Category Archives: Lands

The rapid advance of ISIS across Iraq

At Blogs of War, John Little describes: the massive upsurge in ISIS’s strength and capabilities. The group now:

I could go on. Bad news is flooding in around the clock. This is a tremendously worrying destabilization that will create an environment in which only really terrible things happen. Jessica Lewis and Ahmed Ali of ISW have given some thought to where all of this is heading and paint a pretty dire picture:

Iraq’s security forces will not be able to retake all of the ground they have lost. They may not even be able to hold what they still have. The best-case scenario is a stalemate in which Iraqis manage to contain the ISIS state and army for now. The more likely case is the creation of another Syrian-style conflict pitting ISIS with increasing international support against desperate and increasingly brutal Iraqi Shi’a militias and ISF elements. The two civil wars, which have now completely merged, will continue to expand, destabilizing an already unstable Middle East and inviting further intervention by the Sunni Arab states and Iran. In the very worst case, the fall of Mosul could be a step down the path to outright regional war.

If there is any hope at all, and I am not sure that there is, it might be in that ISIS has overextended itself and the terrible performance by Iraqi forces has made them appear far more formidable than they actually are. [Continue reading…]

Bloomberg reports: As his army flees from an al-Qaeda splinter group, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is rallying Shiite militias to defend his government, raising the specter of civil war in OPEC’s second-biggest oil producer.

In a televised news conference yesterday Maliki urged citizens to take up arms after the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant group seized control of the northern city of Mosul, stealing weapons and helicopters from police and army bases as Iraqi government forces fled. He vowed to build an army of volunteers to “pull the thorns out by ourselves.”

By countering Sunni militants with elements of his own Shiite support, Maliki risks reigniting the sectarian conflict that flared after the 2003 U.S. invasion that led to the ouster of Saddam Hussein. At its worst, in 2006 and 2007, thousands of civilians were losing their lives every month.

“The unleashing of the Shia militias was a driver of the civil war,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, a senior Middle East and North African analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, in a telephone interview. “The question is, will Maliki try to maintain order over these militias or will the level of conflict spiral into something deeper?” [Continue reading…]

Fred Kaplan writes: The collapse of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, has little to do with the withdrawal of American troops and everything to do with the political failure of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

As the U.S. pullout began under the terms of a treaty signed in 2008 by then-President George W. Bush, Maliki, the leader of a Shiite political party, promised to run a more inclusive government — to bring more Sunnis into the ministries, to bring more Sunnis from the Sons of Iraq militia into the national army, to settle property disputes in Kirkuk, to negotiate a formula on sharing oil revenue with Sunni districts, and much more.

Maliki has since backpedaled on all of these commitments and has pursued policies designed to strengthen Shiites and marginalize Sunnis. That has led to the resurgence of sectarian violence in the past few years. The Sunnis, finding themselves excluded from the political process, have taken up arms as the route to power. In the process, they have formed alliances with Sunni jihadist groups — such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which has seized not just Mosul but much of northern Iraq — on the principle that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. [Continue reading…]

Much as many Americans inside and outside government may now be inclined to view the advance of ISIS as Iraq’s problem, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the jihadist group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was held in American custody until his release in 2009.

abu_duaThe FBI “most wanted” mugshot shows a tough, swarthy figure, his hair in a jailbird crew-cut. The $10 million price on his head, meanwhile, suggests that whoever released him from US custody four years ago may now be regretting it.

Taken during his years as a detainee at the US-run Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, this is the only known photograph of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. But while he may lack the photogenic qualities of his hero, Osama bin Laden, he is fast becoming the new poster-boy for the global jihadist movement.

For anyone who has any doubts about the brutality of ISIS, then if you can stomach it, watch some of “The Clanging of the Swords.” This recently released movie could be described as Tarantino-style jihad — repulsive to most people, but presumably appealing to young men who want to kill in the name of Islam.

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Syrian Islamist factions and Kurds in new push against ISIS

The Associated Press reports: A rebel coalition in Syria dominated by Islamic factions announced a new push to dislodge fighters from a rival, al-Qaida-inspired group from the northern province of Aleppo, activists said Wednesday.

