Category Archives: News

Was Orlando shooter really acting for ISIS? For ISIS, it’s all the same

The New York Times reports: The revelation that the 29-year-old man who opened fire on Sunday in a gay nightclub had dedicated the killing to the Islamic State has prompted a now-familiar question: Was the killer truly acting under orders from the Islamic State, or just seeking publicity and the group’s approval for a personal act of hate?

For the terror planners of the Islamic State, the difference is mostly irrelevant.

Influencing distant attackers to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State and then carry out mass murder has become a core part of the group’s propaganda over the past two years. It is a purposeful blurring of the line between operations that are planned and carried out by the terror group’s core fighters and those carried out by its sympathizers.

The attacker, Omar Mateen, told a 911 operator that he was pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. In the group’s nomenclature, that pledge is a central part of the ISIS protocol. The Orlando killing was the third time the loyalty pledge was known to be invoked in the United States. [Continue reading…]

In a tweet, ISIS expert, Charlie Winter, points out that ISIS supporters are denying the homophobic nature of the Orlando massacre. They want the shootings to be viewed purely as an act of terrorism targeting the U.S..

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ISIS’s long game is revealed by Syria’s south

Hassan Hassan writes: For the past three years, ISIL has tried to establish a footing in southern Syria. It tried in the mountainous Qalamoun region near the Lebanese border, but it was expelled after intermittent clashes with Al Qaeda and Hizbollah. Its attempts to co-opt forces near Damascus did not get far either, particularly as rebels preemptively clamped down on the group’s fledgling cells there.

Following its failure to grow organically, it opted last year for a pincer strategy to link up its pockets of control between Palmyra and Homs to ones in Damascus’s north east, such as Dumayr. That effort also failed since its territory in the Homs desert was largely cleared by the pro-government forces in April. The group was also expelled from the Palestinian Yarmouk camp after a brief takeover in April last year.

But there is now bad news. In Deraa, ISIL may see not only an opening but that the opening could be the first of its kind in the whole of Syria since the group was formed in April 2013.

Last month, three local groups in Deraa formed Jaysh Khaled bin Al Walid. ISIL announced the merger on Friday. The groups — namely the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade (YMB), Islamic Muthanna Movement (IMM) and Mujahideen Group – operate mainly in western Deraa. Last Thursday, the US state department designated the YMB as a terrorist group.

For ISIL, the south in general is strategically and symbolically important. Deraa borders Israel and Jordan and has historical resonance. The new formation is named after the historical Muslim figure, Khaled bin Al Walid, who commanded a key battle in the Yarmouk Basin against the Byzantine empire in the 7th century.

Nowhere in Syria has ISIL succeeded in growing organically as it has done in Deraa. This is a remarkable development especially since the Southern Front has been hailed as a good example of international support to the opposition. [Continue reading…]

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Iran steps up recruitment of Shiite mercenaries for Syrian war

Christian Science Monitor reports: With gelled hair spiked high and wearing a Dolce & Gabbana shirt, the young Afghan man looks more like a fashionista than a religious warrior ready to give his life for jihad in Syria.

The man wanted to leave Afghanistan for personal reasons, but the Afghans and Iranians who facilitated his trip to Iran, and hosted him in Tehran, saw a recruiting opportunity. For two and a half months, an Iranian recruiter visited nearly every day to convince him to fight on the Syrian frontline with an all-Afghan unit in exchange for promises of a better life.

As he felt the pressure grow, he finally acquiesced.

“We will send you to Syria; when you come back we will give you an Iranian passport, a house, and money,” the 21-year-old Afghan was promised when he got to Tehran. He was told he would be fighting a “religious war” in Syria.

His is one of many stories heard here in Herat, an ancient and largely Shiite city in northwest Afghanistan, that gives rare insight into how far the Islamic Republic is going to deploy a largely Shiite mercenary force of Afghans in Syria alongside its own troops, Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, and Shiites whom Iran has marshaled from Iraq and Pakistan. [Continue reading…]

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Father of Orlando shooter says his son’s homophobia may have been motive behind massacre

NBC News reports: While no one may ever know what was truly going through the head of the man who shot over 100 people at a gay Orlando nightclub on Sunday, his family says he may have been motivated by pure hate against the LGBT community.

