Monthly Archives: February 2016

Syria Kurds say they will respect ceasefire

AFP reports: Kurdish forces in Syria, where they have been targeted by Turkish artillery, said Thursday they would respect a ceasefire due to start this weekend but retain the right to “retaliate” if attacked.

“We, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), give great importance to the process of cessation of hostilities announced by the United States and Russia and we will respect it, while retaining the right to retaliate… if we are attacked,” YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said on his Facebook page.

A Russian and US-brokered ceasefire between President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and non-jihadist rebels is due to go into effect at 2200 GMT on Friday, as part of efforts to resume peace talks to end five years of war.

The YPG leads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters that on Thursday welcomed the truce on the same terms. [Continue reading…]

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How the changing media is changing terrorism

Jason Burke writes: Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old petty criminal, spent much of the last 36 hours of his life crouched over a laptop in his small apartment in the south‑western French city of Toulouse. It was March 2012. Outside, armed police and journalists gathered. Merah reheated frozen food in a microwave and checked his weapons. He spoke with negotiators and described how he had travelled to Pakistan a few months earlier to receive some desultory training from a faction linked to al-Qaida. He also explained, incoherently, why he had killed seven people over the previous two weeks in a series of shootings. But most of the time, Merah worked on his computer.

Just a few hours before he was killed by armed police after a sustained firefight, Merah finished editing a 24-minute video clip. It was a compilation of images from the GoPro camera that he had attached to his body armour before each of his killings. GoPro primarily caters to practitioners of extreme sports who wish to obtain point-of-view footage of their adrenalin-charged exploits. Merah had filmed his preparations, the murders themselves and his motorbike getaways. His first three victims were off-duty soldiers, two Muslims and a Catholic. The others, a rabbi and three children, had died when he had attacked a Jewish school. The images showed how Merah had chased and caught one of those children: eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego, who had hesitated for a second when others ran, reluctant to abandon her school bag. Merah grabbed her by the hair, changed his weapon when the first jammed, and then finally shot the girl in the head.

Roughly 24 hours after police located Merah and surrounded his building, he managed to slip through a gap in the security cordon. He did not take the opportunity to escape. Instead, he walked to a postbox, deposited a package containing a USB stick with the video on it, and then returned to his home to await his own death.

The package he dropped into the postbox was addressed to al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV network. Merah was confident that al-Jazeera would broadcast the material because, in his words, it constantly showed “massacres and bombs and suchlike”. In fact, al-Jazeera did not show any of the clip because, the network said in a statement, Merah’s images did not “add any information” not already in the public domain and breached its ethical code.

The network’s decision did little to diminish the stream of horrendous violence that has been disseminated by Islamic militant groups and individuals in recent years. Since Merah’s death, the use and broadcast of graphic and violent images has reached an unprecedented level. Much of this is due to the emergence of the Islamic State (Isis), which launched its campaign to carve out an enclave in eastern Syria and western Iraq at around the time Merah was planning his killings. But much is also a result of the capabilities of the new technology that Isis has been able to exploit. [Continue reading…]

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‘It’s easier to live in Iran without thinking about politics’

Ian Black reports: Even the most optimistic estimates say that reformists and moderates – once distinct terms that are now blurred – are unlikely to take more than 80 seats [in Friday’s parliamentary elections]. “We are not going to have a carnival,” concedes Mohammed Ali Vakil, a leading reformist candidate. “But a lot of people will vote for us. They will be calm, but they will surprise us.”

Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist who is campaigning for the reformist alliance, agrees. “I am excited,” he told the Guardian by phone while getting the vote out in Khuzestan in the south-west. “If we can persuade 10%-20% of undecided voters to overcome their indifference and go to the polling stations then there could be a historic outcome. Conservative voters are determined and will definitely vote. It’s the reformists who are undecided.”

Apathy is a huge problem, however. “I voted for the revolution when I was a young man, and that was it,” shrugged Hassan, a burly 60 something driver stuck in the traffic around the capital’s Ferdowsi Square. “Why should I bother now?”

