By Xavier Piedra & Amanda Luz Henning Santiago2018-11-25 15:00:00 UTC

Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir – At least nine people have been killed in violence in India-administered Kashmir, capping off one of this year’s deadliest weeks in the disputed region already suffering its worst bloodshed in a decade.

At least six rebels were killed in an early morning gun battle with security forces on Sunday in Kapran village of Shopian district in southern Kashmir. The fighting later sparked clashes in the volatile district between locals and police, during which a 15-year-old civilian was killed by security forces, according to residents.

A senior police official told Al Jazeera that an army officer, who was wounded in the encounter with rebels, later succumbed to his wounds.

In a separate incident, a foreign rebel was killed in fighting in Awantipora district, taking the total death toll to nine.

“The six killed rebels were wanted in various cases and belonged to a combined group of Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They included three rebel commanders,” the official said, adding that two more Indian soldiers suffered wounds.

Late night operation

Authorities said the operation was launched after receiving information on Saturday night about the presence of rebels in the house of a farmer in Kapran village.

“Multiple cordons were laid. The five rebels were locals and one was a foreigner,” the police official said.

Residents said the house was blasted during the gun battle, which was the second such operation launched by the security forces in the past three days.

As news about the killing of rebels spread, hundreds of civilians took to the streets, raising anti-India slogans and marching towards the house, resulting in clashes with the security forces.

Residents said a local teenager, Numan Ashraf, was shot dead by the forces in the clashes. Several others were wounded.

“Twenty people suffered pellet-gun injuries, four of them in their eyes. Four suffered bullet wounds. Even an 18-month-old girl was hit with pellets in her eye and face, but is in a stable condition,” a doctor in Shopian, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera.

As tension grew, authorities suspended internet services in the district to stop the protests from spreading further, officials said.

Meanwhile, separatist groups in Kashmir, who demand an independent state or merger with Pakistan, have called for a shutdown and protests on Monday against the latest killings.

Residents in south Kashmir often come out in the hundreds during an operation by the security forces, helping the rebels to escape.

Still, 16 rebels have been killed in three such operations since Tuesday. Though wary of “routine gunfights”, residents in south Kashmir continue to back the armed rebels.

“They might call them terrorists, but they are our children fighting injustice. That thousands of people come out and face bullets to save these fighters should act as an eye opener for India,” 45-year-old Gulshan Nazir told Al Jazeera.

“This injustice and oppression does not differentiate between a civilian and a rebel. They did not even spare a child, who was hit with pellets. Was she pelting stones as well,” she asked.

Bloodiest year since 2009

India-administered Kashmir has witnessed a spike in violence since the killing of a popular rebel commander in 2016. 

Kashmir-based rights group Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) said 528 people have been killed this year in armed conflicts in the disputed Himalayan territory, including 145 civilians.

The report on Saturday added that at least 234 rebels and 142 Indian security personnel have also been killed so far this year.

JKCCS coordinator Khurram Parvez said it was the “bloodiest year since 2009” and blamed it on the “political weakness” of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s main ruling party.

“Federal elections are set to take place in India in a few months and the BJP government is selling the body bags of Kashmiris to gain votes,” he told Al Jazeera.

“They want to show their might to cover up for their failures in the government.”

An Israeli technology firm specialising in cyber intelligence offered Saudi Arabia a highly advanced system that hacks into mobile phones, months before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched a mass purge, according to Haaretz.

The Israeli daily reported on Sunday that representatives from NSO Group Technologies held negotiations with Saudi officials in Austria capital Vienna in June 2017.

The officials were identified as Abdullah al-Malihi, a close aide to Prince Turki al-Faisal – a senior member of the royal family and a former Saudi intelligence chief – and Nasser al-Qahtani, who presented himself as the deputy of the current intelligence chief.

At the time, NSO was avidly promoting its Pegasus 3 software, an “espionage tool so sophisticated that it does not depend on the victim clicking on a link before the phone is breached”, Haaretz reported.

According to the publication, this was not the first meeting between the two sides as they had previously held talks in Cyprus via mediators.

NSO was quoted as saying it acted according to the law and “its products are used in the fight against crime and terror”.

There was no immediate comment from the Saudi authorities.

