Category Archives: News

U.S. lags behind rest of the world in generating electricity from renewable energy

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Renewables 2014 Global Status Report released earlier this month has good news for the environment, namely that an estimated 22.1% of the world’s electricity was generated from renewable sources in 2013. That percentage is expected to rise as countries across the globe pour money and resources into alternative, clean energy.

The U.S. ranks second, after China, for annual investment in renewable energy and for generating electricity from renewable sources, yet the U.S. has a lower share of energy (13%) generated from renewable sources than the world average of 22.1%, according to the data compiled by Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century, an international, government-supported institute that supports renewable-energy development. That’s because the U.S. uses a lot of electricity and resources in general. [Continue reading…]

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Fractures emerge in ISIS-Baathist alliance as violence sweeps Iraq

The New York Times reports: The violent struggle over Iraq on Saturday consumed cities and towns widely spread over the north and west of the country, with neither the Sunni militants nor the Iraqi army seeming to gain major ground.

The fighting also was one of the first times fissures appeared in the extremist Sunni coalition led by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, with a battle between that group and its Baathist allies killing 17.

In Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a market in the predominantly Shiite Zafaraniya area, killing four shoppers. Three hours later, two men were found dumped nearby, handcuffed and shot to death. The victims were likely to be Sunnis since the area is controlled by Shiite militiamen.

In the insurgent-held city of Tikrit, in Salahuddin Province, the morgue at the hospital reported that it had received 84 bodies of policemen, soldiers and government employees who had been executed. Seven of them had been beheaded, according to an official there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering the insurgents.

In western Anbar Province, two more towns fell to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, near the border town of Qaim, which fell to the rebels on Friday. Reports from officials at the scene said 34 Iraqi soldiers were killed on Friday as hundreds of militants overran Qaim.

A local government leader, Muthana al-Rawi, said the two towns taken Saturday, Ana and Rawaa, fell after troops and police officers fled Qaim and “sleeper cells of the militants showed up to fill the gap and take control over the two towns.”

Eyewitnesses from another border town, Al Waleed, said the Syrian air force had bombed ISIS troops who were trying to attack and capture it, as well. If Al Waleed fell, that would leave the Iraqi government without control of a single border crossing to Syria. [Continue reading…]

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Secret U.S. plan to aid Iraq fizzled amid mutual distrust

The Wall Street Journal reports: Amid growing signs of instability in Iraq, President Barack Obama authorized a secret plan late last year to aid Iraqi troops in their fight against Sunni extremists by sharing intelligence on the militants’ desert encampments, but devoted only a handful of U.S. specialists to the task.

So few aircraft were dedicated to the program, which also faced restrictions by the Iraqis, that U.S. surveillance flights usually took place just once a month, said current and former U.S. officials briefed on the program.

Instead of providing Iraqis with real-time drone feeds and intercepted communications from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, the militant group that has overrun parts of Iraq, U.S. intelligence specialists typically gave their Iraqi counterparts limited photographic images, reflecting U.S. concerns that more sensitive data would end up in Iranian hands, these officials said.

Islamist extremists ISIS released a video on Friday targeting Western Muslims, encouraging them to give up their Western lives and join the jihadi struggle. Via The Foreign Bureau, WSJ’s global news update.

Overseas problems continue to weigh on President Obama as Iraq descends into disarray. Obama promised that no combat troops would be deployed in Iraq, but he has sent 300 military advisers to the region. The president now must decide whether to back Nouri al-Maliki, the current prime minister, or demand a new leader.

Political and security sensitivities for leaders in both countries led the U.S. to move cautiously to secretly set up the so-called fusion intelligence center in Baghdad. But Mr. Obama’s announcement Thursday that the U.S. will deploy up to 300 military advisers and set up two joint operations centers shows the extent to which U.S. and Iraqi leaders are racing to catch up to an ISIS threat they had already identified but were slow to counter. [Continue reading…]

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17 ISIS suspects held in Beirut for suspected assassination plot

The New York Times reports: Lebanese security forces arrested 17 men in two Beirut hotels on Friday on suspicion that they were plotting to assassinate a prominent Lebanese Shiite leader, a government official said, describing an attack that could inflame sectarian conflict across the Middle East.