The cynicism is just as strong in the leafy north Tehran suburb of Jamaran, where Ayatollah Khomeini lived. “If you are educated you never vote because you would just make a fool of yourself,” said Negin, a young dentist smoking shisha with four friends – their loose headscarves, makeup and fashionable clothes and boots a reminder of far-reaching social changes of recent years. “It’s easier to live in Iran without thinking about politics,” sighed Melina, a designer. [Continue reading…]

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EU parliament votes for embargo on arms sales to Saudi Arabia

The Guardian reports: MEPs have voted for a European Union-wide arms embargo against Saudi Arabia to protest against the Gulf state’s heavy bombing campaign in Yemen.

The European parliament voted by a large majority for an EU-wide ban on arms sales to the kingdom, citing the “disastrous humanitarian situation” as a result of “Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen”.

The vote does not compel EU member states to act but it does increase pressure on Riyadh, in the wake of criticism from the UN and growing international alarm over civilian casualties in Yemen.

The resolution also turns up the heat on the British government, which has supplied export licences for up to £3bn worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in the last year. The UK has been accused of direct involvement in the bombing campaign through the deployment of UK military personnel to the kingdom. [Continue reading…]

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John Kerry says partition of Syria could be part of ‘plan B’ if peace talks fail

The Guardian reports: John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has said he will move towards a plan B that could involve a partition of Syria if a planned ceasefire due to start in the next few days does not materialise, or if a genuine shift to a transitional government does not take place in the coming months.

“It may be too late to keep it as a whole Syria if we wait much longer,” he told the US Senate foreign relations committee on Tuesday.

Kerry did not advocate partition as a solution and refused to specify details of a plan B, such as increased military involvement, beyond insisting it would be wrong to assume that Barack Obama would not countenance further action.

He also admitted it was possible Russian-backed forces could capture Aleppo, but pointed out that it has been very hard to retain territory in the five-year civil war. [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s indiscriminate bombing campaign is tilting the balance of the war in Assad’s favor

David Axe reports: Russia has ramped up its air war in Syria — big time. And it’s starting to show. Relentless and indiscriminate, Moscow’s bombing runs have devastated military and civilian strongholds and cleared a path for Syrian regime forces to counterattack against ISIS militants and rebels.

Five months after the first Russian warplanes slipped into Syria to reinforce the embattled regime of President Bashar al-Assad, the Kremlin’s air wing near Latakia — on Syria’s Mediterranean coast in the heart of regime territory — has found its rhythm, launching roughly one air strike every 20 minutes targeting Islamic State militants, U.S.-backed rebels and civilians in rebel-controlled areas.

“From Feb. 10 to 16, aircraft of the Russian aviation group in the Syrian Arab Republic have performed 444 combat sorties engaging 1,593 terrorist objects in the provinces of Deir Ez Zor, Daraa, Homs, Hama, Latakia and Aleppo,” the Russian defense ministry claimed in a statement.

That’s double the rate of air strikes that the much larger U.S.-led coalition has managed to sustain in its own, much older campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Leave out the coalition airstrikes in Iraq, where there are no Russian forces, and the disparity appears even greater. While lately Russia has launched around 60 air raids every day in Syria, the U.S. and its allies have pulled off just seven, on average, since launching their first attacks in Syria in September 2014. [Continue reading…]

Syria Direct reports: Regime forces are battling to reopen their only supply route into Aleppo city and the surrounding countryside, the Ithriya-Khnaser road, after the Islamic State cut if off entirely on Tuesday, local journalists and a rebel commander tell Syria Direct.

The supply road originates in Hama city, runs approximately 100km northeast to Ithriya in the south Aleppo countryside, and continues 110km northwest through Khnaser and into Aleppo city.

As of Tuesday, Islamic State forces control a 35km section of the road between Ithriya and Khnaser, Mujahid Hreitan, a citizen journalist in the southern Aleppo countryside, told Syria Direct Wednesday.

