Shadi Hamid talks about the significance of Jabhat al-Nusra releasing U.S. journalist Theo Curtis
The world’s failure to address the root causes of al Qaeda led to ISIS
Hassan Hassan writes: This past week was one of drawing parallels. Saudi Arabia’s top cleric condemned Isis’s behaviour, but authorities there have beheaded at least 19 convicts since 4 August. Many of those who condemned the summary execution of Isis rivals celebrated Hamas’s execution of 18 suspected informants. While the world’s attention was focused on Isis, a like-minded Shia militia attacked a Sunni mosque in the Iraqi province of Diyala on Friday, killing nearly 70 worshippers. This militia is linked to the government and has fought alongside the security forces against Isis.
The American defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, warned last Thursday that Isis is “beyond anything that we’ve seen before”. And yet the causes that led to the rise of Isis are all too familiar. And the Americans have contributed their share to these causes.
Isis thrive on the inconsistencies and injustices that plague the region. A response to Isis cannot involve, for example, working with a government-linked militia that indiscriminately kills worshippers, while rhetorically recognising that a credible and viable political process is necessary for Iraq. Nor does it involve flirting with the Assad regime to fight Isis after it killed or caused the death of close to 200,000 people. The battle against Isis, which itself came on the heels of failure to address the root causes of al-Qaida before it, has to be far-reaching and consistent. Otherwise, the defeat of Isis will only give way to an even more extreme and formidable force.
Iraq: On the frontline with the Shia fighters taking the war to ISIS
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports: The new Iraqi “border” is marked by a two-metre-high wall of earth. The berm, as it is known, cuts through farmland and orchards, separating the shrinking lands of the Iraqi state as it has existed for 95 years from the expanding territory of the new Islamic caliphate.
On the northern side, the black flags of Islamic State (Isis) shimmer in the afternoon haze. But on the Iraqi side it is not a national flag that flutters but a black Shia banner.
“This land is what separates good from evil,” says a Shia fighter, pointing at the no man’s land between the two forces. “Here you see the flag of Imam Hussein and there you see the black flags of Isis. This is the same history repeating itself,” he says, referring to ancient Sunni-Shia enmities that played out on these plains centuries ago.
When the Iraqi army capitulated in the face of the Isis onslaught earlier this summer, it was left to Shia militias to fill the void and check the Islamist progress towards Baghdad. Like the Kurds in the north, the Shias are emerging as a far more effective fighting unit to confront the Islamists, whose murderous recent activities have elevated them to global public enemy number one.
But relying on the Shias brings problems of its own. On Friday, Shia militiamen were blamed for killing 70 people at a Sunni mosque in Diyala. It is attacks like these that have persuaded large numbers of ordinary Sunnis who live in the vast spaces between Baghdad and Damascus to side with Isis. [Continue reading…]
Can ISIS govern?
The Economist’s Pomegranite blog: In between chopping off the heads of its adversaries, crucifying miscreants and committing acts of genocide, the Islamic State (IS), the al-Qaeda-minded extremist group that straddles Iraq and Syria and is being targeted by American airstrikes, is dealing with more mundane issues — such as the school curriculum.
This month, August, IS called in teachers in Raqqa province in eastern Syria and set out new conditions for them to receive their salaries, says the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based group that has a network of informants in Syria. IS told the teachers to dedicate more hours to Islamic studies, as well as dropping subjects including philosophy and chemistry. The prompt for the rules appears to be that the government in Damascus has pulled the plug on the education budget of the region, 18 months after it was taken over by rebels opposed to Bashar Assad, Syria’s president.
The evolution of IS from insurgent group to a self-declared state straddling much of the Euphrates valley would not have been possible without careful financial and administrative management, alongside effective military tactics, exploitation of social media and an uncompromising ideology. The group operated a lucrative protection racket in Mosul, Iraq’s second city, long before it took it over on June 10th with the help of allied Sunnis disgruntled with the government in Baghdad. The funds helped to finance IS’s expansion into Syria in 2013.