Saudi purge

Last month, Edward Snowden, who uncovered the classified surveillance programme of the United States’ National Security Agency, claimed that Pegasus had been used by the Saudi authorities to surveil journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Riyadh, after initial denials, has admitted Khashoggi – a Washington Post columnist critical of Prince Mohammed – was killed inside its consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul on October 2.

“They are the worst of the worst,” Snowden said of NSO, whose people he accused of aiding and abetting human rights violations.

The Israeli daily also reported that the system was used to surveil Saudi dissidents living abroad in recent months. 

Last year, Saudi security forces arrested hundreds of the richest people in the country, allegedly in an effort to tackle corruption among the higher echelons of the kingdom’s bureaucracy.

Those arrested were locked up for weeks in the luxurious Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, where some were reportedly physically mistreated.

Experts have suggested that the crown prince used the purge to remove people that could potentially pose a political threat to him.

A leader in the National Liberation Front (NLF), an umbrella organisation of Turkey-backed rebels that includes the Free Syrian Army, has dismissed accusations they used poisonous gas to attack government-held Aleppo city.

The head of the NLF’s legislative office, Omar Huthayfa, told Al Jazeera the coalition does not possess poisonous gas, and said the government is attempting to frame them.

“I believe that this is an act carried out by the government. We’ve seen it in Ghouta and in Khan Sheikhoun in the past, and the international community remained silent,” Huthayfa told Al Jazeera.

“This is why the government has the audacity to continue accusing the opposition of carrying out such attacks when it knows that the opposition doesn’t possess even light weaponry for self-defence.”

His remarks came shortly after Russia – a key Damascus ally – and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government accused opposition fighters of launching chlorine gas attacks on Saturday night.

State news agency SANA reported “107 cases of breathing difficulties” in an updated toll on Sunday.

“We can not know the kinds of gases but we suspected chlorine and treated patients on this basis because of the symptoms,” Zaher Batal, the head of the Aleppo Doctors Syndicate, told Reuters News Agency.

Batal said symptoms included difficulty breathing, eye inflammation, shivering and fainting. Hospitals had discharged many patients.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify whether an attack took place.

Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement earlier on Sunday the attack had been launched from an area in Idlib’s de-escalation zone controlled by Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate that currently controls more than half of Idlib province.

“According to our preliminary information, confirmed in particular by symptoms of poisoning among the victims, the shells used to bombard residential areas of Aleppo were filled with chlorine [gas],” Russian Major-General Igor Konashenkov said.

Moscow said it would speak with Turkey as an opposition backer about the incident.  the statement added.

For the past two months, the situation in the northwestern region of Syria has remained relatively calm.

In September, the leaders of Russia and Turkey signed a deal to establish a 15-20km de-militarised zone in Idlib, in a move that has put on hold a threatened all-out assault by the government on Syria’s last rebel-held stronghold.

As part of the deal, the NLF agreed to clear its heavy weaponry from the zone, which is meant to stretch from neighbouring Latakia’s northern suburbs all the way to the outskirts of Aleppo’s northwestern region.

But disarming the zone is only one aspect of the agreement, which also required the withdrawal of all so-called “radical” fighters from the area, including HTS.

According to Huthayfa, the latest claim made by the government may pave the way for a potential assault on Idlib.

Glasgow, Scotland – When abolitionist Frederick Douglass arrived in Scotland on a speaking tour in 1846 from the United States, 13 years had passed since Britain enacted the Slavery Abolition Act.

Colonial slaves had gradually been freed and Britain’s slaveowners were financially compensated for their loss of “property”.

Douglass’s 19-month visit to Britain and Ireland began in 1845; seven years earlier he had fled slavery himself from the US’ slave-owning South for the free North.

“One of the things about his travels in Scotland was his Scottish surname,” said Alasdair Pettinger, author of the forthcoming book, Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846: Living an Antislavery Life. “He picked up the fact that Douglas [or Douglass] was a name that resonates in Scottish history.”

Douglass often connected with Scottish audiences by referring to the “Black Douglas” – a staunch ally of legendary 14th century Scottish king, Robert the Bruce.

“When he addressed audiences, he quite enjoyed the fact that he could make a connection to the ‘Black Douglas’, which, being black himself, was quite an opportune connection,” said Pettinger.

In fact, his name had its own Scottish connection. 

He was born around 1818 as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. By the time he arrived in Massachusetts as a fugitive, he needed a new name. Nathan Johnson, a free person of colour who gave him shelter, had been reading a narrative poem by the Scottish author Walter Scott – The Lady of the Lake, which had a character named James Douglas.