After capturing regime checkpoints along the Khnaser-Ithriya supply route Monday, the Islamic State took full control of Khnaser town on Tuesday, cementing their control over the stretch of road, reported IS’s semi-official news agency Amaq.

IS’s latest campaign is different from previous attempts to cut off the same regime supply route. The Islamic State has now managed to capture the town of Khnaser in its entirety, whereas in the past “IS would take a couple of small areas [along the road] that the regime quickly recaptured,” Ahmed A-Ruwaished, a citizen journalist in the southern Aleppo countryside, told Syria Direct Wednesday. [Continue reading…]

The National reports: The capture of Sheikh Miskeen by president Bashar Al Assad’s forces last month was their most significant victory in years on Syria’s southern front, but for the rebels, the manner of their defeat was more alarming than the loss itself.

Rebel commanders and fighters described a litany of tactical mistakes, logistical confusion and destructive infighting that contributed to the loss of the town in Deraa province. One commander summed up the performance of the rebel alliance as a “major failure”.

The inability of the rebels and their international backers to come up with an answer to Russian air power was a significant factor in the battle, and is likely to prove critical over the coming weeks and months, as the fight for Syria’s south continues. [Continue reading…]

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Questions remain over Russia’s endgame in Syria, Ukraine and Europe

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The New York Times reports: The partial truce that Russia and the United States have thrashed out in Syria capped something of a foreign policy trifecta for President Vladimir V. Putin, with the Kremlin strong-arming itself into a pivotal role in the Middle East, Ukraine floundering and the European Union developing cracks like a badly glazed pot.

Beyond what could well be a high point for Mr. Putin, however, lingering questions about Russia’s endgame arise in all three directions.

In Syria, Russia achieved its main goal of shoring up the government of President Bashar al-Assad, long the Kremlin’s foremost Arab ally. Yet its ultimate objectives remain murky, not least navigating a graceful exit from the messy conflict.

In Ukraine, Russia maintains a public commitment to put in place a year-old peace agreement. Renewed fighting in the Russian-backed breakaway regions, however, suggests that Moscow seeks to further destabilize the Kiev government, already wobbly from internal political brawling.

In Europe, Mr. Putin wants to deepen cracks in the European Union, hoping to break the 28-nation consensus behind the economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Kremlin recently cranked up its propaganda machine to malign the German chancellor, Angela Merkel — viewed here as the central figure in the confrontation against Moscow — portraying her as barren and her country as suffering violent indigestion from too many immigrants.

The target audience for these achievements is the Russian populace, partly to distract people from their deepening economic woes.

“On screen we can see that we are so strong, we are so important, we are so great,” Nikolai Petrov, a professor of political science at the Moscow School for Higher Economics, said sarcastically. [Continue reading…]

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The paradox hindering Syrian peace

The Wall Street Journal reports: As world powers struggle to agree on a solution to Syria’s war, a United Nations report points to a paradox it says is hindering peace plans: the same countries pushing for peace are the ones fueling the war.

This ambiguity has radicalized the conflict, raised the political stakes and contributed to civilian suffering, said Paulo Pinheiro, the chairman of the U.N.-backed Independent Syria Commission group in an interview Monday.

“We have said this to the states themselves. We have said it’s better to be fully committed to the political process instead,” said Mr. Pinheiro. “The airspace [above Syria] is overcrowded and it has humanitarian consequences.”

The 31-page report, which laid out a detailed account of a nation at the brink of collapse, is the 11th produced since the commission was formed in 2011 to investigate and document Syria’s war. The report offers a list of recommendations for a lasting peace to Syria’s government, the opposition and the international and regional powers involved directly or through proxy groups. Most of what it has so far recommended has fallen on deaf ears. [Continue reading…]

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Highly advanced U.S.-made Javelin anti-tank missile could now be on Syria’s frontlines

The Washington Post reports: A picture of a U.S.-made advanced anti-tank missile, apparently in the hands of a group Kurdish forces fighting near the northern Syrian town of Shaddadi, was posted to social media Tuesday.

