Category Archives: Syria

ISIS seems to be losing appeal and here’s why

Hassan Hassan writes: Two recent developments in the region appear to have caused more damage to ISIL’s popularity and relevance than nine months of air strikes and battles in Iraq and Syria.

The first is the Syrian rebels’ recent victories against Al Assad regime in northern, central and southern Syria. In the past four months, the anti-government forces have assumed control of key military bases (Wadi Al Dhaif, Hamidiya, Brick Factory), a provincial capital (Idlib), a strategic town (Jisr Al Shughour) and several villages in Hama. In the perception of many, ISIL is a has-been. In other words, the rebels have stolen ISIL’s thunder.

But make no mistake, ISIL remains capable of holding on to its territory for years. Even so, it’s worth noting reports from the ground that the group is losing some of its appeal among new recruits. The appeal of ISIL is multifaceted and the fight against it should capitalise on any trend, no matter how insignificant, to undermine the group.

Several people inside Syria have told me that ISIL started to lose some of its sympathisers after the rebels swept through significant regime bases in recent months. Jamal Khashoggi, the prominent writer from Saudi Arabia, has spoken of the same trend on Twitter.

The second development that is damaging to ISIL is the campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the way that people across the region are reacting to it. There is a decided drop in positive mentions of the group. Those who once subtly cheered for ISIL have shifted to enthusiastic support for the campaign against what they perceive as Iranian proxies in Yemen. This attitude is discerned in that section of the region’s population that believes in ISIL’s political project. The energy that often favours ISIL has shifted towards something else, at a time when ISIL is losing ground to Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s revitalized rebels make big gains in Assad’s heartland

Hassan Hassan writes: The Syrian rebels are on a roll. Over the past four months, anti-government forces have made sweeping gains that may redraw the conflict map and shake President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The gains have come on both the war’s northern and southern fronts. On Dec. 15, the rebels took Wadi al-Dhaif, one of the country’s largest military encampments in the north. On Mar. 28, the regime lost the northern city of Idlib, only the second provincial capital to fall to the rebels. The gains continued last week, as rebel forces took the key town of Jisr al-Shugour, southeast of Idlib city, and then pushed further south to capture several villages in Hama province’s al-Ghab plain. On Monday, they seized the “Brick Factory,” one of the last remaining regime strongholds in Idlib province. The gains in the south have been equally impressive: Rebels overran the town of Busra al-Sham in the same week that they took Idlib, and managed to seize the Nassib crossing with Jordan in the following week.

The recent offensives in Idlib have been strikingly swift — thanks in large part to suicide bombers and American anti-tank TOW missiles. In most cases, regime forces have only held out for hours or a few days before retreating. The rebels have also fought with rare harmony under the banner of Jaish al-Fateh (“the Army of Conquest”), a coalition made up of mostly Islamist forces led by Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra.

For the first time since the conflict began, Assad’s heartlands in the western region seem exposed. Jisr al-Shugour lies roughly 45 miles to the northeast of the port city of Latakia, one of the keys to Assad’s strength; it is even closer to villages in Hama and Latakia that rebels often describe as “human reservoirs of shabiha,” referring to the high number of residents who join the pro-regime militias. This could be a game changer: As rebels edge closer to Assad’s heartlands, the regime will be forced to rely more heavily on local militias than on the army. Even though local militiamen tend to fight more fiercely than soldiers dispatched outside their areas, the toll of the conflict will likely increase anger against Assad as casualties rise.

These developments do not necessarily mean Assad is in serious trouble yet. His regime is still secure in Damascus; the urban centers of Homs, Hama, and Sweida; and the coastal areas. Even in the northwest, where the rebels are now better positioned than ever to drive out the government forces, the regime army can still put up a serious fight in Aleppo. The city of Hama will prove even tougher ground for the rebels, especially if find themselves fighting against both the regime and the Islamic State, which controls significant parts of the eastern countryside.