Some spectators were also just curious about seeing a black man on stage at a time when blackface minstrel shows were all the rage.

Alasdair Pettinger, author

According to several accounts, Douglass impressed Scottish audiences with powerful speeches opposing slavery in the US, which had yet to end the practice.

He worked as Scotland’s anti-slavery agent from an address in Edinburgh, where there is now a commemorative plaque in his honour, and toured the country’s cities and towns – including Glasgow, Paisley, Dundee and Perth – between January and October 1846.

Delighting in the warm Scottish welcome, he described a “conglomeration of architectural beauties” in Edinburgh, and even contemplated settling in the capital with his family.

He demonstrated his literary knowledge of Scotland by visiting the birthplace of Robert Burns.

According to Pettinger, the first book Douglass bought after escaping from slavery was an edition of Burns, and he was known to quote the 18th-century Romantic poet as another way of engaging with Scottish audiences.

Douglass, who would go on to become close to US President Abraham Lincoln, arrived amid controversy over the separation of the Free Church from the Church of Scotland.

The Free Church required funds, which saw it accept donations from pro-slavery churches in the US.

Douglass latched on to the issue and denounced the Free Church by repeatedly calling to “send back the money” on his tour.

At Edinburgh’s Music Hall, 2,000 people attended his talk. 

Some spectators were also “just curious about seeing a black man on stage”, said Pettinger, “at a time when blackface minstrel shows were all the rage”.

Newspaper adverts for Douglass’ lectures were sometimes placed next to adverts for these shows, Pettinger explained. 

“And I think it’s fair to say that these racist entertainments shaped people’s expectations of him, even if his brilliant performances destroyed those preconceptions.”

Scotland’s slave trade legacy

Scotland’s association with slavery does not begin or end with Douglass.

Since 2007, 200 years after the UK Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1807), which prohibited the trade in Britain’s colonies, campaigners, historians and experts have been attempting to highlight Scotland’s role in the transatlantic slave industry.

After the 1707 Act of Union, which saw Scotland and England unite to form Great Britain, Scots swiftly took advantage of the new markets that opened up to them. 

When Scotland gave up its sovereignty in 1707, it had four universities to England’s two. Soon, this highly literate and mobilised population eyed opportunities further afield and, as the slave trade gathered pace, so too did the Scottish appetite for making money off the back of human misery.

Scottish merchants and doctors often staffed Africa-bound British slave ships that took enslaved African people and transported them to colonies in the Caribbean. 

By around 1800, a staggering 30 percent of slave plantations in Jamaica, where there are still Scottish surnames and place names, were owned by Scots.

As Scotland’s Tobacco Lords reaped great wealth from their investments, Glasgow boomed. 

But experts and observers say there is collective public amnesia over Scotland’s role in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

“Scottish ports themselves did relatively few recorded slave journeys directly of buying and selling slaves – there are only 35 or so recorded journeys. There may have been more, but in terms of the shipping records that’s all we have,” said Graham Campbell, a Glasgow councillor for the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP). “Whereas [the English ports] of Bristol, London and Liverpool did thousands of journeys.”

Campbell, who is of Jamaican descent and whose great-grandfather was a Scotsman who owned a slave plantation in the Caribbean nation, said there was a history of denying the Scottish role.

On the 50th anniversary of the 1833 abolition of slavery, for example, the Glasgow West India Association announced: “It is to Glasgow’s lasting honour that while Bristol and Liverpool (English cities) were up to their elbows in the slave trade, Glasgow kept out of it … It was at Liverpool that there was not a stone in her streets that was not cemented with the blood of a slave.”

But today, in Glasgow, street names mark the city’s merchants who amassed extraordinary wealth from the transatlantic slave trade, like Glassford Street, named after Scottish Tobacco Lord, John Glassford. 

Other connections include Jamaica Street, named after the island where slave plantations saw the city’s industrialists grow fat on the proceeds of sugar and rum. 

The city’s ancient and illustrious University of Glasgow prospered, too, from slavery-associated wealth, which it has acknowledged. And in Edinburgh, Henry Dundas, a prominent Scottish politician who infamously delayed Britain’s abolition of slavery by 15 years, is immortalised by a statue in the capital.

