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June 2017

Trump and His Generals Trump’s reliance on his generals shows that he values merit over politics. By Victor Davis Hanson

Donald Trump earned respect from the Washington establishment for appointing three of the nation’s most accomplished generals to direct his national-security policy: James Mattis (secretary of defense), H. R. McMaster (national-security adviser), and John Kelly (secretary of homeland security).

In the first five months of the Trump administration, the three generals — along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil CEO — have already recalibrated America’s defenses.

At home, illegal immigration is down by some 70 percent. Abroad, a new policy of principled realism seeks to reestablish deterrence through credible threats of retaliation. The generals are repairing old friendships with allies and neutrals while warning traditional enemies not to press their luck.

Trump has turned over most of the details of military operations to his generals. According to his critics, Trump is improperly outsourcing to his generals both strategic decision-making and its tactical implementation.

But is Trump really doing that?

In his campaign, Trump vowed to avoid new ground wars while not losing those he inherited. He pledged to wipe out ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism without invading Middle Eastern countries to turn them into democracies.

Those are wide but nonetheless unmistakable parameters.

Within them, the U.S. military can drop a huge bomb on the Taliban, strike the chemical weapons depots of Syria’s Bashar Assad, or choose the sort of ships it will use to deter North Korean aggression — without Trump poring over a map, or hectoring Mattis or McMaster about what particular move is politically appropriate or might poll well.

Other presidents have done the same.

A wartime President Lincoln — up for reelection in 1864 — wanted the tottering Confederacy invaded and humiliated. But he had no idea that General William Tecumseh Sherman would interpret that vague wish as nearly destroying Atlanta, and then cutting his supply lines to march across Georgia to the sea at Savannah.

When Sherman pulled off the March to the Sea, Lincoln confessed that he had been wrongly skeptical of, totally surprised, and utterly delighted with Sherman’s victories. He then left it to Sherman and General Ulysses S. Grant to plan the final campaign of the war.

You Can’t be Pro-Palestinian and a Feminist You can either be a feminist. Or you can believe women should marry their rapists. Daniel Greenfield

64% of “Palestinian” men say that women who dress provocatively deserve to be sexually harassed. 52% believe that women who are in public places at night are asking to be harassed.

57% think that a woman should marry her rapist and 47% believe that women who are honor killed for bringing “shame” to their families usually did something to deserve it.

A third of “Palestinian” men say that women who don’t wear hijabs deserve to be insulted.

And the women aren’t much better.

More “Palestinian” women than men justify sexual harassment in public places. 54% believe that a woman who was raped should marry her rapist. 41% don’t think he should be prosecuted.

43% of “Palestinian” women agree that women who are out in public at night deserve to be harassed.

Half the population knew of an honor killing that had taken place in their community in the previous year.

These are the results of a U.N. Women study which finds horrifying attitudes and behaviors toward women in the Muslim world. And which, in true U.N. fashion, attempts to blame it on Israel.

This is the “feminist” reality in the Muslim settlements in the parts of Israel occupied by the rival Islamic warlords of Hamas and Fatah. Both had their roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is a direct link to the Islamist organization. Arafat had first invaded Israel with a Muslim Brotherhood force. He encountered two key Fatah co-founders, Abu Jihad and Abu Iyad, with the Brotherhood.

Hamas gets its backing from the Islamist terror states of Iran, Turkey and Qatar. Fatah’s Palestinian Authority is funded by Western countries. And so it has to be more circumspect. But, like ISIS, the “Palestinian” colonies are efforts to build Islamic states inside Israel. Both declare that their legal systems are based on Islamic sharia law. Their roots are in the Koran which deprives women of basic civil rights and authorizes men to rape non-Muslim women and to beat their Muslim wives.

“Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one of them to excel the other,” the Koran says. “And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them.”

Roughly a quarter of “Palestinians” have seen this Koranic dictum being put into action as their fathers or male relatives beat their mothers.

Islam declares that a woman suffers from a “deficiency in her intelligence” so that it takes two female witnesses to equal one male witness. Women in Islam are considered good for only one thing.

Tunisian Muslim Shouting “Allahu Akbar” Stabs Officer in the Neck at Michigan Airport Daniel Greenfield

This echoes similar attacks in Europe.