Various law-enforcement officials have identified the shooter as Omar Mateen, 29, who was born in New York and lived in Port . St. Lucie, Florida.

Because of his name and heritage, there were immediately questions about Islamic fundamentalism — but his father said it may have been a recent incident involving two men showing each other affection that set the gunman off.

“We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry,” Mir Seddique, told NBC News on Sunday. “They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.’ And then we were in the men’s bathroom and men were kissing each other.’

“We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident,” said Seddique. “We weren’t aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.”

Seddique added, “this had nothing to do with religion.” [Continue reading…]

The Daily Beast reports: [a] senior law enforcement source reports that Mateen became a person of interest in 2013 and again in 2014. The Federal Bureau of Investigation at one point opened an investigation into Mateen but subsequently closed the case when it produced nothing that appeared to warrant further investigation.

“He’s a known quantity,” the source said. “He’s been on the radar before.” [Continue reading…]

NBC News reports: The gunman who opened fire at a gay Florida nightclub early Sunday, shooting over 100 people, had called 911 moments before to pledge allegiance to the leader of ISIS, law enforcement sources told NBC News. [Continue reading…]

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Besieged Syrian town gets first food aid since 2012, then gets bombed

The New York Times reports: Relief trucks delivered food aid for the first time in four years to Daraya, the rebel-held Syrian town just outside of Damascus that has come to symbolize civilian suffering in the war, the United Nations said Friday.

But even as the relief convoy’s success was announced by the World Food Program, the United Nations anti-hunger agency, residents of Daraya were reporting that Syrian military aircraft were bombing the town, making it difficult to distribute the food. They also said the amount delivered was roughly half of what was needed.

“People didn’t come in large numbers to receive the convoy, they were afraid of the bombing,” Amjad Abbar, a member of a local council in Daraya, said by telephone, with sounds of explosions and aircraft heard in the background. “Several barrel bombs have fallen,” he said.

News of the bombing nearly overshadowed the aid delivery, provoking anger among some Western powers hostile to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

“It is an extraordinary duplicity of the regime which we are witnessing,” Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault of France said at the United Nations, where he was visiting to preside over a Security Council meeting on protection of civilians in armed conflict. [Continue reading…]

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How Donald Trump bankrupted his Atlantic City casinos, but still earned millions

The New York Times reports: The Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel is now closed, its windows clouded over by sea salt. Only a faint outline of the gold letters spelling out T-R-U-M-P remains visible on the exterior of what was once this city’s premier casino.

Not far away, the long-failing Trump Marina Hotel Casino was sold at a major loss five years ago and is now known as the Golden Nugget.

At the nearly deserted eastern end of the boardwalk, the Trump Taj Mahal, now under new ownership, is all that remains of the casino empire Donald J. Trump assembled here more than a quarter-century ago. Years of neglect show: The carpets are frayed and dust-coated chandeliers dangle above the few customers there to play the penny slot machines.

On the presidential campaign trail, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, often boasts of his success in Atlantic City, of how he outwitted the Wall Street firms that financed his casinos and rode the value of his name to riches. A central argument of his candidacy is that he would bring the same business prowess to the Oval Office, doing for America what he did for his companies.

“Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in May, summing up his 25-year history here. “The money I took out of there was incredible.”

His audacious personality and opulent properties brought attention — and countless players — to Atlantic City as it sought to overtake Las Vegas as the country’s gambling capital. But a close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings by The New York Times leaves little doubt that Mr. Trump’s casino business was a protracted failure. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed this seaside city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing. [Continue reading…]

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Poll suggests six times as many Sanders supporters would shift to Clinton over Trump

The Guardian reports: Nearly six times as many Bernie Sanders supporters are prepared to shift their support to Hillary Clinton than vote for Donald Trump in November, according to an exclusive new poll which suggests Democrats are in a strong position to convert energy from their passionate primary contest into general election success.

