Monthly Archives: March 2015

Syrian rebels plan seat of government in Idlib

The Daily Star reports: Syria’s opposition-in-exile vowed Sunday to launch efforts to turn the newly seized provincial capital of Idlib into its base of operations, in a bid to maintain the momentum generated by a five-day battle that resulted in a shockingly sudden regime withdrawal.

Supporters of the regime and the opposition spent much of the weekend digesting the news that government forces had abandoned the northwestern town, amid reports that the regime would soon launch a fierce counter-offensive.

The provisional government, which is affiliated with the Turkey-based National Coalition opposition umbrella group, issued a statement in which it promised to work with all rebel factions in a bid to finally relocate inside Syria, and thus meet a long-standing demand of opposition figures and groups inside the war-ravaged country.

“The Syrian provisional government will strive to make the free city of Idlib an example to the entire world about what Syrians want for the future of their country,” it said. “It will begin sending its [government bodies] to work inside the city, along with the local council for the province of Idlib, to begin coordinating with its partners and with the [militias] and influential forces to make the city a headquarters for administering liberated regions of Syria.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Stop the barrel bombs in Syria

Raed al Saleh writes: No words can adequately describe what it is like to save a life. It is pure elation to find and rescue a baby from beneath mountains of rubble. But for us the elation never lasts because we are constantly under attack.

In Aleppo, as in many Syrian cities, the sky has become an obsession. Children on street corners stand watching for helicopters. A clear sky in the morning means we must prepare for barrel bombs.

Before the uprising, I was an electrical supplies salesman. Today, I lead the biggest rescue operation in Syria. We are more than 2,000 men and women who volunteer as firefighters, search-and-rescue workers and paramedics. We are nonsectarian, unarmed and neutral, and we have saved more than 15,000 people from all sides of this conflict, including fighters for the regime. We are the Syrian Civil Defense, but because of our uniforms we are known as the White Helmets.

After the bombs rain down, we rush in to dig for survivors. Our motto, “to save one life is to save all humanity,” is what drives us on. But for every life we save, countless more are lost. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

NSA weighed ending mass phone surveillance program before Snowden leak

The Associated Press reports: The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed the meager counterterrorism benefits.

After the leak and the collective surprise around the world, NSA leaders strongly defended the phone records program to Congress and the public, but without disclosing the internal debate.

The proposal to kill the program was circulating among top managers but had not yet reached the desk of Gen. Keith Alexander, then the NSA director, according to current and former intelligence officials who would not be quoted because the details are sensitive. Two former senior NSA officials say they doubt Alexander would have approved it.

Still, the behind-the-scenes NSA concerns, which have not been reported previously, could be relevant as Congress decides whether to renew or modify the phone records collection when the law authorizing it expires in June.

The internal critics pointed out that the already high costs of vacuuming up and storing the “to and from” information from nearly every domestic landline call were rising, the system was not capturing most cellphone calls, and the program was not central to unraveling terrorist plots, the officials said. They worried about public outrage if the program ever was revealed. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

How UAE suppresses freedom of the press

Newsweek reports: Sean O’Driscoll, who co-wrote a damning investigation into human rights violations and brutal labor practices endured by migrant workers building New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi published by The New York Times, was officially deported from the United Arab Emirates last October. Before that happened, he says he was tailed for months by pursuit cars, bribed, propositioned to spy on other foreign journalists and possibly traced by way of his cell phone. Here’s the story of what allegedly happens when a journalist tries to report on unflattering activity in the UAE.

O’Driscoll had been working in Abu Dhabi as a journalist for nearly two years when the trouble started. In December 2013, the Guardian published an article he co-wrote under a pseudonym (Glenn Carrick) examining the labor conditions involved in erecting the Guggenheim, the Louvre, and a New York University campus on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. O’Driscoll, who is Irish and tall, used the pseudonym for his safety, but when a video circulated with the Guardian story showed a tall guy—face obscured and voice deepened, but with a distinct Irish accent—asking questions, O’Driscoll figured he’d had his cover blown.

“How many tall irish reporters are there working in Abu Dhabi asking questions about labor rights? It’s kind of a narrow field,” he says.