A police officer was stabbed in the neck at Flint’s Bishop International Airport in Michigan by Amor Ftouhi, a Tunisian Muslim who holds Canadian citizenship.

Ftouhi shouted “Allahu Akbar” repeatedly.

Ftouhi yelled “Allahu Akbar” — “Allah is the greatest” — before making the attack, according to the affidavit.

After stabbing the officer in the neck, Ftouhi continued to yell, “Allah,” several times, Sondgeroth’s statement says.

“He further exclaimed something similar to, ‘you have killed people in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and we are all going to die.’ ”

But… but the real problem is fear of being stabbed in the neck by a Muslim terrorist shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

“Murder of a U.S. Citizen” Double standards and media myths on North Korea’s “brutal and despotic” regime. Lloyd Billingsley

American student Otto Warmbier, 22, passed away in Cincinnati on Monday, only days after he returned from North Korea unable to speak, see or respond to voices. North Korea had sentenced Warmbier to 15 years hard labor based on a bogus charge.

President Trump said “It’s a total disgrace what happened to Otto and it should never ever be allowed to happen.” The American’s death also prompted outrage from a leading Democrat.

“The barbaric treatment of Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime amounts to the murder of a U.S. citizen,” California Democrat Adam Schiff told reporters. “The North Korean regime has shown once again that it is perfectly willing to treat Americans who visit their nation as hostages to extract concessions from the United States.” Schiff also echoed Republican calls for a ban on travel to North Korea because tourism “helps to fund one of the most brutal and despotic regimes in the world.”

Schiff is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and a prime mover of the charge that “President Vladimir Putin decided to become an active participant in the U.S. election and attempt to influence its result for Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton.” This sudden display of wrath against North Korea might lead some to believe that the American left has always opposed that regime with the same vigor. Such is hardly the case.

With aid from American Stalinist spies such as Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin gained the technology to build nuclear weapons. The USSR exploded its first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949 and the blast encouraged Stalin to mount a surge in his expansionist plans. He urged his North Korean ally Kim Il-Sung to attack South Korea, an ally of the United States, and on July 25, 1950, the Communist forces invaded.

According to The Hidden History of the Korean War, it was South Korea that invaded North Korea. That was the official Soviet position, and no surprise from author I.F. Stone. As John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev explain in Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, Stone was in fact a Soviet agent who took money from the KGB. He made a career of recycling Communist propaganda but “by the time he died in 1989, I.F. Stone had been installed in the pantheon of left-wing heroes as a symbol of rectitude and a teller of truth to power.”

Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs books, explains that the publishing house, “is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.” The first mentor is “I. F. Stone, proprietor of I. F. Stone’s Weekly,” a man who “combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history.”

In similar style, when he passed away, the New York Times called Stone an “independent, radical pamphleteer of American journalism.”

In Hollywood, Communist writers portrayed North Korea as a peaceful, democratic country struggling to defend itself against the evil United States. Stalinist screenwriter Lester Cole, one of Hollywood Ten, praised North Korean cinema in his 1981 memoir Hollywood Red.

Germanic Umma A Germany with a new purpose and new faith. Michael Finch

Germany will be Islamic in about two decades. The process by which this happens and the results of this transformation will be consequential beyond measure, not just for Europe, but for the world. And Germany’s acceptance of Islam as its national religion will be peaceful and seamless. In making this prediction, I am certainly not alone; many books are being written about the fall of Europe. Yet while many assume this is the “end” of Europe, that the wave of Islamic immigration and migration will cause a collapse,. I am not so certain.

Europe is not “dying.” Western Civilization as we have known it for two millenniums is dying, but Europe as a grouping of over 700 million people with technology and economies that match America and China is far from dying.

Germany, a little over 70 years after the utter destruction of the Third Reich and Hitler’s dream of ruling Europe, is now the dominant European power. The Wehrmacht may not be blitzkrieging its way through France and Poland anymore, but Germany does rule Europe. We call Europe weak, old and dying. Maybe someday, but Germany, at this point in time, is none of those things. Possessing the fourth largest economy in the world, with its exports and manufacturing, its education system and workforce, Germany’s financial might is anyone’s envy. Berlin is the de facto European capital.

