Author Archives: News Sources

Destroying ISIS is about more than vengeance

Hassan Hassan writes: Less than three weeks before ISIL captured Jordanian pilot Maaz Al Kassasbeh on December 24, Jordan’s King Abdullah described the fight against the extremist group as “our third world war”. He said that Muslim leaders should take ownership of the fight, which requires a pan-regional strategy to counter extremism.

Two months later, Jordan is now finding itself being pushed to the forefront of this “generational fight”, as the king put it then. Since the terror group burnt Al Kassasbeh to death in a cage, the country’s air force has carried out at least 56 sorties, and been joined by F16s of the UAE. Jordan’s fight against ISIL is no longer someone else’s war.

The greatest mistake that Jordan can make is to define its battle against ISIL purely in the language of vengeance. The pain and anger that define the atmosphere in Jordan today might abate in coming weeks, but the country’s commitment to the destruction of ISIL should become part of a long-term strategy. The rise of ISIL was a result of reactionary and inconsistent policies in the first place – something Jordan must avoid if it is to win this war.

Jordan must heed the king’s own advice during his interview with CBS News in December, when he said that ISIL would not go away without a “holistic” strategy that views the group as part of greater challenges facing the region. ISIL, he said, is one face of many extremist groups in the Middle East. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s unspoken deal with Assad

Jamie Dettmer reports: Washington and Damascus are not coordinating their battle plans against the so-called Islamic State at any official level, but a de facto deal between them is increasingly obvious. The Assad regime is conducting follow-up bombing raids in the wake of sorties by the U.S.-led coalition, and it has launched a land offensive in eastern Syria that is helping the coalition and the Kurds shut down the jihadist supply lines to Mosul in northern Iraq. This evident, if indirect coordination, is feeding Sunni Muslim suspicions in the region that Syrian President Bashar Assad and U.S. President Barack Obama have decided to work together.

The Syrian civil war, now entering its fifth year, has witnessed a dizzying sequence of shifting alliances. Enemies suddenly become friends and allies are deemed foes in a real-life Game of Thrones. So it’s not surprising that Western-backed rebels are uneasy about recent developments.

Their suspicions are being stoked by the toned-down anti-Assad rhetoric of Obama officials. In his State of the Union last month, Obama focused his Syria remarks on the so-called train-and-equip plan to build a proxy force that will target Islamic State militants. And also by Assad himself. [Continue reading…]

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Why Turkey backs Al-Nusra but shuns ISIS

Aaron Stein writes: In April 2011, senior members of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) met in Ankara to discuss the unrest in Syria. The meeting focused on Syria and how the government should respond to Bashar al-Assad’s violent suppression of antigovernment demonstrations. For the AKP, the unrest posed a unique set of challenges. Since 2002, Turkey had prioritized good relations with Damascus, arguing that areas of northern Syria were part of what they called Turkey’s “natural hinterland.”

In the end, the meeting’s participants decided to cautiously support Assad, albeit while prodding him to make political concessions to allow the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to reenter Syrian politics. Unlike during the Arab Spring protests in Egypt, when Turkey called on President Hosni Mubarak to step down after only eight days of rallies, Ankara’s initial preference in Syria was for the regime to reform and remain in power. To this end, Recep Tayyip Erdogan—then prime minister and now president—dispatched two trusted advisers to try to convince Assad to make cosmetic democratic reforms to appease the protesters. In April 2011, he sent Intelligence Chief Hakan Fidan to try to convince Assad to deescalate the unfolding crisis. Thereafter, he dispatched Ahmet Davutoglu, foreign minister at the time and now prime minister, on numerous occasions. Despite these efforts, neither man was successful. In September 2011, Turkey severed ties with the regime and began to take active part in regional efforts to overthrow the Syrian dictator. [Continue reading…]

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‘Cyber Caliphate’ unmasked as lone Algerian hacker

The Desk: A hacking collective calling itself the “Cyber Caliphate” that claims to be affiliated with the Islamic State militia is actually a lone hacker from Algeria with no connection to the terrorist group, The Desk has learned.

The revelation came following the compromise of a Twitter account used by Newsweek magazine on Tuesday. The attack was said to have been done in the name of the “Cyber Caliphate,” a group that has targeted other news organizations over the past few months in the name of the Islamic State.

But The Desk has learned the attacks are actually conducted by a lone Algeria-based hacker who goes by the alias “Poti Satz.” The hacker was once affiliated with a collective known as “Team System Dz,” which was active for a few months in 2014 before going dark in October.

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‘CyberCaliphate’ hacks Newsweek Twitter account, threatens Obama

Reuters: Newsweek magazine’s Twitter account was the victim of hackers on Tuesday who posted a threat to U.S. President Barack Obama and his family and the words “CyberCaliphate” and “Je suis IS,” a reference to Islamic State and the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The group, which also took responsibility for hacking Pentagon social media accounts last month, tweeted “#CyberCaliphate Bloody Valentine’s Day #MichelleObama! We’re watching you, you girls and your husband!”

