Category Archives: Syria

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

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

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

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

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First airstrikes hit ISIS in Kobane outskirts

Rudaw reports: The US-led anti-Islamic State coalition launched airstrikes targeting militant strongholds on the outskirts of the beleaguered Kurdish city of Kobane for the first time early Saturday, according to local officials.

The strike follows a weeklong Islamic State (IS or ISIS) offensive that has driven over 140,000 Syrian Kurds across the Turkish border.

Ahmed Sulaiman, an official of the Democratic Progressive Party in Syria, told Rudaw that the mission targeted ISIS militants based in Jim-Hiran, Ali-Shar, Mirde Smill, and southern sections of Sheran, all villages east of Kobane, the unofficial capital of the autonomous Kurdish vilayets in Northern Syria.

The bombings began at approximately 6am, according to witnesses, and continued through the morning.

This is the first time that coalition airstrikes targeted the vicinity of the embattled Kurdish city, arriving after a week of desperate pleas from local residents and opposition militias for the coalition to intervene.

ISIS fighters retaliated by shelling the city from positions 10 kilometers away.

Residents reported five major explosions inside the city at 3:30pm. This is the first time the city itself has come under attack. [Continue reading…]

Middle East Eye adds: The US-led coalition overnight and this morning also expanded its campaign against militants in eastern and central Syria, hitting the Homs province for the first time on Saturday, and also targeting the town of Minbej, near the western limit of IS control, the Observatory said.

Further attacks were also unleashed on Raqqa, which Islamic State have made their headquarters, the Britain-based monitoring group said, while adding that IS-held oil fields had also come under attack from the air.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the targets hit in Homs province were far away from the front line with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, who control Homs city, Syria’s third largest.

“The US-Arab coalition has for the first time struck IS bases in the eastern desert of Homs province,” Abdel Rahman said, adding that the positions were in the area of Al-Hammad, east of ancient city Palmyra.

Washington has been keen not to let Assad’s forces exploit the air campaign against IS to take the upper hand in the more than three-year-old civil war.

However, speculation about increasing cooperation between Assad and the coalition is growing. [Continue reading…]

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Turkish intellectuals call for help to Kobane

Hurriyet Daily News reports: Two hundred Turkish academics, writers and civil society activists issued a statement on Sept. 27, calling on the Turkish people as well as all international organizations, especially the United Nations, to take a strong position in defense of Kobane, which has been under siege of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants.

The statement is as follows:

“We believe that joining our voices to loudly condemn the atrocities committed by ISIL has become a requirement for peace and democracy in our region. The fact that ISIL receives support from some Muslims within and outside the region does not render this entity legitimate. In fact, for the overwhelming majority of Muslims the main concern should be the fact that ISIL is using religious values and symbols in its barbaric acts. ISIL, which emerged in the environment of social and political chaos in Iraq and Syria and extended it territorial control with the claims of establishing a caliphate order, is imposing a cruel fundamentalism and commits a myriad of crimes against humanity. It is massacring Shiites, Christians, Ezidis, all who do not accept to be subordinated to its own primitive creed. Its practices include raping women and selling them as slaves.

Through the power struggles in the Middle East, sectarian and radical Islam was tolerated and at times even supported. ISIL is a product of these political processes. Against the expressions of sectarianism, discrimination and violence in the name of any religion or sect, it is therefore all the more significant to embrace and defend secular political norms defined by the respect for peace and freedom for all.

We should not forget that a democratic political outlook that promotes the values of democracy and freedom is the only guarantee for the peaceful coexistence of different communities practicing their own religion. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. considers a no-fly zone to protect civilians from airstrikes by Assad regime

The New York Times reports: The Obama administration has not ruled out establishing a no-fly zone over northeastern Syria to protect civilians from airstrikes by the Syrian government, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday.

Mr. Hagel and General Dempsey indicated they are open to considering the request of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey for a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, where tens of thousands of Syrians have sought refuge. Mr. Hagel said, “We’ve discussed all these possibilities and will continue to talk about what the Turks believe they will require.” He said 1.3 million Syrian refugees are now in Turkey.