IS may also have tapped into the pool of funds from Gulf Arab donors to Salafist and jihadist groups in Syria, but its Iraqi revenue streams gave it an edge over its rivals. The group’s takeover of the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor has given it access to a cluster of oilfields in that area that used to be operated by Shell and Total, Western energy companies, allowing it to sell oil, some allegedly to the regime in Damascus. Additional revenue comes from taxing farmers in both Syria and Iraq, and from various forms of extortion in the towns it controls, including levying jizya (tax) on Christians.
IS’s mission is to create its own caliphate, but until now many of its sources of revenue have depended on its host states. In Iraq, the money that IS extorted from contractors, businesses and institutions ultimately derived from the expenditure of the central government in Baghdad. In both countries, IS’s “subjects” include thousands of employees of the respective central governments, who are still drawing their salaries from the government and carrying out their functions. [Continue reading…]
Hundreds dead as ISIS seizes Syrian air base
Reuters reports: Islamic State militants stormed an air base in northeast Syria on Sunday, capturing it from government forces after days of fighting that cost more than 500 lives, a monitoring group said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 346 Islamic State fighters were killed and more than 170 members of government forces had died since Tuesday in the fight over Tabqa base, making it one of the deadliest confrontations between the two groups since the start of Syria’s war.
The Observatory, which monitors violence in Syria through sources on the ground, said fighting raged inside the air base on Sunday. It was the Syrian army’s last foothold in an area otherwise controlled by Islamic State, which has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq.
In nearby Raqqa city, an Islamic State stronghold, there was celebratory gunfire and several mosques announced through their loudspeakers that the base had fallen to the Islamists and cheered “God is greatest”, a witness told Reuters.
IS fighters displayed the severed heads of Syrian army soldiers in the city square, the witness said, adding that Syrian warplanes were heard over Raqqa following the air base attack. Earlier on Sunday the Syrian air force had bombed areas around the base.
Syrian state television said that after fierce battles, the military was “regrouping”. [Continue reading…]
Syria warns against strikes on territory outside its control
The Washington Post reports: Syria warned the United States on Monday not to extend its air war against radical Islamist militants into Syria, saying that it would regard any attempt to do so as an act of “aggression.”
The warning came a day after fighters with the Islamic State group overran another important Syrian military facility, putting them in full control of the north-central province of Raqqah. American photojournalist James Foley was held for much of his captivity in the province before he was beheaded last week by a masked Islamic State guard with a British accent.
Raqqah is also the site of a failed rescue attempt earlier this summer in which Delta Force commandos sought to snatch Foley and a group of other Americans held by the Islamic State from a prison east of the city of Raqqah, according to U.S. officials and witnesses in the area.
U.S. officials have not ruled out extending the airstrikes launched in Iraq earlier this month into Syria, where the Islamic State has been battling the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
On Monday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem signaled that Damascus would not be prepared to tolerate unilateral action against the extremists even in the parts of the country that the government no longer controls. [Continue reading…]
Iraq urges global action against Islamic State, Iran vows solidarity
Reuters reports: Iraq’s Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi said on Sunday during talks with Iran’s foreign minister that international efforts would be necessary to destroy Islamic State Sunni militants who have seized swathes of his country and of Syria.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran, a Shi’ite Muslim regional power likely to wield influence over the formation of Abadi’s new cabinet, reaffirmed Tehran’s support for Iraq’s territorial unity and its fight against militants.
“Abadi pointed to the presence of many dangers posed in the region as a result of the existence of the terrorist gang Islamic State which requires regional and international efforts to exterminate this terrorist organization,” his office said in a statement after the talks with Zarif. [Continue reading…]
Teenager describes being used as a human shield by Israeli soldiers
The New York Times reports: A Palestinian teenager says that Israeli soldiers detained him for five days last month, forcing him to sleep blindfolded and handcuffed in his underwear and to search and dig for tunnels in Khuza’a, his village near Gaza’s eastern border, which was all but destroyed in the fighting.
The teenager, Ahmed Jamal Abu Raida, said the soldiers assumed he was connected to Hamas, the militant Islamist group that dominates Gaza, insulted him and Allah and threatened to sic a dog on him.
“My life was in danger,” Ahmed, 17, said in one of two lengthy interviews on Thursday and Friday. As soldiers made him walk in front of them through the neighborhood and check houses for tunnels, he added, “In every second, I was going to the unknown.”
