Category Archives: Obama administration

Arctic drilling approval threatens Obama’s climate legacy

InsideClimate News reports: The Obama administration’s final approval of Royal Dutch Shell’s drilling for oil in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea provoked an angry reaction on Monday from environmentalists who had come to consider President Obama a champion in the fight against climate change.

The decision comes two weeks after the release of the United States’ most aggressive attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions, known as the Clean Power Plan, and just days after Obama announced he will visit Alaska later this month to highlight the impacts of climate change, which he recently referred to as “one of the greatest challenges we face this century.”

“I’m flummoxed,” said Jamie Henn, co-founder and director of strategy and communications of the green group 350.org. “Arctic drilling is so blatantly out of line with the President’s stated goals that the only possible explanations seem to be that he truly doesn’t understand the issue or that the White House is somehow convinced that the project won’t go forward.” [Continue reading…]

Mashable reports: The warmest year on record so far may have claimed another milestone, and this time it’s a big one.

According to preliminary data from NASA along with information from the Japan Meteorological Administration, July 2015 was the warmest month on record since instrument temperature records began in the late 1800s.

Research using other data, such as tree rings, ice cores and coral formations in the ocean, have shown that the Earth is now the warmest it has been since at least 4,000 years ago. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. officials feared they didn’t have enough evidence to build a case against ISIS prisoner but she may be executed

The Daily Beast reports: Umm Sayyaf, a key player in the abduction and enslavement of young women and girls by the so-called Islamic State, will stand trial for her alleged crimes. But probably not for her role in the imprisonment and rape of young American aid worker Kayla Mueller, who died while in the hands of ISIS earlier this year. Nor will Umm Sayyaf, the wife of a top ISIS figure killed in a U.S. raid last May, be held to account in an American courtroom.

U.S. officials told The Daily Beast in several interviews that the decision about how to deal with Umm Sayyaf, the most senior ISIS prisoner in American custody, was the result of both legal and pragmatic considerations. They conceded that while, in the end, there will be justice — perhaps very severe justice — for Mueller, it might not take the shape some had expected or hoped.

Indeed, the handling of the case is highly unusual and poses significant questions about how future ISIS fighters captured overseas will be dealt with by U.S. authorities.

Umm Sayyaf, who is an Iraqi citizen, was captured by U.S. forces in Syria. She was interrogated in Iraq by an American unit that operates outside the traditional criminal justice system. But the decision on where to try her was based largely in deference to Iraqi law. And she will now be turned over not to the government of Iraq in Baghdad, but Iraq’s Kurdish regional government in Erbil, which is expected to “throw the book” at her, and perhaps do much more than that. [Continue reading…]

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The questionable legality of U.S. military aid to Egypt

In an editorial, the New York Times says: Egypt’s rising authoritarianism has been met with a collective shrug in Washington, which sends Cairo $1.3 billion in military aid each year.

One notable exception is Senator Patrick Leahy, who is raising alarm about human rights abuses Egyptian security forces have committed as they battle militants in the Sinai Peninsula. He recently asked Secretary of State John Kerry in a letter whether Egypt had run afoul of a federal law he sponsored that bars military units that have committed human rights abuses with impunity from receiving American aid.

“According to information I have received, the number of militants has steadily increased, due, at least in part, to ineffective and indiscriminate operations by the Egyptian military and the lack of licit economic opportunities for inhabitants of the Sinai,” Mr. Leahy wrote in the July 20 letter.

Mr. Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, is asking a rhetorical question. It is abundantly clear to the senator and Egypt experts in the American government that Egypt’s security forces have committed abuses with impunity in recent years. In May, the State Department told Congress in a report that security forces have “committed arbitrary or otherwise unlawful killings during the dispersal of demonstrators, of persons in custody and during military operations in the northern Sinai Peninsula.”

Mr. Leahy’s point is that continuing to enable a despotic government by shipping over American Apache helicopters, missiles and ammunition is not only unwise but almost certainly unlawful. [Continue reading…]

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U.S., Turkey aim to create buffer zone on Syrian border. Nobody knows how

The Washington Post reports: Mohamed Jlelati is not sure whether a de facto “safe zone” along the Turkey-Syria border will include his home town. But he is preparing for it anyway.

Jlelati is a member of the Syrian opposition’s local government in Aleppo, about 40 miles from the Turkish border. And he has plans for his city.

“If people have water and electricity, they will feel stable,” he said, sketching out Aleppo’s water and power grids on a piece of paper. “Then you can provide food. And then start cleaning up the rubble.”

