Category Archives: Obama administration

ISIS could soon control close to half of the Syrian border with Turkey

Michael Werz and Max Hoffman write: President Barack Obama and senior administration officials have repeatedly pointed out the absence of reliable partners on the ground in Syria—the Syrian Kurdish groups, such as YPG, have the potential to help fill that gap. While the PYD (the mainly-Kurdish Democratic Union Party), which dominates the Syrian Kurdish scene, is far from perfect, it has treated the civilians under its control relatively well, has fought ISIS effectively for over a year, and entirely eschews the violent Salafi ideology that animates so many of the rebel groups in Syria. As we argued in a Center for American Progress report in July, Kurdish political and military actors will be a key part of any solution to the Syrian tragedy. While coalition aircraft hit several ISIS tanks and fighting positions Sunday, the tactical strikes must be rapidly expanded to prevent the fall of the city.

The ramifications of inadequate action are dire. First, if ISIS takes the city, they are likely to behave as they have in the past — raping, torturing and murdering residents who survive the shelling of the town. Those who are able will most likely flee to Turkey, adding to the refugee problem there and expanding the humanitarian disaster. Already, the fighting has caused UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, to say “it’s a dramatic humanitarian tragedy as we have all witnessed… the largest single outflow of Syrians in a few days, 160,000 people.”

Second, if ISIS takes Kobani, they will control close to half of the Syrian border with Turkey. This will make it even harder to stem the flow of fighters and equipment to the jihadist group. It will also make it more difficult to crack down on the illicit oil sales that finance their operations and to insulate Turkey against further infiltration and potential attacks.

Third, the fall of Kobani would enrage many Turkish Kurds and potentially derail the fragile peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Thus far, Turkey has done nothing to prevent a slaughter by ISIS just across the border. To its credit, Turkey has, for the most part, accepted Syrian refugees, despite already hosting over a million people fleeing the conflict. But the Turkish government has also hampered the provision of aid to Kobani and tear-gassed Kurdish protesters angered by the government’s refusal to help. Clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish protesters continued Sunday and Monday along the border near Kobani. PKK leaders are already angry about the slow pace of peace negotiations with the government, and a massacre in Kobani would solidify the impression among some Turkish Kurds that their government is inveterately hostile towards their group.

Fourth, Kobani has long been a thorn in ISIS’ side — one of the last redoubts of resistance north of the de facto capital of Raqqah — which is why ISIS has focused on the city with such ferocity, despite being pressed on other fronts. If the city falls, ISIS will be able to consolidate its lines and mass forces elsewhere. It will also be a propaganda victory for ISIS; the YPG has been one of the few forces able to effectively resist ISIS thus far, and a decisive defeat of the Kurdish fighters would further underline ISIS’ military edge.

Finally, the fall of Kobani would likely cripple the YPG as a fighting force. The Syrian Kurds have the potential to contribute on the ground in the coalition against ISIS; allowing them to be defeated would permanently undermine U.S. and Western efforts to reach out to Kurdish political and military actors, who will have lost all trust in the West following such a disaster. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. carry out 90% of airstrikes in anti-ISIS operation

AFP reports: Arab and other allied countries have carried out about 10 percent of the nearly 2,000 air raids against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria since early August, US defense officials said.

US warplanes have conducted 1,768 air strikes since August 8, while other coalition aircraft have carried about 195 air raids against the IS jihadists, defense officials told AFP, citing a tally through Sunday.

The numbers, which for the first time shed light on the participation of Arab coalition partners, reflect the dominant role of the US military in the air campaign.

But Pentagon officials have insisted the role for Arab and European partners is likely to grow over time.

The Arab states involved in the operation in Syria — Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — have been reluctant to divulge details of their participation in the air strikes.

But for Washington and the West, the presence of the Arab countries has carried crucial symbolism in the fight against the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group.

France, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia have committed aircraft for the effort in Iraq, though their presence has been on a small scale so far. [Continue reading…]

And how much value can be attached to CENTCOM data when Kobane and Ayn Al Arab — the same city — are listed separately?

