Category Archives: Syria

Russia is expected to soon start bombing Syria

The Daily Beast reports: Russian combat operations on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are likely to begin “soon,” three U.S. officials told The Daily Beast. And Russian drone flights to spot targets for potential airstrikes are already underway.

That concession by U.S. officials of growing Russian influence marks a shift from previous statements by officials who said they weren’t sure whether Russia intended to use force in Syria and enter into the country’s long and brutal civil war. There already are early signs that Russia plans to target moderate forces that threaten the Assad regime, not the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which has been the focus of a year-long U.S.-led air campaign.

And yet, the recent Russian moves, which threaten to undermine U.S.-led efforts over the last year, were met with hardly a shrug in some circles in Washington.

“There are not discussions happening here about what this means for U.S. influence on the war against ISIS,” one defense official told The Daily Beast. [Continue reading…]

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Russia expands its military presence in Syria, satellite photos show

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russian forces appear to be expanding their military presence in Syria through the development of two additional bases, according to new satellite imagery viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The expansion near Syria’s Mediterranean coast is the latest sign Russia is preparing to inject its military forces into the country’s chaotic civil war, creating new challenges for the U.S.-led coalition trying to force President Bashar al-Assad from power and defeat Islamic State militants.

Until recently, the Russian buildup in Syria was largely focused on an air base south of the port city of Latakia. Moscow has shipped more than two dozen combat aircraft to the airfield, where Russian surveillance drones have started flying, according to U.S. defense officials. Russia has also sent tanks, air-defense systems, armored-personnel carriers and enough housing for 2,000 people, officials have said.

Now, satellite images from IHS Jane’s, a defense-intelligence provider, show an additional, previously undisclosed, Russian military expansion.

The images from mid-September show development of a weapons depot and military facility north of Latakia, suggesting that Russia is preparing to place troops in both places, according to Robert Munks, editor of IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Russia has sharply increased the number of combat aircraft at an air base near Latakia, Syria, giving its forces a new ability to strike targets on the ground in the war-stricken country.

Over the weekend, Russia deployed a dozen Su-24 Fencer and a dozen Su-25 Frogfoot ground-attack planes, bringing to 28 the number of warplanes at the base, a senior United States official said on Monday. Until the weekend, the only combat planes there had been four Flanker air-to-air fighters.

The deployment of some of Russia’s most advanced ground attack planes and fighter jets as well as multiple air defense systems at the base near the ancestral home of President Bashar al-Assad appears to leave little doubt about Moscow’s goal to establish a military outpost in the Middle East. The planes are protected by at least two or possibly three SA-22 surface-to-air, antiaircraft systems, and unarmed Predator-like surveillance drones are being used to fly reconnaissance missions.

“With competent pilots and with an effective command and control process, the addition of these aircraft could prove very effective depending on the desired objectives for their use,” said David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force general who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

In addition, a total of 15 Russian Hip transport and Hind attack helicopters are also now stationed at the base, doubling the number of those aircraft from last week, the American official said. For use in possible ground attacks, the Russians now also have nine T-90 tanks and more than 500 marines, up from more than 200 last week. [Continue reading…]

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Putin claims Russian intervention in Syria has limited the flood of refugees

The New York Times reports: President Vladimir V. Putin on Tuesday forcefully defended Russia’s military assistance to Syria, describing it as aid for a government fighting “terrorist aggression” and saying the migrant crisis in Europe would be far worse without it.

The United States has expressed concern about a recent Russian airlift to Syria that is believed to have included military hardware and soldiers.

“If Russia had not supported Syria, the situation in this country would have been worse than in Libya,” Mr. Putin said, and the flood of refugees would have been even higher.” [Continue reading…]

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With fight against the ISIS in Iraq stalled, U.S. looks to Syria for gains

The Washington Post reports: With the offensive to reclaim territory from the Islamic State largely stalled in Iraq, the Obama administration is laying plans for a more aggressive military campaign in Syria, where U.S.-backed Kurdish forces have made surprising gains in recent months.