The announcement, reported by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, came as the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant overran much of neighboring Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul.

Details of the extent of the new offensive were not immediately known. But one of the groups in the coalition, the Islamic Front, claimed that its fighters recently captured four villages from the Islamic State and killed 17 of its fighters.

The infighting is part of broader rebel-on-rebel clashes that have raged across opposition-held northern Syria since early January.

The new coalition, called the “Operations Room for the People of the Levant” also includes Kurdish groups in Syria, which traditionally have focused on defending their own ethnic areas from other rebel groups, said Rami Abdurrahman of the Observatory.

The new offensive appears to have begun late Monday, said an Aleppo-based activist who uses the name Abu al-Hassan, when two chief towns controlled by the Islamic State, Manbij and al-Bab, came under attack.

The al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic Front attacked the town of al-Bab from the northwest, while Kurdish fighters attacked from the east, he said. [Continue reading…]

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How American history judges Bowe Bergdahl

Mark Perry writes: When the movie “Patton” was released in 1970, in the midst of one of our most divisive wars, it thrilled American theatergoers. The account of our nation’s finest tank commander won seven academy awards, including best picture.

The movie opens with a reprise of George Patton’s legendary speech to the U.S. Third Army just before D-Day, in 1944. In his address, the full-throated Patton extolled the virtues of American manhood and the sanguine character of combat. His words brought howls of appreciation in 1944 — and have ever since.

“Men,” Patton said, “all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.”

Was Patton right? Do we Americans love “the sting and clash of battle”?

The controversy over President Barack Obama’s swap of five Guantanamo detainees for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, held in Afghanistan as a Taliban prisoner since June 2009, places Patton’s claims in a new light, just as Bergdahl’s return has spurred questions about whether he is a hero, or should be put on trial for deserting his post. Claims that the search for Bergdahl might have resulted in as many as six U.S. combat deaths have deepened the controversy. And Bergdahl’s return has aroused impassioned criticism of Obama from his partisan opponents.

The Bergdahl controversy masks the difficulty all militaries have in defining when a soldier has deserted, or “just wandered off” — which might have been the case with Bergdahl. For the U.S. military, the key is intent: A soldier is listed as a deserter when he intends to separate himself from his unit permanently, and forever shirk his service. In wartime, as Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes clear, desertion is punishable by death.

You would think that this punishment, when added to the opprobrium that a deserter suffers from his family and fellow soldiers, would dampen the rate at which men (or women) in uniform leave their posts. But an examination of American military history shows that that’s not true.

Desertion rates in George Washington’s Continental Army peaked in the early years of the Revolutionary War (when desertion rates averaged an astonishing 20 to 25 percent of all men under arms), but fell off when his army became more professional. This didn’t keep Washington from lamenting his losses. The situation was so bad, he said, that the mountainous areas between New Hampshire and Vermont were “populated by hundreds of Deserters from this Army.”

Desertion rates during the Civil War were not as high, with the Union Army suffering a 9 to 12 percent desertion rate. Of the approximately 42,000 Union soldiers court-martialed during the war, just over 14,000 were for desertion, with 147 executions for the offense. The desertion rate among Confederate units was much worse. In the wake of the Gettysburg defeat, Robert E. Lee struggled to keep his army together, with desertion rates peaking at between 20 to 25 percent. In all, more soldiers (North and South) were executed during the Civil War (some 500 in all) than in all our other conflicts combined — two-thirds of them for desertion.

With the Civil War as its model, the Army created a Morale Division after the U.S. entered World War One. The unit’s commander later noted that explaining to recruits why they were fighting kept them on duty. A 1918 memo noted that many U.S. recruits “seemed unclear about the purpose of the war.” The division’s work had an effect: 5,584 men were charged with desertion during the conflict (the lowest rate of any U.S. war), and 2,657 were convicted — with no executions.