However, the research, conducted by SurveyUSA for the Guardian, also shows that if Sanders were to find a way of staying in the presidential race, it could hand the White House to Trump, who would beat Clinton by three percentage points in that scenario.

Carried out the day after the California primary, the polling news comes amid residual pressure from some Sanders supporters for him to continue his struggle – either as an independent or perhaps by replacing Jill Stein, the Green party candidate, on that party’s ticket.

But the survey of 1,408 registered voters reveals limited appetite for this option, which would split the progressive vote. Presented with a four-way choice of Trump, Clinton, Sanders and libertarian Gary Johnson, 35% would vote for the presumptive Republican nominee, versus 32% for Clinton, 18% for Sanders and 4% for Johnson.

Yet when Sanders is removed from the equation and voters are offered the more expected lineup of Trump, Clinton, Stein and Johnson, it is the presumptive Democratic nominee who emerges on top with 39%, followed by Trump on 36%, Johnson at 6% and Stein on 4%. Only 5% of respondents told pollsters they would “stay at home and not vote” in this scenario. [Continue reading…]

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Vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle discovered in Cambodia

The Guardian reports: Archaeologists in Cambodia have found multiple, previously undocumented medieval cities not far from the ancient temple city of Angkor Wat, the Guardian can reveal, in groundbreaking discoveries that promise to upend key assumptions about south-east Asia’s history.

The Australian archaeologist Dr Damian Evans, whose findings will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Monday, will announce that cutting-edge airborne laser scanning technology has revealed multiple cities between 900 and 1,400 years old beneath the tropical forest floor, some of which rival the size of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

Some experts believe that the recently analysed data – captured in 2015 during the most extensive airborne study ever undertaken by an archaeological project, covering 734 sq miles (1,901 sq km) – shows that the colossal, densely populated cities would have constituted the largest empire on earth at the time of its peak in the 12th century.

Evans said: “We have entire cities discovered beneath the forest that no one knew were there – at Preah Khan of Kompong Svay and, it turns out, we uncovered only a part of Mahendraparvata on Phnom Kulen [in the 2012 survey] … this time we got the whole deal and it’s big, the size of Phnom Penh big.” [Continue reading…]

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A desperate woman’s email from Iraq reveals the high toll of Obama’s low-cost wars

The Washington Post reports: On small video screens inside their cockpits, the U.S. pilots spotted their target, an Islamic State checkpoint just south of the Iraqi city of Mosul.

In grainy black and white, they could see the enemy manning the barricades and a guard shack. As they prepared to launch their attack, the pilots noticed a potential complication: Two cars approached the checkpoint and stopped. The drivers appeared to be talking with Islamic State fighters.

Other cars moved through the checkpoint, but these two vehicles remained on the side of the road. Five minutes passed. Then 10. Nearly 40 minutes had gone by and the two vehicles still had not moved.

Running low on fuel and time, the pilots concluded that the people in the cars were allied with the militants and asked for permission to strike. After a brief discussion with their headquarters in Qatar, they got their reply: “You’re cleared to execute.”

This was one version of what war had become in the last years of the Obama administration: The pilots made two strafing runs over the checkpoint, their machine guns cutting through the two cars. Then they unleashed a 500-pound satellite-guided bomb that engulfed the area in dust, fire and deadly shrapnel.

As they returned to their base, the pilots offered an in-flight assessment of their mission: guard shack flattened, two vehicles destroyed and four enemy fighters dead. “There are no apparent civilian or other collateral concerns,” their report concluded.