U.S. and Turkish officials last month announced a landmark deal to fight the Islamic State, the militant group that has seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

The agreement allows the United States to launch aircraft from inside Turkey for swifter strikes against militants. It also envisions an area along the border that is free of extremists and protected by U.S. air power. Turkey hopes the zone will be a haven for the millions of Syrians who have fled across the border into its territory.

But while news of the deal has spurred hope among Syrians, neither the United States nor Turkey has offered details on how such a zone would be established and enforced. In the past two weeks, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, have launched attacks in the area where the United States and Turkey hope to establish the zone. Analysts say that any plans for a buffer zone will fail unless there is a will to organize, administer and police the region.

“I don’t think we will see anything approaching what even resembles a safe zone” in Syria, said Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

“If you’re going to have significant numbers of people sheltering in the zone, you’ll need various things — like electricity, fuel, water tanks, piping, clinics,” Sayigh said. But instead of planning for large humanitarian or reconstruction operations, Turkey and the United States are “mostly trying to do PR” for an unworkable plan, he said. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s secret elite interrogation squad may not be so elite — and might be doomed

The Huffington Post reports: When President Barack Obama took office, he promised to overhaul the nation’s process for interrogating terror suspects. His solution: the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, a small interagency outfit that would use non-coercive methods and the latest psychological research to interrogate America’s most-wanted terrorists — all behind a veil of secrecy.

Today, the HIG often gets the first jab at America’s most-wanted terror suspects. Since its creation in August 2009, HIG teams have questioned a bevy of top detainees, including Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Umm Sayyaf, the wife of a high-profile Islamic State leader killed in a drone strike.

But six years on, the Obama administration’s elite interrogation force is on shaky ground. U.S. officials and outside critics question the effectiveness of its interrogators, whether they’re following their own training, and whether they can continue to rely on psychological research to help break suspects. Congress and the White House, which once saw the group as a key to reinventing the nation’s counterterrorism strategy, aren’t paying attention. And those struggles illuminate a broader reality: Obama’s limited reforms to how American detains, interrogates and prosecutes suspected terrorists are ad-hoc and fragile. His successor could scrap most of them — the HIG included — with the stroke of a pen. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s climate plan is another half-baked carbon trading scheme

By Steffen Böhm, University of Essex and Rebecca Pearse, University of Sydney

The US Clean Power Plan puts a national limit on greenhouse gas emissions for the first time. Despite a few critics, environmentalists have on the whole reacted positively. Yet, as societies around the world are already struggling with the effects of climate change, is Obama’s plan ambitious enough? As he acknowledged himself, “there is such a thing as being too late when it comes to climate change”. We suggest precisely that: his plan is too little, given that it has arrived so late.

The Clean Power Plan aims for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions associated with coal, oil, and gas-fired power plants by 32% below 2005 levels by 2030. It focuses on the electricity sector, which is a good thing. Electricity generation from fossil fuels is the largest single industrial source of CO2 emissions and 31% of the US total.

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The Pentagon ignores Obama’s order to release Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo

Clive Stafford Smith writes: Recent history demonstrates that if President Barack Obama, arguably the most powerful person on planet Earth, wants to prioritize almost anything – from pardoning 46 convicted drug felons to bombing a foreign country without the consent of Congress – little can stand in his way. Why, then, is Shaker Aamer not home in London with his wife and four children?

Aamer is the last British resident to be detained without trial in Guantánamo Bay and he has never been charged with a single offense. In 2007, he was cleared for release by the Bush Administration; in 2009, six US intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that Shaker should be released. In January 2015, British Prime Minster David Cameron personally raised Shaker’s plight with President Obama, who promised that he would “prioritize” the case.

On Thursday, we came a little closer to understanding the reason that Aamer’s youngest child, Faris – who was born on Valentine’s Day 2002, the day that Aamer was rendered to the detention center at Guantánamo Bay – has never even met his father. The Guardian revealed that “the Pentagon [is] blocking Guantánamo deals to return Shaker Aamer and other cleared detainees.” President Obama, it seems, has personally ordered Aamer’s release, and his subordinates have ignored and thwarted his order. [Continue reading…]

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Talks suggest the endgame is afoot in Syria

Michael Young writes: With the Syrian regime losing ground in the Ghab Plain and Qaryatayn last week, the protagonists in Syria are slowly preparing for the aftermath of the conflict. Few believe president Bashar Al Assad can prevail in the war, and even he conceded his army’s difficulties late last month.