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ISIS adapts to U.S. airstrikes, holds territory and advances in American tanks, killing Kurds


A Wall Street Journal report shows that while the Pentagon claims that it has been successful in “disrupting” ISIS, what is much more obvious is the ease with which the organization has thus far adapted to the U.S.-led air campaign.

A U.S. official is quoted saying: “We’re not trying to take ground away from them [in Syria]. We’re trying to take capability away from them.”

And as the population of Kobane has witnessed, the U.S. is not even trying hard to prevent ISIS conquering new territory.

Islamic State fighters have reacted swiftly to the threat of airstrikes over the past weeks, moving out of captured military bases and government buildings in Syria, relocating weapons and hostages, and abandoning training camps, according to residents and rebels in the areas the militants control. In Syria and Iraq, they took down many of their trademark black flags, and camouflaged armed pickup trucks. They also took cover among civilians.

They also have maintained much of their financing and recruiting capability and continued to crack down on local populations, anti-regime activists and rebels in Syria said. At the same time, they publicized a series of beheadings of Western hostages.

In addition to holding territory after they came under attack, they pressed on with an ambitious offensive on the Syrian city of Ayn al-Arab, also known as Kobani, close to the border with Turkey.

Analysts said the U.S. is having a hard time getting intelligence to act on, and, as a result, a fraction of sorties flown have resulted in bombings.

Syrian anti-Assad activists and members of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army said the U.S. is overestimating the impact it has had on Islamic State. Some residents living in areas controlled by the group in Syria maintain that the air campaign has had little effect.

Militants began moving weaponry and leadership away from their bases immediately after the U.S. announced in September it would strike targets in Syria, activists and rebels said. By mid-September, residents of Raqqa—Islamic State’s de facto capital in northeastern Syria—said the city was emptied of the group’s senior leadership.

“We used to see commanders around the city. But since the announcement [that airstrikes would begin], they’re gone,” said one Raqqa resident.

However, an official from one U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf defended the success of the strikes so far, saying they had slowed the militants’ advance in both countries and was slowly degrading their financing infrastructure.

“ISIS will have a big problem when winter starts,” said one aid worker who provides relief in the eastern province of Deir Ezzour.

“They gained some popularity by distributing [a monthly stipend] of gas to the population and lowering prices. They won’t be able to do that.”

An Islamic State member interviewed via Skype said strikes by the Syrian regime have been more damaging than the U.S.-led assaults, and claimed the group’s production and refining of oil—a major revenue source — continues.

Christopher Harmer, a defense analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, said the U.S. is having a hard time getting actionable intelligence. As a result, he estimated only about 10% of the sorties being flown by the U.S. and its partners have dropped bombs.

“ISIS is not really structured in such a way as to be vulnerable to airstrikes,” he said. “They don’t have a lot of static targets. We can bomb a building here, a building there, a tank here, a truck there. But ISIS fighters are very good at intermingling with the civilian population.”

U.S. officials have said the strikes have had a high degree of accuracy.

One U.K. defense expert said that the coalition so far has struck mostly static targets, when the better way to hamper the group’s mobility is attacking fighters moving from one area to another.

“What air power can do is cut down on that mobility,” said Michael Clarke, the director at the Royal United Services Institute, an independent think tank on defense and security. “But it’s not evident at the moment that the coalition of air power has succeeded in doing that.”

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Resolve: Obama lacks what America lacks

USA Today reports: Americans should be braced for a long battle against the brutal terrorist group Islamic State that will test U.S. resolve — and the leadership of the commander in chief, says Leon Panetta, who headed the CIA and then the Pentagon as Al Qaeda was weakened and Osama bin Laden killed.

“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war,” he says, one that will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.

In his first interview about his new book, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, Panetta argues that decisions made by President Obama over the past three years have made that battle more difficult — an explosive assessment by a respected policymaker of the president he served.

