Exclusive: secret Assad emails lift lid on life of leader's inner circle | World news | The Guardian

Bashar al-Assad took advice from Iran on how to handle the uprising against his rule, according to a cache of what appear to be several thousand emails received and sent by the Syrian leader and his wife.

The Syrian leader was also briefed in detail about the presence of western journalists in the Baba Amr district of Homs and urged to "tighten the security grip" on the opposition-held city in November.

The revelations are contained in more than 3,000 documents that activists say are emails downloaded from private accounts belonging to Assad and his wife, Asma.

The messages, which have been obtained by the Guardian, are said to have been intercepted by members of the opposition Supreme Council of the Revolution group between June and early February.

The documents, which emerge on the first anniversary of the rebellion that has seen more than 8,000 Syrians killed, paint a portrait of a first family remarkably insulated from the mounting crisis and continuing to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle.

They appear to show the president's wife spending thousands of dollars over the internet for designer goods while he swaps entertaining internet links on his iPad and downloads music from iTunes.

As the world watched in horror at the brutal suppression of protests across the country and many Syrians faced food shortages and other hardships, Mrs Assad spent more than £10,000 on candlesticks, tables and chandeliers from Paris and instructed an aide to order a fondue set from Amazon.

The Guardian has made extensive efforts to authenticate the emails by checking their contents against established facts and contacting 10 individuals whose correspondence appears in the cache. These checks suggest the messages are genuine, but it has not been possible to verify every one.

The emails also appear to show that:

• Assad established a network of trusted aides who reported directly to him through his "private" email account – bypassing both his powerful clan and the country's security apparatus.

• Assad made light of reforms he had promised in an attempt to defuse the crisis, referring to "rubbish laws of parties, elections, media".

• A daughter of the emir of Qatar, Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani, this year advised Mr and Mrs Assad to leave Syria and suggested Doha may offer them exile.

• Assad sidestepped extensive US sanctions against him by using a third party with a US address to make purchases of music and apps from Apple's iTunes.

• A Dubai-based company, al-Shahba, with a registered office in London is used as a key conduit for Syrian government business and private purchases by the Syrian first lady.

Activists say they were passed username and password details believed to have been used by the couple by a mole in the president's inner circle. The email addresses used the domain name alshahba.com, a conglomerate of companies used by the regime. They say the details allowed uninterrupted access to the two inboxes until the leak was discovered in February.

The emails appear to show how Assad assembled a team of aides to advise him on media strategy and how to position himself in the face of increasing international criticism of his regime's attempts to crush the uprising, which is now thought to have claimed more than 10,000 lives.

Activists say they were able to monitor the inboxes of Assad and his wife in real time for several months. In several cases they claim to have used fresh information to warn colleagues in Damascus of imminent regime moves against them.

The access continued until 7 February when a threatening email arrived in the inbox thought to be used by Assad after the account's existence was revealed when the Anonymous group separately hacked into a number of Syrian government email addresses. All correspondence to and from the two addresses ceased on the same day.

The emails appear to show that Assad received advice from Iran or its proxies on several occasions during the crisis. Ahead of a speech in December his media consultant prepared a long list of themes, reporting that the advice was based on "consultations with a good number of people in addition to the media and political adviser for the Iranian ambassador".

The memo advised the president to use "powerful and violent" language and to show appreciation for support from "friendly states". It also advised that the regime should "leak more information related to our military capability" to convince the public that it could withstand a military challenge.

The president also received advice from Hussein Mortada, an influential Lebanese businessman with strong connections to Iran. In December, Mortada urged Assad to stop blaming al-Qaida for an apparent twin car bombing in Damascus, which took place the day before an Arab League observer mission arrived in the country. He said he had been in contact with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon who shared the same view.

"It is not out of our interest to say that al-Qaida organisation is behind the operation because this claim will [indemnify] the US administration and Syrian opposition," Mortada wrote not long after the blasts. "I have received contacts from Iran and Hezbollah in my role as director of many Iranian-Lebanese channels and they directed me to not mention that al-Qaida is behind the operation. It is a blatant tactical media mistake."

In another email Mortada advised the president that the regime needed to take control of public squares between 3pm and 9pm to deny opposition groups the opportunity to gather there.

Iran and Hezbollah have been accused throughout the year-long uprising of providing on-the-ground support to the regime crackdown, including sending soldiers to fight alongside regime forces and technical experts to help identify activists using the internet. Iran and Hezbollah both deny offering anything more than moral support.