With Mr Al Assad’s foes gaining, all eyes have been on diplomacy in recent weeks. Russian, Saudi and American officials have met in Qatar, the Russian and Saudi foreign ministers met in Moscow on Monday, and Russia mediated a recent meeting in Jeddah between the Saudi deputy crown prince and defence minister, Mohammed bin Salman, and the head of Syria’s National Security Bureau, Ali Mamlouk.

Even Iran has offered a plan for a political solution in Syria. Two things are apparent in these exchanges: Mr Al Assad’s vulnerabilities have prompted his allies to begin a process of finding a negotiated outcome in Syria that could potentially save him and prevent a power vacuum that benefits extremists; and the Syrian president has become increasingly irrelevant, his fate almost entirely in the hands of others. [Continue reading…]

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War in space may be closer than ever

Scientific American reports: The world’s most worrisome military flashpoint is arguably not in the Strait of Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, Iran, Israel, Kashmir or Ukraine. In fact, it cannot be located on any map of Earth, even though it is very easy to find. To see it, just look up into a clear sky, to the no-man’s-land of Earth orbit, where a conflict is unfolding that is an arms race in all but name.

The emptiness of outer space might be the last place you’d expect militaries to vie over contested territory, except that outer space isn’t so empty anymore. About 1,300 active satellites wreathe the globe in a crowded nest of orbits, providing worldwide communications, GPS navigation, weather forecasting and planetary surveillance. For militaries that rely on some of those satellites for modern warfare, space has become the ultimate high ground, with the U.S. as the undisputed king of the hill. Now, as China and Russia aggressively seek to challenge U.S. superiority in space with ambitious military space programs of their own, the power struggle risks sparking a conflict that could cripple the entire planet’s space-based infrastructure. And though it might begin in space, such a conflict could easily ignite full-blown war on Earth.

The long-simmering tensions are now approaching a boiling point due to several events, including recent and ongoing tests of possible anti-satellite weapons by China and Russia, as well as last month’s failure of tension-easing talks at the United Nations. [Continue reading…]

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Growing sense of alarm in U.S. about human rights developments in China

The New York Times reports: A top State Department official said Thursday that there was a “growing sense of alarm in the United States about human rights developments in China,” vowing that the issue would feature prominently in summit talks between President Xi Jinping of China and President Obama in Washington next month.

The official, Tom Malinowski, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, cited concerns about a proposed law in China that would severely restrict civil society and nongovernmental organizations, as well as recent roundups of lawyers and activists.

“Our ability to have a very positive summit of the sort that the Chinese government and the U.S. government wants will certainly be affected by the extent to which things get better or worse in the interim,” Mr. Malinowski said, addressing reporters after the close of the 19th U.S.-China Human Rights Dialogue, in which diplomats from the two countries criticized each other’s record on human rights.

The Chinese diplomats raised concerns about recent police shootings in the United States. “The Ferguson case was raised briefly,” Mr. Malinowski said, “and I actually thought this was quite interesting because they said, ‘We all saw that on TV,’ and my response, without in any way diminishing the seriousness of the problem that we are facing in the United States, was, ‘Exactly, you saw it on TV.’ ”

Reporters in China are not free to report on similar episodes of violence, and victims, their family members and lawyers are not able to petition for redress without fear of retribution from the government, Mr. Malinowski said he told his Chinese counterparts, who did not participate in the news briefing. [Continue reading…]

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Jimmy Carter: There is zero chance for the two-state solution

Prospect Magazine reports: “At this moment, there is zero chance of the two-state solution,” said Jimmy Carter, giving his bleakest pronouncement yet on the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock to which he devoted much effort while President of the United States, and even more time since then.

“These are the worst prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians for years,” he said, adding that he didn’t think that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, “has any intention” of making progress towards the goal, the thrust of international efforts for decades, of the creation of a separate state for the Palestinians alongside Israel. After John Kerry’s efforts as Secretary of State to broker a deal, which collapsed in the spring last year, the “US has withdrawn” from the problem, he reckoned. [Continue reading…]

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How America failed Afghan women

Musa al-Gharbi writes: The U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan was justified in large part by highlighting the plight of women under Taliban governance. Within the first weeks of the campaign, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Cherie Blair helped spearhead a highly-effective propaganda effort to convince the public that the U.S. and the U.K. were engaged in a moral war — one which was fundamentally about human rights rather than merely advancing geopolitical or security interests — thereby necessitating a massive ground invasion and state-building enterprise to transform Afghan society, rather than a more limited venture to dislodge and degrade the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Of course, the U.S. bore significant moral responsibility for the plight of Afghan women, given the central role that the CIA played in sponsoring mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the Cold War — before, during, and after the Russian occupation. Leaders trained in these programs would go on to found the Taliban, the Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda — groups which were not only responsible for the widespread oppression of the Afghan people, but also for planning and executing the suicide bombings of September 11, 2001.