General Dempsey added that “a buffer zone might at some point become a possibility,” but he said it was not imminent. Creating a buffer, or no-fly zone, would require warplanes to disable the Syrian government’s air defense system through airstrikes. [Continue reading…]

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The West’s Syria policy has been shaped by media missionaries

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: Three beheadings have compelled the US into an action that nearly 200,000 gruesome deaths had failed to precipitate.

Last Monday, the US launched a bombing campaign in Syria putatively aimed at the extremist jihadi group ISIL. Also targeted were some “Al Qaeda-linked” organisations. The strikes killed many members of Jabhat Al Nusra (JAN) and Ahrar Al Sham (AS). Both groups are hardline, but their focus is regional. Neither threatens the US; both fight ISIL.

But for the US, according to one administration official, it is all “a toxic soup of terrorists”.

Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad concurs. State media quoted him as supporting any international effort to combat “terrorism” in Syria. For weeks, his regime had been volunteering itself as an ally to the US in its “war on terror”, a status that it had enjoyed under George W Bush. Damascus was once a favoured destination for CIA rendition flights.

It is possible it got its wish. The Syrian opposition, which western polemicists habitually describe as “US-backed”, received no warning of the attacks. The US State department said Assad did. The Free Syria Army (FSA) learnt of the attacks from the news.

If JAN and AS have ended up in the same “toxic soup” with their rival ISIL, then it has much to do with poor intelligence and an impoverished media discourse. [Continue reading…]

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‘Their fight is our fight’: Kurds rush from across Turkey to defend Kobani

The Guardian reports: In the village of Yumurtalik, just over two miles west of the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish side of the border, picnic blankets dot a pistachio orchard; groups of men and women sit around eating and chatting. Some distribute flatbreads, olives and cheese, while others stand at the edge of a field, pointing at the barbed wire that separates the two countries.

“This border has no meaning for us,” says Rahman, 40. “We are all of the same blood. The pain in Kobani is our pain, and their fight is our fight.” Every now and then the thuds of missiles can be heard in the distance. The frontline between Islamic State (Isis) and the Syrian Kurdish People’s Defence Units (PYD) has steadily crept closer to Kobani over the past week.

“We have come here to protect Kobani and to watch over this border,” Nasrettin, 47, says. “We don’t trust Turkey to do this right. They would be happy if Isis wiped Kurdistan from the map.”

Like the majority of Kurds here he firmly believes that Ankara is actively supporting Isis with heavy weaponry, medical care and money – a charge that the Turkish government vehemently denies. Facebook pictures and YouTube videos that appear to back up their suspicions are eagerly shared among the picnickers, and continuous attacks by Turkish security forces on Kurdish activists gathering in border villages is proof enough for most that Turkey does not want the Kurds to prevail in Kobani. [Continue reading…]

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Assad regime strongly supports Obama’s war on ISIS

The New York Times reports: President Obama said the American-led airstrikes in Syria were intended to punish the terror organizations that threatened the United States — but would do nothing to aid President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who is at war with the same groups.

But on the third day of strikes, it was increasingly uncertain whether the United States could maintain that delicate balance.

A Syrian diplomat crowed to a pro-government newspaper that “the U.S. military leadership is now fighting in the same trenches with the Syrian generals, in a war on terrorism inside Syria.” And in New York, the new Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said in an interview that he had delivered a private message to Mr. Assad on behalf of Washington, reassuring him that the Syrian government was not the target of American-led airstrikes.

The confident statements by Syrian leaders and their allies showed how difficult it already is for Mr. Obama to go after terrorists operating out of Syria without getting dragged more deeply into that nation’s three-and-a-half-year-old civil war. Indeed, the American strikes have provided some political cover for Mr. Assad, as pro-government Syrians have become increasingly, even publicly, angry at his inability to defeat the militants.

On the other side, Mr. Obama’s Persian Gulf allies, whom he has pointed to as crucial to the credibility of the air campaign, have expressed displeasure with the United States’ reluctance to go after Mr. Assad directly. For years, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pressed Washington to join the fight to oust the Syrian president.

And for years, the United States has demurred.

“We need to create an army to fight the terrorists, but we also have to fight the regime,” Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, emir of Qatar, said Thursday in an interview with New York Times editors. “We have to do both.”