Among others who communicated with the president's account were Khaled al-Ahmed, who it is believed was tasked with providing advice about Homs and Idlib. In November Ahmed wrote to Assad urging him to "tighten the security grip to start [the] operation to restore state control and authority in Idlib and Hama countryside".

He also told Assad he had been told that European reporters had "entered the area by crossing the Lebanese borders illegally". In another mail he warned the president that "a tested source who met with leaders of groups in Baba Amr today said that a big shipment of weapons is coming from Libya will arrive to the seashores of one of the neighbouring states within three days to be smuggled to Syria."

Link to this video

The emails offer a rare window on the state of mind of the isolated Syrian leader, apparently lurching between self-pity, defiance and flippancy as he swapped links to amusing video footage with his aides and wife. On one occasion he forwards to an aide a link to YouTube footage of a crude re-enactment of the siege of Homs using toys and biscuits.

Throughout 2011, his wife appears to have kept up regular correspondence with the Qatar emir's daughter, Mayassa al-Thani. But relations appear to have chilled early this year when Thani directly suggested that the Syrian leader step down.

"My father regards President Bashar as a friend, despite the current tensions – he always gave him genuine advice," she wrote on 11 December. "The opportunity for real change and development was lost a long time ago. Nevertheless, one opportunity closes, others open up – and I hope its not too late for reflection and coming out of the state of denial."

A second email on 30 January was even more forthright and including a tacit offer of exile. "Just been following the latest developments in Syria … in all honesty – looking at the tide of history and the escalation of recent events – we've seen two results – leaders stepping down and getting political asylum or leaders being brutally attacked. I honestly think this is a good opportunity to leave and re-start a normal life.

"I only pray that you will convince the president to take this an opportunity to exit without having to face charges. The region needs to stabilise, but not more than you need peace of mind. I am sure you have many places to turn to, including Doha."

The direct line of reporting to Assad, independent of the police state's military and intelligence agencies, was a trait of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria for three decades until his death in 2000 ushered the then 36-year-old scion into the presidency.

Assad Sr was renowned for establishing multiple reporting lines from security chiefs and trusted aides in the belief that it would deny the opportunity for any one agency to become powerful enough to pose a threat to him.

His son has reputedly shown the same instincts through his decade of rule. The year-long uprising against his decade of rule appeared to be faltering this week as forces loyal to Assad retook the key northern city of Idlib.

Much of Assad's media advice comes from two young US-educated Syrian women, Sheherazad Jaafari and Hadeel al-Al. Both regularly stress to Assad, who uses the address sam@alshahba, the importance of social media, and particularly the importance of intervening in online discussions. At one point, Jaafari boasts that CNN has fallen for a nom-de-guerre that she set up to post pro-regime remarks. The emails also reveal that the media team has convinced Twitter to close accounts that purport to represent the Syrian regime.

Several weeks after the sam@alshahba.com email was compromised in February, a new Syrian state television channel broadcast two segments denying that the email address had been used by Assad.

Opposition activists claim that this was a pre-emptive move to discredit any future leaking of the emails.

The US president, Barack Obama, signed an executive order last May imposing sanctions against Assad and other Syrian government officials.

In addition to freezing their US assets, the order prohibited "US persons" from engaging in transactions with them. The EU adopted similar measures against Assad last year. They include an EU-wide travel ban for the Syrian president and an embargo on military exports to Syria.

"What is Muhammad’s religious significance for Christians?" was the theme of a conference that I arranged through the World Congress of Faiths. It was led by Bishop Kenneth Cragg, who has an expert and personal knowledge of Islam.

Muslims, as we shall see in a later chapter, regard Jesus as a prophet and are often resentful that Christians do not reciprocate the compliment, although I am happy to speak of Muhammad as a prophet. Ulfat Aziz -us-Saud, complains that "While Muslims believe in Jesus Christ as a true prophet and love and respect him . . . Christians not only reject Muhammad, but are never tired of speaking about him and his religion in the most disparaging manner possible. They declare him to be a victim of hallucination, or even of epilepsy. They attribute unworthy motives to him and claim to find many faults in his character and in his private and public life."

Early Christian accounts of Muhammad’s life were usually derogatory. Christians in the past have spoken of Muhammad as a heretic, with a false or inadequate understanding of God. He was depicted as a war-like aggressor or as promiscuous because he had several wives, although some marriages were partly for diplomatic alliances. He was even called ‘Mahout’ or the spirit of darkness. The great Christian poet Dante placed Muhammad in the inferno, torn to pieces by pigs. Luther regarded Muhammad and the Pope as the two arch-enemies of Christ. In the twentieth century, H G Wells said Muhammad was a man "whose life on the whole was by modern standards unedifying." Some recent comments in the media have been little better.