The effort, which would begin by increasing pressure on the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, marks an important shift in an administration strategy that for most of the past year has prioritized defeating the militant group in Iraq and viewed Syria as a place where there were few real prospects for battlefield success.

The White House’s top national security officials met last week and will convene again in the next few days to discuss ways to capi­tal­ize on recent and unexpected gains made by Syrian irregular forces. The administration is considering providing arms and ammunition to a wider array of rebel groups in Syria and relaxing vetting standards, effectively deepening America’s involvement in the ongoing civil war.

Such a move could lift some of the restrictions that have slowed the Pentagon’s troubled program to train Syrian fighters in Turkey and other sites outside Syria.

Rather than subjecting rebels to repeated rounds of screening before and during their training, U.S. officials might restrict vetting to unit leaders already in the fight. “The key thing is getting them some [expletive] bullets,” one U.S. official said. [Continue reading…]

Although this report leads by saying “the Obama administration is laying plans,” it sounds more like the military is laying down plans and lobbying by all means — including through the press — to win White House approval. Buried deep in the report is this caveat:

Officials stressed that no decisions have been made and that the White House may continue the current approach in Syria, which includes a mix of airstrikes, direct backing for U.S.-trained rebels and indirect support for other forces.

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Why Saudi Arabia is having such trouble with its Syria policy

By Simon Mabon, Lancaster University

The violent civil war in Syria and rise of Islamic State (IS) has forced millions to flee their homes, cascading across Europe in search of safety. And yet, despite the crisis unfolding on its doorstep, the response from the Saudi Arabian government has been far from welcoming.

Why is it that Saudi Arabia, the home of the world’s largest oil supplies – a state with vast swaths of empty territory, has done so little to help?

The Saudi relationship with the Syrian crisis is complex – a tangle of domestic and regional priorities. Abroad, Riyadh wants to see the Assad regime toppled and Iran’s influence in the Levant weakened, but at home Saudi policy has been much more reactionary and conservative, working hard to quash dissent and maintain stability.

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Refugee crisis: How border closures in Europe are boosting the profits of organized crime

Misha Glenny writes: In the midst of the refugee crisis, the European Union has for the first time ever been considering deploying naval assets against organized crime. People smuggling, chiefly from Syria and the Horn of Africa, is now a multibillion-dollar business that is as profitable, if not more so, than the trade in illegal narcotics.

This is not the trafficking of migrant labor or women for sexual purposes. These criminal gangs are effectively offering travel-agent services to desperate people fleeing conflict. Their services can include false documentation, bribes to border guards and transport, in dangerous, often deadly, circumstances.

Sadly, the measures countries are taking to counteract the flood of refugees serve only to make organized crime stronger. As long as European countries fail to implement a plan to take in refugees across member states, the business of people smuggling will continue to grow.

It has been almost a decade since I first argued that organized crime should be seen as a priority for resources above the more emotive issue of combating terrorism. The crisis in Europe demonstrates just how devastating the impact of organized crime can be, through both the exploitation of defenseless refugees and the undermining of legitimate governments at a time when countries on Europe’s periphery are facing daunting economic challenges. [Continue reading…]

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Is Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow an Israeli jab at Washington?

Haaretz reports: The immediate reason for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow on Monday is increased Russian military involvement in Syria.

On Sunday, the first satellite photos were released from the air base that Russia is building on the Alawite strip of coast in northern Syria near Latakia. Netanyahu, who in an unusual step is taking Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi, with him and, at the last minute, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, will devote much of his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to preventing direct friction between Israel and Russia in the north.

The aircraft photographed in northern Syria are Sukhoi 27s. Their main mission, according to experts on the Russian Air Force, is to ensure aerial superiority, not bombardment. That underscores the assessment that Russia has not sent its forces to the region just to fight Islamic State, which is what Russia stresses in justifying its new military deployment, but that Moscow wants to establish a more significant presence. Anti-aircraft batteries will apparently also be deployed to protect the base, as well as a small number of ground forces, tanks, APCs, and a special low-profile unit, in what is reminiscent of Russia’s conduct in the war in Ukraine.

But beyond reducing the risk of an unwanted clash between Israeli and Russian fighter jets over Syria or Lebanon, it seems that the visit should be seen in a wider context of tensions between Moscow and Washington.