Investigators are exploring whether the men intended to kill Nabih Berri, the speaker of Parliament, who has been a leading Shiite political figure in Lebanon for decades, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under government rules. Intelligence reports identified the men as members of a newly established militant cell in Beirut that was believed to include foreigners, the official said, adding that there were suspicions that they belonged to the Islamic State inIraq and Syria, the Sunni militant group known as ISIS.

Such a plot would be a bold and dangerous escalation by ISIS, which wields extremist and sectarian ideology and brutal tactics in its drive to erase the existing nations in the region and create a fundamentalist Islamic caliphate in their place. The group’s insurgent fighters, who already control large parts of northeastern Syria, swept across northern Iraq last week, slaughtering captured Shiite soldiers and proudly broadcasting the killings on the Internet.

Spreading their attacks to Lebanon, the region’s most religiously diverse country, could intensify the destabilizing sectarian conflict. The most powerful force in the country is Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group and political party, which is allied both with Mr. Berri’s Amal movement and with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, where the chaos of a three-year insurgency has provided fertile ground for ISIS to grow. [Continue reading…]

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported: In Lebanon on Tuesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that his forces were capable of sending fighters to Iraq to support Mr. Maliki, in comments made to As-Safir, a local newspaper sympathetic to Hezbollah. Mr. Nasrallah batted away concerns that Hezbollah is spread too thin fighting in Syria and protecting against Israel in southern Lebanon to join the fight in Iraq.

“We are ready to sacrifice martyrs in Iraq five times more than what we sacrificed in Syria, in order to protect shrines, because they are much more important than [Syria’s holy sites],” Mr. Nasrallah said.

Hezbollah justifies its presence in Syria in part by claiming that it is protecting holy sites important to Shiite Islam, particularly the Sayeda Zeinab shrine near Damascus, against groups like ISIS who seek to destroy them. The same argument has also been used by Iraqi Shiites militias and the elite Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps fighting in Syria.

The Lebanese official close to Hezbollah’s leadership, however, played down the withdrawal of Iraqi Shiite militias from Syria said. “Just as Hezbollah is prepared to fight Israel and reserve forces to fight Israel, it is prepared for Syria,” the official said. But he said Hezbollah is too occupied trying to defend against Sunni extremist groups in Syria and Lebanon to commit significant forces to Iraq.

Since last week, Hezbollah has increased security around its stronghold of Dahiyeh, a suburb of Beirut, out of concerns that ISIS gains in Iraq will inspire attacks in Lebanon, Lebanese security officials said.

Underscoring Hezbollah’s fears, ISIS recently published a map showing the group’s black flag over Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Kuwait. ISIS has been able to create a continuous state spanning Iraq and Syria with battlefield gains made over recent weeks.

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Founder of Islamic Army of Iraq promises to storm Baghdad if Maliki does not resign

International Business Times: A co-founder of the Islamic Army of Iraq, the Sunni group fighting alongside the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), has issued an ultimatum to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s regime that the insurgents will storm Baghdad if he does not resign.

“If Maliki does not step down, then there is no doubt that we are moving on Baghdad,” Sheikh Ahmed al-Dabash told the Daily Telegraph. “We will go all the way.”

Dabash, 47, said that the group does not share the extremist views of Isis but they have a common goal of overthrowing Maliki’s Shia government.

“We are here to fight any occupation, whether American or Iranian. We have a common enemy with Isis now, and for this we are fighting together,” he said.

Al-Dabash fought against the 2003 US invasion as part of a Sunni insurgency and went on to form the Islamic Army of Iraq to fight the Allied troops which made him a key US terrorist target.

“Maliki must first be deposed,” said the commander. “Then we demand the fragmentation of Iraq into three autonomous regions, with Sunnis, Shia and Kurds sharing resources equally. [Continue reading…]

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Ayatollah Sistani urges inclusive government in Iraq

The New York Times reports: Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a statement on Friday calling on Iraq’s diverse political parties to move quickly to form a government. He also again clarified that his call for volunteers to defend Iraq against extremist jihadis was not meant as a call to arms for Shiites, but for all Iraqis.