But even if the regime remains secure, these developments are shifting the conflict’s dynamics and heralding a new chapter in the country’s civil war. [Continue reading…]

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As Assad’s power dwindles, Iran creates a state within a state in Syria

The New York Times reports: Four years ago, Syria’s army had 250,000 soldiers; now, because of casualties and desertions, it has 125,000 regulars, alongside 125,000 pro-government militia members, including Iranian-trained Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghan Hazaras, according to the senior American official in Washington.

And Syrians are not always in charge, especially where Hezbollah, the best trained and equipped of the foreign militias, is involved.

“Every area where there is Hezbollah, the command is in their hands,” said the Syrian with security connections. “You do something, you have to ask their permission.”

That, he said, rankled senior security officials who recalled the rule of Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez, in the 1980s, when Hezbollah’s patron Iran was the junior partner in the alliance with Syria.

American officials are exploring how to exploit resulting tensions between Syrian and Hezbollah commanders, said the senior American official.

An official in the region sympathetic to Hezbollah said that enemies were trying to exploit natural tensions that “happen between allies, and between brothers and sisters in the same house,” but would not succeed.

“Even if Hezbollah does battle alone, it is with Syrian approval,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “Hezbollah is only a stone that helps the builder.”

But others see a loss of Syrian sovereignty to Iran, which needs Syria as a conduit to arm Hezbollah. Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Brookings Doha Center in Doha, Qatar, said Iran with the help of Hezbollah and other militias is building “a state within a state in Syria — an insurance policy to protect itself against any future Assad demise.”

Ali, 23, a soldier on leave in Damascus from the southern front, said one of his officers, a major, had complained that any Hezbollah fighter was “more important than a Syrian general.”

Then there is simple jealousy. Hezbollah fighters are paid in dollars, while Syrian soldiers get depreciating Syrian pounds. Hezbollah fighters get new black cars and meat with rice, Ali said, while Syrian soldiers make do with dented Russian trucks and stale bread.

A student who recently fled Damascus after being constantly stopped at checkpoints to prove he is not a deserter said that Hezbollah now runs his neighborhood in the old city and once helped him solve a problem between his brother and security forces. (Syrian police, he said, are so little seen that people now smoke hashish openly.)

“If you have Hezbollah wasta,” or connections, he said, “your problems will be solved.” The student identified himself only as Hamed Al Adem, a name he uses as a performance artist, to protect family members still in Damascus.

Even so, Hezbollah is not in a position to bail out Mr. Assad the way it did in 2013, when it sent hundreds of fighters to crush the insurgent hub of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah now has more fighters and advisers in Syria than ever, about 5,000, American intelligence officials said. But, said the Syrian with security connections, they “only interfere in areas that are in their own interests.”

The official sympathetic to Hezbollah said it has “maybe thousands” of fighters along the Lebanese border, hundreds in the south, bordering Israel, and only dozens around divided Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

It had none in Idlib city, which he said may have fallen because some Syrian officers failed to correctly assess threats.

The Syrian with security ties said the leadership had not made a priority of defending Idlib. Many government troops, he said, fled after insurgents knocked out their communications network and called “God is Great” from the mosques.

“Damascus and the Syrian coast, other than this nothing is important. Nothing,” he said, adding of Mr. Assad: “He doesn’t give a damn if Syria is destroyed.” [Continue reading…]

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Reports of Assad’s (pending) demise may be greatly exaggerated

Lionel Beehner writes: The tell-tale signs that regime change might be imminent are manifold: First, Iran would have to reckon that Assad may be expendable. That is the hunch of Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, who believes that Iran might cut a deal so long as it retains a transit corridor thru Syria to its proxies in Lebanon. Were Russia and Iran to abandon Assad, the house of cards in Damascus would collapse. Second, a ramping up of U.S.-led military pressure might signal to regime supporters that the end is near. This does not require sending in the Fifth Fleet, but might entail boosting offensive military aid to the opposition – let’s scrap this notion of only supporting the vetted “moderate” opposition, which is a meaningless term during times of war – an air campaign against regime targets closer to Damascus, and potentially a de facto no-fly zone and humanitarian corridor in the north. Finally, the rebels would have to seize cities further south, such as Hama, Homs, or Latakia.