Some Christians, however, have written quite objective accounts of Muhammad’s life and teaching. One of the first British writers to attempt a more sympathetic portrait was Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), who saw Muhammad as a genuine hero among the prophets. F. D. Maurice (1805-72) in his lectures on Islam was not entirely unsympathetic. The twentieth century saw many more scholarly accounts of Muhammad’s life and times, although the critical presuppositions of some scholars were unacceptable to Muslims.

Few even of the best accounts of Muhammad’s life discuss the religious significance of Muhammad for those who are Christian. The study of religions which as an academic discipline developed quite quickly during the twentieth century stressed the need for neutrality and impartiality. The phenomenological approach took seriously the faith of the believer and tried to appreciate a religion from the standpoint of its adherents. In arranging the World Congress of Faiths conference I felt that an interfaith group could perhaps go further and try to discuss the religious significance of one faith to members of another. The revelation of the Qur’an is in intention a universal message addressed to all people. Can those who belong to another household of faith also hear in it a word of God?

A rather similar question is whether non-Muslims should speak about the "Prophet" Muhammad. For me as a Christian, Muhammad is not the Prophet or the seal of the prophets. Yet, I believe that his was a genuine encounter with God and that his was a prophetic message, akin to that of the great Biblical prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.

In this I agree with W. Montgomery Watt who gave rather more extended arguments. He wrote, "Muhammad claimed to receive messages from God and conveyed these to his contemporaries. On the basis of these messages a religious community developed, claiming to serve God, numbering some thousands in Muhammad’s lifetime, and now having several hundred million members. The quality of life in the community has been on the whole satisfactory for the members. Many men and women in this community have attained to saintliness of life, and countless ordinary people have been enabled to live decent and moderately happy lives in difficult circumstances. These points lead to the conclusion that the view of reality presented in the Qur’an is true and from God, and that therefore Muhammad is a genuine prophet.’

Keith Ward, who is Regius Professor of Theology at Oxford, has written, "Christians can see Muhammad as truly inspired by God, as called to proclaim a strict monotheistic faith, and as chosen by God for that purpose. In seeing him thus, they can place him on the same level as all the prophets of Israel and the apostles of the early Christian church. It may even be possible to place him, from an authentically Christian viewpoint, on the same level as Jesus, insofar as prophet-hood is concerned (remembering that, for Christians, Jesus is ‘more than a prophet’). In other words, a Christian can see Muhammad as inspired in the same sense as Jewish and Christian prophets, and thus accord him the highest honor as a true prophet. Nevertheless, they would in this still fall short of the Muslim perception that Muhammad was uniquely chosen to utter the definitive and unquestionable words of God himself."

So I use the title "Prophet" of Muhammad partly as a sign of my reverence for him and partly out of respect for the religious convictions of those who are Muslim.

Underlying this approach is my conviction that there is One God who has spoken in various ways through the great religious traditions. While, in my view, there is a transcendent unity of faiths, there is also considerable difference and variety. In part this is because people’s apprehension of and response to the divine is varied, especially because of cultural and historical differences, but also each tradition emphasizes certain central truths. We need to listen to these and see how, if we belong to a different faith community, they illuminate or challenge the convictions that we already hold.

So the approach of the conference was to try to hear the message Muhammad recited and to listen in it for a word of God to those of another community of faith. His emphasis on the Oneness of God and the rejection of idolatry is perhaps a corrective to those forms of Christianity which so focus on Jesus as almost to forget the Father. Orthodox Christian worship is not primarily worship of Jesus but worship of God through Jesus Christ. Islam too, as I have suggested, can remind Christians of the glory and holiness of God.

There is now considerable scholarly agreement about the main events in Muhammad’s life. He was born in 570 CE. at Mecca, which was a busy commercial center in Arabia with a near monopoly of the entrepot trade between the Indian ocean and the Mediterranean. Muhammad was of the family Banu Hashim in the tribe of the Quraysh. He was born after the death of his father and became ward of his grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib. At an early age he had an experience of a visitation by two figures -- later identified as angels -- who "opened his chest and stirred their hands inside". It was the first of several unusual experiences that led Muhammad increasingly to search for the truth of God and religion on his own. This quest was strengthened when he was employed by a widow, called Khadijah, to take trading caravans north to Syria. There he met Christians and Jews, especially the monk Bahira who recognized in him the signs of the promised Messiah. By now Muhammad was under the protection of his uncle Abu Talib. At the age of 25, he married Khadijah. They had two sons who died young and four daughters. Muhammad was increasingly influenced by the Hanifs, who sought to preserve a monotheism which they traced back to Ibrahim (Abraham). The people of Mecca, however, were polytheistic and worshipped idols. Increasingly, Muhammad went by himself to a cave on Mount Hira. It was there that he had the strong sense of a presence, later identified with Gabriel, to which we have already referred.