Mr. Obama told the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday that the United States would work with its allies to roll back the Islamic State through military action and support for moderate rebels. But he added, “The only lasting solution to Syria’s civil war is political: an inclusive political transition that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all Syrian citizens, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of creed.”

Yet as the Syrian conflict transformed from peaceful, popular calls for change to a bloody unraveling of the nation, it also became a proxy battlefield for regional and global interests. Iran and Russia sided with Mr. Assad. Arab Gulf nations sided with the rebels, though not always with the same rebels. The United States called for Mr. Assad to go, but never fully engaged.

The rise of the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS, prompted Mr. Obama to jump in, but under the auspices of an antiterrorism campaign. The United States was not taking sides in the civil war, or at least it did not intend to. But the minute it entered the battlefield, it inevitably muddled its standing in Syria and across the Middle East, analysts and experts in the region said.

When American attacks, for example, killed militants with the Nusra Front, a group linked to Al Qaeda, it angered some of the same Syrian insurgents who Mr. Obama has said will help make up a ground force against the Islamic State.

Some of the groups that had said they would support the United States’ mission have now issued statements condemning the American strikes on the Qaeda-linked militants. Those groups have also expressed concern that by making the Islamic State its priority, the United States has acknowledged that it does not seek to unseat Mr. Assad.

Conversely, supporters of the Syrian government say hitting the Nusra Front is proof that the United States has switched sides.

“Of course coordination exists,” said a pro-government Syrian journalist speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, who had criticized the prospect of the strikes but turned practically jubilant once they began. “How else do you explain the strikes on Nusra?” [Continue reading…]

Even if the U.S. is not officially coordinating its operations with the Syrian government, Iraqi National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayyad is already viewed as serving as an intermediary between Damascus and Washington.

What was initially presented as a military operation to degrade and destroy ISIS, suddenly broadened in scope this week when it included strikes on Jabhat al Nusra. Given that the Obama administration refuses to refer to Nusra by its real name and has instead adopted the fictitious label the “Khorasan Group” in reference to a Nusra unit, it’s hardly surprising that the whole operation even after almost two months still has no official name.

The Pentagon has a page on its website called “Targeted Operations Against ISIL Terrorists” — a description of the operation which, even if it lacks the Marvel Comics-style hyperbolic language that the U.S. military favors in its choice of names, was until this week fairly accurate. But since Nusra got rolled onto the target list, it’s started to look more like Targeted Operations Against Assad’s Worst Enemies.

No surprise then that, at least so far, Assad likes the way the war is proceeding.

Obama has been described as a “realist” who “feels bad about it.”

But Max Abrahms, a Northeastern University professor and terrorism analyst, is the kind of realist willing to assert without apology that U.S. policy should be guided solely by self interest and thus not preclude a working relationship with the Syrian dictator:

“I know of no one who says that Assad ever posed a direct threat to the U.S. homeland. I’ve seen no evidence to ever suggest that, going back to his father. It makes obvious sense in my mind, if the U.S. is going to side with the militants or with Assad, for us to side with Assad.

“The big objection to that is a normative one. People are appalled by the suggestion of the US working with a dictator who’s massacred so many of his people. And yet Assad poses a threat to his own population, not to ours.

“I think there may be an opportunity for the US to work with Assad against ISIS.”

So, given that currently the U.S. appears to have a free hand conducting military operations inside Syria — the Syrian government has raised few objections — are we to imagine that Obama and Assad have formed some kind of secret alliance?

Probably not, but if America’s actions so clearly serve Assad’s interests why would the Syrian leader need a more formal arrangement?

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Syrian activists and intellectuals talk about the war on ISIS

At Dissent, Danny Postel has gathered together brief responses to the U.S.-led war on ISIS from a number of Syrian activists and intellectuals. The first comes from Yassin al-Haj Saleh, one of the leading writers and intellectual figures of the Syrian uprising:

I am ambivalent about a Western attack against ISIS.

On the one hand, I would like to see this thuggish gang wiped from the face of the earth. ISIS is a criminal organization that has killed thousands of Syrians and Iraqis while leaving intact another criminal organization — the Assad regime — that is responsible for the deaths of close to 200,000 people. ISIS has destroyed the cause of the Syrian revolution as much as the Assad regime has destroyed our country and society.

