Iraq – Page 7

Bomb Everyone

October 1, 2014 by Nasheman

Humanitarian arguments, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East.

– by George Monbiot, The Guardian

Let’s bomb the Muslim world – all of it – to save the lives of its people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at blowing up Islamic State, when the Syrian government has murdered and tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative. What’s changed?

How about blasting the Shia militias in Iraq? One of them selected 40 people from the streets of Baghdad in June and murdered them for being Sunnis(1). Another massacred 68 people at a mosque in August(2). They now talk openly of “cleansing” and “erasure”(3), once Islamic State has been defeated. As a senior Shia politician warns, “we are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida.”(4)

What humanitarian principle instructs you to stop there? In Gaza this year, 2,100 Palestinians were massacred: including people taking shelter in schools and hospitals. Surely these atrocities demand an air war against Israel? And what’s the moral basis for refusing to liquidate Iran? Mohsen Amir-Aslani was hanged there last week for making “innovations in the religion” (suggesting that the story of Jonah in the Qu’ran was symbolic rather than literal)(5). Surely that should inspire humanitarian action from above? Pakistan is crying out for friendly bombs: an elderly British man, Mohammed Asghar, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, is, like other blasphemers, awaiting execution there after claiming to be a holy prophet(6). One of his prison guards has already shot him in the back.

Is there not an urgent duty to blow up Saudi Arabia? It has beheaded 59 people so far this year, for offences that include adultery, sorcery and witchcraft(7). It has long presented a far greater threat to the west than Isis now poses. In 2009 Hillary Clinton warned in a secret memo that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban … and other terrorist groups.”(8) In July, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until recently the head of Saudi intelligence, told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.”(9) Saudi support for extreme Sunni militias in Syria during Bandar’s tenure is widely blamed for the rapid rise of Isis(10,11). Why take out the subsidiary and spare the headquarters?

The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week(12), if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East and West Asia. By this means you could end all human suffering, liberating the people of these regions from the vale of tears in which they live.

Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely-Muslim countries(13), in each case citing a moral imperative. The result, as you can see in Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Yemen, Somalia and Syria, has been the eradication of jihadi groups, of conflict, chaos, murder, oppression and torture. Evil has been driven from the face of the earth by the destroying angels of the west.

Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises and threatens. As Obama says, it is a “network of death”(14). But it’s one of many networks of death. Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what it wants(15).

Already Obama’s bombings have brought Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, a rival militia affiliated to Al Qaeda, together(16). More than 6,000 fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began(17). They dangled the heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes. And our governments were stupid enough to take it.

And if the bombing succeeds? If – and it’s a big if – it manages to tilt the balance against Isis, what then? Then we’ll start hearing once more about Shia death squads and the moral imperative to destroy them too – and any civilians who happen to get in the way. The targets change; the policy doesn’t. Never mind the question, the answer is bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our governments wage perpetual war.

While the bombs fall, our states befriend and defend other networks of death. The US government still refuses – despite Obama’s promise – to release the 28 redacted pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, which document Saudi Arabian complicity in the attack on America(18). In the UK, in 2004 the Serious Fraud Office began investigating allegations of massive bribes paid by the British weapons company BAE to Saudi ministers and middlemen. Just as the crucial evidence was about to be released, Tony Blair intervened to stop the investigation(19). The biggest alleged beneficiary was Prince Bandar, mentioned above. The Serious Fraud Office was investigating a claim that, with the approval of the British government, he received £1bn in secret payments from BAE(20).

And still it goes on. Last week’s Private Eye, drawing on a dossier of recordings and emails, alleges that a British company has paid £300m in bribes to facilitate weapons sales to the Saudi National Guard(21). When a whistleblower in the company reported these payments to the British ministry of defence, instead of taking action it alerted his bosses. He had to flee the country to avoid being thrown into a Saudi jail. Smirking, lying, two-faced bastards – this scarcely begins to touch it.

There are no good solutions that military intervention by the UK or the US can engineer. There are political solutions in which our governments could play a minor role: supporting the development of effective states that don’t rely on murder and militias, building civic institutions that don’t depend on terror, helping to create safe passage and aid for people at risk. Oh, and ceasing to protect and sponsor and arm selected networks of death. Whenever our armed forces have bombed or invaded Muslims nations, they have made life worse for those who live there. The regions in which our governments have intervened most are those which suffer most from terrorism and war. That is neither coincidental nor surprising.

Yet our politicians affect to learn nothing. Insisting that more killing will magically resolve deep-rooted conflicts, they scatter bombs like fairy dust.

References:

http://www.theguardian.com/guardianweekly/story/0,,1818778,00.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/22/shia-attack-sunni-mosque-iraq
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/iraq-frontline-shia-fighters-war-isis
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/iraq-frontline-shia-fighters-war-isis
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/iran-executes-man-heresy-mohsen-amir-aslani
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/stand-up-for-blasphemers-like-mohammed-asghar-frankie-boyle
Click to access 52302414.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/242073
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/iraq-crisis-how-saudi-arabia-helped-isis-take-over-the-north-of-the-country-9602312.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-saudi-arabia-iraq-syria-bandar/373181/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/islamic-state-us-failure-to-look-into-saudi-role-in-911-has-helped-isis-9731563.html
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm140926/debtext/140926-0001.htm#1409266000001
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/23/nobel-peace-prize-fact-day-syria-7th-country-bombed-obama/
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm140926/debtext/140926-0001.htm#1409266000001
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/26/west-isis-crusade-britain-iraq-syria
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/28/isis-al-qaida-air-strikes-syria
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.616730
http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/bae
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/05/bae-saudi-yamamah-deal-background
Richard Brooks and Andrew Bousfield, 19th September 2014. Shady Arabia and the Desert Fix. Private Eye.

Isis an hour away from Baghdad – with no sign of Iraq army being able to make a successful counter-attack

October 1, 2014 by Nasheman

The Iraqi army, plagued by corruption, absenteeism and supply failures, has little chance against Islamist fanatics using suicide bombings and fluid tactics. And US air strikes are making little difference.

– by Patrick Cockburn, The Independent

US air strikes are failing to drive back Isis in Iraq where its forces are still within an hour’s drive of Baghdad.

Three and a half months since the Iraqi army was spectacularly routed in northern Iraq by a far inferior force of Isis fighters, it is still seeing bases overrun because it fails to supply them with ammunition, food and water. The selection of a new Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, to replace Nouri al-Maliki last month was supposed to introduce a more conciliatory government that would appeal to Iraq’s Sunni minority from which Isis draws its support.

Mr Abadi promised to end the random bombardment of Sunni civilians, but Fallujah has been shelled for six out of seven days, with 28 killed and 117 injured. Despite the military crisis, the government has still not been able to gets its choice for the two top security jobs, theDefence Minister and Interior Minister, through parliament.

The fighting around Baghdad is particularly bitter because it is often in mixed Sunni-Shia areas where both sides fear massacre. Isis has been making inroads in the Sunni villages and towns such as in north Hilla province where repeated government sweeps have failed to re-establish its authority.

Mr Abadi is dismissing senior officers appointed by Mr Maliki, but this has yet to make a noticeable difference in the effectiveness of the armed forces, which are notoriously corrupt. During the battle for Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June, Iraqi government forces nominally numbered 60,000 in the army, federal police and local police, but only one third were actually on duty. A common source of additional income for officers is for soldiers to kickback half their salaries to their officers in return for staying at home or doing another job.

The same system is universal in civilian ministries, which have far more people on their payroll than are actually employed.

A World Bank report just published reveals that out of 8,206 guards employed by one ministry only 603 were actually working. Some 132 senior officers have recently been sacked by Mr Abadi, but there is as yet no sign of the army being able to make a successful counter-attack against Isis. Worse, in Baghdad it has been unable to stop a wave of car bombs and suicide bombers, which continue to cause a heavy loss of civilian life.

An example of the continued inability of the Iraqi army to remedy the failings, which led to its loss of Mosul and Tikrit, came on 21 September when Isis overran a base at Saqlawiya, near Fallujah, west of Baghdad after besieging it for a week.

The final assault was preceded, as is customary with Isis attacks, by multiple suicide bombing attacks. A bomber driving a captured American Humvee packed with explosives was able to penetrate the base before blowing himself up.

This was followed up by an Isis assault team dressed in Iraqi army uniforms. Some 820 government soldiers stationed at the base broke up into small groups and fled by backroads but were ambushed.

What is striking about the loss of Saqlawiya is that during a siege lasting a week the Iraqi army was unable to help a garrison only 40 miles west of Baghdad. Complaints from the troops that they were left without reinforcements, ammunition, food or water are very much the same as those made in the first half of 2014 when rebels led by Isis outfought some five government divisions, a third of the 350,000-strong army, and inflicted 5,000 casualties.

Fallujah fell in January and the army was unable to recapture it.

The US could embed observers with Iraqi troops to call in air strikes in close support, but people in the Sunni provinces are frightened of being reoccupied by the Iraqi army and Shia militias bent on revenge for their defeats earlier in the year. In areas where there are mixed Sunni-Kurdish populations both sides fear the military success of the other.

The military reputation of the Kurdish soldiers, the Peshmerga, has taken a battering since their defeat in Sinjar in August where its troops fled as fast as the Iraqi army had done earlier. The Peshmerga have not done much fighting since 1991, except with each other during the Kurdish civil wars, and even in the 1980s their speciality was rural guerrilla warfare, wearing the enemy down with pinprick attacks by 15 to 20 fighters.

Before the deployment of US air power, Isis in Iraq used motorised columns with 80 to 100 men which would launch surprise attacks.

With the possibility of US air strikes, this kind of highly mobile warfare is no longer feasible without taking heavy losses, But Isis has shown itself to be highly adaptable and is still able to operate effectively despite US intervention.

The problem for the US and its allies is that even if Iraqi divisions are reconstituted, there is no reason to think they will not break up again under Isis attack. The main military arm of the Baghdad government will remain Iranian-backed Shia militias, of which the Sunni population is terrified.

Iranian president gives qualified support for western action against Isis

September 29, 2014 by Nasheman

Hassan Rouhani says Iraqi government must be consulted about bombing raids on militants.

– by Julian Borger, The Guardian

The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, gave qualified support to western military action against Isis inside Iraq, saying a concerted campaign could be successful as long as it was requested by the Iraqi government.

Speaking to journalists in New York while attending the UN general assembly, Rouhani appeared to draw a sharp distinction between Syria, where the Assad regime had not been informed of US air strikes, let alone asking for them; and Iraq, where the new government has formally called for military assistance.

He criticised western states for responding late to Iraq’s call for help, claiming Iran had been the first to come to its defence and helped prevent Irbil and Baghdad falling to Isis. He also questioned the value of relying on aerial power alone.

But when asked whether western military intervention would be welcome under any conditions, the Iranian president said: “Whatever steps they take, the legitimate sovereign government of the country must be informed and give its genuine consent.

“We must support any government that requests assistance,” Rouhani said. “The request must come from Iraq. If the sovereignty of the Iraqi government is made central, the campaign can be successful.”

The president bristled at being asked whether Iran would assist a western military campaign, saying the question should be posed the other way round: would the West help Iran.

“We’ve actually been the ones countering terrorism in the region for years,” he said. “Had it not been for Iran’s timely assistance, many of the Iraqi cities would have fallen to the hands of these vicious terrorists.”

Rouhani added that the time “wasn’t right” for another phone conversation or a meeting with US president Barack Obama “because of the sensitivity that still exists between the two countries”, Associated Press reported.

One year ago, Obama and Rouhani spoke by telephone for 15 minutes after the Iranian leader’s first appearance at the UN general assembly’s annual meeting of world leaders.

It was the first time the presidents of the United States and Iran had talked directly since the 1979 Iranian revolution and siege of the American embassy. The conversation was hailed as an historic breakthrough.

But Rouhani, questioned about a repeat conversation at a news conference on Friday before heading home after this year’s ministerial meeting, said: “Not a meeting nor a telephone call had been included in the agenda nor been planned for, … nor intended to be a part of our visit this year.”

Rouhani said there must be substantive reasons with “high objectives” for conversations between world leaders. If not, he said, “telephone calls are somewhat meaningless”.

The Iranian president said the time is not ripe as there still is too much sensitivity between the two countries.

A phone conversation between the two leaders “would only be constructive and fruitful when it is done according to a precisely laid plan with precisely clearly stated objectives,” Rouhani said. “Otherwise it will never be constructive or effective.”

An important first step would be for Iran and six major powers including the United States to reach agreement on the country’s disputed nuclear program.

He said progress so far “has not been significant,” and the pace must be speeded up if the 24 November deadline for a final agreement is to be reached.

Isis reconciles with al-Qaida group as Syria air strikes continue

September 29, 2014 by Nasheman

Jabhat al-Nusra denounces US-led attacks as ‘war on Islam’, and leaders of group holding meetings with Islamic State.

A still from a video from a plane camera shows smoke rising after an air strike near Kobani. Photograph: Reuters

– by Martin Chulov, The Guardian

Air strikes continued to target Islamic State (Isis) positions near the Kurdish town of Kobani and hubs across north-east Syria on Sunday, as the terror group moved towards a new alliance with Syria’s largest al-Qaida group that could help offset the threat from the air.

Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been at odds with Isis for much of the past year, vowed retaliation for the US-led strikes, the first wave of which a week ago killed scores of its members. Many al-Nusra units in northern Syria appeared to have reconciled with the group, with which it had fought bitterly early this year.

A senior source confirmed that al-Nusra and Isis leaders were now holding war planning meetings. While no deal has yet been formalised, the addition of at least some al-Nusra numbers to Isis would strengthen the group’s ranks and extend its reach at a time when air strikes are crippling its funding sources and slowing its advances in both Syria and Iraq.

Al-Nusra, which has direct ties to al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called the attacks a “war on Islam” in an audio statement posted over the weekend. A senior al-Nusra figure told the Guardian that 73 members had defected to Isis last Friday alone and that scores more were planning to do so in coming days.

“We are in a long war,” al-Nusra’s spokesman, Abu Firas al-Suri, said on social media platforms. “This war will not end in months nor years, this war could last for decades.”

In the rebel-held north there is a growing resentment among Islamist units of the Syrian opposition that the strikes have done nothing to weaken the Syrian regime. “We have been calling for these sorts of attacks for three years and when they finally come they don’t help us,” said a leader from the Qatari-backed Islamic Front, which groups together Islamic brigades. “People have lost faith. And they’re angry.”British jets flew sorties over Isis positions in Iraq after being ordered into action against the group following a parliamentary vote on Friday.

David Cameron has suggested he might review his decision to confine Britain’s involvement to Iraq alone, but for now the strikes in support of Kurdish civilians and militants in Kobani were being carried out by Arab air forces from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain.

The US was reported to have carried out at least six strikes in support of Kurdish civilians near the centre of Kobani, where the YPG, the Kurdish militia, is fighting a dogged rearguard campaign against Isis, which is mostly holding its ground despite the aerial attacks.

Kobani is the third-largest Kurdish enclave in Syria, and victory for Isis there is essential to its plans to oust the Kurds from lands where they have lived for several thousand years. Control of the area would give the group a strategic foothold in north-east Syria, which would give it easy access to north-west Iraq.

US-led forces are also believed to have carried out air strikes on three makeshift oil refineries under Isis’s control.

Isis continued to make forays along the western edge of Baghdad, where its members have been active for nine months. The Iraqi capital is being heavily defended by Shia militias, who in many cases have primacy over the Iraqi army, which surrendered the north of the country.

That rout – one of the most spectacular anywhere in modern military history – gave Isis a surge of momentum and it has since seized the border with Syria, menaced Irbil, ousted minorities from the Nineveh plains and threatened the Iraqi government’s hold on the country.

Barack Obama said the intelligence community had not appreciated the scale of the threat or comprehended the weakness of the Iraqi army. In an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, he said: “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves. And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world.”

International Committee of the Red Cross: U.S. airstrikes making a bad humanitarian situation worse

September 29, 2014 by Nasheman

– by Matt Carr

In August 2013, when the U.S. et al looked set to start bombing Syria in response to what they claimed was a chemical weapon attack by the Assad regime in Ghouta, The International Committee of the Red Cross went on record to say that any escalation of the conflict would:

likely trigger more displacement and add to humanitarian needs which are already immense.

And it’s clear from the context that by ‘escalation’, they meant U.S. led bombing.

Just over a year later, and that bombing has finally commenced.

The International Committee of the Red Cross have now had this to say about it. From Reuters:

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday that U.S.-led air strikes on Islamist insurgents in Iraq and Syria had worsened a dire humanitarian crisis on the ground.

All warring parties in the widening conflicts in the two countries should spare civilians and allow delivery of aid, the Geneva-based ICRC said in a statement.

“Years of fighting in Syria and Iraq, the proliferation of armed groups and the recent international air strikes in Iraq and Syria have compounded the humanitarian consequences of the conflicts in both countries,” it said. “The humanitarian situation continues to worsen.”

As they’d previously predicted, then, the U.S. led ‘humanitarian’ bombing of Syria has already lead to a worsening of the humanitarian situation, and we are only a few days in.

And if anything, it’s only going to get more brutal from here on in, rather than less so, as all sides start to dig in for what they could see as a fight to the finish. Or to put it more bluntly, a fight to the death.

The very idea that a coalition featuring the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – some of the world’s most persistently abusive, repressive and criminal states – was going to start bombing Syria to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis there always seemed absurd on the face it. Regardless of what Samantha Power says, or what The Guardian says, or any of those other ‘liberal humanitarians’ who are busily spinning illusions in the beneficent power of U.S. led military violence.

Now the world’s foremost aid and relief organisation is openly saying that a bad humanitarian situation is being ‘compounded’ by the bombing. But expect them to be virtually ignored by these said same ‘humanitarians’, on account of their statements simply not being commensurate with the dominant state-corporate media narrative.

Matt Carr is the author of three published books: My Father’s House (Penguin 1997), The Infernal Machine: a History of Terrorism (New Press 2007), recently republished in the UK as The Infernal Machine: an Alternative History of Terrorism (Hurst & Co 2011), and Blood and Faith: the Purging of Muslim Spain (New Press 2009, Hurst 2010). http://interventionswatch.wordpress.com/

US attacks on ISIS may help Bashar al-Assad keep his regime alive

September 25, 2014 by Nasheman

But the Syrian leader will be watching with concern as the US’s use of air power spreads to include more targets outside its original stated aim.

– by Robert Fisk

The moment America expanded its anti-Isis war into Syria, President Bashar al-Assad gained more military and political support than any other Arab leader can boast. With US bombs and missiles exploding across eastern and northern Syria, Assad can now count on America, Russia, China, Iran, the Hezbollah militia, Jordan and a host of wealthy Gulf countries to keep his regime alive. If ever that creaking old Arab proverb – that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – contained any wisdom, Assad has proved it true.

In his Damascus home, the Syrian leader can reflect that the most powerful nation on earth – which only last year wished to bomb him into oblivion – is now trying to bomb his most ferocious enemies into the very same oblivion. Sunni Saudis whose “charity” donations have funded the equally Sunni “Islamic State” now find their government supposedly helping the US to destroy it. As Shia Iran and its Hezbollah protégés battle the Sunni executioners and throat-slashers on the ground, US bombs and missiles rain down to destroy the enemies in front of them.

Not since Churchill found himself an ally of Nazi Germany’s erstwhile friend Stalin in 1941 can a president have found a fearsome antagonist transformed so swiftly into a brother-in-arms. But – and it’s a very big “but” – the Baathist Syrian regime is not so stupid as to take the word “friend” at face value. Neither should we. Obama is the last person with whom Assad would want to associate himself – as Vladimir Putin doesn’t need to remind him – and the Syrian regime will be watching with the deepest concern as America’s promiscuous use of air power spreads inexorably to include more and more targets outside its original stated aim.

Quite apart from the civilian casualties in Idlib province, America’s targeting of the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra suggests that the Pentagon has more than Isis in its sights. How soon, for example, before a missile explodes in a Syrian regime weapons depot – by “mistake”, of course – or other government facilities? Since the US has decided to fund and train the so-called “moderate opposition” to fight Isis and the Syrian regime, why should it not bomb both sets of enemies? And how will Syrians who support whatever is left of these “moderates” react to the American bombs in Idlib which killed their fellow civilians rather than Assad’s forces – bombs, indeed, which appear to have been just as lethal as the munitions dropped on them by Assad’s aircraft?