At first Muhammad thought he was possessed, but as he fled the cave and was half way down the mountain, he heard a voice saying to him, "O Muhammad, thou art the messenger of God and I am Gabriel." On his return home, with a still quaking heart, he said to Khadijah "Cover me, cover me." Khadijah went to tell her cousin Waraqh, who was old and blind, Waraqh, who was a Christian, exclaimed that the angel of Revelation who had come to Moses had now come to Muhammad. A further divine revelation reassured Muhammad. After further revelations, he began preaching, but met strong opposition. He was clear that if God is God and God is One, then there cannot be a Christian God and a Jewish God and certainly not the many deities of Mecca. He was also convinced that the idolatry of Mecca had to be swept away. For Muhammad there was only One God from whom all creation derived. Therefore all human beings should live in a corresponding unity (umma). Islam is the attempt to realize this unity under God.

After his wife Khadijah and his cousin Ali and his slave Zayd, whom the Prophet set free, the first believer was Abu Bakr. They were called al-muslimun or Muslims, those who enter into a condition of safety because of their commitment to God.

Opposition and persecution increased. But then, Muhammad was invited to Yathrib -- soon to be known as Madina -- to make his way of unity a practical reality by reconciling the town’s two rival ruling families. He made this move, known as the Hijara, which means emigration and breaking the bonds of kinship, in 622, a date which was to become the first year of the Muslim calendar. There under the guidance of fresh revelations from God he began to establish a community. These revelations were clearly distinct from the words that Muhammad spoke as an ordinary human being. It is said that his appearance changed and the style of utterance, which was rhythmic and with a loose pattern of rhyme, was different to his normal speech.

At Madina, Muhammad was joined by some seventy other emigrants, the Muhajirun. Opposition from Mecca continued, partly because Muhammad raided some of their caravans. In 624 the Muslims defeated a much larger Meccan army at the battle of Badr, but in the following year the battle of Uhud, in which the Prophet was injured, was inconclusive, largely because the archers disobeyed their orders because they were too eager for booty. In 627 the Quraysh failed in their attempt to besiege Madina. Then in 630, Muhammad captured Mecca and purified it from idols. Besides these military engagements, Muhammad both organized the pattern of life in Madina and built up relations with neighboring tribes.

Muhammad died two years after his return to Mecca. He had often spoken of Paradise and according to his wife A’ishah, his last words were, "With the supreme communion in Paradise, with those upon whom God hath showered His favor, the prophets and the saints and the martyrs and the righteous, most excellent for communion are they." (4, 69).

Despite his various marriages, Muhammad had no surviving son. His nearest relation was his cousin Ali, who had married one of his daughters, but the majority of the community chose as his successor Abu Bakr, who was one of his first followers. There were those, however, who thought that Ali should have been his successor and within a generation of Muhammad’s death, this lead to the division of Islam between Sunni and Shi’a, which persists to this day.

Almost immediately after Muhammad’s death, Abu Bakr (d. 634) who was to become the first Caliph, declared, "If any of you have been worshipping Muhammad, let him know that Muhammad is dead. But if you have been worshipping God, then know that God is eternal and never dies." He quoted the verse:

"Muhammad is no more

Than a Messenger: many were the Messengers that passed away

Before Him" (3, 144). Muhammad is not regarded as superhuman nor divine nor without sin. He was commanded in the Qur’an: "Say: "I am but a man like yourselves, (but) the inspiration has come to me, that your God is One God." (18, 110).

Nonetheless Muhammad is special and is sometimes called insan al-kamil, the Perfect man -- much as Christians think of Jesus in his humanity as the perfect human being. He is regarded as the Exemplar and first living commentary on the meaning of the Qur’an and how to apply it to daily life. He had a particular intensity of communion with God. Countless stories, hadith, were told about him and his sayings and actions inform the mind of the Muslim.