The statement, issued at Friday Prayer in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, was conveyed by Ahmed al-Safi, a leading Shiite cleric and the Sistani representative there.

Mr. Safi said that all political blocs should stick to the timing required in the Constitution to convene a new Parliament by July 2. In the past, government formations have often taken much longer. “The winning bloc should hold dialogue in order to form an effective government that enjoys wide national acceptance to correct the past mistakes and open new horizons for Iraqis for a better future,” Mr. Safi said.

The statement echoed the language used by opponents of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, calling for him to form a government that is accepted by Sunnis and Kurds. It was interpreted by some as an implicit criticism of Mr. Maliki’s government, but was no more strongly worded than previous statements from Ayatollah Sistani’s representatives. [Continue reading…]

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Israel accepts delivery of disputed Kurdish pipeline oil

Reuters reports: A tanker delivered a cargo of disputed crude oil from Iraqi Kurdistan’s new pipeline for the first time on Friday in Israel, despite threats by Baghdad to take legal action against any buyer.

The SCF Altai tanker arrived at Israel’s Ashkelon port early on Friday morning, ship tracking and industry sources said. By the evening, the tanker began unloading the Kurdish oil, a source at the port said.

The port authority at Ashkelon declined to comment.

Securing the first sale of oil from its independent pipeline is crucial for the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) as it seeks greater financial independence from war-torn Iraq.

But the new export route to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, designed to bypass Baghdad’s federal pipeline system, has created a bitter dispute over oil sale rights between the central government and the Kurds. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS controls site of Saddam’s chemical weapons facility

The Wall Street Journal reports: Sunni extremists in Iraq have occupied what was once Saddam Hussein’s premier chemical-weapons production facility, a complex that still contains a stockpile of old weapons, State Department and other U.S. government officials said.

U.S. officials don’t believe the Sunni militants will be able to create a functional chemical weapon from the material. The weapons stockpiled at the Al Muthanna complex are old, contaminated and hard to move, officials said.

Nonetheless, the capture of the chemical-weapon stockpile by the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, known as ISIS or ISIL, the militant group that is seizing territory in the country, has grabbed the attention of the U.S.

“We remain concerned about the seizure of any military site by the ISIL,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said in a written statement. “We do not believe that the complex contains CW materials of military value and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to safely move the materials.” [Continue reading…]

A 2007 CIA report concluded: “Two wars, sanctions and UNSCOM oversight reduced Iraqi’s premier production facility to a stockpile of old damaged and contaminated chemical munitions(sealed in bunkers), a wasteland full of destroyed chemical munitions, razed structures, and unusable war-ravaged facilities.”

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Chemical weapons use ‘systematic’ in Syria

AFP reports: Chemical weapons such as chlorine have likely been used in a “systematic manner” in Syria, according to a report by a team from the world’s watchdog investigating alleged attacks there.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mission said evidence “lends credence to the view that toxic chemicals, most likely pulmonary irritating agents such as chlorine, have been used in a systematic manner in a number of attacks,” according to a copy of the report obtained by AFP.

President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and rebels have both accused the other of using chemical agents, including chlorine, in the bloody uprising that began in March 2011 and in spite of Damascus promising to hand over all its chemical arms.

The OPCW team probing the allegations was attacked with a roadside bomb and gunfire on May 27, preventing them accessing the site of an alleged attack in the village of Kafr Zeyta.

“The attack on the team and the resulting denial of access prevents it from presenting definitive conclusions,” the report added.

Nevertheless, the allegations “cannot be dismissed as unconnected, random, or of a nature attributable to purely political motives,” the report said. [Continue reading…]

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In surprise vote, House backs NSA limits

The Hill reports: A proposal to block intelligence agencies from conducting warrantless and “backdoor” searches of U.S. communications passed in the House late Thursday night.

Adopted 293-123, with one member voting present, the amendment to the 2015 Defense appropriations bill would prohibit the search of government databases for information on U.S. citizens without a warrant. It would further cut off funding for the CIA and National Security Agency to build security vulnerabilities, or “backdoors,” into domestic tech products or services for surveillance purposes. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) was the only member to vote present.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the chief sponsor of the bipartisan amendment, said it would limit the controversial NSA spying.