On the other hand, an attack against ISIS will send a message to many Syrians (and Iraqis and other Arabs) that this intervention isn’t about seeking justice for heinous crimes, but is rather an attack against those who challenged Western powers. This will lead to more resentment against and suspicion of the outside world, which is the very nihilist mood on which ISIS capitalizes and profits.

Western powers could have avoided this had they helped the Syrian resistance in its battle against the fascist Assad regime. The right thing to do, ethically and politically, is to build a coalition against both ISIS and the Assad regime, and to help Syrians bring about significant changes in their country’s political environment.

Let me finally say that I am very skeptical of the plans and intentions of the American administration. ISIS is the terrible outcome of our monstrous regimes and the West’s role in the region for decades, as much as it is the result of grave illnesses within Islam. Three monsters are treading on Syria’s exhausted body. [Continue reading…]

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American shock and awe versus Syria’s dentists, farmers and students

Robin Yassin-Kassab writes: Whatever the hearts-and-minds rhetoric at the United Nations, in Syria the Obama administration is feeding the flames of Sunni extremism, and proving once again the truism that the American state is an enemy of the Syrian people (as it’s an enemy, like all states, of all peoples, including the American).

We expected strikes on ISIS. Some of the strongest strikes (and the strikes are far stronger than in Iraq), however, have been aimed at Jabhat al-Nusra (the Victory Front), the organisation from which ISIS split. Nusra is certainly an extremist Salafist group, and is openly linked to al-Qa’ida. Because its ideology terrifies not only minorities but also huge swathes of the Sunni population, it’s also a strategic obstruction in the way of the Syrian revolution. In August 2013 it participated (with ISIS) in the only documented large-scale massacre of Alawi civilians in the conflict. On the other hand, Nusra (unlike ISIS) was until yesterday actually fighting the regime, not other rebel groups. From January, along with every rebel formation, it’s been fighting ISIS too. And its leadership is entirely Syrian. Many Syrians, not necessarily extremist Salafists themselves, admire Nusra’s victories against their most immediate enemy – the Assadist forces dropping barrel bombs on cities and raping and torturing at checkpoints. A sensible answer to Nusra would be to provide weapons and funds to Free Army forces who would then be in a position to gradually draw men from the organisation, slowly making it irrelevant (most men don’t care about the ideology of their militia’s leadership; they care about food and ammunition). But the Americans are allergic to working with the people on the ground most immediately concerned by the outcome, and bomb from the air instead. Nusra is now abandoning front line positions (in some areas the regime may be able to take immediate advantage). One Nusra leader has already spoken of an alliance with ISIS against the Americans.

Syria’s new daily routine: the Americans and Gulf Arabs bomb the Salafist extremists while Assad bombs the Free Army and Islamic Front (and of course civilians – as usual it isn’t being reported, especially not now the televisual US war is on, but about a hundred are being killed every day). The headline in regime newspaper al-Watan reads “America and its Allies in One Trench with the Syrian Army against Terrorism”. The opposition reads it this way too. Several demonstrations yesterday condemned the American strikes, called for America’s fall, and for solidarity with ISIS and Nusra. A sign at one protest read: “Yes, It’s an International Coalition Against Sunnis.” [Continue reading…]

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Assad and ISIS are two sides of the same coin

Fred Hof writes: The Assad regime and Iran have every reason to applaud strikes on the Islamic State in Raqqa and to the east: it costs them nothing, and airstrikes in the far east of Syria presumably can damage the ability of the Islamic State to sustain operations in Iraq from rear areas in Syria. Yet Tehran and its client will not want to see the US-led coalition hone-in on Islamic State targets in western Syria, where the forces of the self-proclaimed caliph work in tandem with the regime to kill off the nationalist rebels.

It may well be that engaging potential Islamic State targets around Aleppo and elsewhere is problematical in terms of target identification, collateral damage, and the like. Still, left to their own devices, the Islamic State and the Assad regime will work together — either tacitly or explicitly — to remove the anti-Islamic State military ground component identified by President Obama. This would presumably be unacceptable to the United States.

