The BBC’s Steven Sackur yesterday spoke to Turkey’s ambassador to Nato, Mehmet Fatih Ceylan, about whether Ankara is doing enough to counter the threat posed by Islamic State on its border with Syria.
Will Turkey let Kobane fall to ISIS?
Category Archives: Syria
Iraqi Kurds approve deploying forces to Syria’s Kobane
AFP reports: Iraqi Kurdish regional lawmakers Wednesday approved the deployment of security forces to the Syrian town of Kobane to help Kurds battling the Islamic State jihadist group, the parliament speaker said.
Massud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, had sent a letter asking its legislature to give him the approval needed for the deployment.
“The Kurdistan parliament decided to send forces to Kobane with the aim of supporting the fighters there and protecting Kobane,” Yusef Mohammed Sadeq said, according to footage of the session.
It was not immediately clear whether there would be any coordination between the Kurdish region and the federal government in Baghdad on intervening in Syria’s bloody and protracted civil war.
Charles Glass on the ‘improving’ situation in Syria
Louis Proyect writes: The latest issue of the New York Review of Books has an article by Charles Glass titled “In the Syria We Don’t Know” that has been making the rounds on the Internet. I have seen links to it from Vijay Prashad on Twitter, on the Greenleft mailing list in Australia, and just this morning on ZNet. Apparently, those who link to it must have taken heart in Glass’s assurance that the Baathists were getting the upper hand:
As Bashar’s prospects improve with each American sortie against his enemies in the east of the country, Damascus and the populous towns to the north have been enjoying a respite of sorts from war. The Syrian Ministry of Education reported that, of the 22,000 schools in the country, more than 17,000 of them reopened on time in the middle of September. Needless to say, almost all of the functioning schools are in government-held areas. The souks in the old city of Damascus, unlike their more extensive and now destroyed counterparts in Aleppo, are open. Shops selling meat, vegetables, spices, and other basic items to the local population are doing well, although the tourist boutiques in and around the famous Souk Hamadieh have no customers apart from UN workers and a few remaining diplomats. At night, restaurants in most neighborhoods are, if not full, nearly so. Everything from wine to grilled chicken is plentiful, albeit at prices higher than before the war. Traffic remains heavy, although somewhat less obstructed since June when the government felt confident enough to remove many of its checkpoints. Electricity is intermittent, and those who can afford private generators use them in the off-hours.
So, any normal person — especially those who prefer RT.com to Aljazeera — would conclude that it was best for Assad to stay the course, no matter how many barrel bombs it takes to level Aleppo and other cities to the ground just as long as there is meat, vegetables, and spices for sale in Damascus.
I took note of Glass in an article titled “The Betrayal of the Intellectuals on Syria” that was rejected by the publishers of Critical Muslim because they feared it would run afoul of British libel laws. I post the relevant section below:
Arguably, the New York Review of Books and its counterpart the London Review of Books have served as latter day equivalents of Action Française, serving propaganda for a vicious dictatorship that has little connection to its self-flattering image as a beacon of human rights.
Even when the title of an NY Review article foreshadows a condemnation of the Ba‘athists, the content remains consistent with the “plague on both your houses” narrative that pervades this intellectual milieu. [Continue reading…]
ISIS in desperate struggle to capture Kobane
ISIS realizes that they have to take #Kobane soon. Kurds will only get stronger through airstrikes, airdrops and arrival peshmergas.
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 21, 2014
'Last night, fiercest battle yet in #Kobane,' ypg spokesman tells me. Seems ISIS putting all its might to capture town b4 peshmergas arrive.
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 21, 2014
About peshmergas coming 2 #kobane: expected in Turkey in coming 24hrs. Members are Syrian Kurds, not Iraqi Kurds. They got trained in N.Iraq
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 21, 2014
I asked #Kobane ypg spokesman if they welcome peshmerga forces. 'ypg fighting war on terror agnst ISIS on behalf of world. All help welcome'
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 21, 2014
Syria tribal revolt against ISIS in August resulting in civilian massacre was ignored by U.S.
The Washington Post reports: The cost of turning against the Islamic State was made brutally apparent in the streets of a dusty backwater town in eastern Syria in early August. Over a three-day period, vengeful fighters shelled, beheaded, crucified and shot hundreds of members of the Shaitat tribe after they dared to rise up against the extremists.
