Category Archives: Obama administration

Is Khorasan’s real name Jabhat al-Nusra’s ‘Wolf Group’?

Max Fisher writes: Last week, the United States and several Arab allies began bombing ISIS targets in Syria — as well as a mysterious and little-known faction of al-Qaeda that the US says is called Khorasan.

The group’s name, like much else about it, is the subject of some uncertainty and debate. Some have suggested that the US made up the name, perhaps derived from internal al-Qaeda communication referring to the militants as something perhaps like “Our brothers from Khorasan.”

But it turns out that the group may refer to itself by a very different name: the Wolf Unit of Jabhat al-Nusra. That’s according to some apparently internal documents uncovered by Jenan Moussa, a highly respected reporter with the Dubai-based outlet Al Aan TV.

Moussa found the documents in the rubble of a house the group used in the Syrian city of Aleppo and that had been bombed in the US-led airstrikes. (She is braver than you are.) A list of names identifies 13 men, one of them identified by the US as a Khorasan member, under the heading “Wolf Unit of Jabhat al-Nusra.” Moussa says the name appears to include four Turks, two Egyptians, two Yemenis, two Tunisians, one Palestinian, one Serbian, and one from the Caucasus region.

The following video features in Moussa’s Al Aan TV report. She says: “One video of the Wolves exist online.”

The video was uploaded a week ago on an account with the name “Ribat Medya” but after having had 16,600 views, YouTube removed it: “This video has been removed because its content violated YouTube’s Terms of Service.” Obviously, Jabhat al-Nusra weren’t complaining about copyright infringement and there’s nothing offensive in the content (unless one is offended by the sight of members of al Qaeda performing conventional military exercises in a forest, presumably somewhere in Syria). Is YouTube following directions from the Pentagon to censor videos for political reasons?

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White House exempts Syria airstrikes from tight standards on civilian deaths

Yahoo reports: The White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.

A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria’s Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.

The village has been described by Syrian rebel commanders as a reported stronghold of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front where U.S officials believed members of the so-called Khorasan group were plotting attacks against international aircraft.

But at a briefing for members and staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee late last week, Syrian rebel commanders described women and children being hauled from the rubble after an errant cruise missile destroyed a home for displaced civilians. Images of badly injured children also appeared on YouTube, helping to fuel anti-U.S. protests in a number of Syrian villages last week. [Continue reading…]

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Europeans say U.S. never briefed them on plot by the ‘Khorasan Group’

McClatchy reports: European counterterrorism specialists say their American counterparts never mentioned an imminent plot by al Qaida operatives in Syria to attack Western targets and didn’t brief them on the group that’s supposedly behind the plan, a previously unknown terrorist unit that American officials have dubbed the Khorasan group.

The interviews with the specialists, from two European NATO allies with close intelligence ties to the United States, raise questions about why the United States used its first series of airstrikes on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in Syria to also attack eight installations belonging to the Nusra Front, an al Qaida affiliate that anti-government rebel groups consider an important ally in their fight to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

U.S. officials didn’t use the word Nusra to identify the targets, instead saying the strikes in Idlib province, far from Islamic State-controlled territory, were aimed at the Khorasan group. But activists and other rebels in Syria identified the positions hit as belonging to Nusra and said 50 Nusra fighters were killed.

U.S. officials said the Khorasan group was composed of senior al Qaida operatives who’d been dispatched to Syria to plot attacks against the West. The officials said the strikes were intended to break up a plan for an imminent attack.

The White House declined Friday to expand on that description or say with whom the intelligence about the group had been shared.

“We, along with our foreign partners, have been watching this group over the past two years since many of its members arrived in Syria from Pakistan and Afghanistan, and we took action when their plotting reached an advanced stage,” said Caitlyn Hayden, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “I’m not going to be able to discuss with whom intelligence was shared in this case.”

The European specialists, who meet regularly with U.S. officials on terrorism issues – particularly air travel and potential terrorist operations involving Western passport holders – said they were never specifically warned about such a group or such a plot. Such an omission, the specialists said, seemed unlikely if the plot were truly imminent. [Continue reading…]

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How the U.S. lost its latest war within hours

Scott Lucas writes: Wednesday morning’s statement from US Central Command was — unsurprisingly — buoyant. The US and allies from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Jordan had launched attacks the previous day inside Syria, with 14 airstrikes and 47 Tomahawk missiles. Multiple targets of the Islamic State had been hit in northern and eastern Syria, including “fighters, training compounds, headquarters and command and control facilities, storage facilities, a finance center, supply trucks, and armed vehicles”.

Central Command promised, “The U.S. military will continue to conduct targeted airstrikes against ISIL in Syria and Iraq as local forces go on the offensive against this terrorist group.”