Constance Padwick who made a careful study of Muslim Prayer Manuals that were in common use, wrote, "No one can estimate the power of Islam as a religion who does not take into account the love at the heart of it for this figure. It is here that human emotion, repressed at some points by the austerity of the doctrine of God as developed in theology, has its full outlet -- a warm human emotion which the peasant can share with the mystic. The love of this figure is perhaps the strongest binding force in a religion which has so marked a binding power."

The scholar and active inter-faith worker Irfan Ahmad Khan explains the ‘unique status’ of the Prophet. ‘Being a human, the Prophet shares all those limitations which human beings necessarily have and from which God alone is free. However, in the following sense the Prophet is infallible;

"As the Prophet explains the Divine Book to his people and works for the fulfillment of its practical demands, God watches and whenever needed He intervenes (58, 1-4; 80, 1-10). Subsequently, what is conveyed to the people is free of any mistake."

With the Prophet’s death, revelation came to an end. No one inherited Muhammad’s infallibility as the mouthpiece of God. Irfan Ahmad Khan makes entirely clear that "it is a very serious mistake to consider the Qur’an which is Revealed Guidance in Divine Words as the Prophet’s words." Great attention is paid to the sayings of the Prophet but they do not have the same authority as the Divinely revealed message of the Qur’an. It is interesting that St. Paul in writing about marriage distinguishes between the command of the Lord and his own instruction. He writes to the Corinthians: "To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord) . . . To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord)’ (I Corinthians 7, 10 and 12). Later in the chapter Paul writes, "Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgement as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy."

Great authority, therefore, attaches to the sayings of Muhammad, but as Dr Irfan Ahmad Khan makes clear, Muhammad’s directions are not independent of the Book, but its interpretation and amplification. For example, whatever the Prophet says about Ramadan should be seen as explaining the Qur’anic instruction given it: "so whosoever observes the month, should fast during it." (2, 183ff).

It is not, however, just a question of authority, but of deep devotion. Constance Padwick in her book Muslim Devotions quotes one of the prayers that a Muslim pilgrim might say standing before the Tomb of the Prophet at Madina: "I bear witness that you are the apostle of God. You have conveyed the message. You have fulfilled the trust. You have counseled the community and enlightened the gloom and shed glory on the darkness, and uttered words of wisdom." Ezedine Guellouz’s account of his pilgrimage to the Prophet’s tomb is simpler, but just as moving. After praying in the Prophet’s Garden, he writes, "then we resume our progress (from East to West) towards the room where the Prophet’s tomb is. A simple greeting. "Peace be upon you, O Prophet", and the mercy and blessing of God!" Nothing more than one might say to a friend. One is advised not to raise one’s voice, not to bow, not to make any gesture of greeting towards the screen, nor towards the grille, still less to kiss them, or to pray in their direction. All the religious books stress these points. On the other hand, there is no reason why one should not pray God to bless Muhammad and to reward him for all that he did in the service of God and for the salvation of Mankind. "We can also convey to the Prophet the greetings of those who have asked us to do so. . ."

Every Muslim longs to hear, at death, the words:

(To the righteous soul Will be said:) "O (thou) soul, In (complete) rest And satisfaction! Come back thou to thy Lord.

Well pleased (thyself) And well-pleasing Unto Him!

Enter thou, then, Among my Devotees! Yea, enter thou My Heaven. (89, 26-30).

Constance Padwick remarks that Islam has to be ever on its guard against what may be a tacit, though never explicit, deifying of the Prophet. Perhaps the devotion offered by some Christians to the Blessed Virgin Mary may be a parallel. The theological question about when veneration becomes worship need not detain us. The important point here is for Christians to be aware of the deep love that faithful Muslims have for the Prophet "Peace be upon him." Christians need to learn more about Muhammad so as to dispel inherited and lingering prejudice.

Initially Muhammad put up with great courage with the abuse and persecution heaped upon him. Even when odiously reviled he did not answer back. Once when he was in prostration in the courtyard of the Ka’aba, some one placed the entrails of a camel over his shoulders, but he continued in his prayers until his daughter came and removed them so that he could get up. He remained constant in his faith during long years of frustration. Although regular prayer and an annual fast is required of Muslims, the Qur’an says:

So woe to the worshippers who are neglectful of their Prayers. Those who (want but) to be seen, but refuse (to supply) (Even) neighborly needs. (107, 4-7).