The first sign that they had made a horrible mistake came in the form of an email, sent two weeks after the March 2015 airstrike, to an Iraqi citizen working at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

“I am Raja’a Zidan al-Ekabee . . . ” the email began. [Continue reading…]

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Russia is recruiting the U.S.’s rebel allies in Syria

Mike Giglio reports: The rebel commander was nervous. He had changed phone numbers and been difficult to reach before finally agreeing to meet in Antakya, a city near the border with war-torn Syria that has long swarmed with rebels, refugees, and spies. On the road to an out-of-the-way hotel, he told the driver to avoid the main route through town. “It’s better not to drive among all the people,” he said.

It was an open secret that the commander had once received cash and weapons from the CIA, part of a covert U.S. program that backs rebel groups against both ISIS and the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

When his battalion was eventually driven from Syria by its jihadi rivals, like a number of U.S.-backed groups, he pleaded with his U.S. handlers for better support, but it wasn’t enough. So he was, he said, “out of the game.”

Now, he said, sitting at a quiet table at the hotel, he had received an offer that could bring him back in — and potentially make him even stronger than before.

He was being recruited, he said, to work for the U.S.’s rival in Syria: Russia.

“They told me, ‘We will support you forever. We won’t leave you on your own like your old friends did,’” he said. “Honestly, I’m still thinking about it.”

The commander said that five years into a war that has killed some 400,000 people and created nearly 5 million refugees, Russia is recruiting current and former U.S. allies to its side. His revelation was confirmed by four people who said they, too, had been approached with offers from Russia and by two Syrian middlemen who said they delivered them.

The moves come as Russia ratchets up its involvement in Syria with troops and airstrikes. Russia says its military campaign is designed to target ISIS — in reality it has targeted all rebels, including some who are still backed by the U.S., while also wreaking havoc on civilians.

The secret outreach shows that as it works to muscle the U.S. out of Syria, Russia isn’t just bombing the U.S.’s current and former rebel allies — it’s also working to co-opt them, launching a shadowy campaign that seeks to highlight U.S. weakness in Syria. Ultimately, Russia could be hoping to help Assad win the war by dividing the opposition, driving a wedge between rebel groups and their traditional backers, and getting them to turn their guns on his enemies. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS may be far weaker in Libya than many had thought

The Guardian reports: Libyan forces claim to have reached the centre of the coastal city of Sirte, Islamic State’s key stronghold, meaning the jihadi group may have lost all territorial control in the country.

The speed of the apparent rout of Isis after three weeks of heavy fighting is extraordinary given US intelligence was suggesting only two months ago that the group had 6,000 fighters in the city and was starting to pose a threat to neighbouring Tunisia.

“The armed forces entered Sirte. They are currently in the centre, where clashes continue with Daesh,” said Mohamad Ghassri, spokesman for the forces of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

“The operation will not last much longer. I think we’ll be able to announce the liberation of Sirte in two or three days,” he told AFP.

Although it is still possible that the Isis retreat is tactical, most observers believe the military offensive has revealed Isis to be far weaker in Libya than many had thought. [Continue reading…]

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Saudis used financial threats to coerce UN in effort to cover up war crimes in Yemen

The New York Times reports: The United Nations secretary general is supposed to answer to every nation on earth — and no nation at all.

So the unusually frank admission by the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, on Thursday that he had essentially been coerced into removing a Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen from an ignoble list of armies that kill and maim children was a rare window into the limits of his moral and political authority — and an object lesson for whoever succeeds Mr. Ban next year.

On Thursday, Mr. Ban told reporters that he had been threatened with the loss of financing for humanitarian operations in the Palestinian territories, South Sudan and Syria if he did not temporarily delete the Saudi-led coalition from the list.

The coalition has been accused of indiscriminately bombing civilian and nonmilitary targets in its battle against Houthi rebels in Yemen for more than a year. The coalition, which is backed by the United States, has consistently denied the accusations.

Mr. Ban’s office issued a report last week on violations of children’s rights in war zones, and it cited deadly coalition attacks that had hit schools and hospitals. By Monday, however, the coalition was taken off the list, after lobbying by Saudi Arabia and some of its wealthiest allies who help finance United Nations humanitarian operations. [Continue reading…]

Human Rights Watch: “The secretary-general’s decision flies in the face of overwhelming evidence that violations by the Saudi-led coalition have killed and maimed hundreds of children in Yemen,” said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “Allowing governments that commit abuses against children to bully their way off the list makes a mockery of the UN’s children protection efforts.”