It also posted a message intended for the United States in retaliation for its actions in the Muslim world.

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Hearing for accused 9/11 plotters weighs alleged government meddling

Reuters: A U.S. military court on Wednesday tried to assess whether government agents interfered with the trial of five men charged with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by spying on defenses attorneys and their clients.

The judge halted the pre-trial hearing at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison on Monday after one of the defendants said his interpreter had worked at a secret CIA prison.

When the hearing resumed on Wednesday, defenses attorneys contended the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency had planted Arabic interpreters on the defenses team, bugged conversations between the attorneys and their clients and questioned their support staff.

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The international media is failing to report the Syrian war properly

By Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham

February 2015 has already seen some major developments in Syria’s four-year conflict. At the start of February, rebels launched more than 100 rockets into Damascus and the Assad regime fired mortars on areas of its own capital, hoping to discredit the insurgents. At least six people were killed in the attacks.

Then came almost 50 regime air strikes on opposition-held areas near Damascus, which killed at least 82 people. Another 25 were killed in Aleppo when a barrel bomb hit a bus on a roundabout.

Meanwhile, rebels also claimed to have blown up 30 men fighting for the Assad regime – Hezbollah troops, Iranians, and Iraqis among them – at a militia headquarters west of Damascus.

All this while US-led coalition air strikes were carried out in eastern Syria against the Islamic State (IS), with Jordan in particular vowing to “wipe them from the face of the Earth” after the group murdered a captured pilot.

Take a look at the world’s media coverage, though, and you might be forgiven for thinking things were rather more quiet.

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Assad says Syria is informed on anti-ISIS air campaign

BBC News: Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad says his government is receiving messages from the US-led coalition battling the jihadist group, Islamic State.

Mr Assad told the BBC that there had been no direct co-operation since air strikes began in Syria in September.

But third parties – among them Iraq – were conveying “information”.

The US National Security Council has denied co-ordinating with the Syrian government.

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Signs of desperation in the West’s latest moves to halt the Ukraine crisis

Lucian Kim writes: The European Union, with Germany at its head, sleepwalked into the Ukraine crisis. Shielded by U.S. military might since the end of World War Two, Western Europeans had come to live under the illusion that their irresistible soft power — democratic values and economic prosperity — is alone strong enough to bring the continent together. In their attempt to finalize an association agreement with Ukraine in 2013, EU leaders jostled with Putin for influence, not realizing that what they regarded as a trade deal, he viewed as brazen geopolitical encroachment. When the pro-EU protest on the Maidan unexpectedly succeeded in chasing Kremlin client Viktor Yanukovych from power last February, Putin watched the West crossing a red line it had chosen not to see. Securing Russia’s Black Sea Fleet on Crimea was the first priority. Wreaking havoc on Kiev’s interim government by fomenting an uprising in eastern Ukraine was the second.

Could anybody have anticipated Russia’s actions a year ago? Radoslaw Sikorski, who was Poland’s foreign minister during the Maidan protest, said that at last year’s Munich conference he had asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov if the Kremlin had territorial ambitions in Ukraine. “He flatly denied it,” Sikorski said. Less than a month later, Yanukovych fled Kiev, and Russian troops were fanning out across Crimea.

Lavrov was also in Munich this year. The usually suave Russian foreign minister was visibly nervous as he delivered his speech, rattling off a standard list of slights and transgressions — almost all of them committed by the Bush administration — and blaming the United States for everything. When Lavrov said that Crimea chose the path of self-determination as foreseen under the United Nations Charter, the audience of VIPs burst into laughter.

The Russian position afforded a glimpse into the alternate reality presented day in and day out by the Kremlin propaganda machine. “There are no Russian troops in Ukraine,” Konstantin Kosachyov, the head of the Russian Duma’s foreign affairs committee, said in English. “There is no evidence — just statements, statements, statements.” According to his version of events, Russia is sitting and watching idly as a civil war unfolds across hundreds of miles of undefended border. “I thank Madame Merkel for a very strong position,” Kosachyov said about her rejection of arms for Ukraine.

Even if the West doesn’t believe that it’s engaged in a proxy war with Russia, the Kremlin reading is that it’s already taking place. [Continue reading…]

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Ukraine: draft dodgers face jail as Kiev struggles to find new fighters

The Guardian reports: Ruslan Kotsaba posted a video addressed to the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, last week in which he said he would rather go to prison for five years for draft-dodging than fight pro-Russia rebels in the country’s east. Now he faces 15 years in jail after being arrested for treason and obstructing the military.

