Category Archives: News

New diplomacy seen on U.S.-Russian efforts to end Syrian civil war

The New York Times reports: With President Bashar al-Assad of Syria facing battlefield setbacks, diplomats from Russia, the United States and several Middle Eastern powers are engaged in a burst of diplomatic activity, trying to head off a deeper collapse of the country that could further strengthen the militant group Islamic State.

Russia, Mr. Assad’s most powerful backer, has built new ties with Saudi Arabia, a fervent opponent, and even brokered a meeting between high-ranking Saudi and Syrian intelligence officials. On Tuesday, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, met with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in Moscow, wrangling over the fate of Mr. Assad.

Unusual meetings have come in quick succession. Last week, the top Russian, American and Saudi envoys held their first three-way meeting on Syria; Russian officials briefed Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem. He then met officials in Oman, whose ties to both Saudi Arabia and Iran raised the prospect of talks between those archrivals. Russia stopped blocking an international inquiry into who has used chemical weapons in Syria, a longstanding American priority. [Continue reading…]

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Dozens of retired generals, admirals back Iran nuclear deal

The Washington Post reports: Three dozen retired generals and admirals released an open letter Tuesday supporting the Iran nuclear deal and urging Congress to do the same.

Calling the agreement “the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” the letter said that gaining international support for military action against Iran, should that ever become necessary, “would only be possible if we have first given the diplomatic path a chance.”

The release came as Secretary of State John F. Kerry said U.S. allies were “going to look at us and laugh” if the United States were to abandon the deal and then ask them to back a more aggressive posture against Iran. [Continue reading…]

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Head of group opposing Iran accord quits post, saying he backs deal

The New York Times reports: When the bipartisan advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran decided last week to mobilize opposition against the nuclear deal with Tehran, Gary Samore knew he could no longer serve as its president.

The reason: After long study, Mr. Samore, a former nuclear adviser to President Obama, had concluded that the accord was in the United States’ interest.

“I think President Obama’s strategy succeeded,” said Mr. Samore, who left his post on Monday. “He has created economic leverage and traded it away for Iranian nuclear concessions.”

As soon as Mr. Samore left, the group announced a new standard-bearer with a decidedly different message: Joseph I. Lieberman, the former senator from Connecticut and the new chairman of the group. [Continue reading…]

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Iraqi political reforms risk further marginalization of Sunnis

The New York Times reports: Iraq’s Parliament unanimously passed measures on Tuesday that are meant to transform the country’s corrupt political system. Yet by eliminating several high-level positions and doing away with sectarian quotas in political appointments, the measures risk further alienating the country’s Sunni minority while the government is struggling to defeat the Sunni militants of the Islamic State.

The measures, put forward on Sunday by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, are wide-ranging. They promise to save money and fight corruption by cutting expensive perks for officials. Most notably, they eliminate three deputy prime minister posts and three vice presidencies, including the one held by former Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who was a rival of Mr. Abadi.

The passage of the measures was never really in doubt. They were backed by the country’s leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who holds great sway over the country’s Shiite majority. And a sense of public grievance at the current system has been swelling in the streets, culminating in widespread protests. [Continue reading…]

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Republican hopefuls reap $62m in support from donors with fossil fuel ties

The Guardian reports: Republican presidential candidates have banked millions of dollars in donations from a small number of mega-rich individuals and corporations with close ties to the fossil fuel industries that stand to lose the most from the fight against climate change.

Eight out of the 17 GOP figures currently jostling for their party’s presidential nomination have between them attracted a bonanza of at least $62m so far this year from sources either directly involved in polluting industries or with close financial ties to them. Three Republican contenders stand out as recipients of this fossil fuel largesse: the Republican climate change denier-in-chief, Ted Cruz; the party establishment favorite Jeb Bush; and the former governor of Texas, Rick Perry.

