Video: The battle for Syria’s south
Author Archives: News Sources
Fortress Hungary: Orbán profits from the refugees
Der Spiegel reports: On Monday, Hungary closed the last remaining hole in the 175-kilometer (109 mile) fence it has been built along the southern border to Serbia, one of the final stations on the Western Balkan route to Europe that has been the focal point in recent days of tens of thousands of refugees making their way from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa. On Tuesday, a new law went into effect in Hungary making illegal border crossings an offense punishable by up to three years in jail. The developments came as Germany and Austria both imposed border controls to stem the massive influx of refugees on the final leg of the path to Western Europe.
Hungary’s closure of its border with Serbia has led to confusion and desperation among refugees who had hoped to cross into Europe there. For the moment, nobody is being let through at all and Hungary has declared a state of emergency in two counties bordering Serbia to allow for the deployment of the military to assist police there. As part of its new crackdown, Hungary says it has arrested 60 people for damaging the border fence or attempting to cross.
The scenes of chaos the border closure has generated are consistent with those that have played out in Hungary over much of the last couple of weeks. And the cause is clear. The country, under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is downright inhospitable — even hostile — toward refugees. [Continue reading…]
One in five Syrians say ISIS is a good thing, poll says
The Washington Post reports: A recent survey of 1,365 Syrians from all 14 governorates of the country found some surprising attitudes. Consider this: A fifth of those interviewed said the Islamic State — the brutal Islamist group known for its beheadings, that rules over large swaths of Syria and Iraq — is a positive influence on the country. And 82 percent said that they believe the Islamic State was created by the United States and its allies.
The Syria survey was conducted by ORB International, a U.K.-based market research firm, from June 10 to July 2. The poll has a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points.
The majority of Syrians interviewed said they believe that the situation is worsening, and only 21 percent said they preferred their life today than when Syria was fully controlled by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Nearly half of Syrians surveyed said they opposed U.S.-coalition airstrikes, and nearly 80 percent said that the war has gotten worse because of the influx of foreign fighters. Yet there is also sense of hope: The majority of Syrians surveyed said a diplomatic solution was possible to end the war, and that Syrians can set aside their difference and live side by side again. [Continue reading…]
The war in Yemen as a rite of passage
Rami G. Khouri writes: The Saudi-led war in Yemen is one of the most dangerous and paradoxical developments in the region in recent decades. The six-month conflict continues to intensify and attract troops from other Arab countries, threatening to exacerbate violence and insecurity across the Middle East.
The war in Yemen is a rite of passage for members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who are asserting their power and the maturity of their statehood by launching a war against a weaker neighbor. It is equally driven by their exaggerated but nonetheless real fear of growing Iranian influence in the region. The Saudis were especially terrified of being surrounded by Iran’s involvement in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and finally in Yemen, given Tehran’s links with the Houthis.
Half a year into the war, the risks of this venture are just becoming clear for the Saudis and their allies. The aerial bombings that began in March have failed to wrest back control of all Yemen from the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who late last year swept into Sana’a and dissolved the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Saudi Arabia and its multi-nation coalition are expected to launch ground operations, which could threaten and burden the region for years. This may also increase local and global terrorism threats by providing Al-Qaeda with a substantial territorial base similar to that of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). [Continue reading…]
Playing with fire at Al-Aqsa
Khaled Diab writes: The growing familiarity of clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters inside Al-Aqsa Mosque this week has not weakened the effect of the conflict on my Palestinian neighbours and friends in Jerusalem.
The picturesque, stone-lined alleyways of an already tense Old City are seething with anger and frustration, punctuated by Israeli surveillance helicopters that hang in the air. Even unreligious Palestinians who have never stepped foot inside churches or mosques are furious. They partly envisage their wider demise encapsulated by the struggle over the Noble Sanctuary, as they call it, or the Temple Mount, as it is known to Jews.