His assertions, of actions that would violate both international law and a 2005 Israeli Supreme Court ruling, could not be independently corroborated; Ahmed’s father, Jamal Abu Raida, who held a senior position in Gaza’s Tourism Ministry under the Hamas-controlled government, said the family forgot to take photographs documenting any abuse in its happiness over the youth’s return, and disposed of the clothing he was given upon his release. The case was publicized Thursday by Defense for Children International-Palestine, an organization whose reports on abuses of Palestinian youths in West Bank military jails have been challenged by the Israeli authorities.
The Israeli military confirmed that troops had suspected Ahmed of being a militant and detained him during their ground operation in Gaza, noting his father’s affiliation with Hamas. A military spokesman promised several times to provide more details, but ultimately did not deal with the substance of the allegations, saying they had “been referred to the appropriate authorities for examination.”
A military statement also challenged the credibility of D.C.I.-Palestine, which accused the Israeli military of using Ahmed as a human shield by coercing him to engage in military actions. Throughout the current conflict, Israel has argued that Hamas uses Gaza residents as human shields by conducting militant activity in crowded public places.
“D.C.I.-Palestine’s report represents a perverse inversion of a truth in which Hamas persistently engages in the use of human shields, while the I.D.F.’s code of conduct rejects, in absolute terms, such behavior,” the military statement said, using the abbreviation for the Israel Defense Forces.
Israeli soldiers could not have used human shields because they are all good boys who follow the rules.
What kind of imbecile in the IDF sees fit to present this line of reasoning? Israeli arrogance, in its contempt for the intelligence of others, is itself a form of idiocy.
In 2010, Haaretz reported:
The southern command military court convicted two Israeli soldiers on Sunday of using human shields during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, in the winter of 2008-2009.
The soldiers were convicted of offenses including inappropriate behavior and overstepping authority for ordering an 11-year-old Palestinian to search bags suspected to have been booby trapped.
The conviction is the first such conviction for what is termed in the Israel Defense Forces “neighbor procedure” – the use of human shields during searches and pursuits, which has been outlawed.
Note: this was the first conviction — not the first occurrence.
Moreover, when the report notes that the use of human shields has been outlawed, this alludes to two facts:
1. That the use of human shields was standard practice in the IDF, and
2. that even after Israel’s high court ruled that the use of human shields was illegal, the IDF tried to get the ruling overturned.
The fact that the IDF failed in that effort, does not infer that individual soldiers stopped viewing the use of human shields as serving their interests — merely that those engaging in this practice would understand that they would need to take greater effort to avoid getting caught.
Aviva Chomsky: What’s at stake in the border debate
The militarization of the police has been underway since 9/11, but only in the aftermath of the six-shot killing of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, with photos of streets in a St. Louis suburb that looked like occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, has the fact of it, the shock of it, seemed to hit home widely. Congressional representatives are now proposing bills to stop the Pentagon from giving the latest in war equipment to local police forces. The president even interrupted his golfing vacation on Martha’s Vineyard to return to Washington, in part for “briefings” on the ongoing crisis in Ferguson. So militarization is finally a major story.
And that’s no small thing. On the other hand, the news from Ferguson can’t begin to catch the full process of militarization this society has been undergoing or the way America’s distant wars are coming home. We have, at least, a fine book by Radley Balko on how the police have been militarized. Unfortunately, on the subject of the militarization of the country, there is none. And yet from armed soldiers in railway stations to the mass surveillance of Americans, from the endless celebration of our “warriors” to the domestic use of drones, this country has been undergoing a significant process of militarization (and, if there were such a word, national securitization).
Perhaps nowhere has this been truer than on America’s borders and on the subject of immigration. It’s no longer “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The U.S. is in the process of becoming a citadel nation with up-armored, locked-down borders and a Border Patrol operating in a “Constitution-free zone” deep into the country. The news is regularly filled with discussions of the need to “bolster border security” in ways that would have been unimaginable to previous generations. In the meantime, the Border Patrol is producing its own set of Ferguson-style killings as, like SWAT teams around the U.S., it adopts an ever more militarized mindset and the weaponry to go with it. As James Tomsheck, the former head of internal affairs for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, put it recently, “It has been suggested by Border Patrol leadership that they are the Marine Corps of the U.S. law enforcement community. The Border Patrol has a self-identity of a paramilitary border security force and not that of a law enforcement organization.”