Yet none of the above appears likely, given distractions elsewhere (in Yemen, Ukraine, and so forth). As such, the war is at a stalemate. ISIS, despite losing Kobane to US-backed Kurdish forces, still controls large swaths of territory. US-led airpower has been unable to dislodge its gains. On the flipside, the Assad regime can safely portray the war as going its way. Its military has focused mostly on the strategic belt of land that stretches from Dara in the south to Aleppo in the north, ceding large chunks of (mostly unpopulated) territory near Raqqa and Deir Ezzor to ISIS forces. Its forces are stretched too thin, even despite reinforcements from Iran and Lebanon, to control the whole country. In other words, neither side can credibly defeat the other side at this stage in the conflict, yet nor can they credibly accept a peace plan or amnesty, as Assad offered in his Foreign Affairs interview. This is what the scholar Nazih Richani calls a “comfortable impasse” – both sides can withstand untold levels of violence and keep fighting because time remains their most precious asset. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian insurgent gains expose Assad weaknesses

The Associated Press reports: In the span of a month, Syrian insurgents have routed government forces across the country’s northwest, flushing them out of strongholds in a string of embarrassing defeats for President Bashar Assad.

The first to go was the city of Idlib, which fell to opposition fighters at the end of March, followed by the strategic town of Jisr al-Shughour last week and the Qarmeed military base on Monday. Troops are now under fire at the few remaining outposts still in government hands.

The disintegration of government forces in Idlib province, coupled with recent losses in southern Syria, has punctured the notion that Assad is on his way to defeating the four-year-old rebellion and undermined his claim to be a bulwark against the Islamic State group, which had eclipsed the rebels over the past year.

The campaign also points to a new unity and assertiveness within the constellation of opposition forces, which has long been riven by infighting. And it has exposed the government’s fundamental weaknesses — including lack of manpower, battle fatigue and a heavy reliance on Iran and other allies.

“It’s really indicative of some huge problems the regime has,” said Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst for the International Crisis group. “What we’re seeing now is the best evidence yet of a trend we’ve already known about: the regime’s attrition rate is quite high and it can’t replace the soldiers and militiamen that it loses with equally effective Syrian manpower.” [Continue reading…]

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Assad’s hold on power looks shakier than ever as rebels advance in Syria

The Washington Post reports: A surge of rebel gains in Syria is overturning long-held assumptions about the durability of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which now appears in greater peril than at any time in the past three years.

The capture Saturday of the town of Jisr al-Shughour in northern Idlib province was just the latest in a string of battlefield victories by rebel forces, which have made significant advances in both the north and the south of the country.

As was the case in the capital of Idlib province last month, government defenses in Jisr al-Shughour crumbled after just a few days of fighting, pointing as much to the growing weakness of regime forces as the revival of the opposition.

The battlefield shifts come at a time when the Obama administration has set aside the crisis in Syria to focus on its chief priorities: defeating the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and concluding a nuclear deal with Iran.

Yet the pace of events in Syria may force the United States to refocus on the unresolved war, which remains at the heart of the turmoil engulfing the Middle East, analysts say. Iran backs ­Assad, Saudi Arabia backs the rebels, and a shift in the balance of power in Syria could have profound repercussions for the conflicts in Iraq and Yemen. [Continue reading…]

Reuters adds: A coalition of Islamist rebels seized an army base in northwestern Syria at dawn on Monday after a suicide bomber from al Qaeda’s Nusra Front drove a truck packed with explosives into the compound and blew it up.

The capture, reported by a rebel commander and social media videos showing militants inside the base, brought the coalition closer to seizing most of Idlib province and moving toward Latakia, the ancestral home of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Robert S. Ford writes: The Assad regime still enjoys some military advantages and support from Iran and Russia, which helps to prolong the conflict. Yet some recent developments may in fact be indicators of the beginning of the end.