Behind the confident assessment, Central Command did not point to — and presumably did not recognize — reality: with those initial strikes, the US had probably already lost its belated intervention in the 42-month Syrian conflict.

The military did not mention that the greatest casualties of the first night’s attacks had not been suffered by the Islamic State, which had moved most of its forces before the arrival of the warplanes. Instead, the US had struck hardest on two locations of the Islamist insurgents Jabhat al-Nusra, killing more than 70 fighters and civilians in Idlib and Aleppo Provinces. [Continue reading…]

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Turkish military forces quietly watch while ISIS advances on Kobane

Reuters reports: Turkish tanks and armoured vehicles took up positions on hills overlooking the besieged Syrian border town of Kobani on Monday as shelling by Islamic State insurgents intensified and stray fire hit Turkish soil, a Reuters correspondent said.

At least 30 tanks and armoured vehicles, some with their guns pointed towards Syrian territory, were positioned near a Turkish military base just northwest of Kobani. Plumes of smoke rose up as shells hit the eastern and western sides of Kobani and sporadic bursts of machinegun fire rang out.

“We have taken the border under full control. We have ramped up our security measures in the Suruc region,” Interior Minister Efkan Ala told reporters in Istanbul, referring to the area on the Turkish side of the border with Kobani.

A local official inside the besieged town said Islamic State continued to bombard it from the east, west and south and that the militants were 10 km (6 miles) from the outskirts.

“From the morning there have been bomb shellings into Kobani and not one rocket, but maybe about 20 rockets,” Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister in the Kobani canton, said by telephone.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors Syria’s civil war, said at least 15 mortar rounds had landed on Kobani on Monday, killing at least one person. He said Islamic State fighters had advanced to within 5 km of the town. [Continue reading…]

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U.S-led raids hit grain silos in Syria, kill workers

Reuters reports: U.S.-led air strikes hit grain silos and other targets in Islamic State-controlled territory in northern and eastern Syria overnight, killing civilians and wounding militants, a group monitoring the war said on Monday.

The aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij for an Islamic State base, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. There was no immediate comment from Washington.

The United States has targeted Islamic State and other fighters in Syria since last week with the help of Arab allies, and in Iraq since last month. It aims to damage and destroy the bases, forces and supply lines of the al Qaeda offshoot which has captured large areas of both countries.

The strikes in Manbij appeared to have killed only civilians, not fighters, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory which gathers information from sources in Syria.

“These were the workers at the silos. They provide food for the people,” he said. He could not give a number of casualties and it was not immediately possible to verify the information. [Continue reading…]

A CENTCOM news release said the airstrikes “struck an ISIL training camp and ISIL vehicles in a staging area next to an ISIL-held grain storage facility near Manbij that ISIL was using as a logistics hub and vehicle staging facility.”

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‘Where’s Obama?’ Refugees flood across Turkish border as ISIS steps up attacks on Syrian Kurds

The New York Times reports: Shelling intensified Sunday on Kobani, the Syrian town at the center of a region of Kurdish farming villages that has been under a weeklong assault by Islamic State militants, setting fire to buildings and driving a stream of new refugees toward the fence here at the border with Turkey.

The extremist Sunni militants have been closing in on the town from the east and west after moving into villages with tanks and artillery, outgunning Kurdish fighters struggling to defend the area. The Kurds fear a massacre, especially after recent Islamic State attacks on Kurdish civilians in Iraq. More than 150,000 people have fled into Turkey over the past week.

There were no sounds of jets overhead to indicate to the Kurds that help was coming from the American-led coalition, whose stated mission is to degrade and destroy the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Two airstrikes on the eastern front hit Islamic State armored vehicles on Saturday, but did not appear to halt the advance.

“Where’s Obama?” one Turkish Kurd demanded, watching in anguish near the border fence as the headlights of cars could be seen streaming out of Kobani toward the border, although there was no way to cross it. “Does he care about the Kurds?” [Continue reading…]

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Iranian president gives qualified support for Western action against ISIS

The Guardian reports: The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, gave qualified support to western military action against Isis inside Iraq, saying a concerted campaign could be successful as long as it was requested by the Iraqi government.

Speaking to journalists in New York while attending the UN general assembly, Rouhani appeared to draw a sharp distinction between Syria, where the Assad regime had not been informed of US air strikes, let alone asking for them; and Iraq, where the new government has formally called for military assistance.

He criticised western states for responding late to Iraq’s call for help, claiming Iran had been the first to come to its defence and helped prevent Irbil and Baghdad falling to Isis. He also questioned the value of relying on aerial power alone. [Continue reading…]

AFP adds: Iran will attack ISIS inside Iraq if they advance near the border, ground forces commander General Ahmad Reza Pourdestana said in comments published Saturday.