Explaining a war’s purpose is a significant factor in the Bergdahl case. His unit was isolated for long periods of time and fighting a conflict that was fast becoming an afterthought for the American people. In truth, most Americans didn’t even know that Bergdahl was being held by the Taliban until his release, a chilling commentary on America’s focus on the war. [Continue reading…]

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Netanyahu’s staggering defeat

Dimi Reider writes: Reuven Rivlin’s victory in the presidential elections on Tuesday was a resounding one, but nowhere near as resonant as Benjamin Netanyahu’s defeat – a domestic political defeat to match his 2013 failure to stop Iran-U.S. rapprochement, which yanked the rug out from under his foreign policy.

Rivlin and Netanyahu weren’t running against each other. Quite the contrary, Rivlin was the candidate of Netanyahu’s own party, Likud, adored by the party’s rank-and-file and Israelis in the street alike. With a bit of self-discipline and an exercise of that most elusive quality of leadership – humility – Netanyahu could have transformed today’s event into a sweeping victory for his party, for the nationalist camp and for himself personally. Worst come to worst, he could have even written it off as a pointless formality, playing on the public’s weariness of the largely ceremonial presidential role. Instead, Netanyahu made it into a personal crusade, raising the stakes of the presidential race immensely and amplifying his defeat to match. He is perceived as having ignored, deceived and ultimately betrayed his own party – and all to lose the race. This doesn’t mean Netanyahu will be going anywhere tomorrow, but it does mean that the historical fourth term he covets is becoming increasingly unlikely, and that like many a Prime Minister to have served three terms, the final blow might well come from his own home party. [Continue reading…]

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Israel has Egypt over a barrel

David Hearst writes: It took the CIA 60 years to admit its involvement in the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadeq, Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister. The circumstances around the overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, may not take as long to come to light, regardless of whom is behind it.

Mossadeq sealed his fate when he renationalized Iran’s oil production, which had been under the control of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later to become BP. Morsi’s enemy was gas, and he proved to be a major obstacle to a lucrative deal with Israel – which nobody will be surprised to learn – is about to take place now he has been removed.

Clayton Swisher of Al Jazeera’s investigative unit has spent five months delving into the corrupt sale of Egyptian gas to Israel. His report Egypt’s Lost Power to be broadcast on Monday night reveals that Egypt has lost a staggering amount of money -$11bn , with debts and legal liabilities of another $20bn – selling gas at rock bottom prices to Israel, Spain and Jordan. [Continue reading…]

(Interactive: Egypt’s Lost Power)

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Mass sexual assaults continue as Egyptians celebrate Sisi’s rise to the presidency

The New York Times reports: A video showing a mass sexual assault on a nearly naked woman in the midst of inaugural celebrations for Egypt’s new president is testing his pledge to curb an epidemic of such attacks, with captured scenes of a police officer with a gun in his hand struggling against a crowd of men to extricate the victim.

At first a black shirt covered just her shoulders, her backside purple and black with bruises. Moments later, she is seen stripped completely, as her limp and reddened body is carried into a waiting vehicle.

Captured in a blurry two-minute video taken in Tahrir Square on Sunday and circulated via YouTube on Monday, the attack is forcing the new president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, to confront a phenomenon many here said resulted from the collapse of the police force during the uprising against Hosni Mubarak in 2011: the recurring mass sexual assaults that have taken place amid the crowds that have gathered in Tahrir Square ever since. [Continue reading…]

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The betrayal of Karachi

Rafia Zakaria writes: Karachi has been smoldering for more than a week. On June 8 it burst into flames when the Pakistani Taliban laid siege to the city’s main airport, Jinnah International, killing at least 36 people. The firefight between the attackers and security forces was broadcast live on television, delivering images of carrier planes in flames and the sounds of gunfire and explosions. The megacity, with a population of 23.5 million, has been in a standstill since June 3, after the London arrest on money-laundering charges of Altaf Hussain, a prominent Pakistani politician and chief of the opposition Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). All transportation, businesses, schools and offices remain closed. Leery of violence from MQM activists protesting Hussain’s arrest, the city’s residents have been effectively confined to their homes. When he was released on bail last week, it seemed as though calm would finally return to Karachi.