Muhammad said, "He who does not give up uttering falsehood and misconduct abstains in vain from food and drink during the fast, as Allah does not require merely physical compliance from him". Although the Prophet stressed the importance of fasting, he equally insisted on the need to break the fast. Islam is not an ascetic religion. Muhammad said to Uthman ibn Maz’un who was ascetic by nature and who asked permission to make himself a eunuch and to spend the rest of his life as a wandering beggar, "Hast thou not in me a fair example? And I go into women, and I eat meat, and I fast, and I break my fast. He is not of my people who maketh men eunuchs or maketh himself a eunuch." Thinking that Uthman had not fully understood what he meant, he told him that he should not fast every day, "hath its rights, and thy family have their rights. So pray, and sleep, and fast, and break fast."

The Qur’an stresses the importance of giving thanks to God for the gifts of life, for the rich provision of nature,(6, 98-99) for blessings of life, such as hearing and sight and sleep:

And among His Signs
Is the sleep that ye take
By night and by day.’ (30, 23).
The Qur’an also speaks of the joy of marriage as a sign of God’s mercy.
And among His Signs
Is this, that he created
For you mates from among
Yourselves, that ye may
Dwell in tranquillity with them,
And He has put love
And mercy between your (hearts):
Verily in that are Signs
For those who reflect. (30, 21)

Muhammad himself was a man of deep prayer and besides the five required times of prayer would spend much other time in prayer. He was also a person of great compassion. There are many stories of his kindness to animals. I like the one of the occasion when he came into a house and put down his cloak. Whilst he was talking, a mother cat and her kittens settled on the cloak. Rather than disturb the cats, Muhammad took a knife and cut round them leaving the cats part of his cloak.

His compassion was shown too in his treatment of his enemies. After the capture of Mecca, Muhammad sent for the leaders of the Qurish. They appealed for mercy and the Holy Prophet responded in words similar to those used by Joseph to his brothers:

"This day
Let no reproach be (cast)
On you: Allah will forgive you,
And He is the Most Merciful. (12, 92).
Of those who show mercy!"

Despite all the scorn and hatred, the hardship and suffering, in the moment of victory Muhammad granted a general amnesty and chose the way of reconciliation. Prophet showed great skill in diplomacy and his truthfulness was recognized.

As this prayer shows, Muhammad united in himself love for God and love for other people:

O Lord, grant us to love You;
grant that we may love those that love You;
grant that we may do the deeds that win Your love.
Make the love of You to be dearer to us than ourselves,
than our families, than wealth, and even than cool water.

W. Montgomery Watt spoke of Muhammad’s three great gifts. First, his gift as a seer or prophet; secondly, his wisdom as a statesman and thirdly his skill and tact as an administrator. The more I read of his life, the more my respect for Muhammad grows.

When A’ishah, his favorite wife, was asked what sort of character the Prophet possessed, she answered, "Have you not read the Qur’an? . . .Truly the character of the Prophet was the Qur’an."

Thomas Jefferson: The Pirate War: To The Shores Of Tripoli

Monday, Jul. 05, 2004

By Christopher Hitchens

Within days of his March 1801 inauguration as the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson ordered a naval and military expedition to North Africa, without the authorization of Congress, to put down regimes involved in slavery and piracy. The war was the first in which the U.S. flag was carried and planted overseas; it saw the baptism by fire of the U.S. Marine Corps--whose anthem boasts of action on "the shores of Tripoli"--and it prefigured later struggles with both terrorism and jihad.

The Barbary States of North Africa--Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli (today's Libya)--had for centuries sustained themselves by preying on the maritime commerce of others. Income was raised by direct theft, the extortion of bribes or "protection" and the capture of crews and passengers to be used as slaves. The historian Robert Davis, in his book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800, estimates that as many as 1.25 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved. The Barbary raiders--so called because they were partly of Berber origin--struck as far north as England and Ireland. It appears, for example, that almost every inhabitant of the Irish village of Baltimore was carried off in 1631. Samuel Pepys and Daniel Defoe both mention the frightening trade in their writings; at that time, pamphlets and speeches by survivors and escaped slaves had a huge influence on the popular imagination. James Thomson's famously rousing 1740 song Rule Britannia, with its chorus about how Britons "never shall be slaves," was a direct allusion to the Barbary terrorism.

Jefferson was appalled by this practice from an early stage of his career. In 1784 he wrote to James Madison about the Barbary depredations, saying, "We ought to begin a naval power, if we mean to carry on our commerce. Can we begin it on a more honorable occasion or with a weaker foe?" He added that John Paul Jones, the naval hero of the Revolutionary War, "with half a dozen frigates" could subdue the slave kingdoms of North Africa.