And although Netanyahu only last week said “commentators” were wrong when they warned of a collapse of ties between Israel and the United States in light of the Iran nuclear deal, Netanyahu’s current visit to Moscow could be seen as an Israeli jab at Washington. The visit seems to reflect Netanyahu’s lack of faith in the ability or the intent of the United States to protect Israel’s security interests.

The visit cannot be considered good news in Washington, which led a campaign of condemnation and sanctions against Moscow over its involvement in the war in Ukraine last summer. (Israel did not take a position on that conflict and was duly rewarded by Russia which issued a moderate response to Israel’s actions in the war on Gaza shortly thereafter.) [Continue reading…]

Haaretz reports: Russia’s stationing in Syria of the Su-27, which as an air-superiority fighter is designed to seize control of enemy airspace in order to establish air supremacy, rather than ground-attack aircraft reinforces fears in the West and in Israel that Russia’s real goal is not to fight ISIS but rather to protect the Syrian regime, in concert with Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

Some sources have said the planes were the Sukhoi Su-30 model, which are better suited to long-range missions and air-to-ground attacks than the Su-27. Even if that’s the case, they are not the best choice if the goal is to attack mobile targets such as those of the Islamic State organization in Syria.

The Su-27 will presumably not operate against Islamic State, which has no air force of its own, and would instead be used to create a defensive aerial umbrella over western Syria that would prevent, or at least significantly obstruct, the operation of other air forces in the area.

If the United States or another country should in the future want to strike Syrian regime forces from the air, that would lead to a direct conflict with Russia. It would also limit the freedom of action of U.S. and other air forces in attacking ISIS targets in Syria. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: The Syrian military has recently started using new types of air and ground weapons supplied by Russia, a Syrian military source told Reuters on Thursday, underlining growing Russian support for Damascus that is alarming the United States.

“The weapons are highly effective and very accurate, and hit targets precisely,” the source said in response to a question about Russian support. “We can say they are all types of weapons, be it air or ground.” [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s escalating military intervention in Syria

As more Russian aircraft, tanks, artillery and troops arrive near the Syrian port city of Latakia, McClatchy reports: The buildup is Moscow’s first major military operation outside of the former Soviet Union since the 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan. As such, it represents a dangerous gamble for Putin because his intervention to bolster embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad offers a powerful incentive to Syrian rebel groups to collaborate in attacking the growing Russian military presence.

“A challenge for Russia is (that) maintaining a presence on the ground may require a robust force that could come in direct combat with various forces in the region,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Stephen Blank, a former Russian expert with the Army War College who is now with the American Foreign Policy Council, a policy institute, said that the longer the Russian force is on the ground, the greater the chance that Syria “could become a quagmire” for Putin.

“The Russians think they can keep their intervention limited, but I doubt it the longer it goes on,” said Blank.

His warning was reinforced by a vow by the new head of Ahrar al Sham, the largest of the Sunni Muslim groups fighting to topple Assad, to target the Russian troops.

“We owe it to you to restore freedom to Syria after the invasion of the rejectionists from all corners of the Earth,” said Abu Yahya al Hamwi in a speech recorded on a video delivered to supporters somewhere in Turkey and posted on the Internet. “Today they are bolstered by their allies, the Russians, and the fate of this invasion shall be defeated.”

“Rejectionists” is a derogatory term that Sunni extremists use for Shiite Muslims. In citing it, Hamwi was referring to military advisers from Shiite-dominated Iran and Shiites from Afghanistan and Pakistan fighting on behalf of Assad, who is an Alawite, a Shiite offshoot that dominates the Syrian regime.

Ahrar al Sham, estimated to have 35,000 fighters, is the largest component of the Islamic Front, a coalition of rebel groups that recently cooperated with al Qaida’s Syrian arm, the Nusra Front, in conquering northern Idlib province, raising the possibility that they could launch joint operations against the Russians.