“The American people are sick of being spied on,” Massie said. [Continue reading…]

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Despite the explosion in online analytics, marketers still don’t know what they’re doing

Pando reports: We’re in the second decade of the advertising and marketing revolution brought on by the Internet, one that has ripped the heart out of the print media industry. Digital content is targeted and responsive now, offering marketers detailed insight into who clicked, who read, and who shared.

Except the sad thing is, as evidenced by Contently’s The State of Content Marketing Measurement report, a survey of 302 marketers across April and May, is that no one really knows if the new information on offer makes any sense.

The statistics are staggering: 91 percent of marketers Contently spoke to had some level of uncertainty to whether the content performance analytics they used were a good gauge of business impact. [Continue reading…]

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The role the Baathists in Iraq’s Sunni insurgency

The New York Times reports: Meeting with the American ambassador some years ago in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki detailed what he believed was the latest threat of a coup orchestrated by former officers of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

“Don’t waste your time on this coup by the Baathists,” the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, chided him, dismissing his conspiracy theories as fantasy.

Now, though, with Iraq facing its gravest crisis in years, as Sunni insurgents have swept through northern and central Iraq, Mr. Maliki’s claims about Baathist plots have been at least partly vindicated. While fighters for the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, once an offshoot of Al Qaeda, have taken on the most prominent role in the new insurgency, they have done so in alliance with a deeply rooted network of former loyalists to Saddam Hussein.

The involvement of the Baathists helps explain why just a few thousand Islamic State in Iraq and Syria fighters, many of them fresh off the battlefields of Syria, have been able to capture so much territory so quickly. It sheds light on the complexity of the forces aligned against Baghdad in the conflict — not just the foreign-influenced group known as ISIS, but many homegrown groups, too. And with the Baathists’ deep social and cultural ties to many areas now under insurgent control, it stands as a warning of how hard it might be for the government to regain territory and restore order.

Many of the former regime loyalists, including intelligence officers and Republican Guard soldiers — commonly referred to as the “deep state” in the Arab world — belong to a group called the Men of the Army of the Naqshbandia Order, often referred to as J.R.T.N., the initials of its Arabic name. The group announced its establishment in 2007, not long after the execution of Mr. Hussein, and its putative leader, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was one of Mr. Hussein’s most trusted deputies and the highest-ranking figure of the old regime who avoided capture by the Americans.

Referring to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s fighters, Michael Knights, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has researched the Naqshbandia group, said, “They couldn’t have seized a fraction of what they did without coordinated alliances with other Sunni groups.” [Continue reading…]

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How Arab backers of the Syrian rebels see Iraq

Marc Lynch writes: As the Obama administration debates whether and how to intervene in Iraq’s rapidly unfolding crisis, many advocates of intervention have argued that action in Iraq should be matched by action in Syria. Should the United States actually intervene militarily in support of the Iraqi government, however, it should know that it will be on the opposite side of many of the Arab networks that support the Syrian uprising.

That’s not because they support the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has been in a state of open warfare with most other Syrian rebel groups. They just mostly don’t see ISIS as the primary issue. Many of the most vocal Arab backers of Syria’s rebels support what they cast as an Iraqi popular revolution against an Iranian-backed sectarian despot. They equate the Iraqi uprising with the Syrian uprising, as a Sunni revolution against a Shiite tyrant, and actively oppose U.S. or Arab intervention against it. For just one example, the Kuwaiti Islamist preacher Hajjaj al-Ajmi, who has been one of the most prominent fundraisers for Syrian insurgency groups, has urged repeatedly against supporting “the moves by America and Iran to confront the Iraqi revolution.”

That seems to be a popular view, at least among those sectors of the Arab public most invested in supporting the Syrian insurgency. [Continue reading…]

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Islamist group calls for Muslim states to protect Sunnis in Iraq

Reuters reports: Islamist scholars led by influential Qatar-based cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi urged Arab and Islamic states on Thursday to protect Sunni Muslims in Iraq, where sectarian war threatens after Sunni Islamist insurgents overran much of the country’s north.

