution.

After China, Iran has the highest execution rate in the world. Executions happen early in the morning and people from the neighbourhood where it takes place often come to watch. Photographer Ebrahim Noroozi captured the scene in 2012. And Arash Khamooshi in the image from the series Act of forgiveness shows how the family of a victim helps to remove a noose from a convicted murderer in front of the crowd assembled to witness the punishment.

Tahmineh Monzavi was taking pictures in the government-run womens shelter for three years. There she met women of all ages, most of them substance abusers. The photographer keeps in touch with a transgender woman who on seeing the photos of her past was stunned at how she had since managed to return to life.

Gohar Dashti in her Modern Life and War series shows the intimate scenes of everyday life and a deadly context bearing the signs of conflict.

Halya Shyyan, an exhibition visitor, was especially impressed by the works of Saba Alizadeh from his Light and soil series.

This exhibition is really impressive because of the many thought-provoking pictures based on the situation of the country at the war and after the war. The project which impressed me the most is the one with the projection of the soldiers pictures on a sofa or a bed in the interior. These are soldiers who became heroes. The images try to show the life they could live but didnt because of the war.

The opening week of the festival also held an evening screening event Iran now where Iranian photographers described their projects and spoke about the changes happening in their country.

Iran, year 38 is open in Arles until August 27.

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Iran's complex identities speak through photography like once through poetry - euronews

A teenage German girl who ran away after converting to Islam and was found by Iraqi troops in Mosul says she wants to go home, a German newspaper and broadcaster reported Monday.

"I just want to go back home to my family," 16-year-old Linda Wenzel said. "I want to get away from the war, away from all the weapons, away from the noise."

German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and public broadcaster ARD said their reporter interviewed the girl in Baghdad after she was found earlier this month as Iraqi forces liberated the northern city of Mosul from the Islamic State group. She could theoretically face the death penalty in Iraq for membership in IS, according to the country's counter-terrorism law.

Wenzel ran away from her home in the small eastern German town of Pulsnitz last summer, shortly after converting to Islam, according to German security officials. She had been in touch with IS members online and was married to one of the extremist group's fighters after arriving in the group's territory.

Her husband died shortly after the marriage, the German media reported.

The girl said she had been hiding in a basement in Mosul when Iraqi soldiers captured her. She said she is "doing fine" despite a bullet wound in her left leg that she said "is from a helicopter attack."

She is currently in a military hospital ward in Baghdad, according to the report.

It's not clear if Wenzel can return to Germany or if she will be tried as an IS member. However, even if she is sentenced to death in Iraq, she would not be executed before the age of 22.

A spokeswoman for the German Foreign Office, Maria Adebahr, said German Embassy staff visited Wenzel and another German woman on Thursday. While Germany and Iraq didn't have any official extradition agreements, the German government was looking into other ways of cooperation regarding the two German women, Adebahr said.

Photos of a disheveled young woman in the presence of Iraqi soldiers went viral online earlier this month, but there were initially contradicting reports about the girl's identity.

The soldiers initially mistook her for a Yazidi woman, but the teenager told them: "I'm not Yazidi, I'm German."

Wenzel was one of 26 foreigners arrested in Mosul this month, Iraqi officials have said.

The Iraqis found three other women from Germany, with roots in Morocco, Algeria and Chechnya. Iraqi officials said the German-Moroccan woman has a child and both were arrested in Mosul about 10 days ago.

The Chechen-German woman was identified as Fatima by Sueddeutsche Zeitung and ARD. She is sharing a room with Wenzel and has an arm injury, they reported, adding that the woman had told them that her two children were missing after a recent air raid in Mosul.

German paper Bild reported Monday that Linda's father, whose name was only given as Reiner W., learned of his missing daughter's whereabouts on the radio as he was working on the construction of a German highway.

"I had a breakdown where I heard that Linda is alive," Bild quoted the divorced father as saying. "I so much wish that my Linda will come home healthy again. I will always be there for her."

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Report: German runaway found in Iraq wants to go home - ABC News