Russia has long supported Assad with military advisers and weaponry. But the Russian buildup at an airfield near Assad’s stronghold of Latakia is a huge escalation in the effort to prop up the Syrian leader, who’s suffered a string of losses and manpower shortages in fighting that has killed an estimated 250,000 people and uprooted half the population of 23 million. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Syria, and the migrant crisis it has spawned, has been a major focus of Mr. Kerry’s trip to Europe. After a meeting Saturday morning with Philip Hammond, the British foreign secretary, Mr. Kerry said that it was vital to pursue a diplomatic solution to the crisis but that Moscow was not putting enough pressure on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to make him negotiate seriously.

“We need to get to the negotiation,” Mr. Kerry said at a joint news conference with Mr. Hammond. “That’s what we’re looking for, and we hope Russia and Iran, other countries with influence, will help to bring that about, because that’s what’s preventing this crisis from ending.”

“Right now, Assad has refused to have a serious discussion,” Mr. Kerry added, “and Russia has refused to help bring him to the table in order to do that.”

Mr. Hammond and Mr. Kerry each emphasized that Mr. Assad could not remain in power if there was to be a durable solution to the conflict, but they said that the timing of his departure during a political transition in Syria would be a matter of negotiation.

“It doesn’t have to be on Day 1 or Month 1,” Mr. Kerry said. “There is a process by which all the parties have to come together and reach an understanding of how this can best be achieved.”

“I just know that the people of Syria have already spoken with their feet,” Mr. Kerry added. “They’re leaving Syria.” [Continue reading…]

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Did the West ignore a Russian offer for Assad to step down as president?

A recent report on a 2012 overture from Russia, “has been latched on to by various commentators to suggest that the West’s failure to respond to this initiative is responsible for the subsequent humanitarian crisis that unfolded in Syria,” writes Brian Slocock: Even the Guardian’s usually reliable Julian Borger (co-author of the article) seems to gives credence this notion, reciting the terrible events that followed February 2012. Borger at least (somewhat contradictorily) notes that “Officially, Russia has staunchly backed Assad through the four-and-half-year Syrian war, insisting that his removal cannot be part of any peace settlement.” And notes that Kofi Anan’s 2012 peace plan of “soon fell apart over differences on whether Assad should step down.” (i.e. over Russia’s refusal to consider Asad’s removal.)

Other commentators, ranging from the right-wing Daily Mail to American left-wing “policy analyst” Phyllis Bennis, have been more explicit in connecting these events , arguing that the current wave of refugees fleeing Asad’s barrel bombs could have been avoided if the west had listened to Vitaly Churkin in February 2012.

Here is Bennis’s sweeping claim (rather undermined by the welter of conditionals she feels obliged to introduce into her argument):

But what we now see very visibly with these new revelations from Martti Ahtisaari is how in the case of the rise of ISIS … and the war in Syria which is at the root of the rise of ISIS, the refusal of the United States and its allies to take seriously the possibility of negotiating an end to that conflict before it ever reached this horrific level, to negotiate the stepping down, maybe the stepping down, potentially the stepping down, possibly, of Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, would have dramatically changed the situation there.

So let’s try and evaluate this story by looking at exactly what was happening on the diplomatic front with respect to Syria at this point in time. [Continue reading…]

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Human migration will be a defining issue of this century. How best to cope?

Alexander Betts writes: Throughout the crisis, a debate has been on whether it is a “migrant” or a “refugee” crisis. It has been important for the public to understand that most people coming to Europe have been from refugee-producing countries and that “refugees” have a particular set of rights under international law. Furthermore, people have a right to seek asylum, and have their claims to refugee status adjudicated.

However, the stark dichotomy between “refugee” and “economic migrant” masks a growing trend: that many people coming fall between those two extremes.

The modern global refugee regime was established at a particular juncture of history, in the aftermath of the Holocaust and at the start of the cold war. The 1951 convention on the status of refugees defines a refugee as someone fleeing “persecution”, based on race, religion, nationality, membership of a social group, or political opinion. The interpretation of that definition has adapted over time. But at its core was the idea of protecting people whose own governments were either out to get them or unable to prevent persecution by others. Today, the sources of cross-border displacement are increasingly complex, and many fit poorly with the 1951 convention.