Even before it’s published Tuesday by Penguin Press, the 512-page book has provoked rebukes at the State Department and by Vice President Biden. But Panetta says he was determined to write a book that was “honest,” including his high regard for the president on some fronts and his deep concern about his leadership on others.

In an interview at his home with Capital Download, USA TODAY’s video newsmaker series, Panetta says Obama erred:

• By not pushing the Iraqi government harder to allow a residual U.S. force to remain when troops withdrew in 2011, a deal he says could have been negotiated with more effort. That “created a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it’s out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed.” Islamic State also is known as ISIS and ISIL.

• By rejecting the advice of top aides — including Panetta and then-secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — to begin arming Syrian rebels in 2012. If the U.S. had done so, “I do think we would be in a better position to kind of know whether or not there is some moderate element in the rebel forces that are confronting (Syrian President Bashar) Assad.”

• By warning Assad not to use chemical weapons against his own people, then failing to act when that “red line” was crossed in 2013. Before ordering airstrikes, Obama said he wanted to seek congressional authorization, which predictably didn’t happen.

The reversal cost the United States credibility then and is complicating efforts to enlist international allies now to join a coalition against the Islamic State, Panetta says. “There’s a little question mark to, is the United States going to stick this out? Is the United States going to be there when we need them?”

Showing leadership in the fight against ISIS is an opportunity “to repair the damage,” he says. He says it’s also a chance for Obama to get a fresh start after having “lost his way.”

On Friday, the terrorist group released a video that showed the beheading of a fourth Westerner, British aid worker Alan Henning, and threatened to execute American hostage Abdul-Rahman (formerly Peter) Kassig next.

Panetta’s behind-the-scenes account of events during Obama’s first term, including the internal debate over helping Syrian rebels, is consistent with those in memoirs published this year by Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, whom Panetta succeeded as Defense secretary.

But Panetta’s portrait of Obama is more sharply drawn and explicitly critical.

He praises the president for “his intelligence, his convictions, and his determination to do what was best for the country.” He notes that Obama has faced bitter opposition, especially from congressional Republicans. He credits him with scoring significant progress in fighting terrorism and righting the economy.

In the book’s final chapter, however, he writes that Obama’s “most conspicuous weakness” is “a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause.” Too often, he “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.” On occasion, he “avoids the battle, complains, and misses opportunities.”

In the interview, Panetta says he thinks Obama “gets so discouraged by the process” that he sometimes stops fighting.

Whenever American politicians and pundits make Churchillian statements about the need for or the testing of American resolve, it’s hard to take these words seriously.

If, as Leon Panetta predicts, the fight against ISIS will require a 30-year war, rather than suggest that this will test American resolve, an honest assessment would surely conclude that the U.S. is incapable of making this kind of commitment.

But more than this, to say that this nation is incapable of making a 30-year commitment of any kind, is a much more damning critique than to point to the limits of U.S. military power.

Another way of describing this deficit in American resolve is to say that as a culture, America lacks the capacity to focus on the interests of the next generation.

The price of wanting to have it all and have it now, is that immediate gratification always comes at someone else’s expense. We steal the future.

If the fight against ISIS or any other grandiose undertaking is engaged in the name of defending the American way of life, I don’t think that’s a worthy cause — indeed, I’d say it’s a huge part of the problem.

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ISIS hostage Abdul-Rahman Kassig: ‘I’m pretty scared to die’

NBC News reports: An Army Ranger-turned-aid worker held hostage by ISIS militants in Syria admitted to his parents he was “pretty scared to die” but also urged them to “seek refuge and comfort” from his humanitarian work.

Abdul-Rahman Kassig — who was born Peter but changed his name when he converted to Islam last year — wrote in a letter received by his parents on June 2 he was “praying every day” in captivity but was “not angry.” He added: “I am in a dogmatically complicated situation here, but I am at peace with my belief.”