It’s in this context that the emotional flare-up over undocumented Central American children crossing the southern border by the thousands took place. In fact, without the process of militarization, that “debate” — with its discussion of “invasions,” “surges,” “terrorists,” and “tip of the spear” solutions — makes no sense. Its language was far more appropriate to the invasion and occupation of Iraq than the arrival in this country of desperate kids, fleeing hellish conditions, and often looking for their parents.
Aviva Chomsky is the author of a new history of just how the words “immigration” and “illegal” became wedded — it wasn’t talked about that way not so many decades ago — and how immigrants became demonized in ways that are familiar in American history. The Los Angeles Times has hailed Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal for adding “smart, new, and provocative scholarship to the immigration debate.” As in her book, so today at TomDispatch, Chomsky puts the most recent version of the immigration “debate” into a larger context, revealing just what we prefer not to see in our increasingly up-armored nation. Tom Engelhardt
America’s continuing border crisis
The real story behind the “invasion” of the children
By Aviva ChomskyCall it irony or call it a nightmare, but the “crisis” of Central American children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, which lasted for months amid fervent and angry debate, is now fading from the news. The media stories have been legion, the words expended many. And yet, as the “crisis” leaves town, as the sound and fury die down and attention shifts elsewhere (even though the children continue to arrive), the real factors that would have made sense of what’s been happening remain essentially untouched and largely unmentioned. It couldn’t be stranger — or sadder.
Since late June 2014, the “surge” of those thousands of desperate children entering this country has been in the news. Sensational stories were followed by fervent demonstrations and counter-demonstrations with emotions running high. And it’s not a debate that stayed near the southern border either. In my home state, Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick tearfully offered to detain some of the children — and that was somehow turned into a humanitarian gesture that liberals applauded and anti-immigrant activists decried. Meanwhile the mayor of Lynn, a city north of Boston, echoed nativists on the border, announcing that her town didn’t want any more immigrants. The months of this sort of emotion, partisanship, and one-upmanship have, however, diverted attention from the real issues. As so often is the case, there is so much more to the story than what we’ve been hearing in the news.
Why do laughter, smiles and tears look so similar?
Michael Graziano writes: About four thousand years ago, somewhere in the Middle East — we don’t know where or when, exactly — a scribe drew a picture of an ox head. The picture was rather simple: just a face with two horns on top. It was used as part of an abjad, a set of characters that represent the consonants in a language. Over thousands of years, that ox-head icon gradually changed as it found its way into many different abjads and alphabets. It became more angular, then rotated to its side. Finally it turned upside down entirely, so that it was resting on its horns. Today it no longer represents an ox head or even a consonant. We know it as the capital letter A.
The moral of this story is that symbols evolve.
Long before written symbols, even before spoken language, our ancestors communicated by gesture. Even now, a lot of what we communicate to each other is non-verbal, partly hidden beneath the surface of awareness. We smile, laugh, cry, cringe, stand tall, shrug. These behaviours are natural, but they are also symbolic. Some of them, indeed, are pretty bizarre when you think about them. Why do we expose our teeth to express friendliness? Why do we leak lubricant from our eyes to communicate a need for help? Why do we laugh?
One of the first scientists to think about these questions was Charles Darwin. In his 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin observed that all people express their feelings in more or less the same ways. He argued that we probably evolved these gestures from precursor actions in ancestral animals. A modern champion of the same idea is Paul Ekman, the American psychologist. Ekman categorised a basic set of human facial expressions — happy, frightened, disgusted, and so on — and found that they were the same across widely different cultures. People from tribal Papua New Guinea make the same smiles and frowns as people from the industrialised USA.
Our emotional expressions seem to be inborn, in other words: they are part of our evolutionary heritage. And yet their etymology, if I can put it that way, remains a mystery. Can we trace these social signals back to their evolutionary root, to some original behaviour of our ancestors? To explain them fully, we would have to follow the trail back until we left the symbolic realm altogether, until we came face to face with something that had nothing to do with communication. We would have to find the ox head in the letter A.