Environmental change, food insecurity, and generalised violence, for example, represent emerging sources of human displacement. In strong states, the government can usually provide some kind of remedy or resolution to people affected by these types of crisis. However, much less so in fragile states. People who fall outside the internationally recognised definition of a refugee but are nevertheless fleeing very serious socio-economic rights deprivations might be called “survival migrants”.

In the contemporary world, a significant proportion of the people we attempt to describe as economic migrants fall into this category.

Survival migration has been an emerging challenge. Nearly a decade ago, Zimbabwean asylum seekers fleeing Robert Mugabe’s regime made up the largest group of asylum seekers in the world. Most British people would probably assume that at the height of the crisis between 2003 and 2009 the majority would have been refugees. However, in South Africa, to where the overwhelming proportion fled, only about 10% were recognised as refugees and up to 300,000 people a year were deported back to Zimbabwe. The reason for this was simple: they were not judged to fit the 1951 convention definition of a refugee. However, on ethical grounds, it was incontrovertibly cruel to deport people back to a country in a state of socio-economic and political collapse.

This example illustrates how current policy responses bypass engagement with long-term trends. The world as a whole lacks a vision for how to respond to the changing nature of displacement. So much of the current “crisis” is not a crisis of numbers but a crisis of politics. We need bold leadership that correctly and honestly articulates the causes of movement and outlines global solutions. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s Nakba

Mike Giglio and Munzer al-Awad report: The 53-year-old father of two was convinced that Bashar al-Assad wanted him to flee Syria.

More than two years after he buried the bodies from a massacre in his village near Damascus by forces loyal to the Syrian president, he sat in an Istanbul park alongside dozens of other refugees, waiting with their life jackets to make the journey to Europe by sea.

“They want to empty the country,” he said, sitting with his wife and two children as he described how government soldiers had bombed the village of Jdeidet al-Fadel and then executed residents in their homes, suspecting them of rebel sympathies. Some, he said, were “beheaded like chickens.” After helping with the burials, he snuck his family into Turkey.

The refugee crisis isn’t just a by-product of the brutal civil war in Syria, according to many of those fleeing, as well as Western officials and analysts tracking the conflict. It’s part of a concerted effort by the Syrian government, which has killed the vast majority of civilians in a war that has left more than 200,000 people dead.

Assad has lost control over more than three-quarters of the country, and targeting civilians in those areas has been part of his strategy from the start of the four-year-old civil war. His forces work to make opposition-held areas unlivable for rebels and civilians alike — a tactic guaranteed to create masses of refugees. [Continue reading…]

The photographer, Bradley Secker, has documented Syria’s ongoing Nakba with images that should bring to mind the catastrophe leading to the creation of Israel over 60 years ago.

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UN funding shortfalls and cuts in refugee aid fuel exodus to Europe

The New York Times reports: One of the prime reasons for the wave of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers washing into Europe is the deterioration of the conditions that Syrians face in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, a worsening largely caused by sharp falls in international funding from United Nations countries, officials and analysts say.

That shortfall in funding, in contrast with the greater resources provided by Europe, is prompting some to make the hazardous journey who might otherwise remain where they are. The United Nations Syria Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan, which groups a number of humanitarian agencies and covers development aid for the countries bordering Syria, had by the end of August received just 37 percent of the $4.5 billion appeal for needed funds this year.

António Guterres, the high commissioner for refugees, recently said that his agency’s budget this year would be 10 percent smaller than in 2014, and that it could not keep up with the drastic increase in need from the long Syrian conflict, which includes shelter, water, sanitation, food, medical assistance and education. The United Nations refugee agency’s funding for Syria this year is only at 43 percent of budgeted requirements. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Najim Rahim says that when he looks around his neighborhood in the northern city of Kunduz now, “I feel lonely.”

His friend Ahmad Ulomi, who worked in the photo shop down the street, gave up his photography studies and left with five family members, striking out across the Iranian desert on the way to Europe. The shop’s owner, Khalid Ghaznawi, who was Mr. Ulomi’s teacher, decided to follow him with his family of eight, and he put his business up for sale. Mr. Rahim’s friend Atiqullah, who ran the local grocery shop, closed it and also left for Iran with his wife. Another neighbor, Feroz Ahmad, dropped out of college and last week called from Turkey to say he was on his way to Europe.