But despite the past decades of progress and the build-up of technology, Western Europe is racked with guilt; a bloody century that left tens of millions of dead will do that to a continent and a civilization. WWI itself seemed to pull the cord out of what remained of Christian Europe. By the time of the Armistice, Christendom had collapsed. With the breakup of the Royal Empires came the guilt of colonialism, imperialism, and the shadow cast by the “white man’s burden” loomed large over European culture. And that is just Western Europe. What specifically of Germany?

The culture and the nation that gave the world so much wonder and beauty had been betrayed by its own hubris. The culture of Bach, Goethe, Beethoven and Schiller became the nation of Hitler and the SS and the death of over 11 million in the camps, 6 million of them Jews. The horror of Auschwitz, the vision of the camps, the death pallor will hang over Germany, and Germans, forever.

Christianity, which died on the fields of Flanders in the First War, utterly failed Germany. Yes, there were the Bonhoeffers and thousands more Christian martyrs that died in the camps at the hands of the Nazis, but on the whole, the churches, Lutheran and Catholic alike, share in the nation’s guilt. The Lutheran Church of old Prussia, in particular, acquiesced and was silent, its head bowed in forever shame.

Ramadan Jihad Comes to Wisconsin and Michigan One police officer in critical condition, two communities terrorized. Robert Spencer

Ramadan is in full swing – it doesn’t end until Saturday evening – and Britain has been a particular recipient of Islamic piety during the holy month, with major jihad attacks in Manchester and London. But now the United States has been included in the multicultural festivities, as jihadis have struck, albeit with limited results, in Wisconsin and Michigan.

A Taliban spokesmen recently said: “Our fight is Jihad and an obligatory worship. And every obligatory act of worship has 70 times more reward in Ramadan.” Not just the Taliban believe that. Another likely believer in those special Ramadan rewards is a Muslim in Milwaukee named Mohamad Hamdan.

Last Thursday, according to Fox6Now.com, Hamdan walked into the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Milwaukee and “began yelling loudly in an Arabic language,” screaming, among other things, “Muhammad,” “Allah,” and “jihad.” According to the criminal complaint against him, he suddenly put his hand into his pocket, which “caused security to fear for their immediate safety.” Hamdan had apparently imbibed well the Qur’an’s command to “strike terror in the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know whom Allah knows.” (Qur’an 8:60)

And he wasn’t finished striking terror in the enemy of Allah. Escorted out of the building by a U.S. Marshal, Hamdan resumed screaming in Arabic, and said in English: “I’m gonna kill you all. Allah. Bomb.”

This led to a massive traffic tie-up in downtown Milwaukee, as the Courthouse and several nearby buildings were evacuated and a bomb-sniffing dog called in. Nothing was found, and Hamdan was charged with making terrorist threats.

Then on the next Wednesday at Bishop International Airport in Flint, Michigan, a Muslim grabbed for his Ramadan reward by striking terror in the enemies of Allah there, screaming “Allahu akbar” and stabbing a police officer, Lt. Jeff Neville, in the neck. The attacker evidently chose his spot carefully, as the Qur’an directs Muslims: “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (47:4).

Like the U.S. Courthouse, Bishop International Airport was evacuated and the FBI called in. Tim Wiley of the FBI’s Detroit field office downplayed the attacker’s cry of “Allahu akbar,” saying: “We are aware of reports that the attacker made statements immediately prior to or while attacking the officer, but it is too early to determine the nature of these alleged statements or whether or not this was an act of terrorism. Based on the information that we have at this time, we believe this to be an isolated incident.”

That’s the last thing it was. There was nothing in the least isolated about the incidents in Michigan or Wisconsin, even if in both cases the Muslims involved were acting alone and were not in touch with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda. These “isolated incidents” all stem from the same motivating ideology and belief system. They increase in frequency during Ramadan because Ramadan is a time when Muslims are supposed to redouble their efforts to please Allah, and the Qur’an makes abundantly and repeatedly clear that jihad attacks against infidels are pleasing to Allah.

Yet as Ramadan jihad comes to Wisconsin and Michigan, the denial and willful ignorance of American authorities remains as thick as ever. Non-Muslims continue to congratulate Muslims on the occasion of Ramadan and behave as if it were wholly and solely a benign religious observance that good multiculturalists and all decent, broad-minded people should applaud.

As the death count spirals ever higher, the fatuity of this mainstream view becomes ever more apparent. But really, it has been apparent for years, although few are willing to say so publicly because of the inevitable barrage of charges that will ensue, of “racism,” “bigotry” and “Islamophobia.” As Ramadan jihad attacks become more frequent and more common inside the United States, expect the “Islamophobia” propaganda to grow ever more strident, shrill, and insistent. When you’re trying to put the Big Lie across, the only way you can overcome the hard evidence of reality is by means of constant repetition.

So in the aftermath of these jihad events in Wisconsin and Michigan, watch for new mainstream media presentations about how Muslims are victimized by Trump-supporting racist louts in…Wisconsin and Michigan.

Peter Smith :Bowing to the inevitable

Muslim immigration can’t be stopped, nor the superiority of Western cultural and social conventions actively promoted. A safe and encouraging environment can’t be offered to Muslims who wish to leave behind their intolerant creed. We are stuck, I’m afraid, with just a hope and a prayer.

We live only in a thin slice of evolving history. It is impossible in our short adult lives to know in what ‘age’ our lifetimes will be placed by future historians. Those living in the so-called Dark Ages in Europe in 600; those living in the Renaissance in 1450, or in the Enlightenment in 1750, didn’t know they were living in such defining times.

What I would like to do is to take a trip to the future and speculate on how the mullahs will describe our current age, say, from the beginning of this century to its end. The mullahs, you say? Well, yes, I’m simply going where time and tide appear to be taking us.

How about the Age of ‘…Renaissance Reversed?’ or ‘…Mohammed’s Mastery’, ‘…Sharia Supremacy’ or …Christendom Crushed? The Age of Papal Delinquency has the ring of verisimilitude to it. ‘Ottoman Mark II (bigger and better than ever before)’? These are all possibilities which might pass mullah muster.

Or maybe those in charge of such things will have a sense of humour. The Age of Useful Idiots might prompt a chuckle? The Age of Refugees are Welcome Here strikes a sense of delicious irony and might occasion a wry smile. The Age of the Great Hoax is a bit too cryptic and might be confused with global warming — which long since will have been consigned to the box of infidel tricks designed to damage Arabia.

My pick is none of the above. I suggest that the Age of the Religion of Peace has everything going for it. It carries authenticity for believers while leaving incorrigible infidels clueless and, in point of fact, headless. It marries Allah’s forgiveness with his righteous wrath. It can’t be bettered, and to think George W. Bush more or less invented the term after 9/11! The moral of that story is that killing thousands of people is no barrier to being anointed as peaceful by those desperately desperate not to offend.

The game is being lost and we don’t know it because we occupy only a thin slice of passing events. We can’t comprehend the big picture. But we are not akin to beings in a two-dimensional world for which up and down is unseeable. We can surely spot the portents of the evolving future. Here, very broadly, is what we know.

Muslim populations of Christian (Western) countries have grown sharply in recent decades and are continuing to grow disproportionately; both because of immigration and relatively high fertility rates. Christian populations of Muslim countries have declined sharply in recent decades and are continuing to decline sharply because of oppression. (There is a clue in there somewhere.) Islamism is growing in Turkey and in Muslim nations in Southeast Asia; and, in fact, wherever you look.

Muslim scripture is supremacist in its nature and demands that Muslims rid the world of other faiths and establish Dar al-Islam. Tens upon tens of thousands of resolute and devout preachers carry this message to 1.7 billion (and growing) Muslims; including to so-called ‘moderate’ ones. The spiritual counterweight is flimsy and getting flimsier.

With perhaps the possible exception of the United States, Christianity in the West is a pale imitation of its former state. Its feckless and faith-emaciated leaders proffer inter-faith dialogue to “ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15); they shouldn’t wonder at the grisly fate likely awaiting their successors. Assertive atheists show more conviction than do Christian leaders. And good luck if you expect anyone to die in a ditch for atheism.