The symbolism of the confrontation around the holy site quickly triggered an international response. The three days of clashes provoked a stern warning from neighbouring Jordan, with which Israel has a peace accord. “Any more provocations in Jerusalem will affect the relationship between Jordan and Israel,” warned Jordan’s King Abdullah II. “Jordan will have no choice but to take action, unfortunately.” [Continue reading…]
Israel rearrests Palestinian hunger striker after his health improves
Al Jazeera reports: Israeli authorities detained a Palestinian man on Wednesday, just hours after he was discharged from an Israeli hospital for treatment after a two-month hunger strike to protest his earlier detention.
Mohammed Allaan’s condition had improved enough for him to be discharged, the Barzilai hospital in southern Israel said earlier in the day.
His lawyer, Jamil Khatib, said that shortly after Allaan left the hospital he was detained again by Israeli authorities. Allaan was originally detained in November 2014 and held without charges.
Israel accuses the 31-year-old Allaan of links to Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian armed group. Allaan denies the affiliation. [Continue reading…]
‘America is not a planet’: Republicans resist climate change action at debate
The Guardian reports: In an exchange that would have been all but unthinkable even four years ago, moderator Jake Tapper posed a question to Florida senator Marco Rubio and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie that quoted Reagan secretary of state George Schultz: “Why not take out our insurance policy and approach climate change the Reagan way?”
But despite the token question well into the third hour of CNN’s GOP debate, no candidate was willing to endorse any possible solution.
“Here’s the bottom line,” Rubio answered. “Every proposal they put forward will make it harder to do business in America. Harder to create jobs in America. Single parents are already struggling across this country to provide for their families. Maybe a billionaire here in California can afford an increase in their utility rates, but a working family in Tampa, Florida or anywhere across the country cannot afford it.”
He said: “We are not going to destroy our economy, make America a harder place to create jobs, in order to pursue a policy that will do nothing, nothing to change our climate, to change our weather.
“America is a lot of things – the greatest country in the world, absolutely. But America is not a planet.” [Continue reading…]
Why Ahmed Mohamed should have been a topic at Wednesday’s GOP debate
Philip Bump writes: If there were a story tailor-made for the current political moment, it is the story of Ahmed Mohamed. Mohamed is the Irving, Tex., high school freshman whose homemade clock was inexplicably mistaken for a bomb by a teacher at his school.
That is an admittedly generous use of the word “inexplicably.” Mohamed is the son of an immigrant from Sudan. His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, told the Dallas Morning News that his son “just wants to invent good things for mankind. But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated.”
That’s not an unreasonable assumption. The incident occurred only a few days after the 14th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. And as the Morning News makes obvious with the “related” stories that accompany its article that the city leadership in Irving, Tex., was criticized earlier this year for a law that some perceived as unfairly targeting Muslims. [Continue reading…]
Tuna and mackerel populations suffer catastrophic 74% decline, research shows
The Guardian reports: Tuna and mackerel populations have suffered a “catastrophic” decline of nearly three quarters in the last 40 years, according to new research.
WWF and the Zoological Society of London found that numbers of the scombridae family of fish, which also includes bonito, fell by 74% between 1970 and 2012, outstripping a decline of 49% for 1,234 ocean species over the same period.
The conservation charity warned that we face losing species critical to human food security, unless drastic action is taken to halt overfishing and other threats to marine life.
Louise Heaps, chief advisor on marine policy at WWF UK, said: “This is catastrophic. We are destroying vital food sources, and the ecology of our oceans.” [Continue reading…]
What to make of Pope Francis now?
James Carroll writes: As Pope Francis heads to Cuba and the United States this month, with an itinerary that includes visits to the Castros, the U.S. Congress, the White House, the United Nations General Assembly, and a major Catholic convocation in Philadelphia, the measure of his accomplishments and further promise remains confused. Is he a radical or merely a liberal? Does he seek to revise Church dogma — to bring it in line with some ethical ideal — or to formulate a pastoral response that is rooted in reality, and that leaves the institution unchanged? Among Roman Catholics, conservatives emphasize that, for all the hoopla about gays, divorce, women, and dogs going to heaven, he is not changing Church doctrine. Liberals, on the other hand, recognize in him a longed-for reformer of Vatican corruptions and cruelties. In the secular world, where his reach is astonishing, he is celebrated as a prophet of compassion and economic justice, even as his stern pronouncements on climate change, global capitalism, the plight of migrants, and a host of other issues are dismissed as lacking “practical strategies for a fallen world,” as David Brooks put it in the Times.