The funds have come from just 17 billionaires or businesses that have pumped enormous sums – in one case $15m for a single candidate – into the support groups or Super Pacs that work alongside the official campaigns yet are free to attract unlimited contributions. The $62m forms a substantial chunk of almost $400m that has been given to presidential contenders from both main parties in 2015, raising questions about the leverage that fossil fuel interests might seek to exert over the next occupant of the White House at a critical time for the battle against climate change. [Continue reading…]

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The Pentagon’s dangerous views on the wartime press

In an editorial, the New York Times says: The Defense Department earlier this summer released a comprehensive manual outlining its interpretation of the law of war. The 1,176-page document, the first of its kind, includes guidelines on the treatment of journalists covering armed conflicts that would make their work more dangerous, cumbersome and subject to censorship. Those should be repealed immediately.

Journalists, the manual says, are generally regarded as civilians, but may in some instances be deemed “unprivileged belligerents,” a legal term that applies to fighters that are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war. In some instances, the document says, “the relaying of information (such as providing information of immediate use in combat operations) could constitute taking a direct part in hostilities.”

The manual warns that “Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying,” so it calls on journalists to “act openly and with the permission of relevant authorities.” It says that governments “may need to censor journalists’ work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy.”

Allowing this document to stand as guidance for commanders, government lawyers and officials of other nations would do severe damage to press freedoms. Authoritarian leaders around the world could point to it to show that their despotic treatment of journalists — including Americans — is broadly in line with the standards set by the United States government.

One senior Pentagon official, who was asked to explain when a journalist might be deemed an “unprivileged belligerent,” pointed to the assassination of the Afghan military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud in September 2001. That example is preposterous because Mr. Massoud was killed by assassins who posed as television journalists and hid explosives in a camera. They were not, in fact, journalists.

The manual’s argument that some reporting activities could be construed as taking part in hostilities is ludicrous. That vaguely-worded standard could be abused by military officers to censor or even target journalists. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. shelves its $500M Syrian rebel army — sees Syrian Kurds as a more reliable fighting partner

The Daily Beast reports: The Obama administration is still publicly counting on a $500 million rebel army to beat ISIS in Syria. But privately, the Pentagon brass long ago moved past its own proxy force, The Daily Beast has learned. They’ve found another group to fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State instead.

In recent weeks, the handful of fighters in the administration-backed rebel army — the so-called “New Syrian Force” — have been killed, kidnapped, or fallen off the proverbial radar. But the Pentagon maintained a brave face, even after these 54 fighters (out of what was supposed to be a total of 15,000) were decimated by Islamist attacks. “We continue to see volunteers want to be a part of this program,” Air Force Colonel Pat Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters Friday.

It’s a public stance that has left many in the administration and in the defense establishment scratching their heads.

“I don’t understand why we are still training, other than to inoculate criticism. … [The administration] cannot admit it is a complete disaster,” said one senior defense adviser familiar with the U.S. approach. Even after the U.S.-trained fighters vanished, “there was no receptivity to new ideas.”

But what Ryder didn’t say is that, in the eyes of the administration, a better force had emerged — already trained, competent, organized — that posed little risk of abandoning the fight or worse yet, switching sides. They are the Syrian Kurdish militia — the Popular Protection Units or YPG, by their Kurdish initials. And they have successfully wrestled Syrian territory out of ISIS’s hands.

“We knew it would be a challenge but we didn’t expect them to confront the fight they did,” said a second senior defense official, referring to the New Syrian Force. On the other hand, “the YPG is the most effective fighting force in Syria.”

According to one group, the YPG has so far reclaimed at least 11 villages from ISIS, including in the Syrian city of Kobani, one of the biggest victories in the year-long campaign. And in June, the YPG regained control of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad, cutting off a key ISIS conduit to weapons and supplies. Like the New Syrian Force, the YPG can call in coalition airstrikes as needed.