By the time the killing stopped, 700 people were dead, activists and survivors say, making this the bloodiest single atrocity committed by the Islamic State in Syria since it declared its existence 18 months ago.
The little-publicized story of this failed tribal revolt in Abu Hamam, in Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zour province, illuminates the challenges that will confront efforts to persuade those living under Islamic State rule — in Iraq as well as Syria — to join the fight against the jihadist group, something U.S. officials say is essential if the campaign against the militants is to succeed.
The Abu Hamam area has now been abandoned, and many of the bodies remain uncollected, offering a chilling reminder to residents elsewhere of the fate that awaits those who dare rebel.
Just as powerful a message for those living under the militants’ iron fist was the almost complete international silence on the bloodbath. [Continue reading…]
ISIS seizes two Yazidi villages as it advances on Mount Sinjar
The Washington Post reports: Islamic State militants advanced on Mount Sinjar on Monday, seizing two villages and blocking roads as besieged fighters from the minority Yazidi sect pleaded for U.S.-led airstrikes to save them.
Yazidi volunteers who have been protecting the area for more than two months said they retreated from the villages north of the mountain after the extremists attacked in the early hours of Monday under the cover of bad weather. The Yazidis pulled back to a shrine in the foothills of the mountain but said the militants were closing in — their armored vehicles visible just a few miles away as night fell.
“We have so little ammunition, and they are advancing,” said Khalid Qassim Shesho, a 44-year-old fighter trapped in the Sharfadin shrine. “I can see five Humvees without using binoculars. We need planes!”
The extremist gains around Mount Sinjar strike an embarrassing blow to the international campaign against the Islamic State. In August, President Obama authorized targeted airstrikes in Iraq to address the plight of thousands of Yazidis trapped on Sinjar in the face of an initial militant onslaught. [Continue reading…]
U.S. airdrops with weapons and ammunition raise morale inside Kobane
The New York Times reports: Kurdish officials had repeatedly complained that without new supplies of ammunition and weapons, the airstrikes would not be sufficient to drive away the militants. On Monday, a commander in Kobani, Abu Hasan, said that “spirits and morale were high,” after the airdrops, which United States officials said included 27 palettes from Iraqi Kurdish authorities and contained medical supplies, ammunition and weapons.
The containers fell to the west of Kobani at about 4 a.m. local time, he said, adding that one palette that fell astray was destroyed to prevent it from falling into militant hands.
Polat Can, a spokesman for the Kurdish fighters in Syria, said that shipment included antitank weapons. He said that the Kurdish forces were expecting more airdrops in the coming days.
There was less visible fighting in the city during the day. In the afternoon, fires started appearing to the east of the city, an area still partially controlled by ISIS fighters, and residents fretted that the militants were torching homes.
Mr. Cavusoglu did not say how or when the pesh merga fighters would cross into Kobani. Late Monday, Hemin Hawrami, an Iraqi Kurdish official, wrote on Twitter that the fighters had been ordered to deploy in the next 48 hours.
A senior Pentagon official said on Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity, that “it will be a significant change to be able to have a free flow of fighters going into Kobani.”
A Kurdish defense official in Kobani, Ismet Sheikh Hassan said he had not been given any information about when the pesh merga would arrive. He welcomed the influx, while asserting that the Kurdish fighters already in the city — members of the People’s Protection Forces, the Y.P.G. — were not desperate for more fighters.
“We are short on ammunition and weapons,” he said “not on human power.” [Continue reading…]
Victims of ISIS: Non-western journalists who don’t make the headlines
The Guardian reports: Last week, Islamic State militants released a fifth video of the British freelance journalist John Cantlie, wearing a Guantánamo Bay-style orange jumpsuit and appearing to read from a script.
The film’s release was widely reported. Unsurprisingly: since August, Isis has released videos showing its beheading of two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as two British aid workers, David Haines and Alan Henning. All have been huge news events.
Less widely covered were reports that, on 13 October, Isis shot and killed the Mosul correspondent of Iraq’s Sada news agency in the city’s al-Ghazlani camp. Several local sources, as well as a Kurdish Democratic party spokesman and a medical centre, confirmed Mohanad al-Aqidi’s death to numerous NGOs (members of his family have since disputed the reports, and al-Aqidi’s fate is currently unclear.)