Helping the nationalist opposition survive the combined ministrations of the Assad regime and the Islamic State is table ante for engaging in the ultimate contest: overcoming state failure in Syria so that phenomena like the Islamic State will have no place to grow and prosper. Even as the world averts its gaze from regime barrel bombs, starvation sieges, and mass incarceration and torture, strikes against Islamic State forces in western Syria will hurt the Assad regime and disappoint Iran. In the end, however, what can they say in terms of objection?

If overcoming state failure in Syria is the end game, moving against the Assad regime is unavoidable. Bashar al-Assad is the caliph’s recruiting sergeant. Iran knows this, but thinks it needs Assad in western Syria to keep Hezbollah fit to fight in Lebanon. Russia knows it too, but apparently, President Vladimir Putin has a larger point to make about the survival of Moscow’s clients, no matter how unattractive they are. The West has been feckless with respect to Assad, and regional powers have — in the absence of US leadership — pursued policies of narrow self-interest. All of that must change, and perhaps the requisite change has begun. [Continue reading…]

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As a matter of law, we do not need the UN’s permission to attack ISIS

As parliament is about to debate whether Britain should go to war with ISIS, human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson writes: Isis is a group of international criminals, committing war crimes and crimes against humanity with genocidal intent, and the right – arguably the duty – to protect their victims does not depend on Russian approval in the Security Council.

Isis has been killing innocent civilians because of their religion and issuing blood-curdling incitements to kill “all non-believers”. They have been executing without trial, recruiting children as soldiers, taking and killing hostages. They are, in the Latin phrase used in international law, hostis humanis generis, the enemies of humankind. As with the pirate, torturer and slave trader, no UN approval is necessary for law-abiding states to use force against such barbarity.

But our complicity in the invasion of Iraq has cast a long shadow; Ed Miliband, for example, has evinced a “preference” for a Security Council resolution. This is unnecessary and in fact undesirable – action in humanitarian emergencies should not be vulnerable to the veto of the Chinese, or of President Putin. A resolution was necessary for the invasion of Iraq – a sovereign state where there was no basis for humanitarian intervention. President Bush expressly excluded this justification for his (and our) war. As for last year’s proposal to bomb Syria, it was a one-off punishment reprisal of questionable legality and doubtful purpose and it was sensibly rejected by Parliament (and people). [Continue reading…]

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Syrians afraid ‘the West doesn’t want to finish this’

Mike Giglio reports: Ahmed Saoud was sitting in the restaurant of a four-star hotel in the Turkish city of Antakya, a short drive from the border with Syria, when he got an alarming call on his cell phone. An American voice was on the line. He said something that seemed to rile Saoud, a colonel who defected from the Syrian army and now commands a battalion of moderate rebels based in the country’s turbulent north.

Saoud’s group gets covert U.S. military support as part of a small CIA program to arm and train moderate rebels. Called the 13th Division, the battalion boasts a number of military defectors like Saoud, a common trait in the select club of rebel groups that America has decided it can trust in the murky war. One U.S. official involved in Syria policy, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 13th Division gets strong reviews in Washington: “They sit at the rare intersection of combat-effective and responsible.”

Such groups are rare in Syria — and all are weak compared to the Islamist battalions that now dominate the war. The U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army has been reduced to a shadow of the force that once aspired to be the revolution’s standard-bearer.

Yet these same groups are a key component of the U.S. campaign against extremist groups in the country that saw sweeping airstrikes this week — even as their role in U.S. intervention in Syria puts them in an increasingly precarious place. One consequence of the U.S. strikes may be that its allies face their toughest fight for survival to date. [Continue reading…]

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Despite reported airstrikes, ISIS edges toward Kobani

Syria Direct reports: The Islamic State appeared to be closing in on the Kurdish-majority city of Ain al-Arab in northern Aleppo Wednesday despite unconfirmed reports of airstrikes against IS positions in the area the night before.

Reports on the ground indicate that the Islamic State is anywhere from 10 to 15 kilometers from Ain al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish.

Meanwhile, conflicting accounts cast doubt on the reported airstrikes against IS positions in Ain al-Arab.