Excerpts from his heartfelt letter were released in a statement late Sunday by his parents, Ed and Paula Kassig of Indianapolis, explaining how their 26-year-old son had traveled to Lebanon work as a medic before making a “spiritual journey” to become a Muslim. “We feel a need to more fully tell that story to the world,” the statement said. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. air strikes in Syria targeted French intelligence officer who defected to al Qaeda

McClatchy reports: A former French intelligence officer who defected to al Qaida was among the targets of the first wave of U.S. air strikes in Syria last month, according to people familiar with the defector’s movements and identity.

Two European intelligence officials described the former French officer as the highest ranking defector ever to go over to the terrorist group and called his defection one of the most dangerous developments in the West’s long confrontation with al Qaida.

The identity of the officer is a closely guarded secret. Two people, independently of one another, provided the same name, which McClatchy is withholding pending further confirmation. All of the sources agreed that a former French officer was one of the people targeted when the United States struck eight locations occupied by the Nusra Front, al Qaida’s Syrian affiliate. The former officer apparently survived the assault, which included strikes by 47 cruise missiles. [Continue reading…]

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The seeds of failure in Syria and Ukraine were planted long ago

Kennette Benedict writes: In September the United States, along with European and Middle Eastern partners, deployed air power to destroy the radical forces that are occupying territory on the Iraqi-Syrian border. And in his September 24 speech to the UN General Assembly, US President Barack Obama harshly criticized Moscow for seizing Ukrainian territory and backing separatists, saying that “we will impose a cost on Russia for aggression.”

Though more than 1,000 miles apart, these two foreign policy challenges for the United States have much in common. For the sake of civilians — ordinary people trying to make a living, feed their children, and live with a modicum of dignity — we all hope that efforts to end violent conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine will succeed. But Washington’s approach to both problems is ad-hoc and may be much too late. Without new institutions of regional governance, economic integration, and cultural dialogue, these efforts will likely fail to bring about peace and stability.

By “too late” I mean years and even decades too late. That’s because the two major foreign policy debacles the United States faces today could have been avoided by building new institutions when the opportunity first presented itself at the end of the Cold War.

In the 1990s, though, the US foreign policy community fell into intellectual disarray. The hostilities between the United States and the Soviet Union had seemed nearly immutable, and ideological positions blinded even intelligent analysts to the need for a far-reaching post-Cold War plan. Very few had been contemplating what would be needed once the USSR collapsed. There were no plans to help build former Soviet societies after years of economic stagnation and environmental neglect, as there had been for Germany and Japan after World War II. Nor were proposals for international cooperation to prevent future schisms and new “cold wars” given much thought. The national security and foreign policy establishments in the United States and Europe did not undertake any thoroughgoing reviews or take seriously any new ideas that went beyond the already-existing United Nations. [Continue reading…]

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Air strikes against ISIS are not working, say Syrian Kurds

The Guardian reports: Isis fighters have pushed to within little more than a mile of the centre of the city of Kobani, undeterred by western air strikes which are proving ineffective, a leading Kurdish official in the city has said.

Fighting between the Islamist militants and Syrian Kurds continued unabated despite another volley of coalition air strikes in and around the Kobani enclave, Idris Nassan, Kobani’s “foreign affairs minister”, told the Guardian.

“There are fierce clashes between Isis and YPG [People’s Defence Corps] fighters, at the moment mainly to the south-east of the city. Isis now stands at two kilometres from the city centre,” Nassan told the Guardian by phone. “I can hear the bombs and shells here.”

According to Nassan, the situation was “under control for now”, but he underlined that air strikes had not deterred a further Isis advance.

“Air strikes alone are really not enough to defeat Isis in Kobani,” he stressed. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every Isis fighter on the ground.”

He added that Isis had adapted their tactics to military strikes from the air. “Each time a jet approaches they leave their open positions, they scatter and hide. What we really need is ground support. We need heavy weapons and ammunition in order to fend them off and defeat them.” [Continue reading…]

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Coalition risks loss of support in Syria unless it clarifies its aims

Hassan Hassan writes: As the US-led offensive against ISIL inside Syria enters its 10th day today, there already appears to be a growing public backlash in Syria against the campaign. The scepticism about the air strikes emanates from the lack of clarity over the real aims and objectives of the offensive. Five reasons can be identified for this cynicism, which should be addressed if the air strikes are to lead to a positive outcome.