And so, the moral implications of the war were extraordinary: had Operation Enduring Freedom been successful, it would have not only liberated Afghan women, but avenged 9/11—and in the process, helped to rectify a particularly dark chapter in U.S. foreign policy. And this, it was held, would go a long way towards winning the “hearts and minds” of people around the world. [Continue reading…]

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New diplomacy seen on U.S.-Russian efforts to end Syrian civil war

The New York Times reports: With President Bashar al-Assad of Syria facing battlefield setbacks, diplomats from Russia, the United States and several Middle Eastern powers are engaged in a burst of diplomatic activity, trying to head off a deeper collapse of the country that could further strengthen the militant group Islamic State.

Russia, Mr. Assad’s most powerful backer, has built new ties with Saudi Arabia, a fervent opponent, and even brokered a meeting between high-ranking Saudi and Syrian intelligence officials. On Tuesday, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, met with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in Moscow, wrangling over the fate of Mr. Assad.

Unusual meetings have come in quick succession. Last week, the top Russian, American and Saudi envoys held their first three-way meeting on Syria; Russian officials briefed Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem. He then met officials in Oman, whose ties to both Saudi Arabia and Iran raised the prospect of talks between those archrivals. Russia stopped blocking an international inquiry into who has used chemical weapons in Syria, a longstanding American priority. [Continue reading…]

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Iran deal furor reveals a split among Jewish Americans

Lisa Goldman reports: The frenzied lobbying in Washington over the international deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program has drawn attention to two unprecedented ruptures — both of which potentially have significant long-term consequences for Israel’s place in U.S. domestic politics.

For decades, unconditional support for Israel had been a point of unshakable bipartisan consensus inside the Beltway, even as bipartisanship on most other issues became a distant memory. A majority of Jewish voters continue to choose the Democrats; deep-pocketed Jewish donors remain vital to the electoral prospects of candidates from both parties, but partisan distinctions meant little when it came to Israel. And the pro-Israel lobbying establishment, first and foremost the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has always worked hard to span the aisle on Capitol Hill, while political leaders from both parties routinely pay tribute to the lobbying group at its annual convention.

The Iran nuclear deal has thrown that consensus into crisis, leaving Jewish Americans divided between a Democratic-voting majority that polls show support the Iran deal (in numbers proportionally larger than the wider U.S. population) and a conservative minority that includes some very powerful donors, and supports the GOP-led opposition to the deal. And AIPAC’s leading role in campaigning against the deal has prompted President Barack Obama to publicly challenge the group in a manner unprecedented for a U.S. leader over the past two decades. [Continue reading…]

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Inside the secret U.S.-Iran diplomacy that sealed nuke deal

Laura Rozen reports: When Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s president in June 2013 on a campaign platform of engaging with the West to reach a nuclear deal and improve Iran’s economy, he apparently didn’t know that Iran and the United States had already opened a secret diplomatic channel and held bilateral talks in Oman on the nuclear issue in March 2013.

“The first time I informed Rouhani of the secret negotiations with the United States was after his election to office,” former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview Aug. 4 with Iran Daily, adding that the incoming president and former Iranian nuclear negotiator was shocked when Salehi briefed him on the consultations ahead of his inauguration: “Rouhani was in disbelief.”

That is among the revelations that have emerged from interviews with senior Iranian and US officials in the wake of reaching of a final Iran nuclear accord by Iran and six world powers on July 14. The final deal — formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — is currently under a 60-day review by the US Congress. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some pro-Israel lobby groups are pressing members of Congress to kill the deal by voting next month on a resolution of disapproval that seeks to block President Barack Obama from providing the US sanctions relief promised in the accord in exchange for significant steps Iran agreed to take to limit its nuclear program. Obama has vowed to veto any such resolution, and Democrats currently believe they have enough support to sustain his veto, if required. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. shelves its $500M Syrian rebel army — sees Syrian Kurds as a more reliable fighting partner

The Daily Beast reports: The Obama administration is still publicly counting on a $500 million rebel army to beat ISIS in Syria. But privately, the Pentagon brass long ago moved past its own proxy force, The Daily Beast has learned. They’ve found another group to fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State instead.