If confirmed, it would be one of the first documented uses of a FGM-148 Javelin in the war against the Islamic State and a marked escalation in U.S. material being funneled to local groups. [Continue reading…]

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The largely unheard story of democracy developing in Syria

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Middle East Monitor reports: Until now the Syrian story has been a fabrication of assumptions and sensationalism spun by the media. Burning Country is an attempt to counter this, a chance for real Syrians to tell their own stories. As co-author Robin Yassin-Kassab puts it: “We felt that people had been coming at it from narratives of big stories that zoomed out so far they couldn’t hear the people on the ground that had made the revolution and were suffering the counter-revolution. We wanted to amplify those voices.”

Yassin-Kassab and fellow co-author Leila Al-Shami have weaved together the testimonies of revolutionaries, activists, refugees, fighters, democracy activists, pro-regime Alawites and Islamists with their own analysis to create an account of Syria that takes us back further than Ottoman rule and up to October 2015. Published by Pluto Press this year, the book describes how Al-Assad was once respected for adopting an anti-Zionist, anti-Western and pro-Arab rhetoric and today garners western sympathy for his so-called opposition to US-led imperialism, a position the authors describe as “populist opportunism”.

“I think his rhetoric was very anti-imperialist and that was in line with popular sentiment in the Arab street and I think for that reason he was popular for his foreign policy stance both inside Syria and more broadly around the Arab world,” says Al-Shami. “But that didn’t match up in practice and when you see the actions of the Baathist regime whether they’re under Bashar or his predecessor, his father, they certainly didn’t match that rhetoric. You had the massacres of Palestinians in Tel Zaatar camp in Lebanon, you had the intervention against the Black September movement in Jordan and then under Bashar you had collusion with imperialism because you had people that were basically deported, tortured by proxy, to the Assad regime under the US rendition programme as part of its ‘War on Terror’.”

Though the nationalist rhetoric did work among some sections of the population, Yassin-Kassab explains, most people living in Syria were unhappy under the regime. But prior to 2011 economic stability was more important than foreign policy and Hafez Al-Assad had achieved this stability by building roads and installing electricity in long neglected areas of the countryside and subsidising fuel and food. When Bashar succeeded his father, he retracted many of these benefits. “I think these things were important and when these things were pulled out everybody said, ‘look this nationalist rhetoric which we’ve gone along with is rubbish isn’t it?’ When they got hungry, which is what happened when Bashar Al-Assad came and did these neo-liberal reforms which were really crony-capitalist reforms and removed a lot of the safety nets that had allowed people to keep quiet. I think that’s more important, I don’t think they stayed in power because of the nationalist rhetoric.” [Continue reading…]

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Refugees and social media in a surveillance state

The New York Times reports: The Department of Homeland Security, at the urging of Congress, is building tools to more aggressively examine the social media accounts of all visa applicants and those seeking asylum or refugee status in the United States for possible ties to terrorist organizations.

Posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media can reveal a wealth of information that can be used to identify potential terrorists, but experts say the department faces an array of technical, logistical and language barriers in trying to analyze the millions of records generated every day.

After the December mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., “we saw that our efforts are not as robust as they need to be,” Francis X. Taylor, under secretary for intelligence and analysis, the top counterterrorism official at the Department of Homeland Security, said at a congressional hearing.

Travel industry officials and immigration rights advocates say the new policy carries the peril of making someone who posts legitimate criticism of American foreign policy or who has friends or followers who express sympathy toward terrorists subject to unwarranted scrutiny.

Their concerns underline the mounting challenge for law enforcement agencies that are trying to keep pace with the speed and scope of technology as terrorists turn to social media as an essential tool.

“We haven’t seen the policy, but it is a concern considering the already lengthy and opaque process that refugees have to go through,” said Melanie Nezer of HIAS, a group that helps resettle refugees in the United States. “It could keep out people who are not a threat.” Several trade organizations in the travel industry said they had similar concerns.

The attackers in San Bernardino, Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, had exchanged private online messages discussing their commitment to jihad and martyrdom, law enforcement officials said. But they did not post any public messages about their plans on Facebook or other social media platforms, officials said. [Continue reading…]

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Refugee arrivals in Greece exceed 100,000 in less than two months

The Guardian reports: More than 100,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe so far this year, at triple the rate of arrivals over the first half of 2015.