That’s when he says the pursuit cars started showing up in his rearview mirror. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.N. leader warns Iraq not to mistreat civilians after liberation from ISIS

The New York Times reports: Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations used a visit to Baghdad on Monday to warn the Iraqi government to treat civilians decently after it liberates territories like Tikrit, where a government offensive has been supported by heavy American-led airstrikes for the past five days.

“Civilians freed from the brutality of Daesh should not have to then fear their liberators,” Mr. Ban said, in a statement emailed to reporters after Iraqi officials canceled a scheduled news conference with him without explanation. Daesh is the Arabic pronunciation of the initials ISIS, by which the extremists in the Islamic State group are also known.

“One form of violence cannot replace another,” he said. The secretary general was clearly referring to reports, such as one by Human Rights Watch recently, that Iraqi Shiite militias were carrying out abuses in Sunni areas of Salahuddin Province that they had liberated from the extremists.

However, Mr. Ban may have joined his Iraqi governments hosts in speaking too soon about progress in Tikrit. Evidence is mounting that fighters of the Islamic State are much more numerous in the city, and hold much more territory, than the Iraqi government has previously revealed. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iran says U.S. drone kills 2 advisers in Iraq; U.S. denies claim

The Associated Press: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says a U.S. drone strike killed two of its advisers near the Iraqi city of Tikrit, where a major offensive is underway against the Islamic State group, but the U.S. said Monday its coalition conducted no airstrikes in the area during the time of the incident.

U.S. Central Command said it didn’t target the area around Tikrit from March 22 through March 24, the window when the Guard said the two men were killed.

Facebooktwittermail

California enters its fourth year of devastating drought

ThinkProgress reports: The rainy season is over in California before it ever really began.

As the state enters its fourth year of a prolonged and devastating drought, new snowpack estimates give Californians little to aspire to other than more hot and dry conditions. According to the Department of Water Resources, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is lower than any year since 1950, and at the end of March it is just 8 percent of the historical average.

This year’s paltry snowpack is less than one-third of the previous smallest size on record, which was 25 percent of average — an amount that was reached both last year and in 1977.

Winter is normally California’s rainy season, but the state has been parched since several big storms swept through late last year. And that looks like it’s going to continue — state climatologist Michael Anderson told the The Fresno Bee that there is “no significant precipitation in sight.”

“I think we’re done,” he said. “I see heat and more heat in the coming months.”

The impacts of the ongoing drought — which studies have shown is exacerbated by climate change — are being seen in everything from energy production to the survival of critical species like the Delta smelt.

According to a new report from the Pacific Institute, the ongoing drought is causing California to rely on natural gas to replace unavailable hydroelectricity power sources. The report states that the switch has cost California ratepayers $1.4 billion more for electricity than in average years, and has resulted in an 8 percent increase in carbon dioxide and other pollutants between 2011 and 2014. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Yemen: A nightmare worse than Libya

An editorial for the Yemen Times says: Today there is an estimated 320,000 combatants spread across 11 factions in Yemen and all are preparing for war. The majority of these combatants are young people between the ages of 15 and 24. They are under-fed, under-equipped, and under-trained youngsters who have little knowledge of where this is heading, but what they do know is that there is violence coming down the road. In such a situation, their AK-47 is going to be their best friend and potential life saver, which they can not afford to let go silent in the near future.

These 11 factions are spread across the country and most have their geographic strongholds. The expected meeting point is the Taiz-Aden-Al-Baida triangle, with spillovers in every city across the country. The conflict is likely to be protracted given the incapacity of any party to declare a quick victory, and the human cost may be unprecedented. This is indeed a serious and frightening scenario for Yemen, considering that these factions are still actively recruiting and the war propaganda machine is in full swing. Today’s situation was rather difficult to imagine just a year ago. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The Saudi-Iran powerplay behind the Yemen conflict

Nussaibah Younis writes: Saudi Arabian air strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have been touted as the latest escalation in a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. As the two countries continue to train, finance and equip rival militants in the Syrian civil war, and to support opposing sides in Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon and Yemen, fears have been raised about where this now-militarised regional rivalry could go.