The primary source of the report, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Wednesday that an airstrike Tuesday night hit IS supply roads 35 kilometers west of Kobani.

The monitoring group could not confirm that the plane was part of the American- led coalition, but did add that the aircraft was not Syrian and came from the direction of Turkey.

Arabic and Kurdish news agencies also reported the airstrikes Tuesday night.

“According to local sources…airplanes with the international alliance hit IS positions west of Kobani,” Ara News, a pro-opposition Syrian news agency, was quoted as saying.

Kurdish reactions to the airstrikes against IS in Syria appear to be positive, even if confusion remains as to whether the strikes around Ain al-Arab actually took place.

“There was a state of joy and satisfaction [amongst the Kurds] following the strikes,” Baz Ali Bkari, a Kurdish journalist based in the Turkish side of the border, told Syria Direct Wednesday, “because it means saving the Kurdish people from a genocide at the hands of IS.”

“The Kurdish people are with the American strikes against IS,” according to Radwan Biza, another journalist based in the Kurdish city of Tal Abyad on the Syrian-Turkish border.

“US-led airstrikes targeted IS strongholds in Kobani at the Turkish border,” said Kurdish news agency Rudaw Wednesday.

Turkish officials, however, denied that Turkey was involved in the attack, saying that neither Turkish airspace nor airports were used in the operation. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey and the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition

Aaron Stein writes: Turkey’s policy vis-à-vis ISIS has always been relatively clear. Ankara has not supported the group and has thought of it as a terror organization for 1.5 years. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, for example, has criticized Sayyid Qutb’s ideology and believes that his understanding of Islam is incorrect. Davutoglu, who is the architect of Turkish foreign policy, argues that Qutb’s understanding of Islam is too heavily influenced by Western political theories. These theories, he argues, are incongruent with the concept of Dar al Islam, which is a better source of political legitimacy in the Arab/Muslim world. Thus, any suggestions that the AKP supports IS because of an overlap in religious points of view, or a shared ideology, is false. The same applies to Al Qaeda. There is no sympathy in the Turkish government for the ideology underpinning either group.

Turkey, however, did give some support to Jabhat al Nusra. Ankara did so for two reasons. First, after Turkey changed its Syria policy in August 2011, Ankara “bet the farm” on Assad falling in 6 months. After Assad was able to hold on to power, Turkey began to support a slew of rebel groups – including Nusra. Ankara felt that it was imperative to put pressure on the regime to force Assad from power. Nusra was/is an effective fighting force and worked with FSA rebel groups to battle the regime. Second, the Turkish government believes that the Assad is the root cause of extremism in Syria. Thus, if he is forced form power, the appeal of the Jihadists would decrease. In turn, Nusra would be devoid of any widespread popular support and eventually be marginalized in the “New Syria.” Turkey wanted this new Syria to be run by the Brotherhood.

These assumptions guided Ankara’s decision-making up until mid-July 2012. At this stage of the conflict, Assad pulled his forces away from the Kurdish controlled areas. This left the three Kurdish cantons, known collectively as Rojava, to the PYD – a group with links to the PKK. Turkey reacted negatively. First, Ankara threatened to intervene and “establish a buffer zone.” After backing down from this threat, Ankara tried to put the PYD under the thumb of the KDP. This also failed. This eventually prompted Ankara to reach out to members of the PYD – most notably, Salih Muslim. The two sides appeared to have reached some sort of agreement to live in quasi-harmony. Turkey, however, was not comfortable with the status quo. Ankara has kept the border gates with Rojava closed since mid-July 2012 and has only recently begun to intermittently open two border gates along the border to accommodate thousands of Kurdish refugees fleeing from Kobane. [Continue reading…]

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French hostage in Algeria is beheaded in new video

The New York Times reports: A French tourist captured in North Africa by a group aligned with the Islamic State is seen beheaded in a video circulated on Wednesday, according to SITE Intelligence, which tracks jihadist groups.

The Frenchman — Hervé Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from Nice — was abducted in Algeria on Sunday by the terrorist group, known as Jund al-Khilafah. Mr. Gourdel had arrived only a day before on a trip to go hiking in Algeria’s northern mountains.