The escalation of violence exposed the city’s vulnerabilities, including its lack of political leadership and deteriorating security infrastructure. The local law enforcement responding to the airport attack did not even have bulletproof vests and other requisite equipment to engage the assailants. Worse, it’s unclear who was in charge of the operation at the airport until the military took over.

On June 9 the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and promised more to come. In a similar ambush on June 10, unidentified gunmen attacked a security post at Jinnah, briefly engaging local police in gunfire. That the Taliban were able to take over the city’s only gateway to the rest of the world with little resistance underscores the MQM’s weakness and Karachi’s susceptibility to extremism. After controlling the city for more than two decades, the MQM is in total disarray — unable to advocate for Karachi’s security needs at the federal level or defend it from militants, including the Taliban. [Continue reading…]

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Will Israel’s new president, Reuven Rivlin, promote democracy?

Reuven Rivlin was elected in the Knesset today as Israel’s 10th president, replacing outgoing President Shimon Peres.

On Sunday, Dimi Reider wrote:

As speaker, Rivlin’s commitment to parliamentary democracy (and democracy in general) saw him turn time and again against his own party and its allies, stalling most of the anti-democratic legislation pushed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Liberman’s Israel Beitenu, while at the same time trying to instruct his fellow right-wing legislators about the dangers of nationalist populism.

As a staunch right-winger, Rivlin is opposed to partition but is emphatically opposed to racism, coupling his opposition to a Palestinian state with support for offering Israeli citizenship to all Palestinians. While this is a stance being taken up by a number of right-wing politicians in recent years, Rivlin, as a democrat, goes one step further. When I interviewed him for Foreign Policy four years ago, for instance, he spoke nostalgically of a rotation-based executive espoused by Revisionist Zionists like Ze’ev Jabotinsky – and held up by Belfast as one possible inspiration for a future of power-sharing. It’s a far cry from nationalist self-determination, or from the one state advocated by Palestinians and the pro-Palestinian Left. But it still offers infinitely more room for maneuver than anything ever plausibly offered or actually given to Palestinians by the centrist two-state Left.

Rivlin is certainly no left-winger – he hasn’t opposed any Israeli military operation and as communication minister in Sharon’s first cabinet, he presided over a major privatization drive. Still, Rivlin’s tenure as Knesset speaker earned him praise in liberal circles (including the soubriquet of “a bulwark” for democracy from The Economist), and the lasting ire of both Netanyahu and Liberman. Netanyahu, in a lamentable display of panic amplified by a petty squabble with Rivlin over some comments the latter made about Netanyahu’s wife, tried preventing Rivlin’s candidacy by canceling the presidential post at a few week’s notice, and trying to recruit American author Eli Weisel (who is not even an Israeli citizen) to stand in Rivlin’s place. Only when Weisel refused did the prime minister yield and offered Rivlin his sour-faced support. Even if Netanyahu is getting behind Rivlin only so he can eventually stab him in the back (to borrow a Yes, Prime Minister line), he apparently failed to warn Liberman of this decision, prompting the latter to denounce and renounce Rivlin and to hint he himself might support Dalia Itzik.

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Israeli spy general says Iran serious in negotiations on nuclear deal

Reuters reports: Iran is negotiating seriously on a deal to curb its disputed nuclear programme, a senior Israeli intelligence officer said on Monday in a shift of tone from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s scepticism.

Brigadier-General Itai Brun, military intelligence’s chief analyst, told a strategic forum that Iran was honouring a November interim agreement that Netanyahu had condemned as an “historic mistake” for easing sanctions on Israel’s arch-enemy.

With the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany now stepping up contacts with Iran ahead of their self-declared July 20 deadline for a final accord, Brun voiced cautious optimism. [Continue reading…]

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Increased use of barrel bombs in Mideast, Africa

The Associated Press reports: Governments in the Mideast and Africa, in desperate efforts to gain battlefield ground, are using barrel bombs against their enemies, launching the cheap, quickly manufactured weapons as a crude counter to roadside blasts and suicide explosions that insurgents have deployed for years.

New evidence of their use in Iraq, after being dropped on civilians in Syria and Sudan, has raised concerns that governments in unstable nations will embrace them.