In recent weeks, the handful of fighters in the administration-backed rebel army — the so-called “New Syrian Force” — have been killed, kidnapped, or fallen off the proverbial radar. But the Pentagon maintained a brave face, even after these 54 fighters (out of what was supposed to be a total of 15,000) were decimated by Islamist attacks. “We continue to see volunteers want to be a part of this program,” Air Force Colonel Pat Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters Friday.

It’s a public stance that has left many in the administration and in the defense establishment scratching their heads.

“I don’t understand why we are still training, other than to inoculate criticism. … [The administration] cannot admit it is a complete disaster,” said one senior defense adviser familiar with the U.S. approach. Even after the U.S.-trained fighters vanished, “there was no receptivity to new ideas.”

But what Ryder didn’t say is that, in the eyes of the administration, a better force had emerged — already trained, competent, organized — that posed little risk of abandoning the fight or worse yet, switching sides. They are the Syrian Kurdish militia — the Popular Protection Units or YPG, by their Kurdish initials. And they have successfully wrestled Syrian territory out of ISIS’s hands.

“We knew it would be a challenge but we didn’t expect them to confront the fight they did,” said a second senior defense official, referring to the New Syrian Force. On the other hand, “the YPG is the most effective fighting force in Syria.”

According to one group, the YPG has so far reclaimed at least 11 villages from ISIS, including in the Syrian city of Kobani, one of the biggest victories in the year-long campaign. And in June, the YPG regained control of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad, cutting off a key ISIS conduit to weapons and supplies. Like the New Syrian Force, the YPG can call in coalition airstrikes as needed.

Along with hoping nascent Arab fighters can take on ISIS, the U.S. is now keen to work alongside as many as 50,000 proven Kurdish fighters. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey is waging a two-front war. Some worry it’s only making things worse

The New York Times reports: The Turkish deal with the United States sets up an “ISIS-free” bombardment zone along a 60-mile strip of the border region [of Syria] that features another exclusion: At Turkey’s request, it is also explicitly a zone free of the Kurdish militia, even though the Kurds had begun advancing toward the area to start battling the Islamic State there.

Despite cooperating with American forces for months, the Syrian Kurds are now starting to worry that their success might not outweigh Turkey’s importance to the United States.

“There is only one group that has consistently and effectively battled ISIS in Syria, and that is the Y.P.G.,” said Redur Khalil, a spokesman for the militia who says it has grown to include 35,000 soldiers, about 11 years after its start as a self-defense force in a single town. “Opening another front in the region — as Turkey has by attacking the P.K.K. — will make the forces fighting ISIS weaker,” Mr. Khalil said. “Which in turn makes ISIS stronger.”

Cale Salih, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the author of numerous articles on Kurdish affairs, summed up the unease over the deal with Turkey this way: “If it comes at the price of the relationship with one of the few effective partners on the ground in Syria, it doesn’t seem to make sense.” [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Turkey’s decision to move against the Kurds is likely to do more to destabilize the region, some analysts say.

The police dragnet has fostered resentment against authorities in places such as Suruc, where Kurdish families have relatives living on both sides of the border. The United States has looked the other way as Turkey has hit the PKK in Iraq. The U.S. silence on the Turkish operations may hurt its burgeoning alliance with the YPG, whose fighters have proved to be the most effective ground force battling the Islamic State.

“It’s not smart for Turkey to do this,” Aaron Stein, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, said of Turkey’s twin military campaigns.

“Opening a two-front air war against insurgents you can’t defeat by air power alone is not smart strategically,” he said. Indeed, the U.S. military says it has launched more than 5,600 strikes on the Islamic State since last August, but the raids have not dislodged the group from its major strongholds. [Continue reading…]

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Al Qaeda in Syria leaves area where Turkey seeks buffer

Reuters reports: The al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front says it has quit frontline positions against Islamic State north of Aleppo and ceded them to other rebels, leaving an area of northern Syria where Turkey wants to set up a buffer zone.

A Nusra Front statement dated Sunday criticized a Turkish-U.S. plan to drive Islamic State from the Syrian-Turkish border area, saying the aim was to serve “Turkey’s national security” rather than the fight against President Bashar al-Assad.

The United States and Turkey last month announced their intention to drive Islamic State from a strip of territory in northern Syria near the Turkish border in a campaign that would provide air cover for Syrian rebels in the area.

Though Nusra is an enemy of Islamic State, its foothold in northern Syria has been a problem for the U.S.-led campaign against the ultra-hardline group. Late last month, Nusra attacked Syrian rebels trained as part of the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State, calling them agents of U.S. interests. [Continue reading…]

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