The prevailing commentary so emphasizes the once-unimagined uniqueness of Francis that the larger and longer context of his arrival goes unrecognized: the real meaning of this surprising Pope is being missed. Rather than seeing him as a cult-worthy personality who represents something wholly new in Catholicism, it is better to understand Francis, even in his stylistic deviations, as the culmination of a slow, if jerky, recovery on the part of the Church from its self-defeating rejection of modernity. [Continue reading…]
How the Syrian revolution was crowdfunded
Elizabeth Dickinson writes: At the beginning of the revolution, volunteers in Syria were able to collect the donations at the border. But as the conflict sharpened, each shipment required a round of intelligence work. Contacts were called in order to find out which roads were safe to travel on and which armed group controlled each stage of the route the goods would have to take. “We buy all the checkpoints,” says [Mezyan] Al Barazi [a Syrian expatriate living and working in the United Arab Emirates]. Nonetheless, the group [of fellow Syrian expatriates he formed] has had several containers stopped by extremist rebel groups.
As their goods traversed the country, Al Barazi and his friends tracked their progress. Each time they changed hands, a contact would send a message on WhatsApp or post a photo on Instagram. On his computer and Samsung smartphone, Al Barazi kept video clips of boxes of gloves, blood bags, basic medical supplies, flour, sugar, diapers, and clothing – proof that the goods he had sent had reached their destination.
Since 2011, Al Barazi alone has spent more than $400,000 of his own money supporting the revolution. An official with the Syrian National Council, the most prominent opposition group, estimates that diaspora businessmen have sent between $1-billion and $2-billion just to the armed groups challenging the Assad regime. Another prominent businessman puts the figure of all aid – lethal and humanitarian – higher still, at $20-billion, the equivalent of 50% of the country’s pre-war gross domestic product.
It is unlikely we will ever know exactly how much money the Syrian diaspora poured into fighting the Assad regime. No accounting exists of its hundreds of decentralised networks spread across dozens of countries. But one thing is clear. Four years into a bloody civil war, the only reason that many in the country are still fighting, and surviving, is because of the money and assistance being provided by those that fled long ago. [Continue reading…]
See parts two and three of extracts from Godfathers and Thieves by Elizabeth Dickinson.
Intelligence chief: Iraq and Syria may not survive as states
The Associated Press reports: Iraq and Syria may have been permanently torn asunder by war and sectarian tensions, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency said Thursday in a frank assessment that is at odds with Obama administration policy.
“I’m having a tough time seeing it come back together,” Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart told an industry conference, speaking of Iraq and Syria, both of which have seen large chunks territory seized by the Islamic State.
On Iraq, Stewart said he is “wrestling with the idea that the Kurds will come back to a central government of Iraq,” suggesting he believed it was unlikely. On Syria, he added: “I can see a time in the future where Syria is fractured into two or three parts.”
That is not the U.S. goal, he said, but it’s looking increasingly likely. [Continue reading…]
U.S. training helped mold top ISIS military commander
McClatchy reports: The 15 Chechens looking to cross the border from Turkey to Syria didn’t strike Abdullah as particularly important or unusual.
It was early summer in 2012, and as a smuggler based in the Turkish border town of Killis, Abdullah, who’d fled his home village in Syria because of fighting on the outskirts of Aleppo, was used to secretive groups of foreigners – journalists, aid workers and many recently aspiring jihadists – hiring him to cross Turkish military lines at the border while avoiding what was then still a significant Syrian government presence in northern Syrian.