Described as “flying IEDs,” or improvised explosive devices, barrel bombs have the power to wipe out a row of buildings in a single blast. They can kill large numbers of people, including those not targeted.

“It’s fair to say that a lot of governments are losing control of the counterinsurgency,” said Michael Knights, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They’re also watching what they see in Syria, and they feel like their air power is what is making the difference.” [Continue reading…]

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Back in the USSR

Avedis Hadjian writes: A saying usually misattributed to Trotsky, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you,” describes the Ukrainian conflict, which now has almost all the elements needed for a civil war: well-armed rival sides, opposing views of national history and destiny, and a foreign instigator and sponsor for eastern Urkaine’s separatists — Russia. Yet it lacks the critical ingredient of an appetite for fight among many of the population.

Most Ukrainians are doing their best to go about their business and, whatever their views, say they see Russians and Ukrainians as brotherly nations and do not want a war. In the presidential election of 25 May there was high voter turnout everywhere — except in the east, where pro-Russian separatists blocked polling stations — and Ukrainians gave a commanding victory to confectionary magnate Petro Poroshenko, with 54% of the votes. The Russian government said it would respect the will of Ukrainian voters and expressed its readiness to cooperate with the new administration in Kiev.

But it remains to be seen if Poroshenko’s election will help curb the violence. The pro-Russian separatists’ acts of intimidation, which prevented most people in the Donetsk region from voting (only 16% of registered voters cast ballots), and brazen attacks that have left dozens dead in recent weeks — including an all-out assault against the Donetsk airport, which they seized a day after the election — demonstrate that they are intent on undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity. [Continue reading…]

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Israel no longer a cause that unifies Jewish Americans

The Associated Press reports: Once a unifying cause for generations of American Jews, Israel is now bitterly dividing Jewish communities.

Jewish organizations are withdrawing invitations to Jewish speakers or performers considered too critical of Israel, in what opponents have denounced as an ideological litmus test meant to squelch debate. Some Jewish activists have formed watchdog groups, such as Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art, or COPMA, and JCC Watch, to monitor programming for perceived anti-Israel bias. They argue Jewish groups that take donations for strengthening the community shouldn’t be giving a platform to Israel’s critics.

American campuses have become ideological battle zones over Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories, with national Jewish groups sometimes caught up on opposing sides of the internal debate among Jewish students. The “Open Hillel” movement of Jewish students is challenging speaker guidelines developed by Hillel, the major Jewish campus group, which bars speakers who “delegitimize” or “demonize” Israel. Open Hillel is planning its first national conference in October.

And in a vote testing the parameters of Jewish debate over Israel, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, a national coalition that for decades has represented the American Jewish community, denied membership in April to J Street, the 6-year-old lobby group that describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace and has sometimes criticized the Israeli government. Opponents of J Street have been showing a documentary called “The J Street Challenge,” in synagogues and at Jewish gatherings around the country, characterizing the group as a threat from within. [Continue reading…]

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‘It’s hell down there’: Inside the battle for eastern Ukraine

CNN reports: In a forest of pines to the east of Slovyansk, Prapor and his seventy men were digging in Thursday. A man in his late-fifties with a magnificent beard and four different weapons, Prapor freely admitted he was not a local. But he was here — he said — to resist the “Ukrainian fascists” in Krasny Liman, a nearby town just recaptured by government forces.

He was dismissive of the group that had fled Krasny — “Cossacks,” he sneered. He had already lost seven men, but his fighters were the bravest. They would not run away.

Meeting Prapor was revealing in several ways. Pro-Russian separatists working in eastern Ukraine are better organized, better armed (Prapor’s group had a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun that was clearly working), and more of them appear to come from beyond Ukraine. And they are building a maze of roadblocks and defensive positions across the region.

But a few kilometers beyond, in rolling countryside under a hot sun, a very different group was setting up camp: a substantial force of Ukrainian paratroopers, with armored personnel carriers and artillery. Above, a reconnaissance plane drifted in loops.

Both sides look — at least militarily — more competent than they did a few weeks ago. Checkpoints used to be few and far between. Now there is a maze of them — more separatist than Ukrainian — dotted across both the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The insignia of the “Vostok Battalion” — a group that includes both Russian and local fighters — is common at the roadblocks that have sprung up on the main roads leading into Donetsk.