The UN has verified that at least 785 children have been killed and 1,168 injured in Yemen during fighting in 2015, with 60 percent of the casualties attributed to the Saudi-led coalition, the secretary-general’s report said. The UN also verified 101 attacks against schools and hospitals, attributing nearly half of the attacks to the Saudi-led coalition. Nongovernmental organizations have made similar findings. [Continue reading…]

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Tel Aviv mayor says the occupation is a cause of Palestinian terror

Edo Konrad writes: Tel Aviv-Jaffa Mayor Ron Huldai shocked many Israelis Thursday morning when he cited Israel’s occupation as one factor that leads Palestinians to turn to terrorism. Speaking on Army Radio about Wednesday’s deadly shooting attack in Tel Aviv and reported celebrations of it in the West Bank and Gaza, Huldai argued that Israelis should focus instead on the fact that Israel is “perhaps the only country in the world holding another nation under occupation without civil rights.”

“On the one hand the occupation has lasted 49 years, and I took part in it,” Huldai told veteran journalist Ilana Dayan, “I recognize the reality and know that leaders with courage must look to take action and not just talk. The fact that we are suffering does not lead to a change in understanding of what must be done… There is no courage to do what needs to be done in order to reach a [peace] agreement.”

“There is no way to hold people in a situation of occupation and think that they will reach the conclusion that everything is okay and they will continue to live like that,” Huldai added. [Continue reading…]

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France plans to exact stiff penalty for Brexit in order to deter more departures from the EU

Politico reports: France is not ready to let Britain get away from the European Union scot-free.

If the U.K. votes to leave on June 23, Paris will push to ensure that consequences are felt swiftly and severely to avoid emboldening anti-EU forces elsewhere in the bloc, senior EU diplomatic sources said.

France’s tough stance foreshadows major difficulties for London in the event of Brexit, as a core EU member tries to assert its influence in a reconfigured bloc and sway other countries against adopting an easygoing attitude toward Britain. Some of those countries, such as Germany, are more inclined to favor a softer approach.

The French push is focused on convincing the remaining EU countries to unwind all treaties and agreements binding the U.K. to the bloc quickly, so the divorce is sealed by withdrawing subsidies, re-evaluating trade relationships sector by sector, denying British supervisory bodies EU recognition in areas like financial services, and establishing new immigration rules, to name just a few levers, the sources said.

“If we say you are outside the EU but can keep all of the advantages, access to the single market without any solidarity, it’s a terrible message for the rest of the EU,” said a senior EU diplomat who asked not to be named due to the non-public nature of discussions. “[A painless Brexit] is impossible if we want to keep the rest of the EU present.”

The need to send a message is all the more pressing for the French political elite with the anti-EU National Front positioned to make a strong showing in the country’s 2017 presidential election. France would not be acting out of spite, officials said, and has no interest in setting off a tit-for-tat war of punitive measures.

But as a core EU member, sources said it had a responsibility to strengthen the bloc and deprive anti-EU parties — not just the FN but also the likes of Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in the Netherlands — of a chance to use Britain as a shining example of what life can be after the European Union. [Continue reading…]

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Within three hours, three hospitals in Aleppo bombed by Assad-allied forces

The New York Times reports: Bombs from airstrikes hit three hospitals on Wednesday in the rebel-held side of Aleppo, Syria, including a pediatrics center supported by the United Nations, in what aid providers and opposition activists called a new atrocity in the fighting that has ravaged the city.

The Middle East regional office of Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, said in a statement that the attacks happened within a space of three hours on al-Bayan and al-Hakeem hospitals and the Abdulhadi Fares clinic.

Unicef provided no details on casualties, damage or who was responsible, but it said the attack was the second on al-Hakeem hospital, which it helps operate.