The terrorist group issued a statement after his abduction, saying that it was following the guidance of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq and has called on its sympathizers to strike Westerners — especially the French — wherever they can. [Continue reading…]

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Jabhat Al-Nusra: ‘Why attack us? We didn’t do anything against the U.S. We just want to fight Assad’

Mike Giglio reports: At least eight U.S. airstrikes targeted the infamous Syrian rebel group called Jabhat al-Nusra in the last 24 hours. But a week ago, serving tea at his apartment in southern Turkey, an official with the extremist group complained that it gets a bad rap in the U.S. — and that the Obama administration should even see it as an ally.

Nusra is one of the most powerful insurgent forces in Syria’s civil war, with a long record of fighting the regime. It’s also a branch of al-Qaeda. This has seen it blacklisted as a terrorist group by the U.S. and U.N., something that has always angered some of its members, such as the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They say their lone goal is to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — a man whose ouster the Obama administration has called for too. “Why this treatment?” the official asked.

With global attention — and U.S. airstrikes — focused on another extremist group in the region, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, some Nusra members were pushing to mark a clear distinction between the two organizations. Nusra even released a U.S. man it was holding captive — journalist Peter Theo Curtis — as well as 45 U.N. peacekeepers. “They’re just criminals,” the official said of ISIS, making a point of condemning the group for beheading U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. “They’re against the U.S. generally.”

He suggested that Nusra and the U.S., which backs moderate rebel groups inside Syria, were on the same side: “We are fighting with the rebels. We are fighting with their alliance against the other alliance. So why attack us?”

He added: “We didn’t do anything against the U.S. We just want to fight Assad.” [Continue reading…]

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Doubts cast over U.S. strike on ‘Khorasan’ group

AFP reports: The US says it has hit a little-known group called “Khorasan” in Syria, but experts and activists argue it actually struck Al-Qaeda’s affiliate Al-Nusra Front, which fights alongside Syrian rebels.

In announcing its raids in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday, Washington described the group it targeted as Khorasan, a cell of Al-Qaeda veterans planning attacks against the West.

But experts and activists cast doubt on the distinction between Khorasan and Al-Nusra Front, which is Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch.

“In Syria, no one had ever heard talk of Khorasan until the US media brought it up,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Rebels, activists and the whole world knows that these positions (hit Tuesday) were Al-Nusra positions, and the fighters killed were Al-Nusra fighters,” added Abdel Rahman, who has tracked the Syrian conflict since it erupted in 2011.

Experts were similarly dubious about the distinction.

“The name refers to Al-Qaeda fighters previously based in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran who have travelled to Syria to fight with… Al-Nusra,” said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre.

“They… should not be considered a new or distinct group as such.” [Continue reading…]

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Syrian Kurds call for more targeted strikes

The Wall Street Journal reports: The chaos in a town near Turkey’s Syrian border intensified after U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State targets Tuesday, prompting Kurdish leaders to call on Washington to give them a role in coordinating the fight against the jihadists.

Kurdish leaders said that after U.S. warplanes hit Raqqa, the de facto capital of Islamic State, the insurgents redeployed men and heavy weaponry closer to Kurdish areas. The officials said the jihadist onslaught around the Syrian city of Ayn al-Arab, known in Kurdish as Kobani, continued through Tuesday, as shells fell on the city and surrounding villages were seized.

Turkey’s government said on Tuesday that the number of refugees fleeing the jihadist advance rose to 150,000, while the United Nations relief agency warned the number could reach 400,000.

Panic over Islamic State’s advance led to fresh clashes at the border between Turkish security forces and angry Kurdish protesters who cursed the absence of Turkey—a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member with a major U.S. air base—from the Washington-led coalition. Speaking to reporters in New York, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey could give military or logistical support to the U.S.-led coalition, but stopped short of offering any firm commitments.

The Syrian Kurdish militia, which fights under the banner of the People’s Defense Units, or YPG, on Tuesday asked to join President Barack Obama’s coalition.

“We welcome the airstrikes but they didn’t help Kobani. The U.S. should coordinate with us,” said Redur Xelil, a YPG spokesman. “We fear that the airstrikes may even push their fighters to concentrate on Kobani, endangering the city even more.” [Continue reading…]

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