The first one is that the air strikes do not offer any clear endgame. This lack of clarity over what to expect from the air strikes has led Syrians to interpret the signals they have received so far. Bashar Al Assad, for example, is not only spared the air strikes, but he also has more time to bomb civilian areas, given that the pressure against his forces in Hama and eastern Aleppo has been reduced significantly. This is creating an impression that the Assad regime is a de facto partner in the US coalition, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.

Another reason is the economic consequences of the air strikes. On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that most of the oil refineries controlled by ISIL in Syria have been destroyed. These refineries will prevent ISIL from generating further revenues in Syria, which will also affect ISIL in Iraq, as much of the refined oil is transferred to the other side of the border.

However, these refineries, even before ISIL’s arrival in eastern Syria, have served as a lifeline for local communities.

Oil refineries have helped the population in Deir Ezzor to survive starvation after they were isolated between the Iraqi authorities across theborder, on one hand, and the regime on the other. These refineries were the latchkeys of a full-fledged war economy that helped to operate water-pumping engines to irrigate lands far from the Euphrates river. Without them, the situation in Deir Ezzor would have been much worse. Destroying these refineries will not affect ISIL, which had stopped operating them days before the air strikes began, as much as it will affect families living there. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. airstrikes back local forces in Iraq but not Syria — Kobane feels ‘deserted and furious’

Bloomberg reports: The U.S military is monitoring the threat to Kobani, and has conducted airstrikes “in and around” the town in the past several days, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters in Washington yesterday. U.S. Central Command said today the coalition had carried out 14 strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq yesterday and today. Vehicles, artillery positions and a building were destroyed near Kobani, said in an e-mailed statement.

Kirby said the U.S. operation in Syria targets areas Islamic State can use as a “sanctuary and a safe haven,” compared with strikes in Iraq that are being conducted to back local forces. That doesn’t mean “we are going to turn a blind eye to what’s going on at Kobani or anywhere else,” Kirby said.

While Turkey’s government has vowed to prevent an Islamic State takeover of Kobani, Kurds aren’t convinced, accusing authorities in Ankara of using the crisis to smother a largely autonomous Kurdish region that has evolved during Syria’s three-year civil war.

The Kurds fighting Islamic State in Syria are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, whose separatist ambition has long been considered Turkey’s top security threat.

“The people of Kobani feel deserted and furious,” Faysal Sariyildiz, another pro-Kurdish legislator, said yesterday.

The Washington Post adds: The real reason [for the limited number of airstrikes on ISIS near Kobane] appears to be that the main focus of the U.S.-led air war remains on Iraq, with any strikes conducted in Syria intended primarily to degrade the Islamic State’s capacity to operate there, according to Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“This is about stabilizing Iraq, not about minorities,” he said. “It appears Syria is secondary and strikes are not being carried out with a discernible political or humanitarian strategy.”

U.S. officials asked to explain the inaction in Kobane cast the answer in similar, if less explicit, terms.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, noted to reporters Friday that airstrikes had been conducted in the vicinity of the town, adding that if they could be conducted “in such a way that we’re not going to cause any greater damage or civilian casualties, then . . . we’re going to do it,” he said.

But, he added, “we’re broadly focused, not just on one city and one town. We have to stay broadly focused on the whole region.”

“The focus in Syria has really been about the safe haven they enjoy,” he said of Islamic State fighters. “In Iraq, it’s really been much more focused on supporting Iraqi security forces and Kurdish forces on the ground.”

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Now an ISIS hostage, former U.S. soldier Peter Kassig aided Syria’s wounded

CNN reports: Peter Kassig first went to the Middle East as a U.S. soldier and returned as a medical worker, feeling compelled to help victims of war.