Others said that at least 10 civilians were killed in the bombings, including children, and that many others were wounded. Activist groups blamed Syrian military forces. Insurgents have no aircraft, which are used to conduct such bombings.

“This devastating pattern of warfare in Syria seems to have no checks and balances,” the Unicef regional director, Dr. Peter Salama, said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Surely this should shake the moral compass of the world. How long will we allow the children of Syria to suffer like this?” [Continue reading…]

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The Syrian humanitarian food farce

The Daily Beast reports: Lice shampoo — more than one bottle for every two residents. Sand-fly nets — more than 1,000 of them, designed to stop the spread of leishmaniasis, a sand-fly-borne skin disorder that isn’t prevalent in southern Syria.

After four years, the 4,000 residents of the besieged Damascus suburb of Darayya received their first official multi-agency United Nations aid convoy Wednesday. But documents viewed by The Daily Beast show that the convoy carried items that are largely useless to the population, whose primary concerns are starvation and disease. And even at that, the Assad government gave the convoy permission for the partial delivery in an eleventh-hour concession to stop the UN from staging air drops of desperately needed aid.

Darayya is only 15 kilometers — fewer than 10 miles — from downtown Damascus. Despite extensive social media fanfare by the agencies taking part in the convoy, the first “successful” delivery to the area since 2012 was far from cause for celebration for the besieged residents.

“It is unprecedented in areas of conflict that the UN and the aid community as a whole is not allowed to access an area for four years,” a UN official who did not want to be named for fear of the impact on the work of their organization, told The Daily Beast. [Continue reading…]

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CIA and Pentagon bicker while Russia wipes out U.S.-backed rebels

The Daily Beast reports: U.S.-backed opposition forces in Syria’s largest city are facing a ferocious Russian-led assault, raising fears that the rebels could be eliminated in a matter of weeks.
So how are the Pentagon and the intelligence community responding?

By catfighting among themselves.

Two Department of Defense officials told The Daily Beast that they are not eager to support the rebels in the city of Aleppo because they’re seen as being affiliated with al Qaeda in Syria, or Jabhat al Nusra. The CIA, which supports those rebel groups, rejects that claim, saying alliances of convenience in the face of a mounting Russian-led offensive have created marriages of battlefield necessity, not ideology.

“It is a strange thing that DoD hall chatter mimics Russian propaganda,” one U.S. official, who supports the intelligence community position, wryly noted to Pentagon claims that the opposition and Nusra are one in the same.

But even if the rebels were completely separated from Nusra, there would still be something of a strategic conflict with U.S. military goals. The rebels in Aleppo, these Pentagon officials note, are fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime; the American military effort, on the other hand, is primarily about defeating the self-proclaimed Islamic State. [Continue reading…]

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Signs of bigger ISIS cell in Germany emerge

The Wall Street Journal reports: A man who was detained in France and exposed an Islamic State terror cell in Germany told authorities that the cell contained many more people than the three arrested last week, according to officials familiar with his testimony.

The revelations, part of new details emerging about the arrested suspects, add to concerns that the extremist group could be poised to strike again in Europe.

Authorities in France, Germany and the Netherlands are examining testimony from Saleh A., who walked into a police station in the north of Paris in February claiming that he was part of an Islamic State sleeper cell of between 10 and 20 people, officials familiar with the investigation said. Based on his testimony, German police last week arrested three suspected Islamic State members who arrived in the country among Syrian asylum seekers on suspicion of preparing an attack in the western Germany city of Düsseldorf.

“Saleh A.’s statements are central” to the investigation, one German official familiar with the investigation said. German and French authorities have worked closely together on the case, the person said, adding that German investigators had been able to question Saleh A.

Saleh A. told French police that his terror cell was awaiting instructions from a certain Abu Doujana Al Tunisi, supposedly the head of foreign fighters for Islamic State, and that around 20 people were members of the cell, according to a French official. Another official familiar with the probe said Saleh A. had told investigators about 10 people would participate in the attack in Düsseldorf. [Continue reading…]

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