Lisa Williams runs the Black History Walking Tours of Edinburgh which explore the capital’s links to slavery.

“I’ve had people quite shocked on the tour,” Williams, who is of Caribbean descent, to Al Jazeera. “I’ve had people coming up to me saying, ‘I’m from Edinburgh, I went to university here, and I didn’t know a lot the information that was given to me,’ but it’s right under our noses.”

There are plans for Scotland to face up to its past, following on from the 2007 opening of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool. Zandra Yeaman, communities and campaigns officer for Scotland’s Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER), told Al Jazeera that Scotland will have a museum of empire, slavery, colonialism and migration in the next 10 years.

As for Douglass, he visited Scotland again between 1859 and 1860.

After his first tour, he arrived back in the US in 1847 a free man, after supporters in England made provisions to buy his liberty.

“Part of the significance of the commemoration plaque to him is evidence of a recognition of his activities here,” said Pettinger, the author. “It’s another step to making Scots aware of this figure who was important to Scotland as Scotland was important to him.”

Follow Alasdair Soussi on Twitter: @AlasdairSoussi

The blockade against Qatar is being played out at banks in the UAE which have Qatari shareholders, weighing on their business and raising questions about their future.

Some banks and other businesses had been warned by the UAE government against entering into deals with Qatari companies, since the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt began a boycott of Qatar in June 2017, sources including a senior UAE banker and a UAE business official told Reuters news agency.

As a result, some UAE companies and banks have shied away from business with United Arab Bank (UAB), Commercial Bank International and Al Khaliji France, sources said.

Qatari nationals face UAE travel restrictions, making it hard for them to manage their investments in the emirates.

On June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia – alongside fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries Bahrain and the UAE, as well as Egypt – imposed a sea, air and land blockade on Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism and destabilising the region, allegations Doha has consistently denied.

Among its list of demands for the resolution of the crisis, the blockading quartet asked that Al Jazeera media network and a Turkish military base be shut down.

Since the boycott of Qatar, commercial ties have been scaled back and some UAE banks pulled deposits and loans from their Qatari counterparts, while Qatar’s Doha Bank, is cutting its exposure to the UAE via asset swaps with UAE banks.

But Qataris, previously big investors in UAE real estate and other industries, are still the largest shareholders in UAB, 40 percent owned by Commercial Bank, and CBI, 40 percent held by Qatar National Bank (QNB).

UAB and CBI are the only banks of the 15 largest listed lenders in the UAE to experience a fall in assets, customer deposits and loans since the start of the crisis.

“CBI and UAB both previously benefited from their respective ownership by Qatari banks, and now this benefit is far less obvious,” Redmond Ramsdale at Fitch Ratings said.

Al Khaliji France, which operates in France and UAE and is wholly owned by Qatar’s Al Khalij Commercial Bank, has seen a drop off in demand among its Qatari clients and has not grown its balance sheet, a source familiar with the matter said.

Unlisted Al Khaliji France’s latest full year financial disclosures shows its assets, customer deposits and loans and advances fell between 2016 and 2017.

UAB and CBI have been cleaning up their balance sheets since before the regional dispute began, after a build up of bad debt, mainly from SME customers hit by a soft economy.

“CBI has been reducing the unsecured lending portfolio in its retail banking business,” a bank spokesperson said, adding that with lower funding needs it had also reduced its deposits.

UAB, Al Khalij and the UAE Central Bank did not respond to requests for comment.

Disputed deposits

A UAE business official, who declined to be named, said at least one UAE bank with a Qatari shareholder had seen a withdrawal in some government-linked deposits.

However, sources close to the banks said they had not seen any significant outflow in government-linked deposits, adding that they had never been large in any case.

UAB and CBI have had to diversify their funding sources since the dispute as some Abu Dhabi banks are wary about engaging with them, two sources said.

While Qatari banks Commercial Bank and Al Khalij have both attempted to exit their holdings in the UAE banks, partly as a result of the row, sale talks also failed in part because of the dispute.

Commercial Bank said in June it had ended talks with UAE-based Tabarak Investment to buy its UAB stake, with a source close to the talks saying Tabarak was unable to secure funding.

And Al Khalij said in September that it had dropped the sale of Al Khaliji France.

A source familiar with both sales processes said some of the offers received by both banks were below market value “seeking to take advantage of the political situation”.

QNB has previously ruled out any sale of its stake in CBI.