“In 2012, everyone was coming to Syria and we had too much work leading all kinds of people across the border,” he explained over lunch in Killis, a Turkish town just a few miles from the rebel-held Syrian city of Azzaz. “A lot were Muslims who had come to support the revolution against Bashar Assad from every country. So many from Europe, Russia, Germany, France. . . .”
The 15 men had reached Abdullah through a network of contacts that were funneling new fighters to northern Syria, and Abdullah recalled they said they were going to Syria to assist in the fight against Assad. They were quiet, disciplined and for the most part spoke only a bit of crude formal Arabic.
Only later did Abdullah realize that the network that funneled these men to him was the beginnings of the Islamic State, and that one of the 15 would turn out to be the most important non-Arab figure in the Islamic State hierarchy, a former American-trained noncommissioned officer in the special forces of the nation of Georgia, who’d led his men heroically during the 2008 Russian invasion of his homeland.
Abu Omar al Shishani, as he’s now known, had been born Tarkhan Batirashvili 27 years earlier in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, a tiny enclave of ethnic Chechens, known locally as Kists, whose roughly 10,000 residents represent virtually all of the Muslims in predominantly Orthodox Christian Georgia.
But analysts of extremist groups said Batirashvili’s impact has been far greater than the small numbers of Muslims in Georgia would suggest. Since he swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2013, thousands of Muslims from the Caucasus have flocked to Syria to join the extremist cause. [Continue reading…]
The implications of Russia’s military buildup in Syria
Jeffrey White writes: Russia appears to have begun a significant, direct military intervention in Syria. Extensive reporting, including some attributed to U.S. government and intelligence sources, indicates that Russia is building a joint air-ground expeditionary force in Latakia and Tartus provinces along the northwestern coast, far surpassing the scope of its longstanding advisory and arms-supply role. If this force develops along the reported lines, it could be a game-changer in the war. It could also have major implications for Israel’s ability to conduct air operations over western Syria and Lebanon, and for U.S./coalition operations against the “Islamic State”/ISIS and other terrorist organizations in Syria.
Moreover, if the Russian presence becomes established, it will be increasingly difficult to remove. As in Crimea and Ukraine, the United States — much less any other country — seems unlikely to challenge Russian forces militarily. And while these forces will probably suffer casualties and could become bogged down in Syria, Moscow may well accept that as the cost of keeping the Assad regime in power and frustrating Washington.
Russia’s moves in Syria are seemingly based on a larger geopolitical strategy that counts on little interference from the United States and its coalition allies. The intervention appears to be a deliberate strategic effort to support the regime with direct military force, most likely spurred by the assessment that Bashar al-Assad’s forces are failing and that the support provided by Hezbollah and Iran is inadequate. The decision was likely made in coordination with Tehran, which is reportedly boosting its own military assistance to the regime. Other probable goals include safeguarding the regime’s western heartland, protecting and expanding Russian naval and air access to Syria, and increasing Moscow’s overall influence on the situation. More broadly, Russia appears committed to exercising its influence in the Middle East, and Syria provides an opportunity.
In some ways, the deployment looks like Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea: ambiguous early moves cloaked by misleading leadership statements on their purpose, accompanied by an incremental buildup of forces using cover provided by preexisting Russian activities and facilities in Syria. [Continue reading…]
For those who remain in Syria, daily life is a nightmare
The New York Times reports: Every morning, at the dawn call to prayer, women and children move silently from the Damascus suburb of Douma to the surrounding farm fields, seeking safety from the day’s bombardments by the Syrian government.
The walk is part of a surreal routine described by the fraction of Douma’s residents who remain: shopping on half-demolished streets, scavenging wild greens, carrying out mass burials. But not even the fields are safe; recently, medics said, bombs killed two families there — 10 people, including seven children.
As crowds of Syrians transfix the world with their flight to Europe, this kind of life is one of the many nightmares they are fleeing. They leave behind increasingly empty neighborhoods — from the Damascus suburbs to the northern city of Aleppo — that testify to the scale of their exodus.