All of that happened in the past two weeks as people in Kunduz are rushing to seize what many see as a last chance to make it to Europe, just as others are doing throughout Afghanistan. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Thousands of migrants poured into Austria on Saturday after being bounced around countries overwhelmed by their arrival and insistent that they keep moving.

Hungary — which had taken the most draconian and visible measures to turn back the exodus, notably the construction of a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia — partly caved Friday evening. It grudgingly allowed at least 11,000 migrants to enter from Croatia, and then sent them by bus and train to processing centers along its border with Austria.

The Austrian authorities said that about 10,000 people entered the country on Saturday, from Slovenia and Hungary. [Continue reading…]

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Baathist truthers

Louis Proyect writes: In the course of responding to the amen corner for the past couple of weeks over the Syrian refugee crisis, it dawned on me that it is not only an ethical lapse that we are dealing with but a theoretical one as well. Largely as a function of its narrow focus on US foreign policy and the sort of revelations we associate with Seymour Hersh type investigative reporting, Wikileaks, etc., there is zero interest in how Marxism can relate to events taking place within Syria. The country becomes a kind of black box where reductionism is taken to such an extreme degree that everything is bracketed out except what the CIA or other Western imperialist agencies are up to. Tunnel vision is perfectly suited to Baathist state terrorism.

When the protests erupted in Syria in 2011, I tried to get as much information as possible about the social and economic conditions that spurred people into action. Although I disagreed with Jadaliyya’s Bassam Haddad on some questions, I found his analysis of the agrarian crisis most useful, especially “The Syrian Regime’s Business Backbone” that appeared in the Spring 2012 Middle East Report. It was a reminder that the Baathist state was socialist in name only:

By the late 1990s, the business community that the Asads had created in their own image had transformed Syria from a semi-socialist state into a crony capitalist state par excellence. The economic liberalization that started in 1991 had redounded heavily to the benefit of tycoons who had ties to the state or those who partnered with state officials. The private sector outgrew the public sector, but the most affluent members of the private sector were state officials, politicians and their relatives. The economic growth registered in the mid-1990s was mostly a short-lived bump in consumption, as evidenced by the slump at the end of the century. Growth rates that had been 5-7 percent fell to 1-2 percent from 1997 to 2000 and beyond.

But within the first month of the protests, others were searching for a CIA connection since Syria was perceived as an ally of Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and Iran — four countries that to varying degrees represented an “anti-imperialist” pole of attraction. When I kept urging one old friend to look at websites that took the side of the anti-Assad revolt, he told me that he did not have time for that. Meanwhile, he was obviously keeping track of what Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk and Tariq Ali were writing with no problem. In essence, what you had was a total refusal to examine all sides of a political question because “our obligations were to oppose imperialism”. Basically it was the same kind of intellectual laziness and lack of backbone that allowed most of the left to defend the Moscow Trials in the late 1930s.

As the years and bloodletting wore on, a “truther” mentality set in that was not that different from the “911” type. “False flags” were constantly being referred to as if the USA was planning to invade Syria and impose a sectarian Sunni state in the same way that George W. Bush imposed a sectarian Shiite state in Iraq. Blaming Assad for the Sarin gas attack in East Ghouta was like the WMD propaganda campaign in 2002. Or like 911 since Dubya supposedly needed that as a casus belli.

Even today, you have warnings about “regime change” in places like WSWS.org no matter what Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly I. Churkin stated: “This is something we share now with the U.S. Government: They don’t want the Assad Government to fail. They want to fight ISIL in a way that won’t harm the Syrian government.”

Instead of examining class relations, the left became amateur sleuths anxious to prove once and for all that the USA has been using Syrian rebels as puppets to bring down the Assad dictatorship. [Continue reading…]

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Open and shut: How Germany plays politics with its borders

By Holger Nehring, University of Stirling

Was it just a dream? Only last week, Germany made it clear that all refugees were welcome, and chancellor Angela Merkel became the Mother Teresa of European politics.