But talk of a proxy war risks over-estimating the level of power Saudi Arabia and Iran wield, and overlooking the local actors who truly shape the conflicts in question. The Houthi movement has been able to advance across Yemen largely because of its alliance with the ancien régime of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and because of its ability to tap into disillusionment with the poor performance of the Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi government. Though Iran may have helped to hone the effectiveness of the Houthi movement, it is neither the cause of nor a major player in the emerging Yemeni civil war.

That reality, however, is lost on a Saudi Arabia that is so fearful of Iran’s mounting influence in the region that it has instigated air strikes that are more likely to exacerbate than to resolve the conflict in neighbouring Yemen. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Threat of ground incursion looms over Yemen

CNN reports: Oversized military trucks painted in desert beige hauled tanks in the same camouflage color down a dark highway late Saturday past glowing billboards in the Saudi Arabian town of Jazan.

With the border with Yemen little more than 20 miles away, the trucks captured on a video distributed by the news agency Reuters also carried a message: Suggestions of a ground incursion into Yemen, which is in the throes of a Houthi rebel uprising, may be more than just talk.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt have both spoken about the possibility of putting boots on the ground before. And on Saturday, Yemeni Foreign Minister Riyadh Yaseen said he expected coalition troops to be in Yemen within days.

Saudi leaders have said that if troops do go in, they won’t leave until they have degraded the Houthis’ ability to do battle, CNN’s Ian Lee reported. The Houthis are apt guerrillas. A fight on the ground could prove bloody and lengthy. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Yemeni warplane fleet destroyed in raids, Saudis say

The Washington Post reports: The first three days of airstrikes by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia have destroyed Yemen’s fleet of fighter aircraft and crippled military command centers, dealing a blow to Houthi insurgents, a senior defense official in Riyadh said.

In a statement published Saturday evening by the Saudi Press Agency, Brig. Gen. Ahmed bin Hasan Asiri said that rebels “are no longer possessing” jet fighters. The coalition air raids also destroyed most of the groups’ arsenal of ground-to-ground ballistic missiles and command-and-control centers, he said.

Analysts say that the attacks are part of strategy to eliminate the air defenses, weapons arsenals and communication lines of the Shiite insurgents so as to ease the way for a potential land invasion. Many residents in the destitute Arabian Peninsula nation fear a ground assault, and. Gen. Asiri hinted that the Saudi-led campaign would continue, telling the news agency that the first phase of attacks had been “achieved.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Syrian rebels capture Idlib

Aron Lund writes: the apparent collapse of government defenses in Idlib has punched a gaping hole in the government’s narrative of approaching victory and boosted the opposition politically as well as militarily, spelling trouble for Bashar al-Assad.

Out of thirteen provincial capitals, Idlib is only the second to be lost to the government, after the northeastern town of Raqqa was captured in early 2013. And like Raqqa, Idlib is a regional center rather than a major city – it would not fit on a top-five list over Syria’s most important cities. But the blow is heavy nonetheless.

The government remains much stronger than any rebel group on the national level, controlling perhaps two thirds of the population. Assad’s semi-cohesive central leadership and his control of a fully functional air force makes him Syria’s by far most powerful political actor, but his regime suffers from serious shortcomings nonetheless. It lacks enough reliable troops to conduct multiple offensives while also controlling its current territory and has been forced to farm out sensitive security tasks to local militias and Iranian-backed Shia Islamist foreign fighters.

Meanwhile, the state-run economy is withering, with a currency crisis and increasingly debilitating lapses in the fuel supply system and electricity production. The falling oil price is likely to cap Russian and Iranian support at levels too low to sustain the current ambitions of their Syrian ally. In short, it seems that Assad is still trying to bite off more of Syria than he can swallow, and the recent defeat in Idlib underlines how dangerously overstretched his regime has become. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iraqi forces in no hurry to expel ISIS from Tikrit

The New York Times reports: Here at the headquarters of Iraqi ground forces, after three days of American airstrikes that at times witnesses here described as “carpet bombing,” Iraq’s military seemed in no great hurry on Saturday to press its advantage.

It also seemed to be moving very slowly on promises to withdraw Shiite militias from the battlefield.

An Iraqi Air Force C-130 carrying 150 fresh militia volunteers, a dozen federal police officers, a few soldiers back from leave and two American journalists landed here late in the morning. Although the intensive bombardment of the night had eased, within half an hour two large explosions rattled the windows of the Salahuddin Operations Command building as bombs dropped by unseen aircraft brought satisfied smiles from the assembled military men.

