Fresh protests erupt as new details are released on the U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi

Interviews with survivors of the attack on the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi and witnesses have provided new details into what U.S. President Barack Obama declared, for the first time, a terrorist attack. The compound was hit by two assaults, the first by an unorganized mob, and the second described as a more complex and sophisticated ambush. Officials are investigating into the possibility that attackers were associated with the militant group, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The White House referred to the events as a terrorist attack, but mentioned there is not yet enough intelligence to determine whether it was planned in advance. Meanwhile, fresh protests over the anti-Islamic video that spurred violence in Libya and throughout the Muslim world, as well as a French cartoon that mocks Muhammad, have taken place in Pakistan on Friday, which the government declared the holiday a "Day of Love for the Prophet Muhammad." Protesters set two cinemas ablaze and clashed with riot police, resulting in at least one death. About 10,000 demonstrators have gathered in Bangladesh’s capitol, Dhaka, and 2,000 in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Tunisia has banned Friday protests. France has closed its embassies for the day in 20 countries across the Muslim world over fears of violence.

Syria

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad spoke with Egyptian news outlet, al-Ahram al-Arabi, in a rare interview. He said that armed groups are exercising terrorism and are not popular with Syrians, and that his regime would not fall like that of Libyan, Muammar al-Qaddafi. Of the regional overthrow of Arab regimes, Assad asserted it had "not worked in the interest of freedom, democracy, or ending social injustice as much as helped create chaos." The opposition Syrian National Council has continued to call for intervention in the civil war in Syria that increasingly appears to be moving toward stalemate. A Syrian warplane hit a fuel station killing an estimated 54 people after opposition forces overtook an area on the fringes of al-Raqqa province on the border with Turkey, which has long been a government stronghold. Raqqah province, in north central Syria, sits strategically between the heavily contested and embattled Aleppo and Deir al-Zour provinces. The gas station is south of the border crossing of Tal Abyad, which the opposition reportedly gained control of after days of fighting. Tal Abyad is at least the third border crossing between Syria and Turkey overtaken by the opposition. Fighting additionally continued in Aleppo and across Syria with at least 225 people reported killed on Thursday.

Headlines  

• Iraq has denied requests from North Korea to fly shipments of weapons to Syria. Iraq maintains it has not allowed Iran to use its airspace to funnel wepons and personnell to Syria.
• Iran and Israel faced off at the annual meeting of the U.N. atomic agency over Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons development program and Israel’s failure to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• Israeli soldiers killed three armed gunmen who entered southern Israel from Egypt and ambushed the Israeli troops.

Arguments & Analysis

‘How the Arab Spring Killed Hezbollah‘ (Thanassis Cambanis, The New Republic)

"Hassan Nasrallah has always been more sophisticated than the caricatured nightmare featured in the breathless propaganda of Hezbollah’s many enemies. Even at his most noxious he usually managed to present himself as a man of principle. That’s why it was almost sad to see Nasrallah this week pandering like an old-time Arab despot to public anger over the misbegotten Prophet Mohammed YouTube clip.

America, which uses the pretext of freedom of expression needs to understand that putting out the whole film will have very grave consequences around the world," Nasrallah said at a Hezbollah rally on September 17, one of the exceedingly rare occasions on which he appeared in public since he went into hiding during the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. Though the message sounds militant, it was actually just a flailing attempt to catch up to developments elsewhere in the region. Hezbollah, which used to set the Arab world’s trends, now finds itself forced to opportunistically jump on the latest global Islamist bandwagon."

‘Rage, but also self-criticism‘ (The Economist)

"After the noon prayer in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on September 14th, a copiously bearded speaker delivered a rousing, finger-wagging open-air sermon. Thundering against the incendiary anti-Muslim film trailer that recently appeared on the internet, he warned his brothers to prepare for battle, urging them to take up weapons against incoming "Crusader armies". Soon after, youths resumed a rock-throwing assault on police protecting the nearby American embassy.

As with past incidents of what many Muslims see as Western attacks against their beliefs, similar scenes unfolded across the Muslim world, producing tragic results. The anger displayed at all these events was certainly real, and widely shared among Muslims. Yet the television coverage of protests obscured an obvious fact. As in many other protests across the region, the crowd at the fiery Friday sermon in Cairo numbered in the mere hundreds, in a space where throngs a thousand times bigger have become commonplace. In the midst of a city of perhaps 20m inhabitants, the rest went about their business as usual. The number of youths who actually picked up rocks barely rose to the dozens. Their anger was aimed as much at the police as against "the West". The street-fighting looked more like a rowdy sporting event, replete with parading to the cameras, than a clash of civilisations."

‘The Struggle for Security in Eastern Libya‘ (Frederic Wehrey, The Carnegie Endowment)

"Despite successful parliamentary elections in early July, localized clashes over identity, power, and resources persist in Libya, straining the capacity of the weak government, deterring foreign investment, and possibly stunting the emergence of democratic institutions. The most pressing of these conflicts-growing insecurity in Libya’s eastern region of Barqa, where Benghazi is located-is fueled by longstanding neglect, Salafi militancy, and fighting between ethnic Tabu and Arab tribes. Lacking an effective police and national army, the state is struggling for legitimacy and control of the east. It must act to restore the periphery’s confidence in the center."

–By Jennifer Parker and Mary Casey