There are no doubts about the public beheading on 10 October, in Samarra, 50km south-east of Tikrit, of Raad Mohamed al-Azaoui , an Iraqi cameraman and photographer for Sama Salah Aldeen TV. Azaoui, a 37-year-old father of three, was killed with his brother after Friday prayers. [Continue reading…]
How to cover the ISIS — and survive
Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, writes: Sometime in 2013, as Islamic State militants expanded the territory under their control, an order came down to the local brigades: Grab any non-Muslim foreigner you can find. Western journalists became prime targets, and over the next few months dozens were captured by local fighters.
International news organizations purposely avoided covering the kidnappings. Such blackouts are intended to create space for hostage negotiations to move forward discreetly, undisturbed by the media spotlight. Yet this voluntary censorship also had unintended consequences: In late 2013, when 30 journalists were missing in Syria, there was virtually no coverage of the problem, little public awareness that Islamic State fighters were actively searching for journalists and humanitarian workers to abduct, and less recognition of the rise of a group that has now emerged as a serious international security threat.
The Islamic State’s approach to news media, meanwhile, has reaped huge benefits for the group. Ransom payments by European governments have generated millions of dollars in revenue, with the going price per hostage estimated to be north of $2 million. Its grisly videos showing the beheadings of journalists such as James Foley and Steven Sotloff have reinforced the militants’ message of terror and served as valuable recruiting tools. And the group has managed its global image through its deft use of social media and its ability to restrict access to independent journalists.
In the battle over information between the Islamic State and journalists, the terrorists are winning. [Continue reading…]
In reversal, Turkey to open passage to Kobane for Iraqi Kurdish fighters
The Wall Street Journal reports: Turkey said Monday it would allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters to cross its territory to reinforce the embattled Syrian city of Kobani, reversing its long-standing opposition to such aid hours after U.S. airdrops of weapons and ammunition to the city’s Syrian Kurdish defenders.
Speaking in a news conference in the Turkish capital Ankara, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu didn’t offer details how Turkish authorities would enable the transfer Kurdish Peshmerga fighters across Turkey or whether Syrian Kurdish authorities would accept additional forces.
“We are aiding the transfer of Peshmerga forces to Kobani for support. Consultations on this matter are ongoing,” Mr. Cavusoglu said. [Continue reading…]
I just asked senior Kurdish official in Erbil (KDP) if peshmergas on their way to #Kobane thru Turkey as being reported? Answer: "Not yet"
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 20, 2014
U.S. airdrops weapons and supplies to besieged Syrian Kurds in Kobane
The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. dropped weapons, ammunition and medical supplies to Syrian Kurds fighting Islamic State extremists in the embattled city of Kobani, U.S. officials said Sunday.
Three U.S. C-130 cargo planes began dropping the weapons and supplies, provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq, on Sunday, the officials said. Over several hours, the U.S. dropped 27 bundles of small arms, ammunition and supplies.
The mission marks a deeper U.S. involvement in the conflict and comes over the objections of U.S. ally Turkey, which strongly opposes arming the Syrian Kurds.
The U.S. has conducted some 135 airstrikes in the area of Kobani, itself a main focus of the Islamic State militant offensive. U.S. military officials said they have killed hundreds of fighters and damaged scores of combat equipment. [Continue reading…]
YPG and YPJ units have received thermal weapon sights. thanks for @CENTCOM . | #Kobane
— Rodi Khalil ✌ (@Rodi_Khalil) October 20, 2014
YPG and YPJ units have received anti-armors and a good quantity of shells . Thanks for @CENTCOM and Kurdistan Regional Government. | #Kobane
— Rodi Khalil ✌ (@Rodi_Khalil) October 20, 2014
Reuters adds: The main Syrian Kurdish armed group defending the Syrian border town on Kobani against Islamic State attackers said on Monday arms air-dropped by the United States would not be enough for it to win the battle, and asked for more support.
Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the Kurdish YPG group, said the weapons dropped overnight would have a “positive impact” on the battle and the morale of fighters who have been out-gunned by Islamic State. But he added: “Certainly it will not be enough to decide the battle.”
“We do not think the battle of Kobani will end that quickly. The forces of (Islamic State) are still heavily present and determined to occupy Kobani. In addition, there is resolve (from the YPG) to repel this attack,” he told Reuters in an interview conducted via Skype.