Missing from this picture was any sense of urgency. The holdouts from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, who remain in the center of Tikrit are believed to number “about 400,” as one general here said. But the extremists have so far held off an offensive by an estimated 30,000 Iraqi troops and volunteer militiamen for nearly four weeks. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Is ISIS in trouble in Iraq?

Der Spiegel reports: The trip from Baghdad to Tikrit remains extremely dangerous. There may be bombs planted along the road and snipers occasionally lurk nearby. As such, nobody knows for sure which car Iraqi Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban is traveling. His convoy, protected by heavily armed soldiers, is heading north, driving by walls and schools where the black flag of Islamic State (IS) is still flying. And it passes through empty villages and past trenches that reflect the ongoing fighting.

The minister is headed for the front-line city of Tikrit, 180 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad, from which IS has been forced to retreat in recent days. Ghabban, 53, is a wiry man in a simple police uniform. He was jailed at the young age of 18 during the Saddam Hussein regime and later joined the Iran-founded Shiite Badr Party. Tikrit is a place of some significance for him. This is where the hated dictator was born and it is not far from where he is buried.

The Tikrit water tower can be seen from afar: It too has been painted black and bears the white IS script. Tikrit used to have 260,000 inhabitants, but now it is a ghost town. Burnt-out vehicles dot the roadside, there is no electricity and the cell phone towers have been destroyed. But the Iraqi flag is once again flying over Alam Square. Behind it, on the main street, stand the men responsible for this victory: policemen, soldiers and, above all, Shiite militia members.

They have lined up hundreds of cartridges of mortar shells they say IS fighters fired during the battle for the city. An old police commander steps up to the interior minister and reports that his unit lost 60 troops during the fighting. But, he adds, the streets of Tikrit’s Qadisiya district are littered with the corpses of IS fighters. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iran’s top negotiator says accord can be drafted

The New York Times reports: Iran’s chief diplomat said on Saturday that he had had productive discussions with his European counterparts and that Iranian negotiators were ready to begin drafting an initial agreement on a nuclear accord.

“I believe that France and Germany are serious about an agreement,” said Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister. “We are ready to draft.”

Western diplomats said the atmosphere in the talks was workmanlike. But they also cautioned that gaps remained and that it was still unclear if they could be bridged.

Negotiators are trying to meet a Tuesday deadline for settling on the main parameters of an accord. Once that step is taken, a comprehensive agreement with detailed technical addendums is to be finished by the end of June.

With the deadline just days away, foreign ministers from other world powers began arriving here to join Secretary of State John Kerry and Mr. Zarif, who have been meeting since Thursday. The arrival of the French and German foreign ministers on Saturday was generally seen as an indication that the talks were approaching a pivotal moment. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Pope Francis believes his days are numbered

Barbie Latza Nadeau writes: Of all the things a sitting pope can do, calling for a Holy Jubilee Year is surely one of the more important. It is a joyous occasion that draws millions of Catholic pilgrims to Rome to take part in celebrations and get that ever-important indulgence, or forgiveness for sins, that some believers think will shorten their time in Purgatory.

With the announcement that Pope Francis has designated December 8 as the beginning of what the Vatican calls the Holy Jubilee of Mercy, this enormously popular pontiff is setting yet another record. No pope has ever declared a jubilee year so soon in his papacy. John Paul II held two holy years during his long sojourn, Benedict XVI retired before he had a chance to call such a celebration.

Once more the 78-year-old Francis seems to be racing against the clock, and many in Rome are speculating that his decision to declare such a momentous event so soon in his papacy, barely two years after his election, is to be sure he gets one in before time runs out, as if he is holding a sort of last hurrah or a farewell ceremony. And there are sad, almost sinister undertones.