Inability to defend and to counterattack. Although the armed opposition announced its plan to attack the provincial capital of Idlib weeks in advance, the regime lacked forces to reinforce the city, which it lost on March 28 a week after the battle started. The regime has since tried to assemble forces for a counterattack, but its gains have been minimal. At the other end of the country, near the Jordanian border, the regime lost the regional stronghold of Busra Sham on March 25 and then the important Nasib border crossing on April 2—the last functioning crossing with Jordan. Regime counterattacks in those areas also stalled. In sum, the regime appears broadly on the defensive now, and its hold on western Aleppo appears insecure due to the vulnerability of its supply lines.

Increased dissent within the inner regime. There are four secret police agencies that are the foundation of the regime’s power, and in mid-March the regime publicly announced that the heads of two of them had been fired. The removal of Political Security Director Rustum Ghazaleh and Syrian Military Intelligence Chief Rafiq Shehadeh was unprecedented. There are unconfirmed reports that Ghazaleh and Shehadeh fell out over the regime’s dependence on Iran; there also are unconfirmed reports that in the wake of the argument Ghazaleh had to be hospitalized after he was physically attacked. [Continue reading…]

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Understanding ISIS as a dynamic countercultural movement

Scott Atran recently addressed the UN Security Council’s Ministerial Debate on “The Role of Youth in Countering Violent Extremism and Promoting Peace.” This post is an adaptation of his remarks: I am an anthropologist. Anthropologists, as a group, study the diversity of human cultures to understand our commonalities and differences, and to use the knowledge of what is common to us all to help us bridge our differences. My research aims to help reduce violence between peoples, by first trying to understand thoughts and behaviors as different from my own as any I can imagine: such as suicide actions that kill masses of people innocent of direct harm to others. The key, as Margaret Mead taught me long ago, when I worked as her assistant at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was to empathize with people, without always sympathizing: to participate in their lives to the extent you feel is morally possible. And then report.

I’ve spent much time observing, interviewing and carrying out systematic studies among people on six continents who are drawn to violent action for a group and its cause. Most recently with colleagues last month in Kirkuk, Iraq among young men who had killed for ISIS, and with young adults in the banlieus of Paris and barrios of Barcelona who seek to join it.

With some insights from social science research, I will try to outline a few conditions that may help move such youth from taking the path of violent extremism.

But first, who are these young people? None of the ISIS fighters we interviewed in Iraq had more than primary school education, some had wives and young children. When asked “what is Islam?” they answered “my life.” They knew nothing of the Quran or Hadith, or of the early caliphs Omar and Othman, but had learned of Islam from Al Qaeda and ISIS propaganda, teaching that Muslims like them were targeted for elimination unless they first eliminated the impure. This isn’t an outlandish proposition in their lived circumstances: as they told of growing up after the fall of Saddam Hussein in a hellish world of constant guerrilla war, family deaths and dislocation, and of not being even able to go out of their homes or temporary shelters for months on end. [Continue reading…]

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Israel reportedly hits Hezbollah, Assad targets in Syria

The Times of Israel reports: Israel reportedly hit several targets belonging to Hezbollah and the Syrian army in a series of air attacks Saturday morning in the Kalamun area on the border between Syria and Lebanon.

According to a report in the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya, a first Israeli Air Force strike took place Wednesday, allegedly targeting two sites believed to have been Syrian army missile depots.

On Saturday, according to a report in al-Jazeera, the Syrian targets were divisions 155 and 65 of the Assad army, in charge of “strategic weapons.” Al-Arabiya reported that the targets were Scud missile depots housed in the military bases. [Continue reading…]

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Angelina Jolie to UN: In Syria the Security Council has refused to use its powers to protect and defend the innocent

Addressing the UN Security Council yesterday, Angelina Jolie Pitt said: In 2011, the Syrian refugees I met were full of hope. They said “please, tell people what is happening to us”, trusting that the truth alone would guarantee international action.

When I returned, hope was turning into anger: the anger of the man who held his baby up to me, asking “is this a terrorist? Is my son a terrorist?”

On my last visit in February, anger had subsided into resignation, misery and the bitter question “why are we, the Syrian people, not worth saving?”

To be a Syrian caught up in this conflict is to be cut off from every law and principle designed to protect innocent life:

International humanitarian law prohibits torture, starvation, the targeting of schools and hospitals – but these crimes are happening every day in Syria.

