KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Sri Lankan authorities have arrested a Saudi-educated scholar for what they claim are links with Zahran Hashim, the suspected ringleader of the Easter Sunday bombings, throwing a spotlight on the rising influence of Salafi-Wahhabi Islam on the island’s Muslims.
A mosque is seen at Center for Islamic Guidance in Kattankudy in Kattankudy, Sri Lanka, May 4, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui
Mohamed Aliyar, 60, is the founder of the Centre for Islamic Guidance, which boasts a mosque, a religious school and a library in Zahran’s hometown of Kattankudy, a Muslim-dominated city on Sri Lanka’s eastern shores.
“Information has been revealed that the suspect arrested had a close relationship with ... Zahran and had been operating financial transactions,” said a police statement late on Friday.
The statement said Aliyar was “involved” with training in the southern town of Hambantota for the group of suicide bombers who attacked hotels and churches on Easter, killing over 250 people.
A police spokesman declined to provide details on the accusations.
Calls to Aliyar and his associates went unanswered. Reuters was unable to find contact details for a lawyer.
The government says Zahran, a radical Tamil-speaking preacher, was a leader of the group.
Two Muslim community sources in Kattankudy told Reuters his hardline views were partly shaped by ultra-conservative Salafi-Wahhabi texts that he picked up at the Centre for Islamic Guidance’s library around 2-3 years ago. The sources are not affiliated with the center.
“I used to always run into him at the center, reading Saudi journals and literature,” said one of the sources.
During that time, Zahran started criticizing the practice of asking God for help, for instance, arguing that such pleas were an affront to pure Islam.
“That kind of teaching was not in Sri Lanka in 2016, unless you read it in Salafi literature,” the source added, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions in Kattankudy.
Salafism, a puritanical interpretation of Islam that advocates a return to the values of the first three generations of Muslims and is closely linked to Wahhabism, has often been criticized as the ideology of radical Islamists worldwide.
Wahhabi Islam has its roots in Saudi Arabia and is backed by its rulers, although Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has committed the kingdom to a more moderate form of Islam.
Other than the fact that Zahran visited the center, the sources in Kattankudy said they did not know of any personal ties between him and Aliyar.
Aliyar founded the center in 1990, a year after he graduated from the Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, in what one resident said marked a key moment in the spread of Salafi doctrine in Kattankudy. The center was partly funded by Saudi and Kuwaiti donors, according to a plaque outside.
Reuters spoke to three members of the center’s board before Aliyar’s arrest. They asked to remain anonymous, citing security concerns amid a backlash against some Muslims.
They said Zahran was a troublemaker and that they had warned authorities about his extremist views. The members said they thought Zahran frequented the library around a decade ago, but had no recollection of him visiting recently and denied that any of its books were to blame for his views.
Funding for the center came from local donations, student fees, and private donors who were classmates of Aliyar’s in Riyadh, the center’s sources said. Reuters was unable to immediately determine further details about the funding of the center.
The Saudi government communications office in Riyadh did not respond to requests for comment on the funding of the center.
Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin in Riyadh and Ranga Sirilal in Colombo; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan
President Trump shared his take on the stalled U.S. trade talks with China on Saturday, suggesting Beijing may be waiting until the 2020 presidential election to see if a Democrat gets elected to secure more favorable terms.
“I think that China felt they were being beaten so badly in the recent negotiation that they may as well wait around for the next election, 2020, to see if they could get lucky & have a Democrat win - in which case they would continue to rip-off the USA for $500 Billion a year...." the president wrote.
Trump’s remarks came a day after another round of talks between Washington and Beijing ended with no trade pact. In follow-up tweets, the president said it would be wise for China to agree to a trade deal soon, before predicting it would face “far worse” terms if the impasse continues.
"....The only problem is that they know I am going to win (best economy & employment numbers in U.S. history, & much more), and the deal will become far worse for them if it has to be negotiated in my second term. Would be wise for them to act now, but love collecting BIG TARIFFS!" he posted.
VARNEY: CHINA TRADE TALKS, TARIFFS 'THE MOST IMPORTANT FINANCIAL STORY OF THE YEAR'
In response to a lack of progress between both sides last week, the U.S. imposed further tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods and threatened more tariffs on remaining Chinese products worth $325 billion.
China’s top negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He, said Friday that both sides have agreed to more trade talks in Beijing, Bloomberg reported. Speaking to Chinese media, he said the U.S. must remove all extra tariffs to clear the way for the possibility of an agreement. China has vowed retaliation but has not released specifics.