“This pope seems to be in a hurry to get as much done as he can, as if he’s got a deadline,” Marco Politi, a Vatican expert, said at a small roundtable discussion on Francis and the length of his papacy last week. “He keeps talking about how his time is short, but it’s not because he’s sick. He has told his friends that he feels it will be an ‘event’ that wipes him out, not a natural end.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Salafists and sectarianism: Twitter and communal conflict in the Middle East

Geneive Abdo writes: The widening divide between Shi‘a and Sunni believers has become one of the most important factors in destabilizing the Middle East, and there seems to be no end in sight. The blossoming of the Syrian war into a full-scale sectarian conflict between Shi‘a and Sunni Muslims and its spillover into parts of Iraq and Lebanon has re-ignited a debate among U.S. policymakers and Western analysts over whether fundamental doctrinal differences or political rivalry and socio-economic grievances lie behind the conflict.

Although actors on both sides are driving this conflict, it is today’s Salafists who are proving to be the dominant standard-bearers of anti-Shi‘a discourse — not taking into account the violent jihadists, whose popular appeal and staying power have yet to be demonstrated despite some spectacular and headline-grabbing territorial gains and terrorist acts. The Salafist movement has shown itself adroit at exploiting opportunities to advance its rhetorical and theological positions amid the religious re-examination and outright contestation among religious subgroups sparked by the recent Arab uprisings and their successful challenge to existing institutions of power in the region.

At the heart of the resurgent Salafist movement is the seemingly sudden emergence of a compelling message of a return to the ideas and morals of the era of the Prophet Mohammad at the expense of Islam’s subsequent rich tradition of religious interpretation. Given that the uprisings occurred on the heels of a surge in Shi‘a power in both Iraq and Lebanon, the Sunnis were predisposed to feel threatened. The sectarian war in Syria has been pivotal in providing a narrative for both sides in answering the fundamental questions within the world of Islam: Who is a Muslim, and who gets to decide? Although these are age-old questions within Islam, the violence that has ensued since the Arab uprisings over these very issues threatens to redraw the map of the Middle East and create instability for years to come.

The conflict over resolving these two questions is both a Shi‘a-Sunni debate as well as an internal conflict among the different strands of Sunni thought. While some scholars and specialists argue that the root of the conflict is the result of weakening or collapsed states in the aftermath of the Arab rebellions, this study will open a much-needed window on one of the fundamental causes — if not the fundamental cause — of today’s violence: Islam itself is being revised in the midst of political upheaval in the Middle East. Jihadists, Salafists, Shi’a militias, and other non-state actors are actively trying to redefine Islam as they see it.

The following study focuses on rising Salafist players who are intimately engaged in the public debate — not the radical jihadists who are fighting in Syria and Iraq but the non-violent Salafists who are successfully using social media and other such platforms to express their negative views of the Shi‘a and, by association, the Alawites and Iran. They are using social media to take advantage of conflicts throughout the region in order to raise their public profiles and influence public opinion. Although much media focus and attention is devoted to the radical jihadists, those Salafists who do not condone violence also have an important role in the future of destabilizing the Middle East. Uncovering and understanding their subculture, and in particular their public discourse, is vital to prudent and responsible policy formulation.

Penetrating and engaging with the world of contemporary Salafism presents a number of challenges to the researcher. However, as this study will show, new social media technologies taking hold around the world, in particular Twitter feeds, can offer valuable insight into Salafist ideas and practice and help identify leading personalities, uncover important relationships, and reveal significant discursive trends. “Social media has revolutionized the way that the world has understood the Syrian conflict and how that conflict has been waged,” asserted a study published by the United States Institute of Peace. “Syria has been at the cutting edge of the evolution of new uses of social media and the Internet by political actors, insurgent groups, journalists and researchers.” As skeptics of the power of social media have noted, Twitter cannot inspire revolutions and did not create the Arab uprisings, for example. The political and social conditions for revolution or violence must be present and do not emerge from cyberspace. These same critics argue that individuals are responsible for creating the Arab uprisings, not the tools available to them.

Nonetheless, Twitter and other forms of social media have proven to be valuable tools in influencing events on the ground once they are already underway, creating an interactive discussion between those in cyberspace and the foot soldiers on the ground.

In her new paper “Salafists and Sectarianism: Twitter and Communal Conflict in the Middle East,” Geneive Abdo shows that chief among the central threads of Salafist discourse in Arabic is an abiding belief that the Shi‘a are not real Muslims, and are out to extinguish Sunni believers who, in the Salafist view, are the only true Muslims. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail