Showing posts with label War. Show all posts

Saturday 4 October 2014

Obama envoy sees long road ahead in war with Islamic State

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(Reuters) - The U.S. envoy charged by President Barack Obama with building a coalition to fight the militant group Islamic State warned on Friday that the war against the jihadists was in its early stages.

"The fight will not be easy. There will be ebb and flow on the battlefield," retired General John Allen told reporters during a visit to Baghdad. "This will take time and requires patience."

The Islamic State has seized large chunks of territory in Iraq since June, when the Iraqi military collapsed as the militants took northern Iraq's biggest city, Mosul, and then charged through the Tigris River valley.

The jihadists also control much of eastern Syria, which is embroiled in a three-year-old civil war, and have erased much of the border between the neighboring countries as it pursues its goal of creating a caliphate.

Allen cautioned that launching a campaign to take Mosul was not on the immediate horizon.

"It will kick off within a year. I can't be more specific. It's not a single battle. It's a campaign," Allen said.

Allen also described the Iraqi government's hopes to woo Sunni tribes to fight Islamic State as in its early stages.

"There is no cookie-cutter approach to the tribes. Each one has to be taken separately," he said.

"How that ultimately plays out in terms of what they can harvest from a relationship with the tribes I think is going to unfold over time."

Allen, mindful of deep suspicion among Iraq's Shi'ite majority of the United States' intent nearly three years after the U.S. withdrew its troops from the county, reiterated Obama's message that no U.S. combat troops would be sent to Iraq.

"We must build Iraqi capacity to take on the fight. This is why the United States will not send combat troops to Iraq, but instead will continue our support for Iraqi security forces through military advisers training and capacity building," he said.

Allen, a former military commander in Anbar province in 2007, is expected to visit Belgium, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey on this trip.

Accompanied by his deputy, Brett McGurk, he arrived in Iraq on Thursday to meet Iraqi officials and regional leaders "on U.S. support for and cooperation with Iraq in the fight against ISIL," the State Department said.

U.S. officials have said Allen's main purpose is to develop greater support for the coalition, which has conducted air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria.

Monday 29 September 2014

U.S. may keep secret prisoners in custody after Afghan war exit

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(Reuters) - The fate of a group of prisoners held in near-total secrecy by U.S. forces at a prison in Afghanistan is hanging in limbo, the facility's commander said, as Washington gropes for options after its legal right to hold them there expires in December.

The inmates - all foreign nationals captured on battlefields around the world - could be transferred to the U.S. court system or, as a last resort, to the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, Brigadier General Patrick J. Reinert told Reuters.

The quandary over what to do with the detainees held in a prison near Bagram airfield, north of Kabul, has rekindled the outrage over the U.S. policy of rendition in the early phases of the Afghan war.

In the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, suspected militants were abducted and held in secret prisons worldwide without charge or evidence.

The United State abandoned that policy under President Barack Obama, but the detention of those being held near Bagram is a reminder that the issue has not been concluded.

"We've got to resolve their fate by either returning them to their home country or turning them over to the Afghans for prosecution or any other number of ways that the Department of Defense has to resolve," Reinert told Reuters.

Almost nothing is known of the detainees' identities. The United States has declined to disclose their nationalities, where they were captured and how many are still in its custody.

Their status is increasingly urgent because the United States will lose the right to hold prisoners in Afghanistan after the 2014 end of mission for the U.S.-led force there.

Most of the prisoners are Pakistani, according to the human rights group Justice Project Pakistan. Some are from Yemen, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The inmates remained in U.S. custody after the prison on the outskirts of the U.S. military's Bagram base handed its Afghan detainees over to Afghan control last year.

DILEMMA

The United States wants to repatriate the detainees to their home countries, Reinert said, but that might not be possible because Washington has not received assurances they will not prosecuted at home or kept in humane conditions.

"Until the country provides assurances, the individual cannot be transferred," he said. He declined to say how many were held at the prison.

There were about 50 foreign nationals there last year when it was transferred to Afghan control, U.S. officials said at the time, but some have since been repatriated.

One possible solution could be to transfer them to the United States, where they could be prosecuted.

"If someone has committed a crime overseas that could be a crime also in the United States, a detainee could be transferred back to the United States," Reinert said.

They could also end up in Guantanamo Bay, although this was less likely because of pressure to close the facility, he said.

Obama's 2008 vow to close the prison in Cuba has gone unfulfilled, and there are 155 detainees still held there because they are either considered too dangerous to release or the United States cannot find another country to take them.

The possibility of the Bagram detainees' remaining in U.S. custody has alarmed rights groups.

"It would be an absolute nightmare if that happened ... We don't even know who they are ... Our effort is to ensure all Pakistanis are back before the end of December," said Maryam Haq, a lawyer with the Justice Project Pakistan.

The United States last week quietly repatriated 14 Pakistani detainees from the facility because there was no real evidence to keep them in prison. Other Pakistanis repatriated in the past had been held for a decade without charge, Haq said.

The United States had long resisted handing over the prison over concerns "dangerous" prisoners would be set free by the Afghan authorities and had earlier strongly objected to Afghanistan's release of about 65 prisoners.

Wednesday 24 September 2014

Britain close to joining U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State

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(Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron may announce as early as this week that Britain is ready to join air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and that he plans to seek parliament's approval for such action, government sources said on Tuesday.

Cameron is due to set out his position in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Wednesday night at which he will call on the world to unite to destroy Islamic State (IS)militants, whom he has warned are planning to attack Britain.

The decision to strike in Iraq would be at Baghdad's request. Cameron is due to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Wednesday. Sources in Cameron's office expect him to request British air strikes against IS during the meeting.

Cameron has not yet decided whether Britain would take part in strikes against IS targets in Syria because of legal issues, one source familiar with the matter said, and any announcement on Iraq would be to join strikes in principle and would not herald immediate action.

"This is a fight you cannot opt out of," Cameron told NBC News in an interview on Tuesday. "These people want to kill us. They've got us in their sights and we have to put together this coalition ... to make sure that we ultimately destroy this evil organisation."

Earlier, the British leader's office said he supported air strikes by the United States and allies on IS targets in Syria. He has previously said he supports similar U.S. action in Iraq.

"The prime minister will be holding talks at the United Nations in New York over the next two days on what more the UK and others can do to contribute to international efforts to tackle the threat we all face from (Islamic State)," his office said in a statement.

"The UK is already offering significant military support, including supplying arms to the Kurds as well as surveillance operations by a squadron of Tornadoes and other RAF aircraft."

Britain was quick to join U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq a decade ago. But a war-weary public and parliament's rejection last year of air strikes on Syria have made Cameron wary.

He also had to prioritise Scotland's independence referendum last Thursday over possible action.

Cameron would need to recall parliament, which is in recess, to put proposed air strikes to a vote. That could happen as early as this Friday after Cameron discusses the matter with his Cabinet or might occur next week.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told the Spectator magazine he hoped parliament would support the plan.

“I hope Parliament now will have the courage shown by our armed forces already, (and) will have the mental strength ... to take on this challenge, but we’ll see,” said Fallon.

Politicians in the opposition Labour party, which voted against strikes on Syria last year, have suggested they would support action this time.

"If Mr Cameron comes to the Labour opposition and there is a clear proposition, then I think he will get a fair wind," Jack Straw, a senior Labour lawmaker, said on Tuesday.

"Legally it is very straightforward as far as Iraq is concerned, because this is at the request of the sovereign government so there's no issue of legality," Straw told BBC radio, saying strikes on Syria would be legally trickier.

Douglas Alexander, Labour's foreign affairs spokesman, said his party backed U.S. and Arab strikes, but sources close to the party said it would only definitively make up its mind when it saw the text of a resolution from Cameron.

Alexander and Straw were in the northern English city of Manchester at Labour's political conference.

"Both the prime minister and the president (Barack Obama) are due in the United Nations this week, so we are now urging that a resolution (on military action) be brought to the Security Council of the United Nations," Alexander said.

A few months ago, the British government was not actively considering air strikes. But the beheading of a British aid worker by an IS militant with a British accent has highlighted the danger the group poses to Britain's domestic security.

Tuesday 23 September 2014

U.S., backed by Arabs, launches first strikes on fighters in Syria

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(Reuters) - The United States and Arab allies bombed Syria for the first time on Tuesday, killing dozens of Islamic State fighters and members of a separate al Qaeda-linked group, pursuing a campaign against militants into a war at the heart of the Middle East.

"I can confirm that U.S. military and partner nation forces are undertaking military action against (Islamic State) terrorists in Syria using a mix of fighter, bomber and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles," Rear Admiral John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement.

U.S. Central Command said Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates participated in or supported the strikes against Islamic State targets around the eastern cities of Raqqa, Deir al-Zor, Hasakah and Albu Kamal.

Targets included "fighters, training compounds, headquarters and command and control facilities, storage facilities, a finance center, supply trucks and armed vehicles," it said.

Separately, U.S. forces acting alone launched strikes in another area of Syria against an al Qaeda-linked group, the Nusra Front, to "disrupt imminent attack" against U.S. and Western interests by "seasoned al Qaeda veterans", CentCom said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria, said at least 20 Islamic State fighters were killed in strikes that hit at least 50 targets in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor provinces in Syria's east.

It said strikes targeting the Nusra Front in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib had killed at least 50 fighters and eight civilians. The Nusra Front is al Qaeda's official Syrian wing and Islamic State's rival. The Observatory said most of the fighters killed there were not Syrians.

The air attacks fulfill President Barack Obama's pledge to strike in Syria against Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim group that has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq, imposing a mediaeval interpretation of Islam, slaughtering prisoners and ordering Shi'ites and non-Muslims to convert or die.

Islamic State vowed revenge.

"These attacks will be answered," an Islamic State fighter told Reuters by Skype from Syria, blaming the "sons of Saloul" - a derogatory term for Saudi Arabia's ruling family - for allowing the strikes to take place.

The Sunni fighters, who have proclaimed a caliphate ruling over all Muslims, shook the Middle East by sweeping through northern Iraq in June. They then alarmed the West in recent weeks by beheading two U.S. journalists and a British aid worker, raising fears that they could attack Western countries.

The strikes took place hours before Obama goes to the U.N. General Assembly in New York where he will try to rally more nations behind his drive to destroy Islamic State.

The action pitches Washington for the first time into the three-year-old Syrian civil war, which has killed 200,000 people and displaced millions.

U.S. forces have previously hit Islamic State targets in Iraq, where Washington supports the government, but had held back from a military engagement in Syria, where the United States opposes President Bashar al-Assad.

SYRIAN GOVERNMENT INFORMED

The Syrian government said Washington had informed it hours before the strikes. Secretary of State John Kerry had sent a letter to Damascus through his Iraqi counterpart, it said.

A ministry statement read on state television said Syria would continue to attack Islamic State. It was ready to cooperate with any international effort to fight terrorism and was coordinating with the government of Iraq.

The United States has previously said it would not coordinate with Assad's government. Washington says Assad must leave power, particularly after he was accused of using chemical weapons against his own people last year.

Islamic State's Sunni fighters, now equipped with U.S. weapons seized during their advance in Iraq, are among the most powerful opponents of Assad, a member of a Shi'ite-derived sect. They are also battling against rival Sunni groups in Syria, against the Shi'ite-led government of Iraq and against Kurdish forces on both sides of the border.

In recent days they have captured villages from Kurds near Syria's Turkish border, sending nearly 140,000 refugees across the frontier since last week. The United Nations said it was bracing for up to 400,000 people to flee.

Washington is determined to defeat the fighters without helping Assad, a policy that requires deft diplomacy in a war in which nearly all the region's countries have a stake.

The Western-backed Syrian opposition, which is fighting against both Assad and Islamic State, welcomed the air strikes which it said would help defeat Assad.

The targets included Raqqa city, the main headquarters in Syria of Islamic State fighters who have proclaimed a caliphate stretching from Syria's Aleppo province through the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys to the outskirts of Baghdad.

Photographs taken in Raqqa showed wreckage of what the Islamic State fighter said was a drone that had been shot down. Pieces of the wreckage, including what appeared to be part of a propeller, were shown loaded into the back of a van.

A video posted online, filmed through night-vision apparatus, showed lights from jets flying overhead firing a stream of projectiles at the ground. It was not clear where or when the video was filmed.

Jordan, confirming its participation, said its air force had bombed "a number of targets that belong to some terrorist groups that sought to commit terrorist acts inside Jordan," although it did not specify any location.

Israel shot down a Syrian aircraft over air space it controls in the Golan Heights but there was no indication the incident, confirmed by Syria, was linked to the U.S. action.

WEAPONS SUPPLIES, CHECKPOINTS HIT

U.S. officials and the Syrian Observatory said buildings used by the militants, their weapons supplies and checkpoints were targeted in the attacks on Raqqa. Areas along the Iraq-Syria border were also hit.

Residents in Raqqa had said last week that Islamic State was moving underground after Obama signaled on Sept. 11 that air attacks on its forces could be expanded from Iraq to Syria.

The group had evacuated buildings it was using as offices, redeployed its heavy weaponry, and moved fighters' families out of the city, the residents said.

"They are trying to keep on the move," said one Raqqa resident, communicating via the Internet and speaking on condition of anonymity because of safety fears. "They only meet in very limited gatherings."

The addition of Arab allies in the attacks was crucial for the credibility of the American-led campaign. Some U.S. allies in the Middle East are skeptical of how far Washington will commit to a complex conflict set against the backdrop of Islam's 1,300-year-old rift between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

With the backing of Jordan and the Gulf states, Washington has gained the support of Sunni states that are hostile to Assad. It has not, however, won the open support of Assad himself or his main regional ally, Shi'ite Iran.

Some traditional Western allies, including Britain which went to war alongside the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, have so far stayed out of the campaign.

France has struck Islamic State in Iraq but not in Syria. A Muslim militant group which kidnapped a French national in Algeria on Sunday has threatened in a video to kill him unless Paris halted intervention in Iraq.

NATO ally Turkey, which is alarmed by Islamic State but also worried about Kurdish fighters and opposed to any action that might help Assad, has refused a military role in the coalition.

Assad's ally Russia, whose ties with Washington are at their lowest since the end of the Cold War, said any strikes in Syria are illegal without Assad's permission or a U.N. Security Council resolution, which Moscow would have the right to veto.

Obama backed away from getting involved in Syria's civil war a year ago after threatening air strikes against Assad's government over the use of chemical weapons. The rise of Islamic State prompted him to change course and take action against Assad's most powerful opponents.

Washington says it hopes to strengthen a moderate Syrian opposition to fill the vacuum so that it can degrade Islamic State without helping Assad. But so far, the opposition groups recognized as legitimate by the United States and its allies have been a comparatively weak force on the battlefield.

U.S. opposes linking Iran cooperation on Islamic State to nuclear talks

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(Reuters) - The United States said on Monday it would refuse to seek Iran's cooperation in fighting Islamic State forces by being more flexible in the negotiations of six world powers with Tehran on its nuclear program.

Senior Iranian officials told Reuters that Iran is ready to work with the United States and its allies to stop Islamic State militants but would like more flexibility on Iran's uranium enrichment program in exchange.

Asked to respond, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the idea was unacceptable, remarks that echoed those from other Western powers in the negotiations with Tehran. European officials have also made clear they do not want to bring other issues into the nuclear negotiations.

Earnest said the effort by world powers, including the United States, to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program is "entirely separate" from President Barack Obama's attempts to build a coalition against Islamic State.

"The United States will not be in the position of trading aspects of Iran's nuclear program to secure commitments to take on ISIL," Earnest said, using an acronym for Islamic State (IS).

He also said the United States would not coordinate the coalition's military activities with the Iranians and would not share intelligence on Islamic State with Iran.

Islamic State forces have seized swathes of Iraq and Syria and proclaimed a caliphate. They stand accused of massacres of civilians, beheadings and other human rights violations.

While not surprising, the U.S. response suggests the White House feels a need to tell Iran publicly that it wants other issues kept away from the nuclear talks.

The comments from Iranian officials about linking the nuclear negotiations and the fight against Islamic State highlight how difficult it may be for the Western powers to separate the atomic negotiations from other topics.

Iran wields influence in the Syrian civil war and on the Iraqi government, which is fighting the advance of Islamic State fighters.

The latest round of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China began last week and is expected to run at least until Friday.

No major breakthroughs are expected in the negotiations in New York, which are aimed at coming up with a deal that would end sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. The sides have set a Nov. 24 deadline for a long-term accord between Iran and the six powers.

Islamic State urges attacks on U.S., French citizens, taunts Obama

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(Reuters) - Islamic State urged its followers on Monday to attack citizens of the United States, France and other countries which have joined a coalition to destroy the ultra-radical group.

Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani also taunted U.S. President Barack Obama and other Western "crusaders" in a statement carried by the SITE monitoring website, saying their forces faced inevitable defeat at the insurgents' hands.

The United States is building an international coalition to combat the extremist Sunni Muslim force, which has seized large expanses of territory in Iraq and Syria and proclaimed a caliphate erasing borders in the heart of the Middle East.

Adnani said the intervention by the U.S.-led coalition would be the "final campaign of the crusaders", according to SITE's English-language transcript of an audio recording in Arabic.

"It will be broken and defeated, just as all your previous campaigns were broken and defeated," Adnani said, according to the recording, which urged followers to attack U.S., French, Canadian, Australian and other nationals.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the group's call showed once again, "if it needed to be shown, the barbarity of these terrorists, and shows why we must fight them relentlessly..." In a statement, he added, using an Arabic acronym for the militants: "We must also eliminate the risk that Daesh represents to our security."

U.S. and French warplanes have struck Islamic State targets in Iraq, and on Sunday the United States said other countries had indicated a willingness to join it if it goes ahead with air strikes against the group in Syria too.

Washington has also committed $500 million to arm and train Syrian rebels and to send 1,600 U.S. military advisers to Iraq to help fight Islamic State, while stressing the U.S. personnel would not engage in combat.

Adnani mocked Western leaders over their deepening military engagement in the region and said Obama was repeating the mistakes of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

"If you fight it (Islamic State), it becomes stronger and tougher. If you leave it alone, it grows and expands. If Obama has promised you with defeating the Islamic State, then Bush has also lied before him," Adnani said, according to the transcript.

"DRAGGED TO DESTRUCTION"

Addressing Obama directly, Adnani added: "O mule of the Jews, you claimed today that America would not be drawn into a war on the ground. No, it will be drawn and dragged ... to its death, grave and destruction."

Obama, who has spent much of his tenure since 2009 extracting the United States from Iraq after its costly 2003 invasion and occupation, is sensitive to charges that he is being drawn into another long campaign that risks the lives of U.S. soldiers.

While Obama has ruled out a combat mission, military officials say the reality of a protracted campaign in Iraq and possibly Syria may ultimately require greater use of U.S. troops, including tactical air strike spotters or front-line advisers embedded with Iraqi forces.

In his statement, Adnani criticised Kurdish fighters who are battling the Islamic State militants in both Syria and Iraq.

"We do not fight Kurds because they are Kurds. Rather we fight the disbelievers amongst them, the allies of the crusaders and Jews in their war against the Muslims," Adnani said.

He added that there were many Muslim Kurds within the ranks of the Islamic State army.

On Monday, Syrian Kurdish fighters halted an advance by Islamic State to the east of a predominantly Kurdish town near the border with Turkey, a spokesman for the main Kurdish group said.

Adnani also condemned Saudi Arabia, whose senior Muslim clergy have denounced Islamic State and whose ruling royal family has joined other Arab states in a pledge to tackle militant ideology as part of a strategy to counter the group.

Adnani condemned Western inaction over Syria's conflict, in which President Bashar al-Assad's forces have been embroiled in civil war with mainly Sunni Muslim fighters since 2011. He said the West had "looked the other way" when barrel bombs were dropped and chemical weapons were used against Muslim civilians.

"So know that – by Allah – we fear not the swarms of planes, nor ballistic missiles, nor drones, nor satellites, nor battleships, nor weapons of mass destruction."

French national taken in Algeria, group claims kidnapping

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(Reuters) - A French national was kidnapped in eastern Algeria on Sunday, France's foreign ministry said, and his kidnappers issued a video threatening to kill him if Paris did not halt its intervention in Iraq.

The Caliphate Soldiers, a group linked to Islamic State militants, published a video on the Internet soon after the French ministry's announcement on Monday, claiming responsibility for the kidnapping and showing a man who identified himself as Herve Gourdel, 55, from Nice in southern France.

The group said it would kill Gourdel if Paris did not halt its intervention in Iraq.

The French foreign ministry later confirmed the video was authentic.

The kidnapping came just hours after Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani urged the group's followers to attack citizens of the United States, France and other countries which have joined a coalition to destroy the radical group.

"A French national was kidnapped on Sunday in Algeria, in the region of Tizi Ouzou, while he was on holiday there," deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexandre Georgini said in a statement.

Citing an interior ministry statement, Algeria's state news agency APS said the Frenchman, who it described as a mountain guide, had been taken in the village of Ait Ouabane when he was traveling in a vehicle with some Algerian nationals.

France, which on Monday raised the threat level at 30 of its embassies across the Middle East and Africa, launched its first air strikes targeting Islamic State targets in Iraq on Friday. It has said all must be done to rid the region of the group.

President Francois Hollande said in a statement he had spoken to Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and that the two countries were cooperating to at all levels to find and liberate the hostage.

Western diplomats and intelligence sources say they believe there are less than 10 hostages still held by Islamic State. The group has recently killed two Americans, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and one Briton, David Haines, and threatened to kill another Briton, Alan Henning.

The kidnapping was one of the first abductions of a foreigner by militants in Algeria since the North African country ended its decade-long war with Islamist fighters in the 1990s.

The area where the Frenchman was taken is a mountainous region which was once a stronghold for the fighters. There have been several kidnappings targeting Algerian businessmen for extortion in the area but most were freed by security forces.

Al Qaeda's North Africa branch, AQIM, and other groups are still active in Algeria.

CALIPHATE SOLDIERS OF ALGERIA

The four-minute video which appeared on YouTube and Islamic State Twitter accounts on Monday was entitled "A message from the Caliphate Soldiers in Algeria to the dog Hollande."

The Caliphate Soldiers said in a statement on Sept. 14 it had split from AQIM and sworn loyalty to the Islamic State.

The video opens with images of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, commander of the Islamic State, while in the background Monday's speech from Islamic State spokesman Adnani is played threatening France, coalition allies and Iran.

"We, the Caliphate Soldiers in Algeria, in compliance with the order of our leader Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ... give Hollande, president of the criminal French state, 24 hours to cease its hostility against the Islamic State, otherwise the fate of his citizen will be slaughter.

"To save his life, you must officially announce the end of your hostility against the Islamic State," a speaker on the video said.

The video then shows Gourdel sitting next to two armed gunmen in black turbans and carrying assault rifles. He said he arrived in Algeria on Sept. 20 and was taken on Sept. 21.

"I am in the hands of Jund al-Khilifa (Caliphate Soldiers), an Algerian armed group. This armed group is asking me to ask you (President Hollande) to not intervene in Iraq. They are holding me as a hostage and I ask you Mr President to do everything to get me out of this bad situation. I thank you."

Gourdel's friends and relatives confirmed to a Reuters reporter in Nice that the man in the video was Gourdel.

Local private Echorouk television and agency APS said Algerian military had began a search operation in the area.

Militant attacks and operations are rarer now in Algeria. But at the start of 2013, Islamist militants attacked the Amenas gas plant in southern Algeria, triggering a siege during which 40 oil workers, mostly foreigners, were killed.

Monday 22 September 2014

SOME 130,000 SYRIANS REACH TURKEY, FLEEING IS

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(AP) — Some 130,000 Syrian refugees have reached Turkey in the past four days after fleeing the advance of Islamic State militants, Turkey's deputy prime minister said Monday, warning that the number could rise further as the militants press ahead with an onslaught.

Numan Kurtulmus said however, that Turkey was ready to react to "the worst case scenario."

"I hope that we are not faced with a more populous refugee wave, but if we are, we have taken our precautions," Kurtulmus said. "A refugee wave that can be expressed by hundreds of thousands is a possibility."

The refugees have been flooding into Turkey since Thursday, escaping an Islamic State offensive that has pushed the conflict nearly within sight of the Turkish border. The conflict in Syria had already pushed more than a million people over the border in the past 3½ years.

The al-Qaida breakaway group — which says it wants to establish an Islamic state, or caliphate, ruled by a harsh version of Islamic law in territory it captured straddling the Syria-Iraq border — has in recent days advanced into Kurdish regions of Syria that border Turkey, where fleeing refugees on Sunday reported atrocities that included stonings, beheadings and the torching of homes.

On Monday, fighting between Kurdish fighters and the Islamic State militants raged on near the northern city of Kobani, which is also known as Ayn Arab, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Observatory said the militants lost at least 21 fighters since Sunday night, most of them on the southern outskirts of Kobani.

Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, told The Associated Press that the situation on the ground "is better than before."

He added that the main Kurdish force in Syria, known as the People's Protection Units, had pushed Islamic State fighters about 10 kilometers (6 miles) away from their previous positions east of Kobani.

"We will fight until the last gunman in Kobani," Khalil said.

The situation at the Turkish side of the border was tense, with more clashes breaking out between Kurds wanting to cross to take aid to the Kobani region and police preventing them from reaching the area.

The nearby town of Suruc was flooded with refugees and armored military vehicles were moving.

 "This is not a natural disaster... What we are faced with is a man-made disaster," said Kurtulmus, the Turkish deputy prime minister.

"We don't know how many more villages may be raided, how many more people may be forced to seek refuge. We don't know," he said. "An uncontrollable force at the other side of the border is attacking civilians. The extent of the disaster is worse than a natural disaster."

Sunday 21 September 2014

United States says role for Iran in tackling Islamic State

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(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that Iran had a role to play in a global coalition to tackle Islamic State militants who have seized swaths of Iraq and Syria and proclaimed a caliphate in the heart of the Middle East.

"The coalition required to eliminate ISIL (Islamic State) is not only, or even primarily, military in nature," Kerry told a United Nations Security Council meeting on Iraq.

"It must be comprehensive and include close collaboration across multiple lines of effort. It's about taking out an entire network, decimating and discrediting a militant cult masquerading as a religious movement," he said. "There is a role for nearly every country in the world to play, including Iran."

Kerry's remarks appeared to represent a shift away from previous U.S. statements indicating a reluctance to cooperate with Iran to confront the threat of Islamic State. The United States cut off diplomatic ties with Tehran during a hostage crisis after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The United States, president of the U.N. Security Council for September, called the meeting on Iraq as it builds an international military, political and financial coalition to defeat the radical Sunni Muslim group.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, this week said he had rejected an offer by Washington for talks on fighting Islamic State. Kerry said he refused to be drawn into a "back and forth" with Iran over the issue.

Shi'ite Muslim-dominated Iran is a key ally of the governments in Iraq and Syria.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is the only country in the region that is both capable of and has shown unqualified determination to help the Iraqi government and coordinate with it to assist all those threatened by ISIL," Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the council.

"Any real and genuine initiative to remedy regional predicaments needs to originate from within the region and be based on regional cooperation. Combating extremism is not an exception," he said, repeating Tehran's official view.

Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are expected to hold bilateral talks on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly next week where Islamic State and Tehran's nuclear program will likely be among key topics of discussion.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said 40 nations have pledged help to a coalition against Islamic State. French jets struck a suspected Islamic State target in Iraq for the first time on Friday, joining a U.S. bombing campaign that started a month ago when Iraq asked for help.

"In 2003, acting against Iraq was something that divided this council; in 2014, acting for Iraq and against the (Islamic State) ... terrorists is a duty for all of us," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told the U.N. Security Council, referring to French opposition to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday adopted a statement urging "the international community, in accordance with international law, to further strengthen and expand support for the government of Iraq as it fights ISIL (Islamic State) and associated armed groups."

The U.N. special envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said the United Nations estimates some 8,500 have been killed during clashes in Iraq since January and more than 16,000 injured.

"ISIL is a scourge that has brought untold sorrow to the people of Iraq and Syria," Mladenov told the Security Council. "They have shown contempt for equality, fundamental human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person."

The United States is also planning to carry out air strikes against Islamic State in Syria, while the U.S. Congress on Thursday gave final approval to Obama's plan for training and arming moderate Syrian rebels to take on the militants.

Other Western powers have been more reluctant to launch military strikes in Syria, which could be seen to bolster President Bashar al-Assad. Western states have repeatedly called for Assad's departure over his crackdown on popular protests in 2011 that sparked a civil war, now in its fourth year.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin warned that any action by an international coalition against Islamic State should be in line with international law and the U.N. Charter.

He said Russia, long an ally of the Syrian government, was "extremely concerned" about possible air strikes against the militants in Syria without the Damascus government's approval.