The Security Council has powers to address these threats to international peace and security – but those powers lie unused.

The UN has adopted the Responsibility to Protect concept, saying that when a State cannot protect its people the international community will not stand by – but we are standing by, in Syria.

The problem is not lack of information – we know in excruciating detail what is happening in Yarmouk, in Aleppo and in Homs.

The problem is lack of political will.

We cannot look at Syria, and the evil that has arisen from the ashes of indecision, and think this is not the lowest point in the world’s inability to protect and defend the innocent. [Continue reading…]

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The Middle East’s chaotic future

Henri J. Barkey writes: The state as we know it is vanishing in the Middle East. Strife in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, foreign intrusion from states within the region and outside it, and dreadful rule by self-serving elites have all contributed to the destruction of societies, infrastructure and systems of governance. Nonstate actors of all kinds, most of them armed, are emerging to run their own shows. Generations of mistrust underlie it all.

It is difficult to see how Humpty Dumpty will ever be put back together again. To be sure, many Middle Eastern states were mostly illegitimate to begin with. They may have been recognized internationally, but their governments exercised authority mostly through repression and sometimes through terror. They relied on a political veneer or constructed narrative to justify the rule of ethnic or sectarian minorities, mafia-like family clans or power-hungry dictators. In most countries, the systems that were built were never intended to create national institutions, so they did not.

The Arab Spring shook some of these societies to the core, precipitating their disintegration. But it was the rise of the Islamic State, and the ease with which it spread through Syria and Iraq, that truly laid bare the incoherence of the existing states. [Continue reading…]

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Survivors tell of Syrian refugees’ desperate efforts to reach Europe

The Daily Beast reports: “It was pitch black. We were groping our way through the forest, hoping to hear water soon. I’d seen the maps and spoken to others who had done the journey before—I knew that once we reached the river, we would nearly be in Greece.”

This was no orienteering exercise. It was a long-awaited attempt to enter Europe.

In 2014, 23-year-old Yousef made the perilous overland journey from Turkey to Germany, fleeing Syria, where he had been imprisoned for organizing peaceful protests. Many people make this journey with the help of paid smugglers, but Yousef had spent the months beforehand poring over maps of Europe, filling his camera phone with screenshot aerial views of the terrain and learning village names by heart.

“I had no money. I couldn’t afford the smugglers’ fees, so I had to rely on myself for a lot of the journey,” he told The Daily Beast at his new home in central Germany. “I spoke to everyone I could to hear how they had done it, and studied really hard.”

At the Greek border, the waters of the Evros River that separates Greece from Turkey were flowing fast. “I’m a fairly good swimmer, but I still believed I’d be washed away. We waited until sunrise so we could see more clearly, and then I jumped in with a rope tied around me. I thought, ‘That’s it, Yousef, you’re going to drown here.’ But somehow I made it to the opposite bank and tied the rope to a tree so others could cross more easily.”

After less than half an hour, however, Yousef and his three other companions were caught by Greek police. Forced into a car, they were instantly returned to Turkey.

Today, over 3.8 million Syrians have fled the brutality of the Syrian war zone. Many have sought sanctuary in neighboring countries, but countless others are desperately attempting to reach European soil. With European Union states granting formal entry to only a handful of refugees (at 30,000, Germany has been by far the most “generous”) many have resorted to seeking asylum after illegal entry. Currently, the bulk of those attempting to reach Europe illegally are Syrians. [Continue reading…]

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Saudis believe war in Yemen signals more assertive role for the kingdom across the Middle East

Kim Ghattas writes: almost every conversation with Saudis about the Yemen military operation leads to a wider discussion about the region, the kingdom’s new role as the leader of a military coalition and in many cases, people’s desire to see this translate into action elsewhere.

At a bowling alley in Riyadh one evening, I met a young couple enjoying an evening out. The man was in the military so he would only give his name as Hamed. His eyes lit up when I asked him whether he supported the war.

“We support the king’s decision to go to war 100%, it’s long overdue. Hopefully, we will move to help Syria next, and bring down President Assad who has been causing so much death and destruction for his people,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has accused regional rival Iran of arming the Houthis – a charge both the Houthis and Iran have denied.