“We each get one life and that’s it. We get one shot at this and we don’t get any do-overs, and for me, it was time to put up or shut up,” he said in a 2012 interview with CNN.

Now Kassig, 26, is being held hostage by ISIS.

His life was threatened Friday in an ISIS video that showed the apparent beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning.

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Netanyahu finds himself increasingly alone on Iran

Dimi Reider writes: For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, are essentially the same thing.

During a diatribe against Iran in his United Nations speech on Monday, Netanyahu asked: “Would you let ISIS enrich uranium? Would you let ISIS build a heavy water reactor? Would you let ISIS develop intercontinental ballistic missiles? Of course you wouldn’t.”

It was almost as if Netanyahu views Iran and ISIS as interchangeable. But the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way — least of all the United States, which is making a crucial last push for a comprehensive agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, even as it musters an international coalition to fight the Islamic State.

In insisting that Iran and ISIS are essentially the same enemy, Netanyahu broadcast his isolation among world leaders and underscored the jadedness of the idea that he has championed for most of his political career: the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb and the apocalyptic threat it would pose to the free world.

After all these years, Netanyahu still calls for every nook and cranny of Iran’s nuclear program to be demolished by military force, though preferably not Israel’s alone.

The isolation of his views was evidenced not only by the near-empty General Assembly hall when he gave his speech, but also in the Israeli media. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s army goes on the offensive as U.S. bombs Assad’s foes

Reuters reports: As U.S. warplanes bomb his enemies in Syria’s east, President Bashar al-Assad has set loose his own forces in the west, alarming Washington’s few friends on the ground and potentially undermining the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State.

U.S. President Barack Obama says Washington’s goal in Syria is to defeat Islamic State without helping Assad’s government. The Arab allies that have joined the U.S.-led strikes are some of Assad’s fiercest opponents.

Nevertheless, after first tamping down the use of its own air power in the initial days of the strikes, Syria’s military has intensified its own bombing against some of the rebel groups in the west of the country that Washington considers its allies.

Last Thursday alone, Syrian warplanes dropped bombs, including steel drums packed full of explosives and shrapnel, in Hama, Idlib, Homs and Aleppo provinces and around Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring body.

“In the first two days the Syrian air strikes went down about 90 percent, but then there were more, more than before. Now they are targeting Idlib every day,” said Rami Abdelrahman, who runs the Britain-based Observatory. [Continue reading…]

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Turkish parliament authorizes military action in Syria, Iraq — but imminent action not expected

The Washington Post reports: Turkey’s parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly endorsed a measure authorizing Turkish and foreign troops to take military action in Iraq and Syria, potentially setting the stage for a deeper level of Turkish involvement in the expanding international war against the radical Islamic State group.

It was not immediately clear, however, how far Turkey is prepared to go to support the military effort against the Islamic State, a heavily armed al-Qaeda offshoot also known as ISIS or ISIL. The effort risks further complicating Turkey’s already tangled relationships with its own restive Kurdish population, the million or more Syrian refugees in Turkey and even the extremists themselves.

Turkish officials said they expect no immediate change to Turkey’s existing policy of facilitating humanitarian efforts to aid needy Syrians inside and outside Syria and supporting moderate Syrian rebels battling the Damascus government.

“I don’t think there will be any imminent action,” said a Turkish official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. [Continue reading…]

For reports and discussion on the battle for Kobane, listen to On Point:

U.S. Central Command reported that U.S. and other forces in the coalition conducted just four strikes on Wednesday and Thursday in Syria.

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Iran, the thinkable American ally

Roger Cohen writes: The interim agreement with Iran, reached in November 2013, has had many merits. Iran has respected its commitments, including a reduction of its stockpiles of enriched uranium and a curbing of production. The deal has brought a thaw in relations between the United States and Tehran; once impossible meetings between senior officials are now near routine.