Along with hoping nascent Arab fighters can take on ISIS, the U.S. is now keen to work alongside as many as 50,000 proven Kurdish fighters. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS takes aim at its toughest foes

Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan write: For more than two years, one region in Syria—the south—has managed to push back the so-called Islamic State’s incessant attacks and meticulous planning. But that situation might be quietly changing with the recent capture al-Qaryatain. It’s a town in Homs province that is roughly equidistant from the ancient city of Palmyra, which the terror army took in late May, and Damascus. Most of the estimated 40,000 inhabitants, many of them internally displaced persons from other areas of Syria, fled. Another 230 — including 30 Assyrian Christians — have been reportedly captured. Hundreds of Assyrian families have also fled the neighboring town of Sadad in fear.

The failure of ISIS to establish a presence in southern Syria has been largely thanks to the preemptive action taken by groups operating in that region. Elsewhere in the war-ravaged country, rival rebels have succumbed to ISIS by ignoring the group’s characteristic method of divide and conquer: by deploying sleeper cells which infiltrate opposition-held areas and cultivate locals such that towns and villages go over to ISIS well in advance of any military blitzkrieg. The “civil war within a civil war” that has categorized the latter-half of the Syrian conflict has been won and lost on the basis of counterintelligence. ISIS has proved more adept when it comes to both dispatching spies and informants and weeding them out. Many rebels have proved disastrously ill-equipped — or simply too corrupt — to forestall ISIS’s creeping takeovers of their territory. At least this has been the case in northern Syria.

In the south, anti-ISIS forces have proved more vigilant. [Continue reading…]

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Russia, Saudis fail in talks to agree on fate of Syria’s Assad

Reuters reports: Russia and Saudi Arabia failed in talks on Tuesday to overcome their differences on the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a central dispute in Syria’s civil war that shows no sign of abating despite renewed diplomacy.

Russia is pushing for a coalition to fight Islamic State insurgents — who have seized swathes of northern and eastern Syria — that would involve Assad, a longtime ally of Moscow. But, speaking after talks in Moscow, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir reiterated Riyadh’s stance that Assad must go.

“A key reason behind the emergence of Islamic State was the actions of Assad who directed his arms at his nation, not Islamic State,” Jubeir told a news conference after talks with Russia’s Sergei Lavrov.

“Assad is part of the problem, not part of the solution to the Syrian crisis… There is no place for Assad in the future of Syria,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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Ocalan calls on PKK and Ankara to end fighting

Rudaw reports: The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has called on the PKK and Turkish government to end ongoing clashes and resume negotiations, which were planned to lead to permanent peace in the country.

The Civil Peace Department, a government-backed organization which supervises the peace process between Ankara and the PKK, published a letter written by Ocalan in which the jailed leader slammed the negotiating partners for the “bloodshed.”

“Our (PKK) fighters, leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the Turkish government’s officials failed to administer and commit themselves to the peace negotiations,” Ocalan wrote from his prison on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, calling for an immediate ceasefire. [Continue reading…]

Rudaw reports: Recent Turkish airstrikes against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party in northern Iraq have killed 390 PKK members and injured 400, Turkey’s official Anadolu Agency on Sunday quoted unidentified security sources as saying.

“Turkish security sources are claiming to have killed a total of 390 militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in a series of recent air strikes against rebel targets in northern Iraq,” the agency said.

“An anonymous security force source also told Anadolu Agency that 400 PKK insurgents were injured in the attacks,” the agency added. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Two women shot at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Monday and at least eight people were killed in a wave of separate attacks on Turkish security forces, weeks after Ankara launched a crackdown on Islamic State, Kurdish and far-left militants.

The NATO member has been in a heightened state of alert since starting its “synchronized war on terror” last month, including air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq. It has also rounded up hundreds of suspected militants at home.

A far-left group that killed a Turkish security guard in a 2013 suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy in Ankara claimed it was involved in Monday’s attack.

The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, said one of its members was involved in the attack, and called Washington the “arch enemy” of the people of the Middle East and the world. [Continue reading…]

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Al Qaeda in Syria leaves area where Turkey seeks buffer

Reuters reports: The al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front says it has quit frontline positions against Islamic State north of Aleppo and ceded them to other rebels, leaving an area of northern Syria where Turkey wants to set up a buffer zone.