Saudis and Sunnis in general feel they have been taking a beating by Shia Iran across the Middle East as Tehran tries to solidify its influence from Baghdad to Beirut.

The victim narrative is an odd one considering the power of countries like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) in general and the fact that an overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world are Sunni.

So there is an interesting wave of patriotism on display in the kingdom these days and a sense of pride that Saudi Arabia, under new King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, is asserting itself in a way it has not in the past.

“Saudi Arabia is a reference and a leader for the Arab and Muslim world and we are proud of that,” said Hamed.

Some Saudis do quietly express concern about the country entering into a war with no apparent end game. But no-one wants to be openly critical as they ponder the possibility it could all wrong and the kingdom could find itself in a long protracted war. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in neighbouring Yemen shows that the Sunni monarchy will stand up to Iran and that Arab states can protect their interests without U.S. leadership, the kingdom’s ambassador to Britain said.

Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf also said that the Saudi-led coalition that has waged four weeks of air strikes against Shi’ite Houthi fighters in Yemen had met its goals and could be a model for future joint Arab action. [Continue reading…]

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Pentagon map hides ISIS gains

The Daily Beast reports: The Defense Department released a map last week showing territory where it is has pushed ISIS back, claiming that the terrorist group is “no longer able to operate freely in roughly 25 to 30 percent of populated areas of Iraqi territory where it once could.” This was touted as evidence of success by numerous news outlets.

Pushing ISIS back is clearly a good step. But the information from the Pentagon is, at best, misleading and incomplete, experts in the region and people on the ground tell The Daily Beast. They said the map misinforms the public about how effective the U.S.-led effort to beat back ISIS has actually been. The map released by the Pentagon excludes inconvenient facts in some parts, and obscures them in others.

The Pentagon’s map assessing the so-called Islamic State’s strength has only two categories: territory held by ISIS currently, and territory lost by ISIS since coalition airstrikes began in August 2014. The category that would illustrate American setbacks — where ISIS has actually gained territory since the coalition effort began — is not included. [Continue reading…]

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The children risking their lives to reach Europe

Gemma Parkin at Save the Children writes: In 2014, half of the children who arrived in Italy were unaccompanied, but this year the proportion has increased to over two-thirds (68%).

These children are fleeing conflict, extreme poverty and persecution in some of the world’s most bloody conflicts, failed states and repressive regimes including Syria, Somalia and Eritrea. They are not criminals, but victims of some of the modern world’s most major crises.

Many of those children I’ve spoken to were tricked by traffickers and promised jobs as hairdressers, shop assistants and babysitters. Their families were persuaded to pay thousands of pounds to allow them to head to Europe. But once in the hands of traffickers and far from home, they had no rights and no protection.

Libya has for many years been the point of departure for thousands of people fleeing Africa and the Middle East, but the deteriorating situation in the country has allowed human trafficking to flourish. The lack of police, governance or state control in anarchic Libya means traffickers operate with impunity. Combined with recent good weather, the number of people launching off the country’s northern coast has rocketed in recent months.

On the journey across Libya, children face dehydration and malnutrition, kidnapping, detention and extortion, torture, child slavery, trafficking and sexual abuse. Here in Sicily, the Save the Children team met 17-year-old Brahane from Eritrea. He described being forced to board a pick-up truck of 30 people to cross the Sahara desert into Libya. He reported seeing ruthless traffickers spraying migrants with petrol and setting them on fire for “stepping out of line”. [Continue reading…]

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Pro-regime Syrians back army but dodge draft

AFP reports: Young Syrian men in regime-controlled areas are using any means necessary, including violent demonstrations, to avoid military conscription – even if they support the government.

More than 80,000 soldiers and other pro-regime fighters have been killed in the 4-year-old conflict, out of a total of roughly 220,000 dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“I’m with the regime but I am a deserter, because military service in Syria means death,” said George, a Christian student from Damascus.