It is one thing to spot the trend towards Islamic dominance; it is quite another to arrest it. In particular, tolerant societies in these politically correct times have no feasible way of countering intolerance when it is practised and preached by a minority religion ready to claim victimhood at the drop of a hat. I entertained the thought that it could, but it can’t be done. And it certainly can’t be done when Muslim populations become large enough to have political clout; and that isn’t too large.

The Ongoing Drama of Palestinian Lies by Bassam Tawil

The current policy of the PA leadership is to avoid alienating the Trump administration by continuing to pretend that Abbas and his cronies are serious about achieving peace with Israel. This is why Abbas’s representatives are careful not to criticize Trump or his envoys.

When Israel does not comply with their list of demands, the Palestinians will accuse it of “destroying” the peace process. Worse still, the Palestinians will use this charge as an excuse to redouble their terror against Israelis. The Palestinian claim, as always, will be that they are being forced to resort to terrorism in light of the failure of yet another US-sponsored peace process.

No doubt, Abbas cannot find it within himself to clarify to the American envoys that he lacks a mandate from his people to make any step toward peace with Israel. Abbas knows, even if the American representatives do not, that any move in that direction would end his career, and very possibly his life. Abbas also does not wish to go down in Palestinian history as the treacherous leader who “sold out to the Jews.” Moreover, someone can come along later and say, quite correctly, that as Abbas has exceeded his legitimate term in office, any deal he makes is illegal and illegitimate.

US envoys Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, who met this week in Jerusalem and Ramallah with Israeli and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials to discuss reviving the peace process, have discovered what previous US Middle East envoys learned in the past two decades — that the PA has not, cannot, and will not change.

During their meeting in Ramallah with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the two US emissaries were told that the Palestinians will not accept anything less than an independent state along on the pre-1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.Abbas also made it clear that he has no intention to make concessions on the “right of return” for Palestinian “refugees.” This means he wants a Palestinian state next to Israel while flooding Israel with millions of Palestinian “refugees” and turning it, too, into another Palestinian state.

At the meeting, Abbas also reiterated his demand that Israel release all Palestinian prisoners, including convicted murderers with Jewish blood on their hands, as part of any peace agreement. The release of terrorists in the past has only resulted in increased terrorism against Israel.

According to Abbas’s spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, the PA president told Kushner and Greenblatt that a “just and comprehensive peace should be based on all United Nations resolutions (pertaining to the Israeli-Arab conflict) and the (2002) Arab Peace Initiative.” Translation: Israel must withdraw to the indefensible pre-1967 lines and allow armed Palestinian factions to sit on the hilltops overlooking Ben Gurion Airport and Tel Aviv.

U.S.: Strategic Objectives in the Middle East by Peter Huessy

The new “test” of our alliance will be whether the assembled nations will join in removing the hateful parts of such a doctrine from their communities.

What still has to be considered is the U.S. approach to stopping Iran from filling the vacuum created by ridding the region of the Islamic State (ISIS), as well as Iran’s push for extending its path straight through to the Mediterranean.

The tectonic plates in the Middle East have shifted markedly with President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and his announced new regional policy.

The trip represented the beginning of a major but necessary shift in US security policy.

For much of the last nearly half-century, American Middle East policy has been centered on the “peace process” and how to bring Israel and the Palestinians to agreement on a “two-state” solution for two peoples — a phrase that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to say.

First was shuttle diplomacy during 1973-74 in the Nixon administration; then second, in 1978, the Camp David agreement and the recognition of Israel by Egypt, made palatable by $7 billion in new annual US assistance to the two nations; third, the anti-Hizballah doctrine, recently accurately described by National Security adviser General McMaster, as Iran, since 1983, started spreading its terror to Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. This last effort was often excused by many American and European analysts as a result somehow, of supposed American bad faith. Fourth, came the birth, in 1992, of the “Oslo Accords” where some Israelis and Palestinians imagined that a two-state solution was just another round of negotiations away.

Ironically, during the decade after Oslo, little peace was achieved; instead, terror expanded dramatically. The Palestinians launched three wars, “Intifadas,” against Israel; Al Qaeda launched its terror attacks on U.S. Embassies in Africa; and Iran, Hizballah, and Al Qaeda together carried out the forerunner attacks against America of 9/11/2001.