The year 1784 saw the American brig Betsey, with her crew of 10, captured by a Moroccan corsair while sailing with a cargo of salt from Spain to Philadelphia. Soon after, Algerian pirates grabbed the Dauphin and the Maria on the high seas of the Atlantic and took their crews captive. The situation was becoming worse because the British fleet had withdrawn protection of American vessels after the former colony declared its independence, and the U.S. had no navy of its own. Secretary of State John Jay decided to do what the European powers did and pay tribute to the Barbary sultans in exchange for safe passage as well as for the return of captured American slaves.

America's two main diplomats at the time were John Adams in London and Jefferson in Paris. Together they called upon Ambassador Abdrahaman, the envoy of Tripoli in London, in March 1786. This dignitary mentioned a tariff of three payments--for the ransom of slaves and hostages, for cheap terms of temporary peace and for more costly terms of "perpetual peace." He did not forget to add his own commission as a percentage. Adams and Jefferson asked to know by what right he was exacting these levies. The U.S. had never menaced or quarreled with any of the Muslim powers. As Jefferson later reported to the State Department and Congress, "The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners."

Jefferson's recommendation was that the Administration refuse any payment of tribute and prepare at once to outfit a naval squadron to visit the Mediterranean in strength. Ultimately, he proposed, America should arrange for an international concert of powers composed of all those nations whose shipping and citizens were preyed upon. "Justice and Honor favor this course," he wrote, adding that it would also save money in the long run.

Adams agreed with the sentiment but did not think the recommendation was feasible. Congress at that time was in no mood to spend money for a fleet. Jefferson, however, never let the subject drop. In 1787 he approached Jones, who was down on his luck in Paris, out of work and having woman troubles as usual. Would Jones be interested in a job offer from Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, who Jefferson happened to know was looking for an admiral? That admiral's task would be to clear out the Turkish fleet from the Black Sea, on Russia's southern border.

Why would Jefferson want to act as recruiter for a European monarch? First, because he wanted to keep Jones employed and give him the type of combat experience that would befit the potential chief naval commander of the United States. Second, because three of the four Barbary States--Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis--were part of the Turkish, or Ottoman, Empire. Britain, which rather encouraged the Barbary powers to attack American ships, used Turkey as a counterweight in its war against Catholic powers on mainland Europe. Why shouldn't the U.S. reply in kind by discreetly helping Russia make life hard for the Turks?

Jones set off for St. Petersburg in May 1788, presented the Empress with a copy of the new U.S. Constitution, took command in the Black Sea and inflicted some hard blows on the Turkish fleet. He proposed going to the source by leading a Russian fleet into the Mediterranean, where it could interrupt Ottoman shipping between Constantinople and Egypt. For all this activity on the "infidel" side, Jones was rewarded by having a price put on his head by the ruler of Algiers. Meanwhile, however, he fell from favor at Empress Catherine's court and began to lose his health. Jefferson did not know this and had since become Secretary of State. In this capacity, he persuaded President George Washington to commission Jones to lead a delegation to Algiers, empowering him to give an ultimatum to the ruler. The package containing the commission and the instructions arrived in Paris only days after Jones had died there, in July 1792, from jaundice, nephritis and pneumonia. But Jefferson was still not discouraged.

The next year, 1793, saw Jefferson's retirement as Secretary of State and his withdrawal to Monticello. Like many of his temporary "resignations," this one was well timed. It meant that he did not have to express an opinion in the congressional debates on the military budget. Many of his Republican colleagues opposed the expense, as well as the principle, of having a permanent army and navy. The Federalist supporters of Adams, furthermore, desired a larger military budget in order to conduct hostilities against revolutionary France, a regime for which Jefferson felt sympathy. But by staying out of the political battle and biding his time, Jefferson ensured that when the hour struck for his own project, he could call on a fleet that Adams had built for him. In 1794, partly moved by the letters from American sailors held in Barbary dungeons and slave pens, Congress authorized the building of six frigates, three of which--the Constitution, the United States and the Constellation--were already completed. In July 1798 funds were approved for a Marine Corps as well.

Jefferson became President in early 1801, shortly after Yusuf Karamanli, the ruler of Tripoli, unwisely issued an ultimatum to the U.S.: If it did not pay him fresh tribute, he threatened, he would declare war on America. The new Commander in Chief coolly decided to let the ultimatum expire and take the declaration of war at face value. He summoned his new Cabinet, which approved the dispatch of a naval squadron and decided not to bother Congress--which was then in recess--with the information. He did not, in fact, tell the elected representatives of his plans until the fleet was on the high seas and too far away to be recalled.