The country was able to bask in the glory of being an example of the good European – only months after Merkel had been chided for her politics of austerity towards Greece and after she had, to much criticism worldwide, told a young Palestinian girl that “we cannot take everyone in”.

But barely a week after the hearty welcome, the country closed its borders with Austria, the route by which the majority of refugees were arriving. Police forces and helpers in Bavaria were simply unable to cope with the massive influx of people – more than 20,000 refugees had arrived in Munich alone over the course of the weekend, more than UK prime minister David Cameron said his country was prepared to take in over the next five years.

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In Syria, many families face a terrible dilemma

Hassan Hassan writes: Aside from the military situation, special consideration must be given to how the targeting of ISIL’s financial routes is affecting local attitudes towards the group. In recent months I have noticed a trend of some families sending at least one of their children to join ISIL because that was the only way for them to generate an income in the family. This is especially the case among displaced families, although not limited to them.

A family of eight, for example, left the city of Deir Ezzor due to shelling and bombardment and lived in an ISIL-controlled town in the countryside. The family’s breadwinner could not find a job to sustain his family of four daughters and two sons, including one disabled son. Eventually the father sent one of his sons to join ISIL which paid a monthly salary of $400 (Dh1,469). The son was since displaced to fight for the group in Hasakah.

Another case is of a family from Hatla, near Deir Ezzor, who were displaced to a town called Subaykhan. The family’s breadwinner, their 21-year-old son, joined ISIL to support a family of five. The man, who has only visited his family once since he joined the group five months ago, was sent to fight in the Iraqi town of Haditha.

Such situations are widespread and are a direct result of the air campaign. Many of those families would not have allowed their children to join ISIL. Suspicion towards the group was common before the campaign and many families had successfully persuaded their children to leave the extremists behind. In such cases, ISIL would allow the member to choose whether he wanted to return to his family instead of fighting for it.

Officials involved in the international coalition recognise the negative financial effect of the campaign and the lack of an alternative to the poor people living under ISIL. Many even hope that the worsening situation would lead people to rise up against the group or cooperate with foreign countries fighting it. But that is an absurd thought disproved by overwhelming examples of people getting closer to the organisation – out of need more than anything else – because of the air strikes. [Continue reading…]

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Europe and U.S. pay cost of inaction against Syria’s Assad

Yaroslav Trofimov reports: The Syrian refugee crisis overwhelming Europe has shattered the illusion, often used to justify inaction, that in the modern world there is such a thing as a distant war in a faraway land.

Over the past four years, 250,000 Syrians have died, most of them killed by the Assad regime against which the West has refused to intervene. More than half of the population has been forced to flee their homes, with four million refugees pouring first into neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan — and now many of them to Europe.

As Europe’s frontiers have collapsed, millions more are likely to follow suit, overland or by sea. This has already turned Syria from a thorny foreign-policy issue into a full-blown domestic emergency that threatens the cohesion and social peace of the European Union and lays bare the costs of the West’s policy of nonintervention against the regime.

“The Syria conflict is a lot closer to Europe than the U.S. — and the interest in solving it should have been regarded as a vital one at least here in Europe,” said Guido Steinberg, an expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and the German federal government’s former adviser on international terrorism.

“But the Europeans really have no clue how to deal with a major regional crisis in the Middle East. We needed the U.S. — but the U.S. wasn’t there.” [Continue reading…]

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Thousands of Russians fighting for ISIS, says security service

Newsweek reports: Russia’s federal security services (FSB) estimate that around 2,500 Russian nationals have joined the ranks of Islamist terror organisation ISIS, state TV channel Perviy Kanal reported on Friday.

Speaking to reporters at a summit attended by Russian anti-terrorism officials and officials from other member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, FSB Deputy Chief Sergey Smirnov said some of Russia’s neighbours also face urgent problems in terms of jihadist recruitment.

He said that according to FSB data, 3,000 would-be jihadis from across the central Asian region had joined ISIS. Smirnov did not clarify what role these recruits play, and it did not specify if they were actively involved in fighting alongside ISIS. [Continue reading…]

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