At least 102,500 have arrived on the Greek islands of Samos, Kos and Lesbos, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Another 7,500 have reached Italy, and in the first six weeks of the year 411 people are known to have died attempting to make the journey.

In 2015 the threshold of 100,000 arrivals was not reached until the end of June. As spring approaches and the weather improves, the rate of arrivals this year is expected to climb further.

The IOM said 20% of the arrivals were from Afghanistan and nearly half were Syrians. On Monday the US and Russia agreed to organise a partial truce involving the Assad regime and most of the Syrian armed opposition, but not Islamic State or the Nusra Front. There are widespread doubts about how effective the ceasefire will be and how long it will last. [Continue reading…]

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Egyptian military court convicts toddler of murder

The New York Times reports: As alibis go, this one would seem to be airtight: Your honor, my client was only a year old at the time of the crime.

But it did not stop an Egyptian military court from convicting the accused, a boy now 3 ½, of killing three people, carrying guns and firebombs, blocking a road with burning tires, and trying to damage government buildings — and sentencing him to life in prison.

The verdict came last week in a mass trial of 107 people suspected of being members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, and the charges stemmed from the protests, street clashes and police crackdowns in Egypt after the military overthrow of the elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands were jailed.

After an uproar over the conviction of the boy — Ahmed Mansour Qorani Sharara, who was never arrested — the military said that it was a case of mistaken identity, and that the authorities had actually meant to try a 16-year-old student with the same name. The teenager is on the run, the military added in a post on its official Facebook page.

But that, too, may be a mistake: Before the military statement, a police spokesman, Abu Bakr Abdel-Karim, said in a television interview that the wanted culprit was the toddler’s uncle, a 51-year-old man who has a similar name. [Continue reading…]

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Report details ‘inhuman’ treatment in Israeli jail

Al Jazeera reports: Blows to the head and sleeping in insect-infested beds are among numerous examples of “degrading” and “inhuman” treatment of Palestinian detainees by Israeli interrogators, according to a new report from Israeli human rights groups.

The 54-page report from HaMoked and B’Tselem, released on Wednesday, alleges that the treatment of detainees is at times “tantamount to torture”. It documents physical abuse by Israeli interrogators both in the field and at the Shikma detention facility in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

“[One Palestinian] was beaten until he passed out. Another detainee related that police officers photographed themselves next to him as he lay handcuffed on the ground after being beaten for about half an hour,” the report stated, noting that abusive conditions had been “used systematically against Palestinians interrogated at Shikma”.

The findings are based on the testimonies of 116 Palestinians interviewed between August 2013 and March 2014, along with dozens of affidavits and medical records. [Continue reading…]

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Netanyahu demands Israeli apartheid posters be removed from London Underground

The Guardian reports: The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has asked the UK government to remove hundreds of flyposters on London Underground trains put up by pro-Palestinian activists which claim that his country’s policies amount to apartheid.

The posters, designed to look like genuine adverts, were pasted on tube trains by London Palestine Action as part of this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week. Political leaders in Jerusalem and Jewish organisations in the UK condemned the posters.

Netanyahu asked Israel’s foreign ministry director, Dore Gold, to raise the matter with British government officials while on a trip to London. “I asked him to demand from the British government that the posters be removed,” he told parliamentary colleagues, according to reports in the Israeli media. [Continue reading…]

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In political leanings, Catholics mirror average Americans

Since Catholics make up the largest religious denomination in the U.S. (69.5 million members, which is 22% of the population), it makes sense that their political leanings would be close to the average among Americans of all and no religious affiliations.

Still, since in the media there is a tendency to associate religious with right-wing, it’s worth noting that Catholics lean Democratic rather than Republican — 44% vs. 37% — by exactly the same proportions as do all U.S. adults.

Pew Research breaks down the numbers for all religious groups:

The political preferences of U.S. religious groups

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