I think we can do that. [Continue reading…]
Music: Pat Metheny & The Metropole Orkest — ‘Into the Dream/So May it Secretly Begin’
The Metropole Orkest (or Metropole Orchestra), a jazz and pop orchestra based in the Netherlands, is the largest full-time ensemble of its kind in the world. Pat Metheny plays the 42-string Pikasso Guitar.
ISIS now appears to have grabbed SA-24 state-of-the-art antiaircraft missiles
#Syria #Raqqa #IslamicState seized manpads (portable anti aircraft missiles) from #Tabqa airbase pic.twitter.com/PytDn7pTyS
— Mark (@markito0171) August 24, 2014
The photo above allegedly shows an ISIS fighter inside the newly captured Tabqa military airbase outside Raqa in Syria. He appears to be holding a Russian SA-24 manpad (man-portable air defense system) containing a missile. This is a state-of-the-art antiaircraft missile system — not a leftover from the Soviet era.
C.J. Chivers writes:
It can be fired effectively at aircraft head-on, from the side, or from the rear, and has features to overcome the countermeasures on modern military aircraft designed to confuse and thwart heat-seeking missiles. It also has a longer range, a proximity fuse and a larger warhead. It is, in short, one of the graver threats in the manpads class.
In their rush to evacuate the air base, the Syrian air force also appears to have left lots of fighter aircraft behind.
No doubt it’s widely assumed that ISIS does not possess trained pilots in its ranks, but at this point we should probably stop making assumptions.
The leader of ISIS is ‘a classic maneuver warrior’
NPR recently talked to retired U.S. Marine Col. Gary Anderson about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or Caliph Ibrahim as the leader of the self-anointed Islamic State prefers to be known.
Gary Anderson writes: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is not a formally trained military commander. However, he is not illiterate or a common thug such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who led al Qaeda in Iraq until his death in 2006. Al-Baghdadi holds a doctorate in theology from a theological seminary and appears to be a keen student of American tactics as they were passed on to the Iraqi Army, as well as the military practices of his Syrian Baathist opponents. Whether he is a military prodigy or merely a very talented student and practitioner of military art is irrelevant. To date, he has shown himself to be a very effective commander.
Like the prophet Mohammed from whom he claims descent, al-Baghdadi sees himself as a soldier-Imam and recognizes no difference between fighting, governing, and religion. This allows him to flow seamlessly between mediums. If we write him off as a mere terrorist, we make the mistake of underestimating him. He is generally considered to be a crackpot by serious Islamic scholars, but he controls a tract of land that includes most of al-Anbar province, much of eastern Syria, and Iraq’s second largest city; that makes him a serious player in the region. However, we should also beware of making him out to be ten feet tall. If we are going to deal with him, we need to understand how he fights and governs as well as his strengths and weaknesses.
There is both military art and science behind al-Baghdadi’s recent successes. His approach is different from western military leadership practices, but it is not unique in history. He seems to have borrowed some elements of the warfighting styles of the Prophet Mohammed and Genghis Khan as well as the some political-strategic approaches of Lenin and Hitler. Whether these were adopted from a study of history or the serendipitous outcome of pure talent is somewhat irrelevant. To date, al-Baghdadi has achieved significant results. We can’t fully understand his thought process but we can study his methods and the principles he employs.
Like the forces of Genghis Khan, al-Baghdadi’s army consists of a small group of professionals; they are largely comprised of veteran foreign fighters. To enhance unit cohesion, al-Baghdadi appears to keep them in national units. This also helps internal communication as the chance of confusion due to dialects is reduced by keeping countrymen together.
Al-Baghdadi has surrounded himself with loyal, battle hardened sub-commanders who he trusts enough to send on independent missions. This reliance on commanders empowered to make decisions based on the intent of the overall commander allows agility unheard of in Damascus and Baghdad where commanders are judged more on perceived loyalty to the leader than on competence. This is a great tactical advantage for the self-proclaimed Caliph.