"International counter terrorist operations should be carried out either with the approval of the sovereign government or with the approval of the U.N. Security Council," Churkin told the council.

"Any other options are considered illegal and undermine international and regional stability," he said.

Iran's Araqchi said the fight against Islamic State would only be successful if the relevant central governments were enabled to "deal with this menace."

"Any strategy that undermines these authorities, including the Syrian government ... will be a recipe for defeat," he said.

Wife of Alan Henning, Briton held by Islamic State, pleads for his release

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(Reuters) - Alan Henning, a volunteer British aid worker being held by Islamic State (IS) militants, should be released unharmed, his wife said in a statement issued a week after his captors threatened to murder him.

Henning, 47, was part of an aid convoy taking medical supplies to a hospital in northwest Syria in December last year when it was stopped by gunmen and he was abducted.

He appeared in a video released by IS last week, which showed the murder of another Briton, David Haines. In it, a masked man said Henning would also be killed if British Prime Minister David Cameron kept supporting the fight against IS.

"Alan is a peaceful, selfless man," his wife Barbara said in a statement released via Britain's Foreign Office late on Saturday.

"When he was taken he was driving an ambulance full of food and water to be handed out to anyone in need. His purpose for being there was no more and no less."

Last week, Muslim groups across Britain, including some organizations that are highly critical of British foreign policy and blame Western interference for fanning the recent crisis in Iraq and Syria, called for Henning's release.

"I cannot see how it could assist any state's cause to allow the world to see a man like Alan dying," his wife said, saying she had tried to contact his captors but received no response.

"I pray that the people holding Alan respond to my messages and contact me before it is too late ... I implore the people of the Islamic State to see it in their hearts to release my husband."

Tuesday 16 September 2014

U.S. Congress pushes ahead with bid to arm Syrian rebels

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(Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives began debating legislation on Tuesday to authorize President Barack Obama's plan to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State militants, and lawmakers said the measure would likely pass the full Congress by the end of this week.

House Republican leaders unveiled the authorization on Monday as an amendment to a stopgap funding bill Congress must pass this month, after Obama asked lawmakers to approve the training as part of his broader plan to stop the Sunni militants who have taken over swaths of Syria and Iraq.

House members were expected to vote to pass the amendment on Wednesday, congressional aides and lawmakers said. It would then be sent to the U.S. Senate for approval this week, before lawmakers leave Washington to spend the next six weeks campaigning for the Nov. 4 congressional elections.

The Senate, which is controlled by Obama's fellow Democrats, is expected to approve the amendment.

House Speaker John Boehner said he considered Obama's request a "sound one" and that he saw no reason for Congress not to authorize it, although he did not think Obama's larger plan to stop Islamic State was strong enough.

"If our goal here is to destroy ISIL, we’ve got to do more than train a few folks in Syria and train a few folks in Iraq and drop some bombs," Boehner told reporters after a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, using an alternative abbreviation for the Islamic State group.

POCKETS OF OPPOSITION

There are pockets of opposition to the plan.

Some lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, worried that the training mission could escalate and end with large numbers of U.S. forces sent back to Iraq, where the United States was at war from 2003 to 2011.

Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the House, said there has been a lot of discussion about involvement in another conflict, but he expected party members would provide the authorization Obama wants.

"I don’t think train and equip is the principal concern. The principal concern is deploying American men and women, spending a large sum of money, prosecuting a war," he said.

Several lawmakers also pushed for Congress to consider a broader authorization for the use of force, arguing that the Constitution requires the legislature's approval for a military campaign like Obama's against Islamic State.

But a vote on such an authorization would not take place before mid-November, after the elections at the soonest, lawmakers and congressional aides said.

Republican lawmakers unveiled the amendment on Monday as a way to quickly provide the authority that Obama wants to equip and train the rebels, without forcing a debate on the $500 million the White House wants to pay for it.

The amendment allows the Pentagon to later submit reprogramming requests to shift funds within the budget if it needs money for the program. Those requests can be granted without full congressional approval, needing only authorization from certain committee leaders.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel urged lawmakers at a Senate hearing to move quickly on the authorization, so recruiting and training of a moderate rebel force, which will take months, can get under way.

"Time is of the essence here," Hagel said.
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