A few weeks ago, we watched the bedraggled remnants of the Ukrainian army’s 25th Division surrounded and harangued by locals near Kramatorsk. Now there is a sense of purpose among the units newly deployed, and a greater readiness to use heavy armor. Throughout an extensive tour of the Slovyansk area, the crump of artillery and boom of tankfire sounded periodically.

But the targeting is sometimes puzzling.

Krasny Liman is a town of some 20,000 people and a major railway junction. But one of its two hospitals is in ruins, struck repeatedly by what appeared to have been mortars or shells. There was also evidence of strafing from the air. A tearful nurse approached us, saying that whoever had done this was not human. She — and others — thought Ukrainian forces were responsible, but they could not be sure. Patients had been evacuated, but one middle-aged man sat listlessly on a bench outside. He had nowhere to go, he told us; a doctor came past once a day to give him an injection.

The new mayor, installed Thursday as Kiev’s local appointee, said he would investigate the bombing of the hospital. But for the government, recovering Krasny Liman is a rare victory — and judging by the number of troops installed around the town, one it intends to protect. Now Ukrainian armor seems intent on squeezing separatist positions closer to Slovyansk.

It seems like eastern Ukraine is half-way through a game of chess, pieces scattered across the board in threatening positions, with neither black nor white close to checkmate. Civilians, whatever their allegiance, are suffering the consequences. [Continue reading…]

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Documents show how Russia’s troll army hit America

BuzzFeed reports: Russia’s campaign to shape international opinion around its invasion of Ukraine has extended to recruiting and training a new cadre of online trolls that have been deployed to spread the Kremlin’s message on the comments section of top American websites.

Plans attached to emails leaked by a mysterious Russian hacker collective show IT managers reporting on a new ideological front against the West in the comments sections of Fox News, Huffington Post, The Blaze, Politico, and WorldNetDaily.

The bizarre hive of social media activity appears to be part of a two-pronged Kremlin campaign to claim control over the internet, launching a million-dollar army of trolls to mold American public opinion as it cracks down on internet freedom at home.

“Foreign media are currently actively forming a negative image of the Russian Federation in the eyes of the global community,” one of the project’s team members, Svetlana Boiko, wrote in a strategy document. “Additionally, the discussions formed by comments to those articles are also negative in tone.

“Like any brand formed by popular opinion, Russia has its supporters (‘brand advocates’) and its opponents. The main problem is that in the foreign internet community, the ratio of supporters and opponents of Russia is about 20/80 respectively.”

The documents show instructions provided to the commenters that detail the workload expected of them. On an average working day, the Russians are to post on news articles 50 times. Each blogger is to maintain six Facebook accounts publishing at least three posts a day and discussing the news in groups at least twice a day. By the end of the first month, they are expected to have won 500 subscribers and get at least five posts on each item a day. On Twitter, the bloggers are expected to manage 10 accounts with up to 2,000 followers and tweet 50 times a day. [Continue reading…]

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Major terrorism trial could be held in secret for first time in UK legal history

The Guardian reports: A major terrorism trial is set to be held entirely in secret for the first time in British legal history in an unprecedented departure from the principles of open justice, the court of appeal has heard.

The identities of the two defendants charged with serious terror offences are being withheld from the public, and the media are banned from being present in court to report the forthcoming trial against the two men, known only as AB and CD.

The unprecedented secrecy has been imposed on the proceedings after the Crown Prosecution Service obtained legal orders to withhold the names of the defendants and allow the trial to take place in private on the grounds, they said, of national security.

At the court of appeal in London, Anthony Hudson, representing the Guardian and several other media organisations, challenged the orders, which will allow a secret criminal trial to take place for the first time in legal history. [Continue reading…]

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The life-and-death struggle to help Syria’s sick

A medical worker in Syria writes: It is impossible to transport a single aspirin tablet into eastern Ghouta, an agricultural belt just outside Damascus and the area devastated by chemical attacks last August. Instead, we – a network of doctors and activists – are forced to smuggle medicines and cash across front lines and through checkpoints throughout Syria on a daily basis. But we cannot pass the soldiers surrounding this collection of villages, home to more than one million people.