“For the interest of the people of China, the people of U.S. and the people of the whole world, we will deal with this rationally,” Liu said. “But China is not afraid, nor are the Chinese people,” adding that “China needs a cooperative agreement with equality and dignity.”
TRUMP'S ATTACKS ON POWELL REPORTEDLY HURTING US-CHINA TRADE TALKS
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the Trump administration would release details of the tariffs on $325 billion in Chinese imports on Monday.
A trade deal seemed imminent, until last week when China sent American trade negotiators a cable with redacted text that both sides had been working on. To the American, the modification signaled Beijing’s walking back of its earlier commitments made during months of negotiations.
In this March 5, 2019 photo, a cargo ship arrives at the Port of Tacoma, in Tacoma, Wash. U.S. and Chinese negotiators resumed trade talks Friday, May 10, 2019, under increasing pressure after President Donald Trump raised tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods and Beijing promised to retaliate. (Associated Press)
The divide between both sides has not stalled the U.S. economy. The GDP rose at a 3.2 percent annualized rate, even as a five-week partial government shutdown affected some sectors. Unemployment is at a historic low and 213,000 jobs are being created monthly.
Trump, who is seeking re-election on the heels of a booming economy, signaled Friday that he is no rush to secure a deal. Over Twitter, he proposed using income from the import taxes to buy agricultural products from American farmers.
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Chinese state media said China would give in on its core interests, Reuters reported.
“China clearly requires that the trade procurement figures should be realistic; the text must be balanced and expressed in terms that are acceptable to the Chinese people and do not undermine the sovereignty and dignity of the country,” the People’s Daily newspaper said in a commentary on Saturday.
WASHINGTON – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is deriding President Donald Trump as foolish for trying to oust him. Kim Jong Un is testing Trump’s “love” – and his resolve – in the North Korea negotiations. And Iran’s leaders are finding new ways to threaten the U.S. and to defy the president’s “maximum pressure” campaign.
In short, Trump’s foreign policy agenda is hitting the diplomatic rocks, with potentially disastrous results.
Some say it’s by design – Trump doesn't mind sowing chaos and confusion, and he has. Others say it’s a result of misguided policies and contradictory, undisciplined decision-making inside the White House.
Either way, the president has suffered a series of stunning foreign policy setbacks this week, raising fresh questions about his approach to military engagement and international affairs.
“What you see is a mismatch between means and ends across the board – whether it’s in Venezuela, whether it’s in North Korea, whether it’s in Iran – where the end’s always extremely ambitious and the diplomatic means tend to be quite de minimis,” said Robert Malley, a senior White House adviser on the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region in the Obama administration. “We’re courting danger where there’s no reason to.”
Jon B. Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank, said the series of foreign policy crises that have come to a head in recent days seem part of Trump’s design.
“The president is a lot more comfortable with chaos than any president in recent memory,” Alterman said. “The president doesn’t see uncertainty and disorder as a liability. He sees it as an asset.”
So escalating tensions in Iran and the stalemate in Venezuela, he said, are not necessarily an aberration but a feature of Trump’s sometimes erratic and contradictory approach to world affairs.
The result has been on full display in recent days:
For his part, Trump says he is cleaning up "the mess" left behind by predecessors, from bad trade deals across the globe to protracted military conflicts in Iran and Afghanistan.
"We have made a decisive break from the failed foreign policy establishment that sacrificed our sovereignty, surrendered our jobs and tied us down to endless foreign wars," Trump said during a political rally Wednesday in Florida.
Democrats scoff at Trump's efforts to blame his foreign policy troubles on previous presidents.
“Everything the president has touched internationally has gone to crap,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said at a national security forum on Friday sponsored by former Obama administration officials.
“We have split our alliances," said Murphy, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We have engaged in a trade war that’s cost Americans money. We have allowed Iran to restart their nuclear program. We have made no substantial progress in North Korea. The Middle East is more chaotic, not less chaotic. There’s still 20,000 members of ISIS who are getting ready to regroup.”
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the fundamental problem with Trump's approach to foreign policy is that he sets sky-high goals, but is unwilling or unable to deliver on them.
"The president has articulated wildly ambitious goals that he almost certainly is going to fail to meet," he said.
For example, Trump says he wants North Korea to give up its entire nuclear arsenal, and to do it quickly. He wants Iran's regime to collapse or to radically alter its behavior across the Middle East. He wants fundamental changes in China trade policy.
All these are long shots, at best, Haass said.
"In all three of those cases he will have to compromise, or he will fail," said Haass, author of the book "A World In Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order."