His case is symptomatic of Kiev’s difficulties in mobilising a war-weary society to continue the fight against the rebels, who appear to have an unlimited supply of weapons and training from Russia. As the country nears bankruptcy and the reform programme demanded by the Maidan revolution last year is sidelined by the war effort, the drive to call up new recruits is floundering.

The conflict has cost more than 5,000 lives since it began last spring and Russia shows no signs of toning down its backing for the separatist movement. Poroshenko is due to meet his Russian, French and German counterparts in Minsk on Wednesday, and the financial and emotional burden of months of conflict could mean Ukraine is forced to accept a deal that effectively gives up control of rebel-held territory. [Continue reading…]

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We dream about drones, said 13-year-old Yemeni before his death in a CIA strike

The Guardian reports: A 13-year-old boy killed in Yemen last month by a CIA drone strike had told the Guardian just months earlier that he lived in constant fear of the “death machines” in the sky that had already killed his father and brother.

“I see them every day and we are scared of them,” said Mohammed Tuaiman, speaking from al-Zur village in Marib province, where he died two weeks ago.

“A lot of the kids in this area wake up from sleeping because of nightmares from them and some now have mental problems. They turned our area into hell and continuous horror, day and night, we even dream of them in our sleep.”

Much of Mohammed’s life was spent living in fear of drone strikes. In 2011 an unmanned combat drone killed his father and teenage brother as they were out herding the family’s camels. [Continue reading…]

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Limitless ambitions of Yemen’s Houthis

Nabeel Khoury writes: The Houthis are the largest Zaidi tribe in the northern Saada region of Yemen, abutting the Saudi border to the north. For years, the central government in Sanaa had marginalized the Houthis. Sunni Salafis from the north had meddled and proselytized the Zaidi tribe, which is an offshoot of Shia Islam. In 2004, the Houthi leader Hussein Badreddine Al-Houthi declined a summons to the capital by President Saleh. In response, Saleh sent troops to bring the Houthi leader by force, sparking off a six-year war that culminated in Saudi Arabia’s failed incursion into northern Yemen, in 2009 to 2010, to assist Saleh against the motley Houthi army.

At the time, the Houthi political movement was known as Al-Shabab Al-Mumin — the Believing Youth. Saleh had supported the Houthis until they adopted the slogan, ‘Death to America, Death to Israel,’ after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Houthi demands back then were regional and sectarian: They wanted some autonomy within their region, to run their schools and mosques as they saw fit. They also wanted to see a fair share of the national budget spent on projects in their governorate.

After years of fighting a larger more organized army, the Houthis transformed from a regional ragtag militia into the most effective fighting force in Yemen—from a tribe totally preoccupied with local, sectarian goals into an ambitious party. The Houthi leader now makes reference to regional and international issues as he claims to speak on behalf of Islam and Muslims everywhere. The Houthis have transitioned from the insignificant, scarcely-known Believing Youth to Ansar Allah — the Defenders of God — a name derived from a Koranic verse. The Houthis have drawn help from Iran and Hezbollah—and the attention of the world in the process. In the words of Abdelmalek Al-Houthi in a recent speech, “Our ambitions are limitless.” [Continue reading…]

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Family of ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller confirms U.S. aid worker has been killed

The Guardian: The family of Kayla Mueller, the 26-year-old aid worker held hostage by Isis since August 2013, has confirmed in a statement that she has been killed.

“We are heartbroken to share that we’ve received confirmation that Kayla Jean Mueller, has lost her life,” her parents and brother said on Tuesday.

Supporters of Islamic State had claimed on Friday that she was killed in a Jordanian air strike intended to avenge the burning to death of a captured Jordanian pilot.

Carl and Marsha Mueller, her parents, said: “Our hearts are breaking for our only daughter, but we will continue on in peace, dignity, and love for her.”

In a statement released by the White House, Barack Obama sent his “deepest condolences” to the Mueller family, and vowed to bring those responsible for Kayla’s death to justice.

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Privacy experts question Obama’s strategy to tackle cyber threats

The Guardian reports: Cybersecurity and digital privacy experts are questioning the need for Barack Obama’s latest bureaucratic initiative, a new agency spurred by the massive Sony hack that critics fear will expand the government’s role into monitoring online data networks on security grounds.

White House security adviser Lisa Monaco planned to unveil on Tuesday the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, the name of which speaks to its position within a US intelligence community whose ongoing, surreptitious reach over the internet has attracted global skepticism.

The remit of the new center, subordinate to the office of the director of national intelligence and modelled on the National Counterterrorism Center, is said to be the combination of the various intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies’ understanding and analysis of new or emerging malicious cyber-attacks.