A Nusra Front statement dated Sunday criticized a Turkish-U.S. plan to drive Islamic State from the Syrian-Turkish border area, saying the aim was to serve “Turkey’s national security” rather than the fight against President Bashar al-Assad.

The United States and Turkey last month announced their intention to drive Islamic State from a strip of territory in northern Syria near the Turkish border in a campaign that would provide air cover for Syrian rebels in the area.

Though Nusra is an enemy of Islamic State, its foothold in northern Syria has been a problem for the U.S.-led campaign against the ultra-hardline group. Late last month, Nusra attacked Syrian rebels trained as part of the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State, calling them agents of U.S. interests. [Continue reading…]

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The Pentagon is keeping half of Gitmo locked up — against the White House’s wishes

The Daily Beast reports: The White House wants to quickly cut the number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. One man is standing in the way: President Obama’s Defense Secretary, Ash Carter.

Carter and the White House are increasingly at odds about how to whittle down the number of detainees held in Guantánamo Bay, hampering the administration’s push to close the detention center by the end of its term.

The White House believes that Carter is unwilling to be accountable for the transfer of Guantánamo detainees and their conduct post-release, even to the point of defying the president’s policy on the detention facility, a White House source told The Daily Beast. [Continue reading…]

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Israel continues crackdown on Jewish extremist network in West Bank

The New York Times reports: The Israeli authorities on Sunday continued their crackdown against the young Jewish zealots believed to be associated with the Revolt, a shadowy network described by its members as an anarchistic vision of redemption.

The extremists’ working plan calls for fomenting unrest to bring about the collapse of the State of Israel, with its democratic system of government and courts, and establishing a Jewish kingdom based on the laws of the Torah. Non-Jews are to be expelled, the Third Temple is to be built and religious observance is to be enforced, initially in public spaces.

“The starting point of the Revolt is that the State of Israel has no right to exist, and therefore we are not bound by the rules of the game,” write the anonymous authors of the manifesto of sedition that lays out these ideas, which the Shin Bet internal security agency recently discovered.

Six-month administrative detention orders were issued Sunday against two high-profile activists from the radical right, Meir Ettinger and Eviatar Slonim, both in their early 20s. [Continue reading…]

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New worry for tech firms that don’t want to hand data to the government: Hillary Clinton

The Los Angeles Times reports: When Hillary Rodham Clinton talks tough about diluting the influence of the sprawling Islamic State terrorist network, she sometimes skips the rhetoric on diplomatic and military strategy in the Middle East – and instead targets Silicon Valley.

Executives in the boardrooms of America’s big tech firms are taking notice as the Democratic front-runner in the presidential race warns about the impunity with which terrorists operate online. Clinton said the problem needs a “hard look” by government. Internet freedom is great, she told voters at a town hall in New Hampshire, “but I don’t believe we should give a free pass to a terrorist organization.”

The remarks haven’t been particularly controversial in the early voting states where Clinton is stumping. But across the country in the Bay Area, the social media industry is anxious about what exactly Clinton has in mind. Her focus comes as tech companies are engaged in a pitched battle with their state’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, over her push to require Internet companies to become government informants when they come across potentially troublesome communications.

At the core of the dispute is disagreement over how much companies should do to stop terrorist groups from using their platforms to recruit members and coordinate attacks. The firms, Feinstein said at a hearing last month, are taking down thousands of posts monthly that violate corporate bans on terrorism-related discussions – but they are not alerting law enforcement about any of that content. Feinstein made the comments after convening meetings with high-level officials at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and Microsoft.

“The companies do not proactively monitor their sites to identify [terrorist] content, nor do they inform the FBI when they identified and remove their content,” she said. “I believe they should.” Soon after, the Senate Intelligence Committee, of which Feinstein is vice chair, tacked language onto a routine funding bill requiring the firms to share with law enforcement any such posts they come across. [Continue reading…]

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The Coca-Cola conspiracy

The New York Times reports: Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of sugary beverages, is backing a new “science-based” solution to the obesity crisis: To maintain a healthy weight, get more exercise and worry less about cutting calories.