Fighters from the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized a swathe of northern Iraqi towns last week in a southwards thrust towards Baghdad, stunning the country’s Shi’ite Muslim-led central government.

The United States is considering an Iraqi request to launch air strikes on ISIL and Iran’s president said on Wednesday his countrymen would not hesitate to defend Shi’ite shrines in Iraq.

Iraq’s energy-rich Gulf Arab neighbors, all Sunni monarchies, have condemned ISIL but blame the Baghdad government for the crisis by failing to share power with Iraq’s Sunni minority. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey opposes possible U.S. strikes on militants in Iraq

Today’s Zaman reports: Turkey objected to possible US air strikes on militant targets in Iraq on Thursday, a day after the US announced that the Iraqi government has officially asked for such attacks to help it deal with a mounting insurgency that now threatens Iraq’s territorial integrity.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said any air strike on Iraq could cause considerable civilian deaths and that the US does not view such a strategy as favorable.

In his remarks in Ankara, before departing for Vienna on Thursday, Erdoğan indicated that Turkey, which has seen 80 of its citizens held captive by the insurgents of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq more than a week ago, will not welcome an air attack on Iraq.

“America, looking at its stance and recent statements, does not view such attacks positively. Because the ISIL elements are mixed with the civilians there, such an operation could result in a serious number of civilian deaths,” Erdoğan said. [Continue reading…]

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Maliki or ISIS? Neither looks good to Sunni Awakening veterans

Christian Science Monitor reports: The last time the Al Qaeda franchise raised its head in Iraq, its brutal tactics convinced many fellow Sunnis to take them on.

Back then, fresh-faced Abu Omar was a local leader of the US-backed “Sons of Iraq,” trying to put a lid on Sunni militancy.

But today, as Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) advance across the country, he sits at home in a dark blue polo shirt playing with his children, unable to stop a storm that he says is threatening to engulf Iraq again.

ISIS is one problem. The group has posted videos it claims show it massacring Shiite Iraqi Army troops, while promising “justice” and basic services on its turf.

But the stunning ISIS advance is riding what some top Sunni politicians – echoed by local players like Abu Omar – say is a much wider “revolution” against the unabashedly Shiite-first policies of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. And this raises the specter of a return to sectarian bloodshed in Iraq.

“If no solution is found very soon, no one will be able to stop ISIS; they are getting very strong with tanks and equipment and manpower,” says Abu Omar, who asked that only this nickname be used.

He reckons that 60 to 70 percent of Iraq’s Sunnis “welcome that revolution” and have been “brainwashed” about the true violent nature of a group they support. “I am expecting worse than 2006-2007, if there is not a quick solution,” he says, adding that ISIS and other Sunni extremist cells are already in Baghdad.

“Rivers of blood will be in the street. The killing we will not be in the air [as rumors], but live,” he warns. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq’s Maliki: I won’t quit as condition of U.S. strikes against ISIS

The Guardian reports: A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has said he will not stand down as a condition of US air strikes against Sunni militants who have made a lightning advance across the country.

Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, on Wednesday made a public call on al-Arabiya television for the US to launch strikes, but Barack Obama has come under pressure from senior US politicians to persuade Maliki, a Shia Muslim who has pursued sectarian policies, to step down over what they see as failed leadership in the face of an insurgency.

Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, told a hearing on Wednesday that Maliki’s government “has got to go if you want any reconciliation”, and Republican John McCain called for the use of US air power but also urged Obama to “make very clear to Maliki that his time is up”. [Continue reading…]

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British embassy reopens in Tehran as Iraq crisis helps thaw Iran relations

The Guardian reports: William Hague has announced that the British embassy in Iran will be reopened as jihadist gains in northern Iraq have forced the west to reassess its relations with Tehran.

The foreign secretary said the circumstances were right to restore the diplomatic mission after a significant thawing in relations in recent months.

“Our two primary concerns when considering whether to reopen our embassy in Tehran have been assurance that our staff would be safe and secure, and confidence that they would be able to carry out their functions without hindrance,” Hague told MPs in a written statement. [Continue reading…]

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