Since 9/11, despite wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism has not only failed to recede; on the contrary, it has expanded. Iran has become the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism, and the Islamic State (ISIS) has tried to establish a transnational “Islamic caliphate.” Literally tens of thousands of terror attacks have been carried out since 9/11 by those claiming an Islamic duty to do so. These assaults on Western civilization have taken place on bridges, cafes, night clubs, offices, military recruitment centers, theaters, markets, and sporting events — not only across the West but also in countries where Muslims have often been the primary victims.

Particularly condemnable have been the improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, perpetrated to a great extent by Iran, according to U.S. military testimony before Congress.

All the while, we in the West keep trying to convince ourselves that, as a former American president thought, if there were a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, most of the terrorist attacks we see in Europe and the United States “would disappear.”

No matter how hard we may rhetorically push the “peace process”, there is no arc of history that bends naturally in that direction. Rather, nations such as the United States together with its allies must create those alliances best able to meet the challenges to peace and especially defeat the totalitarian elements at the core of Islamist ideology.

If anything, the so-called Middle East “peace process” has undercut chances of achieving a sound U.S. security policy. While the search for a solution to the Israel-Palestinian “problem” dominated American thinking about Middle East peace for so many decades, other far more serious threats materialized but were often ignored, not the least of which was the rise of Iran as the world’s most aggressive terrorist.

The United States has now moved in a markedly more promising and thoughtful direction.

Congo’s Escalating Political Crisis Sends Millions Into Exile By Nicholas Bariyo see note please

This is the tragic legacy of the post colonial movement in Africa which was called “the emerging continent” and with exceptions like Botswana, Namibia, and Kenya so many nations are riddled with tribal warfare, starvation, epidemics and genocide….and the so called “African-American” caucus in Congress and the Black Lives Matter movements do nothing and care not a whit….It is an appalling apathy…..rsk

YANGWALI, Uganda—The day Bungwile Mabuya discovered her husband’s mangled body near her house in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kasai region, she grabbed her children and ran.

The mother of five, who found refuge in a sprawling lakeside refugee camp here, is one of roughly 1.5 million Congolese fleeing a brutal power struggle pitting President Joseph Kabila against traditional chiefs, who still administer large swaths of the vast central African nation.

Government forces and local militias have killed more than 3,300 people in Ms. Mabuya’s home region since October, according to the Catholic Church, which has had its priests count the bodies since then. On Tuesday, the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, accused Mr. Kabila’s government of arming a new militia he said has slaughtered hundreds of villagers—including pregnant women and toddlers—in Kasai. A government spokesman has denied the allegations.

The killings reflect the unraveling of a complex network of power trading and patronage, backed by amateur fighters unchecked by the official security apparatus, that has helped secure Mr. Kabila’s rule for the past 16 years.

Ms. Mabuya said her husband, Constantine Masumbe, had stepped outside their hut one December night when she saw three men wearing army uniforms drag him away, accusing him of being a member of Kamuina Nsapu, an antigovernment militia the U.N. says is recruiting child soldiers and raping underage girls in the central Kasai region.

Ms. Mabuya, who found her husband’s body the next morning, denied that her husband belonged to Kamuina Nsapu and said he was a victim of a government crackdown that has intensified since Mr. Kabila’s official mandate expired in December. Mr. Kabila, who is barred from running again by the nation’s constitution, has put off elections, citing a lack of funds and security issues.

“We could not even hold a burial ceremony. Everyone was running,” Ms. Mabuya said.

Tensions in impoverished Kasai escalated last year, when Mr. Kabila refused to recognize Jean-Pierre Mpandi, a chief who founded Kamuina Nsapu and was friendly with Mr. Kabila’s political opponents. In August, government forces fighting Kamuina Nsapu killed Mr. Mpandi. Aid agencies say more than a dozen other traditional chiefs across five provinces have since been killed.

Traditional chiefs are selected according to local custom and perform religious ceremonies, but receive government salaries. Under Congo’s constitution they are required to be apolitical and resolve local disputes, forming a vital link between the capital Kinshasa and remote villages. CONTINUE AT SITE