The army of the newly proclaimed Caliphate is well versed in the theory and practice of maneuver warfare. Maneuver Warfare is not just about movement. It is about putting of all of your force’s effects where they will do the most damage to the enemy. Al-Baghdadi has proven adept at the key tenants of maneuver warfare:
Avoiding Surfaces and Exploiting Gaps. Al-Baghdadi understands the concept of striking the enemy where he is weak and avoiding his foes’ strengths; this is true of physical military capability as well as the exploitation of enemy moral weaknesses. He exploits reconnaissance and intelligence to gauge whether an operation is doable. In Mosul, al-Baghdadi judged Iraqi army leadership to be rotten to the core and was able to take the city with a main force of about 800 men routing thousands of Iraqi government security forces after their leaders fled. However, when Iraqi government commandos provided steadfast resistance at the Baji oil fields, al-Baghdadi’s commander on the scene recognized a surface and moved on to softer targets.
Attack the Enemy’s Moral Cohesion. Through the selective use of terror, al-Baghdadi has gotten inside the opponent’s decision cycle. Iraqi government commanders in Baghdad found themselves issuing orders to subordinate leaders who have left the field. Junior soldiers woke up to see their commanders boarding mini-busses and panicked fearing the fate of fellow soldiers who had previously surrendered only to be massacred. This deliberate use of terror is selective as was the case with Genghis Khan. He massacred the populations of the first cities of any region that he attacked, and the word got around that resistance was futile. The great Khan conquered many cities, but based on his reputation, he had to lay siege to very few.
Employ Useful Idiots as Fifth Columns and Auxiliaries. Here, al-Baghdadi has skilfully used tactics that he may well have learned from reading about Hitler and Lenin; like them, he has used Sunni unhappiness with the Shiite/Alawite governments in Baghdad and Damascus respectfully to create alliances of convenience that swell his ranks, provide intelligence, and potentially incite local uprisings that force government foes to be looking for potential enemies in all directions.
Recent interviews with Sunni sheikhs and former Baathist officials fighting alongside Baghdadi’s forces indicate that they think they can control al-Baghdadi in the end. This sounds frighteningly similar to comments by German conservatives about Hitler in the early 1930s and Russian liberals about Lenin in the immediate aftermath of the 1917 revolution. Once the usefulness of these partners had diminished and the two dictators consolidated power; many of the collaborators found themselves in concentration camps, in front of firing squads, or on the wrong end of a rope.
We Americans have had an obsession with destroying jihadist leadership cadres. In many cases, we have merely culled out older leadership only to see it replaced with more ambitious and competent leaders. That raises the question of how indispensable al-Baghdadi is to his movement. Mohammed’s death slowed jihadist momentum for years while his successors fought for power, and the Sunni-Shiite split still divides Islam today. The possibility of al-Baghdadi’s jihad imploding is one potential outcome if we are successful in eliminating him. Jihads have a bad tendency to turn inward on themselves and this one seems already to be doing so with the Zawahiri-Baghdadi split. An intramural fight for control among Baghdadi’s would-be successors would undoubtedly weaken the movement. But there is another scenario.
The Genghis Khan model is another potential outcome. Like the great Khan, Baghdadi has stressed initiative and independent action among his subordinates. If he designates a successor, the potential for internal conflict may be lessened. When Genghis died, there was a reasonably smooth succession; and the Mongol Hordes rumbled on. [Continue reading…]
ISIS advances towards the borders of Turkey as West considers options
The Guardian reports: Islamic State extremists are pushing to secure the border between Turkey and north-western Syria as the main gateway for recruits to join the caliphate they have imposed across much of eastern Syria and western Iraq.
Large numbers of jihadists from Islamic State (formerly Isis) are moving this weekend towards the Turkish border area, about 60 miles north of Aleppo, in columns of armoured trucks that they looted from abandoned Iraqi military bases. The area is now one of the most active front lines in the group’s attempt to redraw the borders of the Levant, a campaign that will have huge ramifications for Turkey.
Residents and Syrian opposition militants in the town of Marea, close to the Turkish border, on Saturday said that Isis had advanced to within sight of the town and had sent envoys to negotiate access.
Turkey Syria“They could storm in like the Mongols, if they wanted to,” said a fighter from Syrian rebel group Islamic Front. “But they’re trying to be nice. We have dealt with them before. There is no reconciling with them. We will have to fight.”