“Very few young men accept to enlist because at our age, no one wants to die.” [Continue reading…]

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The structure of ISIS: How Haji Bakr created an Islamic intelligence state

Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi aka Haji Bakr

Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi aka Haji Bakr

Christoph Reuter reports on the documents revealing Haji Bakr’s blueprint for ISIS: What Bakr put on paper, page by page, with carefully outlined boxes for individual responsibilities, was nothing less than a blueprint for a takeover. It was not a manifesto of faith, but a technically precise plan for an “Islamic Intelligence State” — a caliphate run by an organization that resembled East Germany’s notorious Stasi domestic intelligence agency.

This blueprint was implemented with astonishing accuracy in the ensuing months. The plan would always begin with the same detail: The group recruited followers under the pretense of opening a Dawah office, an Islamic missionary center. Of those who came to listen to lectures and attend courses on Islamic life, one or two men were selected and instructed to spy on their village and obtain a wide range of information. To that end, Haji Bakr compiled lists such as the following:

  • List the powerful families.
  • Name the powerful individuals in these families.
  • Find out their sources of income.
  • Name names and the sizes of (rebel) brigades in the village.
  • Find out the names of their leaders, who controls the brigades and their political orientation.
  • Find out their illegal activities (according to Sharia law), which could be used to blackmail them if necessary

The spies were told to note such details as whether someone was a criminal or a homosexual, or was involved in a secret affair, so as to have ammunition for blackmailing later. “We will appoint the smartest ones as Sharia sheiks,” Bakr had noted. “We will train them for a while and then dispatch them.” As a postscript, he had added that several “brothers” would be selected in each town to marry the daughters of the most influential families, in order to “ensure penetration of these families without their knowledge.”

The spies were to find out as much as possible about the target towns: Who lived there, who was in charge, which families were religious, which Islamic school of religious jurisprudence they belonged to, how many mosques there were, who the imam was, how many wives and children he had and how old they were. Other details included what the imam’s sermons were like, whether he was more open to the Sufi, or mystical variant of Islam, whether he sided with the opposition or the regime, and what his position was on jihad. Bakr also wanted answers to questions like: Does the imam earn a salary? If so, who pays it? Who appoints him? Finally: How many people in the village are champions of democracy?

The agents were supposed to function as seismic signal waves, sent out to track down the tiniest cracks, as well as age-old faults within the deep layers of society — in short, any information that could be used to divide and subjugate the local population. The informants included former intelligence spies, but also regime opponents who had quarreled with one of the rebel groups. Some were also young men and adolescents who needed money or found the work exciting. Most of the men on Bakr’s list of informants, such as those from Tal Rifaat, were in their early twenties, but some were as young as 16 or 17.

The plans also include areas like finance, schools, daycare, the media and transportation. But there is a constantly recurring, core theme, which is meticulously addressed in organizational charts and lists of responsibilities and reporting requirements: surveillance, espionage, murder and kidnapping. [Continue reading…]

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In the face of ISIS’s atrocities, global inaction is not an option

Philippe Sands writes: Eight mass graves reportedly found in the Iraqi city of Tikrit earlier this month are believed to hold some of the bodies of 1,700 Shia military cadets who were rounded up by Islamic State in June 2014 and paraded through the streets, before disappearing.

These graves, and surely others in and around the city, will be subjected to a grim, intimate process followed too often around the world, a fruit of ethnic and religious strife. As in Rwanda and various parts of former Yugoslavia with now familiar names – such as Srebrenica and Vukovar– the sites will be mapped and documented; bodies will be identified, photographed, removed and then minutely analysed by forensic anthropologists for identity and trauma; full excavation of the site will follow, with identification and accounting for the moment of mass death. What happens next?

These sites are crime scenes, with a resonance going beyond the local. Their dimension is international because of their scale, nature and context. Such acts of unlawful killing may be war crimes in armed conflict, or “crimes against humanity” when occasioned beyond the battlefield. If it can be established that the killings were motivated by an intention to destroy Shias as a group in whole or in part (as the UN has intimated in relation to accounts of the murder by Islamic State forces of members of the Yazidi community in Iraq), then “genocide” may have been committed. [Continue reading…]

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