“If the terrorist group (IS) come near our borders, we will attack deep into Iraqi territory and we will not allow it to approach our border,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Pourdestana as saying.

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Secret Service fumbled response after gunman hit White House residence in 2011

The Washington Post reports: The gunman parked his black Honda directly south of the White House, in the dark of a November night, in a closed lane of Constitution Avenue. He pointed his semiautomatic rifle out of the passenger window, aimed directly at the home of the president of the United States, and pulled the trigger.

A bullet smashed a window on the second floor, just steps from the first family’s formal living room. Another lodged in a window frame, and more pinged off the roof, sending bits of wood and concrete to the ground. At least seven bullets struck the upstairs residence of the White House, flying some 700 yards across the South Lawn.

President Obama and his wife were out of town on that evening of Nov. 11, 2011, but their younger daughter, Sasha, and Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, were inside, while older daughter Malia was expected back any moment from an outing with friends.

Secret Service officers initially rushed to respond. One, stationed directly under the second-floor terrace where the bullets struck, drew her .357 handgun and prepared to crack open an emergency gun box. Snipers on the roof, standing just 20 feet from where one bullet struck, scanned the South Lawn through their rifle scopes for signs of an attack. With little camera surveillance on the White House perimeter, it was up to the Secret Service officers on duty to figure out what was going on.

Then came an order that surprised some of the officers. “No shots have been fired. . . . Stand down,” a supervisor called over his radio. He said the noise was the backfire from a nearby construction vehicle.

That command was the first of a string of security lapses, never previously reported, as the Secret Service failed to identify and properly investigate a serious attack on the White House. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS reconciles with Jabhat al-Nusra as Syria air strikes continue

The Guardian reports: Air strikes continued to target Islamic State (Isis) positions near the Kurdish town of Kobani and hubs across north-east Syria on Sunday, as the terror group moved towards a new alliance with Syria’s largest al-Qaida group that could help offset the threat from the air.

Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been at odds with Isis for much of the past year, vowed retaliation for the US-led strikes, the first wave of which a week ago killed scores of its members. Many Nusra units in northern Syria appeared to have reconciled with the group, with which it had fought bitterly early this year.

A senior source confirmed that al-Nusra and Isis leaders were now holding war-planning meetings. While not yet formalised, the addition of at least some al-Nusra numbers to Isis would strengthen the group’s ranks and further its reach at a time when air strikes are crippling its funding sources and slowing its advances in both Syria and Iraq.

Al-Nusra, which has direct ties to al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, denounced the attacks as a “war on Islam”, in an audio statement posted over the weekend. A senior al-Nusra figure told the Guardian that 73 members had defected to Isis last Friday alone and that scores more were planning to swear allegiance in coming days. [Continue reading…]

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‘What the ISIS jihadis lose in strength from the air strikes they may gain in legitimacy’

Hassan Hassan writes: Since Islamic State (Isis) were formed in their current incarnation in April last year, they have had a dilemma: how to gain legitimacy from the local population while continuing to be ruthless and genocidal against fellow Sunnis. The decision by the American-led coalition to strike against Isis while overlooking the Assad regime seems to have resolved this dilemma for the jihadist organisation. What Isis will lose in terms of strength and numbers as a result of the air strikes they might gain in terms of legitimacy.

Air strikes against Isis were inevitable, as the group’s advances towards Baghdad, Erbil and northern Syria seemed irreversible by local forces. But the way the US-led coalition, which the UK has now joined, has conducted itself so far threatens to worsen the situation in favour of Isis.

Most importantly, by overlooking the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which caused the death of nearly 200,000 Syrians, the air strikes create the perception that the international coalition is providing a lifeline to the regime. Despite repeated reassurance by Washington, such a perception is likely to become entrenched if the Assad regime begins to fill the vacuum left by the offensive against Isis, especially that there has been no evidence yet that the opposition forces are part of the military strategy against Isis. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. airstrikes trigger largest protests in Syria in months

Scott Lucas writes: This week’s US airstrikes inside Syria have had an unexpected consequence — they have mobilized the largest opposition protests in months.

However, these demonstrations are not celebrating the American attacks. To the contrary, they are denouncing the “Crusader coalition, despite its declared intention to degrade and destroy the Islamic State.

The initial criticism of the opposition, activists, and local residents of the US airstrikes was that they were not targeting the Assad regime as well as the jihadists.

That complaint was soon supplemented by the claim that the Americans are also trying to degrade the insurgency — effectively helping President Assad’s forces — through deadly attacks on the Islamist faction Jabhat al-Nusra.