The Syrian opposition fought a bitter and costly war with Isis in the same area in January, ousting them from ground they had used as a rallying point for foreign fighters and for a successful push into Iraq. The six-week battle cost the lives of more than 2,500 opposition fighters and allowed the Syrian regime, together with its proxies, to slowly encircle Aleppo from the north-west, a move which is likely to prove decisive in the Syrian civil war.
Since that battle, the flow of foreign fighters from across the Turkish border to Isis has slowed. Isis now wants to reverse that, making it easier for anyone who wants to join them to cross a 130-mile strip of the frontier that has been used by the vast majority of foreign fighters, including British and European jihadists. [Continue reading…]
ISIS seizes military air base cementing its control over Raqa province in Syria
AFP reports: Jihadists from the Islamic State group have seized the Tabqa military airport, the last remaining Syrian army base in northern Raqa province, a monitoring group and state media said Sunday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were still clashes taking place on the outskirts of the airport, but that it was under control of the militants.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the bodies of “dozens” of Syrian troops killed in the battle for the airport were still inside the facility.
Syrian state television, meanwhile, said troops had staged an “evacuation” of the airport after heavy fighting.
“After heavy fighting by the forces defending the Tabqa airport, our forces implemented a regrouping operation after the evacuation of the airport,” state television said in a breaking news alert.
It added that troops were launching “precision strikes” against “terrorist groups” in the area, inflicting heavy losses.
The capture came after IS fighters launched a fourth assault on Tabqa overnight, in a bid to cement their control over Raqa province. [Continue reading…]
ISIS allegedly tipped off to U.S. operation to free Foley from Antakya
Today’s Zaman: A secret planned United States military operation in Syria this summer to save US journalist James Foley before he was beheaded by the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was ultimately unsuccessful because ISIL was tipped off about the plan when its members saw Americans asking about the hostages in the province of Antakya, in Turkey.
A Syrian source close to ISIL, which is also knows as the “Islamic State,” told Reuters that the ISIL militants learned about the operation after Americans were desperately looking for their hostages or any information about the. The source, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, said: “They [Americans] met people in Antakya and asked questions. Afterwards, the operation became expected. The state [ISIL] anticipated the operation and took precautions. They expected it and that is why they probably changed the location of the hostages.” [Continue reading…]
U.S. has called Israel’s use of Hellfire missiles ‘disgraceful’ yet new supplies will not be delayed
The Washington Post reports: An Israeli missile attack that killed 10 civilians sheltering in a U.N. school here early this month prompted a call for restraint from the U.S. government over what the State Department described as a “disgraceful’’ act.
Yet what Israel used in that Aug. 3 strike, according to the United Nations, was a Hellfire missile — a U.S.-made weapon. The incident was one of many in the ongoing six-week-old war in the Gaza Strip in which weapons sold to Israel by the United States and some European nations have played a prominent role.
In the fighting between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas, the Palestinian death toll now tops 1,900, with nearly three-fourths of the dead being civilians, according to the United Nations.
Of the arms suppliers that have criticized Israel for those civilian deaths, Spain and Britain have announced plans to suspend or review their exports of arms and military-related equipment to Israel. President Obama has offered similar criticism, but U.S. officials also said in recent days that a new transfer of Hellfires will not be delayed. [Continue reading…]
Hamas opposes the killing of civilians, says Meshaal
In an interview with Yahoo News, the political leader of Hamas on Friday vigorously rejected any comparison to ISIL terrorists and pledged that the Palestinian militant group will start giving warnings to Israelis about impending rocket attacks in order to avoid the killing of innocent civilians.
As much of the world expressed revulsion over the beheading of American journalist James Foley by an ISIL executioner, Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal took pains to distance his organization from the Islamist militant group that has conducted a murderous rampage across a large swath of Syria and Iraq.
“This is an opportunity for me to say we are against the killing of any civilians, any journalists,” Meshaal said in the interview. But he then turned the accusation against Israel. “The question is who is killing the civilians,” he said, asserting that more than 15 journalists have been killed during the Israeli assault on Gaza. [Continue reading…]