The impact of airstrikes on the battle for Kobane
The Telegraph reports: The first signs that things could change came when planes appeared in the sky, circling for hours, but not attacking. The first strikes came on October 7 when US-made vehicles driven by Isil fighters to resupply the city were hit outside the town.
Scorched metal skeletons were all that remained of the jihadist’s prized Humvees.
“We had a walkie-talkie tuned on the Isil radio system, that we had taken from a jihadist that we killed,” said Mr Kharaba.
“When the first air strikes hit, we heard them on the radio screaming in panic.
“They were shouting ’Allah Akbhar’ (God is great) and listing the leaders who were killed: Abu Anas, Abu Hamza and many others.” Within a week, the air strikes had escalated from a few every day, to several every hour and by Tuesday the US and allies launched 21 air strikes on Isil positions in and around Kobane.
They bombed Tel Shair, a hill at the edge of Kobani, from which Isil had boastfully erected its black flag, and which it had used as a position to shell the town from.
Kurdish forces stormed the hill after the air strikes and cleaned it of their enemy.
“After we took the hill, I knew that Isil was on the back foot,” said Mr Kharaba.
“I knew it would be hard for them to keep Kobane.” The next day the strikes were hitting inside Kobane itself and the tide began to turn.
Pilots overhead grew in confidence and began to strike positions in the centre of Kobane, hitting Isil on their front lines.
Mr Kharaba described to the Telegraph being just metres from the air strike’s targets, and knowing he was safe: “They are incredibly accurate. If the Americans wanted to put a rocket in someone’s eye, even from hundreds of meters in the air, they could.”
The Syrian rebels and their Kurdish allies claimed they worked closely with the US planners to help set up the coordinates for the laser guided bombs.
Idris Nassan, 40, a senior spokesman for the Kurdish fighters told the Telegraph: “There is close co-ordination. We have a member of YPG who works directly with the Americans.”
Officially, the US government has shied away from directly admitting coordinating its attacks through the YPG, whose affiliate, the PKK, is on America’s terrorist list.
But John Allen, the US special envoy in charge of building the international coalition against Islamic State, admitted that Washington was open to receiving information on targets from all sources.
“Obviously, information comes in from all different sources associated with providing local information or potentially targeting information.
“And we’ll take it all when it comes in. It’s ultimately evaluated for its value,” Allen told reporters in Washington.
One fighter who asked not to be named recalled a battle on the eastern front of Kobane where his men were about to be forced into a retreat: “We called a Kurdish commander for help. He told us to move back a few meters. Then, minutes after, an air strike hit the men we had been fighting.”
The results have been increasingly effective. [Continue reading…]
Humiliation replaces fear for the women kidnapped by ISIS
The Guardian reports: They sold Amsha for $12. Other girls and women went for more, much more. But Amsha had a small son and was pregnant with her second child. She had already seen Islamic State (Isis) militants execute her husband in front of her. Now the terror of that crime and the fear of captivity was to be replaced by the indignity and humiliation of being traded like cattle.
“A 50-year-old man with a dark beard came to buy me,” she recalls. “From that day on, I didn’t want to live any more.”
Amsha is one of hundreds of Yazidi women from northern Iraq captured during Islamic State’s rapid advance this year. Interviews with women who escaped reveal that Isis corralled the women into halls and other detention centres and gradually sold them off to fighters as the spoils of war.
Isis said in an online article that it was reviving an ancient custom of enslaving enemies and forcing the women to become wives of victorious fighters.
“One should remember that enslaving the families of the [non-believers] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the sharia, that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’an and the narrations of the prophet,” the article said, adding that mothers were not separated from their young children. [Continue reading…]
Denmark tries a progressive approach to fighters returning from Syria
The Washington Post reports: The rush of morning shoppers parted to make way for Talha, a lanky 21-year-old in desert camouflage and a long, religious beard. He strode through the local mall with a fighter’s gait picked up on the battlefields of Syria. Streams of young Muslim men greeted him like a returning king.
As-salamu alaykum.
Wa alaikum assalaam.
In other countries, Talha — one of hundreds of young jihadists from the West who has fought in Syria and Iraq — might be barred from return or thrown in jail. But in Denmark, a country that has spawned more foreign fighters per capita than almost anywhere else, the port city of Aarhus is taking a novel approach by rolling out a welcome mat.