On Friday, rallies expressed solidarity with Jabhat al-Nusra as they denounced the US: [Continue reading…]

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The anti-ISIS campaign may lead to an Assad exit

Michael Young writes: If Iran and Hezbollah appear worried about the attacks being directed by the United States and its allies against the Islamic State, or ISIS, the reason is simple. They realize that the logical outcome of military operations in Syria is likely to be pressure for a political solution that leads to Bashar al-Assad’s departure.

The connection between the anti-ISIS campaign and the Syrian conflict was made on Thursday at a Friends of Syria foreign ministers’ meeting in New York. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal expressed it succinctly: “For as long as the strife in Syria continues, the growth of extremist groups will continue.”

Applying the same logic as in Iraq, the Americans are also likely to soon conclude that only a more inclusive government in Syria can consolidate the gains made against ISIS. In Iraq, the aim was to bring Sunnis into the political process, in the belief that they are necessary to defeating ISIS, and to do so the Obama administration helped remove Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Why should Syria be any different?

Perhaps what disturbs Iran and Hezbollah the most is that their strategy in both Iraq and Syria is crumbling. When Mosul fell to ISIS, Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, was asked what was to be done. “We must rely on Shiite solidarity,” Suleimani allegedly replied.

That was decidedly not the solution that the United States pursued, nor one that would have allowed the Iraqi government to prevail over ISIS. If anything, Shiite solidarity would only have solidified the Iraqi divide, allowing ISIS, with its core of Saddam-era officers, to reinforce its hold over Sunni areas. [Continue reading…]

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While strikes hit ISIS, Syrian rebels’ military needs remain unmet

The Wall Street Journal reports: Moderate rebels in Syria say they are far from taking advantage of the U.S.-led attacks against Islamic State targets because they remain outgunned by both the extremists and President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

The rebel groups also blame the slow pace of training new fighters for the Free Syrian Army, which is backed by Western and Arab countries.

A $500 million program was approved by the U.S. Congress this month to expand a Pentagon program to train and equip rebels, but it will take at least six months to churn out the first batch of fighters.

“This is the luxury of time we don’t have,” said Husam Almarie, a spokesman for the FSA’s northern factions in Reyhanli, a Turkish town on the border with Syria. “The programs now don’t cover our needs.”

The rebels are receiving training in several countries in the region including Jordan, where most are being trained in an initiative run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Syrian opposition officials say they were given weapons this month through the Military Operations Command, a CIA-led grouping of Western and Arab intelligence agencies created to streamline support to rebels. But the transfer was mostly light arms, not the antitank missiles that have helped the FSA defend their positions, or the more coveted antiaircraft weapons the opposition has requested for more than three years.

“When they gave us the weapons, they said ‘this is something to stay alive until the new program starts,” said one opposition official who spoke with U.S. representatives at the Military Operations Command. “They’ve been giving us enough weapons to stay alive for three years, but never to progress.”

Adding to opposition frustrations are the civilian casualties caused by the U.S.-led strikes, which have killed nearly two dozen Syrians since the campaign started early Tuesday.

The casualties risk creating a popular backlash against the FSA over their alliance with the international coalition. On Friday, thousands of Syrians came out across the country protesting the airstrikes and chanting anti-American slogans.

“Our fear is that those airstrikes will hurt civilians and create casualties and increase recruits for” Islamic State, said Ahmed al-Eid, a commander for Harakat Hazm, one of the U.S.-backed FSA groups that is fighting in Syria’s north.

No matter how big the international coalition becomes, he said, “it won’t be able to stand in the face of the people if they enraged” by civilian casualties. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey ‘to do whatever needed’ in anti-ISIS coalition, Erdoğan says

Hurriyet Daily News reports: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has given the clearest signal yet of Turkey’s readiness to join a possible ground operation against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). “Related countries are now planning a ground operation,” Erdoğan said, while mentioning Oct. 2 as the key date the Turkish Parliament is expected to vote on a new motion to expand the scope of motions authorizing the army to conduct cross-border operations into Iraq and Syria.

“We will protect our borders ourselves,” he added.

Here are the key remarks of Erdoğan, who spoke to journalists aboard Turkey’s presidential jet TC-TUR on his way back to Turkey from New York, to which he paid an official visit for the United Nations sessions: [Continue reading…]

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Jabhat Al Nusra vows retaliation against U.S.-led air strikes

Reuters reports: The al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front on Saturday denounced U.S.-led air strikes on Syria, saying they amounted to a war against Islam and vowing to retaliate against Western and Arab countries that took part.

“We are in a long war. This war will not end in months nor years. This war could last for decades,” group spokesman Abu Firas al-Suri said.

“It’s not a war against Nusra Front, it’s a war against Islam,” he added in an audio message published on the group’s social media network in its first reaction since the launch of the U.S.-led strikes on Tuesday.

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