The rapid spread over the past year of the Sunni jihadist movement that calls itself Islamic State has underscored the importance of these nascent bilateral relations: ISIS is a barbarous, shared enemy whose rollback becomes immeasurably more challenging in the absence of American-Iranian understanding. Allies need not be friends, as the Soviet role in defeating Hitler demonstrated. President Obama’s war against ISIS makes war with Iran more unthinkable than ever. Absent a “comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful,” in the words of last year’s accord, the drumbeat for such a war would almost certainly resume. From Jerusalem to Washington countless drummers are ready.

It is critical that this doable deal get done, the naysayers be frustrated, and a rancorous American-Iranian bust-up not be added to the ambient mayhem in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic, 35 years after the revolution, is — like it or not — a serious and stable power in an unstable region. Its highly educated population is pro-Western. Its actions and interests are often opposed to the United States and America’s allies, and its human rights record is appalling, but then that is true of several countries with which Washington does business. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS and al Qaeda are ‘one and the same’ to Obama despite evidence of schism

The Guardian reports: The Obama administration is publicly conflating the Islamic State (Isis) and al-Qaida, taking a legally convenient position for its new war that dismisses a major public split between the two jihadist organizations.

While several US officials contend the rupture between Isis and al-Qaida is irrelevant – Secretary of State John Kerry has mocked it as a “publicity stunt” – the administration line undercuts its previous distinctions between al-Qaida’s core leadership, various affiliates and unrelated terrorist groups.

Amongst counter-terrorism veterans, the conflation is considered tendentious – and, to some, reminiscent of the Bush administration’s exaggerated linkages between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, part of the language that tried to sell the 2003 Iraq invasion.

While Isis began life as al-Qaida in Iraq, al-Qaida’s leadership ultimately renounced all ties and condemned the group in February 2014. It is believed to be the first time al-Qaida has declared itself “not responsible” for a former affiliate.

“We know from open sourcing that they are not part of al-Qaida,” said Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst. “Zawahiri denounced them. Baghdadi has declared his caliphate separate. We have no reason to believe they are currently operating as part of al-Qaida,” she said, referring to the respective leaders of al-Qaida and Isis.

Glenn Carle, a former CIA official who supports taking action against Isis, said that while the US public may not need a catalogue of the differences between Isis and al-Qaida, “each of them is different, and they are not one group.”

Much of the administration’s conflation of Isis and al-Qaida has occurred in a legal context, part of its argument that Obama possesses authority to attack Isis in Syria ahead of a congressional vote. But the contention is starting to migrate beyond legal discussions. [Continue reading…]

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Obama and Erdogan have left Kobane to ISIS

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Airstrikes have little impact as ISIS advances on Kobane and Baghdad

McClatchy reports: The Turkish government says 160,000 Kurds have crossed from northern Syria in the past week, and there were at least 10,000 more on Monday, according to Sanliurfa.Com, a local news portal.

On Tuesday, a McClatchy reporter witnessed Kurds arriving at a rate of about 500 an hour. Turkish authorities processed them in an orderly and efficient manner, with children offered rubella vaccinations in a medical tent, and everyone required to register at a mobile immigration office before being transported by a fleet of minibuses to nearby towns.

The regional Kobane government, controlled by a Kurdish group that Turkey, the United States and the European Union have labeled as a terrorist organization, said the U.S.-led coalition staged two airstrikes on Islamic State positions Monday night about six miles west of Kobane, but the Islamic State advance seemed to be undeterred.

Idriss Nassan, the deputy foreign minister of the Kobane canton, reached by phone, told McClatchy that Islamic State fighters were within three miles of the city on the south and east and six miles on the west. Other estimates put the Islamic State as close as two miles outside the town, which is also known in Arabic as Ayn al Arab.

If the U.S. and its Arab allies appeared reluctant to save Kobane from the Islamic State, there was no sign that Turkey would intervene, either. The Turkish military brought more than 30 tanks and armored vehicles to the border Monday and menacingly pointed their turrets into Syria. But one day later, they were parked in a lot close to the border with no sign of crews.