The beverage giant has teamed up with influential scientists who are advancing this message in medical journals, at conferences and through social media. To help the scientists get the word out, Coke has provided financial and logistical support to a new nonprofit organization called the Global Energy Balance Network, which promotes the argument that weight-conscious Americans are overly fixated on how much they eat and drink while not paying enough attention to exercise.

“Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, ‘Oh they’re eating too much, eating too much, eating too much’ — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on,” the group’s vice president, Steven N. Blair, an exercise scientist, says in a recent video announcing the new organization. “And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause.”

Health experts say this message is misleading and part of an effort by Coke to deflect criticism about the role sugary drinks have played in the spread of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. They contend that the company is using the new group to convince the public that physical activity can offset a bad diet despite evidence that exercise has only minimal impact on weight compared with what people consume.

This clash over the science of obesity comes in a period of rising efforts to tax sugary drinks, remove them from schools and stop companies from marketing them to children. In the last two decades, consumption of full-calorie sodas by the average American has dropped by 25 percent.

“Coca-Cola’s sales are slipping, and there’s this huge political and public backlash against soda, with every major city trying to do something to curb consumption,” said Michele Simon, a public health lawyer. “This is a direct response to the ways that the company is losing. They’re desperate to stop the bleeding.” [Continue reading…]

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Iraqi premier tests authority in anti-graft push after protests

Bloomberg reports: Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi, backed by the nation’s top Shiite cleric, vowed to investigate corruption and proposed abolishing key government posts in a move that will test his authority in the fractured country.

Abadi, in a seven-point plan that has to be ratified by parliament, said the positions of vice presidents and deputy prime ministers should be eliminated immediately as part of a push to improve performance and tackle corruption. Nouri al-Maliki, Abadi’s predecessor and one of the country’s three vice presidents, said he supports the plan, which was also approved by the cabinet.

Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets on Friday to protest what they describe as widespread corruption in OPEC’s second-biggest producer. While the plunge in oil prices and the battle against Islamic State militants are depleting the government’s coffers, many Iraqis say corruption is compounding the nation’s economic woes.
“Abadi chose the right time to take these decisions,” Hameed Fayad, a political science professor in Baghdad University, said by phone. “The real battle will be in parliament in the coming weeks, but in the end, the religious authority and people’s word will have the upper hand.”

Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, urged the prime minister on Friday to tackle corruption and fire any official “who tries to hinder reform, no matter what their position is.” [Continue reading…]

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Syrian president’s cousin fatally shoots top air force official in road rage incident

AFP reports: A cousin of Syria’s president has shot dead a senior air force officer in a road rage incident in the Latakia coastal heartland of their minority Alawite community, according to a monitoring group.

Suleiman al-Assad, a first cousin once removed of Bashar al-Assad, killed Colonel Hassan al-Sheikh “because he overtook him at a crossroads” Thursday evening, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Assad “followed him, swerved the car around, got out and shot him dead”, said Abdel Rahman, whose group has contacts across war-torn Syria. [Continue reading…]

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Obama challenges AIPAC on Iran deal

The New York Times reports: President Obama had a tough message for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, the powerful pro-Israel group that is furiously campaigning against the Iran nuclear accord, when he met with two of its leaders at the White House this week. The president accused Aipac of spending millions of dollars in advertising against the deal and spreading false claims about it, people in the meeting recalled.

So Mr. Obama told the Aipac leaders that he intended to hit back hard.

The next day in a speech at American University, Mr. Obama denounced the deal’s opponents as “lobbyists” doling out millions of dollars to trumpet the same hawkish rhetoric that had led the United States into war with Iraq. The president never mentioned Aipac by name, but his target was unmistakable.

The remarks reflected an unusually sharp rupture between a sitting American president and the most potent pro-Israel lobbying group, which was founded in 1951 a few years after the birth of Israel. [Continue reading…]

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