Over the next four years, in what Jefferson laconically described as a "cruise," the new American Navy bombarded the harbors of Algiers, Morocco and Tunisor threatened them with bombardment--until the states gradually agreed to cease cooperating with Karamanli. The Tripoli government, however, remained defiant and even succeeded in boarding and capturing the Philadelphia in 1803. That led directly to an episode that, as Henry Adams records in his history of the two Jefferson administrations, used to be known to every American schoolboy. In February 1804, Captain Stephen Decatur Jr. sailed straight into Tripoli harbor and set on fire the captured Philadelphia. In August 1804 he helped rescue its crew from a gruesome imprisonment, bombarded the fortified town and boarded the pasha's own fleet where it lay at anchor. In the ensuing hand-to-hand combat, Decatur is said by legend--and by some eyewitnesses--to have slain the very officer who, some hours before, had killed his brother, Lieut. James Decatur.

This rescue was inspiring news for the folks back home and other captives and slaves in North African hands, but the event was almost eclipsed by another daring raid the following year. In April 1805, Captain William Eaton put together a mixed force of Arab rebels and mercenaries and American Marines, and in a maneuver that has since been compared to that of the charismatic T.E. Lawrence, led a desert march from inland that took Tripoli's second city, Derna, by surprise. Lieut. Presley O'Bannon of the Marine Corps hoisted the Stars and Stripes over the captured town, and the Marine anthem preserves his gesture to this day.

That did not bring the conflict to a complete close, but it signaled the beginning of the end. Over the next few years, all four of the Barbary States signed treaties with America renouncing piracy, kidnapping and blackmail. Algiers had to be bombarded a few more times, and there was an awkward moment during negotiations in Washington when the Tunisian representative, Sidi Soliman Melli Melli, made it clear that he expected to be amused at public expense by some ladies of the night. (Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison were able to arrange an off-the-record State Department budget for that purpose, thus demonstrating that they understood the facts of life.)

Taken together with some of Jefferson's other ambitious and quasi-constitutional moves--the Louisiana Purchase and the sending of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the West--the Barbary war exposed him to some Federalist and newspaper criticism for his secrecy, high-handedness and overly "presidential" style. But there was no arguing with success, and some historians believe that just as Jefferson was able to make use of Adams' Navy, so Madison, when he became President, was able to deploy Decatur's Navy, battle hardened and skillful, in the sterner combat of the War of 1812. Those who like to look for lessons for today might care to note that Jefferson did not act unilaterally until he was satisfied that European powers would not join his coalition and that he did not seek to impose a regime change or an occupation of the Barbary States. And those who ponder the ethics of history might take a crumb of comfort from the fact that though he could not bring himself to abolish slavery in the U.S. and even supported its retention in Haiti, Thomas Jefferson at least managed to destroy it somewhere.

• 

• Find this article at:
• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,994562,00.html

1500-year-old gospel kept in Ankara excites Vatican, report claims

The Vatican has requested that Turkey allow it to examine a 1500-year-old copy of an apocryphal gospel that was discovered by Turkish police during an anti-smuggling operation in 2000 and handed over to the Ankara Ethnography Museum, the Turkish Bugün daily reported on Thursday.

The daily said the document is reportedly written in Aramaic, the language Jesus is thought to have spoken, and is said to be worth TL 40 million. According to the report, the document was seized from a gang smuggling artifacts during a police operation in southern Turkey in 2010 and reportedly preserves its originality and many traces of the period it's from.

The gang was reportedly convicted of smuggling various items seized during the operation, including the text, and all the artifacts were kept in a safe in the Ankara Courthouse. The document, which was reportedly kept in the courthouse for years, was only recently handed over to the care of Ankara Ethnography Museum.

The leather-bound text is written on leather sheets and is now under protection as it is regarded as a valuable cultural asset. Even a Xerox copy of pages from the book is reported to be worth as much as TL 3-4 million.

Another Turkish daily, the Star, has claimed that it may be a copy of the much-debated Gospel of Barnabas, which Muslims claim is an original gospel that was later suppressed. The oldest existent copies of this gospel date back to the 16th century and are written in Italian and Spanish. However, the Gospel of Barnabas is not included in the four gospels that currently comprise the canonical New Testament -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The Gospel of Barnabas contradicts the canonical New Testament account of Jesus and his ministry, but has strong parallels with the Islamic view of Jesus. Much of its content and themes parallel Islamic ideas and it includes a prediction by Jesus of the Prophet Muhammad coming to earth.