The tragedy of the Kobane region is that its leadership had been able to secure peace and calm for the past two years, a period in which internally displaced Kurds and other groups migrated there by the tens of thousands. When the Islamic State began pressuring last spring, the local Kurdish militia, known by its Kurdish initials as the YPG, seemed to be able to hold them off. But in recent days, the Islamic State has been advancing, and the U.S. coalition, no doubt spurred on by Turkey’s fears that the YPG is allied with its own Kurdish separatist insurgents, hasn’t come to the rescue. When Turkish Kurds tried to send in fighters, the Turkish government stopped them, using tear gas.

On Tuesday there was no sign of more volunteers, and none of the two dozen or so returning Kobane residents said they intended to join the militia, and a sense of hopelessness swept those who’d fled. [Continue reading…]

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that since ISIS began its attack on September 16, it has seized 325 villages in the area surrounding Kobane.

Reuters reports: Islamic State beheaded seven men and three women in a northern Kurdish area of Syria, a human rights monitoring group said on Wednesday, part of what it described as a campaign to frighten residents resisting the militant group’s advance.

The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human, Rights Rami Abdulrahman, said five anti-Islamic State Kurdish fighters, including three women, and four Syrian Arab rebels were detained and beheaded on Tuesday 14 km (8 miles) west of Kobani, a Kurdish town besieged by Islamic State near the Turkish border.

He said a Kurdish male civilian was also beheaded.

“I don’t know why they were arrested or beheaded. Only the Islamic State knows why. They want to scare people,” he said.

NBC News reports: ISIS militants seized weapons and besieged hundreds of Iraqi soldiers after overrunning an army base northwest of the capital, a senior security official told NBC News. The attack on the Albu Aytha military camp, 50 miles outside of Baghdad, comes amid airstrikes by the U.S. and its allies and gains by Kurdish troops on the Iraqi-Syria border. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said late Tuesday that poor communications from the base meant it was unclear exactly how many soldiers remained trapped inside the base but reports suggested between 240 and 600 people were under siege. The senior security official added that some of the soldiers at Albu Aytha were able to escape before ISIS arrived.

NBC News also reports: Iraqi military pilots mistakenly gave food, water and ammunition to enemy ISIS militants instead of their own soldiers, a senior security official and a brigadier-general told NBC News. The supplies were supposed to help besieged Iraqi army officers and soldiers who had been fighting Islamist extremists for a week in Saglawyah and the village of Al-Sijar in the country’s western province of Anbar.

“Some pilots, instead of dropping these supplies over the area of the Iraqi army, threw it over the area that is controlled by ISIS fighters,” said Hakim Al-Zamili, a lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament who is a member of the security and defense committee and acts as a security liaison for service members and commanders formed by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. “Those soldiers were in deadly need of these supplies, but because of the wrong plans of the commanders in the Iraqi army and lack of experience of the pilots, we in a way or another helped ISIS fighters to kill our soldiers.”

A brigadier-general in Iraq’s Defense Ministry, who declined to be named, confirmed the incident, which occurred on Sept. 19. “Yes, that’s what had happened,” the officer said, adding that some air force pilots “do not have enough experience … they are all young and new.” Both Al-Zamili and the brigadier-general said there would be an investigation to determine the cause of the blunder.

Middle East Eye: The Pentagon, appealing for patience, warned that there would be no quick and easy end to the fighting.

No one should be lulled into a false sense of security by accurate air strikes,” Pentagon spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, told reporters. “We will not, we cannot bomb them into obscurity.”

A long-term effort will be needed to train and arm Syrian rebel forces and strengthen Iraq’s army, he said.

He said “military action alone will not win this effort”.

Kirby criticised some media coverage as raising unrealistic expectations about the air campaign in Syria and Iraq.

Commanders from the outset had made clear that air power alone would not be enough while a long-term effort would be needed to train and arm Syrian rebel forces and strengthen Iraq’s army, he said.

“Even as we share the sense of urgency about this group, we must also share a sense of strategic patience about this entire effort. And I think some of that has been lacking,” Kirby said.

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