Migrants who had crossed the Serbian border into Hungary tried to keep warm at a collection point in Morahalom on Tuesday.As European Migrant Crisis Grows, U.S. Considers Taking In More SyriansSEPT. 8, 2015
Such bombardments have been going on for years in insurgent-held areas like Douma, one of the first areas to revolt against the government in 2011. And yet, the situation can still get worse. The past month in Douma made that clear. [Continue reading…]
Barrel bombs and artillery take heavy toll on vital rebel offensive in Syria’s south
Vice News reports: A powerful coalition of moderate Syrian rebel groups who receive covert backing from the West have renewed calls for a no-fly zone in the south of the country, as their offensive against government troops grinds to a crawl amid heavy bombardment.
The Southern Front is the largest force still to fight under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, and the dominant rebel formation in the city of Daraa, next to the Jordanian border. That places it within striking distance of the Syrian capital of Damascus.
The coalition is avowedly moderate and has publicly rejected coordination with Islamist militias, including al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, al Nusra.
More appealing still to Western observers, they have been winning. From late 2014 until early summer this year, they notched up a string of impressive victories, beating back forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
In one early success, they took the hilltop stronghold of Tal al-Harra last October, overrunning an abandoned Russian intelligence base. An Assad-regime general who had made contact with the Southern Front purposely deployed his troops in a weak formation, before defecting in a fake ambush, designed to make it look like he had been killed. He was spirited to Amman, where he provided vital intelligence, leading to the capture of the base, according to the National newspaper.
The victory pointed to another of the Southern Front’s assets: their relative moderation make them an attractive target for defectors from the Assad regime who would never consider supporting Islamists.
By this summer, analysts were feting the Southern Front. One called them Syria’s “last, best hope.” But then the offensive stalled. [Continue reading…]
Erdogan’s great losing gamble
Henri J. Barkey writes: hese are unusual times in Turkey. This is not just because Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a new round of voting after the June 7 general election, in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002 or because of the renewed violence with the Kurds. These are also unusual times because there is a great deal of confusion in Ankara: Who actually runs the country, the Prime Minister or the President?
If we were to judge by appearances—namely Erdogan’s forceful personality—then we would conclude that it is the President who is fully in charge, whereas Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu seems to be just a functionary executing the former’s orders. The Turkish Constitution makes the President an impartial, yet powerful, above-party leader. Executive power resides with the Prime Minister. However, because of a modification to the constitution, Erdogan in 2014 became the first President ever to be elected directly by the people instead of by Parliament. Erdogan has repeatedly said that this change is tantamount to a regime change in Turkey, because a popularly elected President is de facto imbued with greater powers.
Still, the informal control he exercises—through his influence over the AKP stalwarts, allied or fully controlled media organs, and his control over the bureaucracy through years of careful appointments of loyalists—is not enough for Erdogan. He wants to amend the constitution yet again to replace the parliamentary system with a presidential one—probably one that resembles France’s. [Continue reading…]
Across the globe, a growing disillusionment with democracy
Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk write: Signs of democratic dysfunction are everywhere, from Athens to Ankara, Brussels to Brasília. In the United States, the federal government has shut down 12 times in the last 35 years. According to the political scientists Christopher Hare and Keith T. Poole, the two main American political parties are more polarized now than they have been at any time since the Civil War. Meanwhile, a Gallup tracking poll shows that trust in the presidency and in the Supreme Court stands at historic lows — while faith in Congress has plummeted so far that it is now in the single digits.
Some citizens of democracies have become so unhappy with their institutions that — according to disturbing new studies of public opinion around the world — they may be tempted to dispense with partisan politics altogether. Would it not be better to let the president make decisions without having to worry about Congress — or to entrust key decisions to unelected experts like the Federal Reserve and the Pentagon?
According to a growing share of Americans, the answer is yes. Back in 1995, the well-respected World Values Survey, which studies representative samples of citizens in almost 100 countries, asked Americans for the first time whether they approved of the idea of “having the army rule.” One in 15 agreed. Since then, that number has steadily grown, to one in six. [Continue reading…]