Others echoed that assessment but said Trump has exacerbated that disconnect with contradictory positions coming from within the White House.
Take the current crisis in Venezuela, where Trump had forcefully backed Guaido's bid to oust Maduro, a socialist leader who had helped drive his country to the brink of economic collapse. Trump's position has been driven by hawks inside his administration, including Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton.
After Maduro's uprising floundered last week, Bolton and Pompeo went to the Pentagon to talk to Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan about possible U.S. military options. But such intervention would run directly counter to Trump's own instincts, and his campaign promises, to steer clear of military interventions.
Trump's advisers seem "more willing to bandy about the threat of the use of military force, whereas he is far less inclined to do so," Malley said. That split between Trump and his advisers creates one layer of confusion, Malley said, and a second one comes from "a tug of war within (Trump's) own mind."
While Trump says he wants to avoid messy military entanglements, he also wants "to project a sense not just of power but of a willingness to go the brink and to court confrontation," Malley said.
That has fed a sense of failure or stalemate in places like Venezuela, he added, where Bolton predicted Maduro's ouster was just a matter of time. And it's created whiplash on North Korea, where Trump went from threatening Kim with "fire and fury" to declaring that they "fell in love."
Alterman said economic pressure, like the sanctions that Trump has slapped on the Maduro government, almost never lead to regime change or a popular revolt against an authoritarian leader. But Trump doesn't seem to really want to take the next step of military intervention in places like Venezuela.
The same is true with Iran, he said, where Trump has set himself up for failure by outlining a policy that shoots for the stars – complete transformation of the Iranian regime, or what Alterman called "self-regime change." But the president is relying on economic pressure and bellicose rhetoric to achieve that, which Alterman said will almost certainly not work.
Brian Hook, the State Department's special envoy for Iran, argues that Trump's approach to Iran has borne fruit. Exhibit A, Hook says, is that Iran appears to be cutting back its financial support for militant groups in Syria and Lebanon.
But he and others concede that Iran is not close to reopening talks with the U.S. on a broader agreement that would curb its ballistic missile program or halt its support for terrorism. And just days after the Pentagon rushed its bombers to the region in response to an Iranian threat, Trump told supporters he would like to sit-down with Iran's president and negotiate.
"I hope to be able at some point … to sit down and work out a fair deal," he said during Wednesday's rally in Florida. "We’re not looking to hurt anybody ... We just don’t want them to have nuclear weapons."
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Islamabad, Pakistan - Gunmen have stormed a five-star hotel in Pakistan's port city of Gwadar, killing at least one person, according to the military.
In a statement, Pakistan's military said three armed men killed a security guard as they attempted to enter the Pearl Continental hotel in the southern city.
Security forces surrounded the attackers in a staircase leading to the top floor of the building, it said, adding that a security operation to clear the area was ongoing.
There were conflicting reports about additional casualties. Zia Langove, the provincial home minister, said initial reports indicated some people at the hotel had been wounded in firing on the premises.
The military, however, said that all guests at the hotel, which has 114 rooms, were safely evacuated.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an ethnic Baloch separatist group fighting for independence for Balochistan province, claimed responsibility for the attack.
"Our fighters have carried out this attack on Chinese and other foreign investors who were staying in PC hotel," said Jihand Baloch, a BLA spokesperson, in a statement emailed to Al Jazeera.
Gwadar is the site of a major port built as the culmination of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a trade corridor that links southwestern China to the Arabian Sea through Pakistan.
The $60bn CPEC project has seen massive investment in infrastructure across Pakistan, including major roads and the Gwadar port in Balochistan province.
Recent days have seen an uptick in violence in the province, with ethnic Baloch separatist groups ramping up attacks against security forces and civilians.
On Thursday, at least five people were killed when BLA gunmen attacked a coal mine in the Harnai district of Balochistan.
The BLA and other armed groups have been fighting Pakistani security forces for more than a decade, demanding independence for the ethnic Baloch areas of Balochistan province, which they claim has been neglected by the Pakistani state and exploited for its mineral resources.
Balochistan, located in southwestern Pakistan, is the country's largest but least populated province, with rich deposits of natural gas, coal, metals and minerals.
Rights groups allege that Pakistani security forces have abducted hundreds of pro-freedom Baloch political activists and fighters in their fight to quell the rebellion.
Last month, an alliance of Baloch separatist groups ambushed a passenger bus en route from Gwadar to Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, killing at least 14 people.
Asad Hashim is Al Jazeera's digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @AsadHashim.