In Denmark, not one returned fighter has been locked up. Instead, taking the view that discrimination at home is as criminal as Islamic State recruiting, officials here are providing free psychological counseling while finding returnees jobs and spots in schools and universities. Officials credit a new effort to reach out to a radical mosque with stanching the flow of recruits.
Some progressives say Aarhus should become a model for other communities in the United States and Europe that are trying to cope with the question of what to do when the jihad generation comes back to town. [Continue reading…]
Iran vows to aid Lebanese military
The Associated Press reports: Iran said Sunday it is ready to provide aid to the Lebanese army as well as the Shiite Hezbollah group to help combat “terrorists.”
The promise of aid comes after Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia pledged billions of dollars to Lebanon’s armed forces, and will be seen by many Lebanese as part of a competition for influence over the tiny country, which is gripped by sectarian tensions and bitterly divided over the Syrian civil war.
Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was quoted by state TV as saying that “supporting the Lebanese nation, army and resistance will still remain on Iran’s agenda.” Hezbollah’s allies refer to it as the “resistance” because of its stated mission of driving Israel out of occupied territory.
Fiercest fighting in days hits Kobane
Reuters reports: The fiercest fighting in days shook the Syrian border town of Kobani overnight as Islamic State fighters attacked Kurdish defenders with mortars and car bombs, sources in the town and a monitoring group said on Sunday.
Islamic State, which controls much of Syria and Iraq, fired 44 mortars at Kurdish parts of the town on Saturday and some of the shells fell inside nearby Turkey, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said four more mortars were fired on Sunday. [Continue reading…]
The CIA’s wrong: Arming rebels works
Christopher Dickey writes: The New York Times ran a story last week that suggested CIA covert operations failed again and again to achieve the policy objectives set for them.
Just about everyone I talked to afterward in the U.S. intelligence community saw this as a story put out by the administration. One retired high-ranking intelligence officer said the article “seems founded on the kind of leaks that are permissible when beneficial to folks in high places but prosecutable when done by others.”
Has the CIA failed repeatedly to meet its covert goals? Actually, the problem has been exactly the reverse. With the exception of the Bay of Pigs, the agency has succeeded repeatedly, sometimes spectacularly. In Afghanistan in the 1980s “the CIA arms for the mujahedin won the final and decisive battle of the Cold War, liberating Eastern Europe and destroying the USSR,” says CIA veteran Bruce Riedel, now at the Brookings Institute. “That’s victory by any measure. Of course the war had other long term consequences, but the CIA accomplished what the White House wanted, a Russian Vietnam.”
Long-term consequences indeed. What happened again and again after the agency eliminated or helped to neutralize the presumed bad guys was the spectacle of their replacements turning out to be as bad or worse. But for those tragic policy decisions one must blame every president dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower. American commanders-in-chief and the people around them come to think they can reengineer countries around the world, whether to make them more anti-Communist in the old days, or less terrorist, or more humanitarian in the present. And in many cases the action is out in the open.
“A CIA study says arming rebels rarely works?” a senior veteran of the agency asked wryly. “You could say the same thing about the U.S. military. How many wars have we won since World War II?” Granada? Kosovo? One hardly wants to mention the continuing tragedy of Iraq and Afghanistan: “mission accomplished” turns so quickly to “mission impossible.”
From 1983 to 2003 the United States waged what Rudyard Kipling called “savage wars of peace” to teach lessons and change regimes just about every year, sometimes secretly, more often openly, in Lebanon, Granada, Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan, Libya, against Iran in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, and so on. Most Americans have forgotten these operations, of course, but the latter ones, especially the 1999 Kosovo war in which not a single allied soldier lost his or her life, started to make the whole business of war look just a little too easy—and laid the groundwork for the biggest disaster of all, the full scale invasion of Iraq.
By comparison with conventional military campaigns, the CIA ops were, in fact, pretty small beer, but most eventually left an acrid aftertaste. [Continue reading…]
Joshua Landis: ‘Syria is locked into its grinding civil war’
Danny Postel in conversation with Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, former president of the Syrian Studies Association, and editor of the blog Syria Comment. This discussion is an elaboration of a short article, “The Great Sorting Out: Ethnicity & the Future of the Levant,” by Landis that Elias Muhanna published on his blog, Qifa Nabki.
(H/t Pulse)