Over the past five years, the administration has stood up new entities, such as the National Security Agency’s military twin US Cyber Command, or expanded the remit of others, like the Department of Homeland Security, to safeguard government – and increasingly civilian – networks.

“Given the number of other agencies that have cybersecurity threat integration responsibilities, it’s not clear that a new agency is needed,” said Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology. [Continue reading…]

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How Sisi dictates

Tom Stevenson writes: It’s no secret that Hosni Mubarak’s regime was repressive. Yet although in its treatment of prisoners and many other ways besides, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s is worse, statesmen around the world praise its role in Egypt’s ‘democratic transition’. When John Kerry visited Cairo last year he reported that Sisi had given him ‘a very strong sense of his commitment to human rights’. These issues, he said, were ‘very much’ on Sisi’s mind. For more than thirty years it was US policy to support autocratic government in Egypt as a route to ‘regional security’. The US backed Mubarak’s regime until its very last days; even during the mass protests of January 2011, the US hoped Mubarak could survive if he made political concessions. Mubarak is gone, but the US Defense Department’s links with the Egyptian military – long-standing and solid – have remained. Officials are steadily restoring the flow of aid and equipment that was temporarily suspended in the wake of the coup: there is no serious ‘human rights’ issue for Washington.

The US is not alone in this. When Shinzo Abe visited Cairo last month he spoke of the ‘high esteem’ in which the Japanese government holds its relationship with Sisi, and pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in development loans. Diplomatic support from Europe, which suffered minor interruptions when the repression peaked late in the summer of 2013, has largely been restored. In addition to visiting the UN General Assembly, Sisi has been received on official visits to the Vatican, Davos, Rome and Paris: little or nothing has been said about routine human rights abuses, let alone the Rabaa massacre or the mass imprisonment and torture of dissidents.

When David Cameron held a meeting with Sisi in New York in September he spoke of ‘Egypt’s pivotal role in the region’ and its importance to British policy. ‘Both economically and in the fight against Islamist extremism’, he said, Egypt was a crucial ally and the UK was ‘keen to expand practical partnerships’. Cameron urged the president ‘to ensure human rights are respected’; he was much more specific on the point that Egyptian state debts to Britain’s international oil companies should be promptly repaid. The British embassy now issues reports with titles like ‘Egypt: Open for Business?’ and last month’s UK investment delegation to Cairo was the biggest in a decade. Western leaders – as Sisi well knows – have very little interest in upsetting Egypt, strategically located as it is between the world’s major energy-producing region and the developed world. The West appears to see no contradiction in supporting the ‘stability’ of the Sisi regime at a time when the Egyptian population is suffering from the extreme instability that comes with mass arrests and torture. [Continue reading…]

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Greece’s leaders stun Europe with escalating defiance

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes: Greece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has spelled out the negotiating strategy of the Syriza government with crystal clarity.

“Exit from the euro does not even enter into our plans, quite simply because the euro is fragile. It is like a house of cards. If you pull away the Greek card, they all come down,” he said.

“Do we really want Europe to break apart? Anybody who is tempted to think it possible to amputate Greece strategically from Europe should be careful. It is very dangerous. Who would be hit after us? Portugal? What would happen to Italy when it discovers that it is impossible to stay within the austerity straight-jacket?”

“There are Italian officials – I won’t say from which institution – who have approached me to say they support us, but they can’t say the truth because Italy is at risk of bankruptcy and they fear the consequence from Germany. A cloud of fear has been hanging over Europe over recent years. We are becoming worse than the Soviet Union,” he told the Italian TV station RAI.

This earned a stiff rebuke from the Italian finance minister, Pier Carlo Padoan. “These comments are out of place. Italy’s debt is solid and sustainable,” he said.

Yet the point remains. Deflationary conditions are causing interest costs to rise faster than nominal GDP in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, automatically pushing public debt ratios ever higher.

Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen warns that Grexit would be “Lehman squared”, setting off a calamitous chain reaction with worldwide consequences. Syriza’s gamble is that the EU authorities know this, whatever officials may claim in public. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS pulls forces and hardware from Syria’s Aleppo, say rebels

Reuters reports: Islamic State has withdrawn some of its insurgents and equipment from areas northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo, rebels and residents say, adding to signs of strain in the Syrian provinces of its self-declared caliphate.

The group, which has recently lost ground to Kurdish and Syrian government forces elsewhere in Syria, has pulled fighters and hardware from several villages in areas northeast of Aleppo, they said. But it has not fully withdrawn from area.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war using a network of sources on the ground, said Islamic State had redeployed forces from Aleppo province to join battles further east with Kurdish forces and mainstream rebel groups.

Islamic State-held areas northeast of Aleppo mark the western edge of a domain that expanded rapidly in Syria and Iraq last year after the jihadists seized the Iraqi city of Mosul. [Continue reading…]

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