We cannot get medication in so we have set up a factory to manufacture paracetamol and antibiotics – a small lab in the middle of the farming region where brave pharmacists are forced to make what should be available for a few pounds at every corner shop.

It is more than three months since the United Nations passed a resolution that is meant to ensure that everyone, no matter where they live in Syria, gets all they need to survive. [Continue reading…]

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A dangerous method: Syria, Sy Hersh, and the art of mass-crime revisionism

In the LA Review of Books, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: On the day the London Review of Books published a widely circulated article by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh exonerating the Syrian regime for last year’s chemical attack, 118 Syrians, including 19 children, died in aerial bombing and artillery fire. Only the regime has planes and heavy ordnance.

Since last November, Aleppo has been targeted by helicopters dropping explosives-filled barrels from high altitudes. Between last November and the end of March, Human Rights Watch recorded 2,321 civilian deaths by this indiscriminate weapon. Only the regime has helicopters.

For many months after the chemical massacre, the targeted neighborhoods and the Yarmouk refugee camp were kept under a starvation siege. Aid agencies were denied entry. Only the regime controls access.

The regime’s ruthlessness has never been in doubt. Reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry, and myriad journalists and on-the-ground witnesses have repeatedly confirmed it. The regime has demonstrated the intent and capability to inflict mass violence. The repression is ongoing.

So when an attack occurred last August, employing a weapon that the regime was known to possess, using a delivery mechanism peculiar to its arsenal, in a place the regime was known to target, and against people the regime was known to loathe, it was not unreasonable to assume regime responsibility. This conclusion was corroborated by first responders, UN investigators, human rights organizations, and independent analysts.

When a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and a respectable literary publication undertake to challenge this consensus, one reasonably expects due diligence. The gravity of the matter demands that a high burden of proof be met. Sources would have to be vetted, claims corroborated, contrary evidence addressed.

But the editors didn’t do that. They gave precedence to storytelling over truth-telling. They disregarded available evidence and, based on the uncorroborated claims of a single unnamed source, absolved the perpetrator of a horrific atrocity, demonized his opponents, and slandered a foreign head of state. Worse, in using Hersh as click bait, they provided a smokescreen for new violations.

Five days after Hersh’s article went live, a military helicopter dropped a barrel bomb on Kafr Zita. This one carried toxic chlorine instead of the usual TNT. The regime, like Hersh, blamed the Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra. But only the regime has an air force.

In a time of ongoing slaughter, to obfuscate the regime’s well-documented responsibility for a war crime does not just aid the regime today, it aids it tomorrow. As long as doubts remain about previous atrocities, there will be hesitancy to assign new blame. Accountability will be deferred.

Propaganda usually functions on one of two tracks: sometimes it builds support for a desired policy, sometimes it saps support for an undesired one. The former relies on persuasion, the latter on obfuscation. “Doubt is our product” is the assurance PR firms in the 1950s gave to a jittery tobacco industry facing accumulating scientific evidence linking cigarettes to cancer. Energy companies wishing to impede environmental legislation have since invested in the same strategy. This is also Hersh’s method. [Continue reading…]

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Blame the state for sham Arab democracy

Rami G Khouri writes: The recent string of “elections” across the Arab world raises profound questions about the Arab world’s apparent difficulty in adopting institutions and practices of liberal pluralistic democracies.

But is the problem really about the ability of Arab social values to accommodate democracy, or is there a deeper problem related to the clumsy nature of statehood that has emerged in this region during the past century?

The “elections” I refer to include spectacles in Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Lebanese presidential election-selection that was not even held on time due to political bickering among the country’s sectarian leaders. The Egyptian, Syrian and Algerian cases repeat the ugly legacy of the modern Arab tradition of family-run security states and dictatorships that put on a show of voting to secure approval ratings of 87 or 93 or 97 percent, complete with adoring crowds of supporters of the “Great Leader.” [Continue reading…]

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