As for the Gulf Arabs, not one has so far shown evidence that it has physically bombed any targets in Syria. Only Jordan has claimed to have attacked Isis; the rest of King Abdullah’s allies in the Arab “coalition of the willing” – how quickly we have forgotten that this was George W Bush’s expression for those nations which supported his 2003 Iraq invasion – appear to have limited their co-operation to providing airstrips, refuelling planes and perhaps patrolling the peaceful waters of the Gulf. In his hearings on Capitol Hill last week, the Secretary of State John Kerry was given an impatient grilling from Congressmen over just how many Arab aircraft would be dropping ordnance on Isis. Kerry fluffed his answers.

The Gulf Arabs, after all, have been here before. They remember clearly the exaggerated claims of military success in the air – of smart bombs that did not slaughter civilians, of cruise missiles that destroyed bunkers and training camps and “command and control centres” in 1991 and 2003. It all proved to be a very dodgy war menu. Yet now the Americans are re-cooking these old snacks for the Isis conflict.

Were these Islamist “warriors” really sitting around – drinking tea, perhaps – at “training camps” so that the Americans could kill them? Does Isis boast anything like a “command and control centre” – a bunker of computers and blinking target indicators – rather than just a clutch of mobile phones? Yet a “command-and-control centre”, no less, was said to have been destroyed.

And, as so often amid the excitement of yet another conflict escalation, the “experts” and decrepit ex-ambassadors on our screens need to leaf through a history book or two before explaining “our” actions. The “Islamic State” was created out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which absorbed the anti-American resistance to American occupation, which in turn followed the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. If Messrs Bush and Blair had not embarked on their Iraqi adventure, does anyone think the US would be helping Assad to destroy his enemies today?

“Irony” doesn’t measure up to the words of the Middle-East’s “peace envoy” who this week transformed himself into a war envoy by holding out the prospect of more Western troops in the Muslim world. Is the Syrian regime supposed to laugh or cry?

Source

Jimmy Carter: US bomb attack on Islamic State 'likely to kill more civilians' than fighters

September 25, 2014 by Nasheman

– by AP

Grand Rapids, Michigan: A U.S. bombing attack against the Islamic State forces in Iraq could end up killing more civilians than militants unless there are American spotters on the ground, former President Jimmy Carter said Monday during an appearance at a community college in western Michigan.

The 39th president and his wife, Rosalynn, spoke for about 45 minutes as part of Grand Rapids Community College’s Diversity Lecture Series.

The 89-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner addressed a range of topics and answered student questions.

Carter said that he normally opposes the use of U.S. military force to solve problems. He said that the U.S. needs to exercise care so as not to harm noncombatants if it uses air power to attack the militants who refer to themselves as the Islamic State, sometimes referred to as ISIS.

“When ISIS forces go into a city and take it over, and then the United States goes over there with bombers and drops bombs, we are very likely to kill more civilians than ISIS members,” Carter said in a video broadcast by WOOD-TV (http://bit.ly/1pp4pWu ). “That’s why it’s very necessary for us to have our own people on the ground that can give us accurate information about exactly where to let a missile land or a bomb land to make sure that it kills the ISIS terrorists instead of normal civilians.”

Carter has written 28 books, including “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power.” It was released in March.

Source

Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate

September 24, 2014 by Nasheman

Barack Obama makes a speech during the Nobel Peace Prize Concert at Oslo Spektrum on December 11, 2009 in Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

– by Glenn Greenwald

The U.S. today began bombing targets inside Syria, in concert with its lovely and inspiring group of five allied regimes: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan.

That means that Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama—after Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq.

The utter lack of interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria is telling indeed: Empires bomb who they want, when they want, for whatever reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya even after Congress explicitly voted against authorization to use force, and very few people seemed to mind that abject act of lawlessness; constitutional constraints are not for warriors and emperors).

It was just over a year ago that Obama officials were insisting that bombing and attacking Assad was a moral and strategic imperative. Instead, Obama is now bombing Assad’s enemies while politely informing his regime of its targets in advance. It seems irrelevant on whom the U.S. wages war; what matters it that it be at war, always and forever.

Six weeks of bombing hasn’t budged ISIS in Iraq, but it has caused ISIS recruitment to soar. That’s all predictable: the U.S. has known for years that what fuels and strengthens anti-American sentiment (and thus anti-American extremism) is exactly what they keep doing: aggression in that region. If you know that, then they know that. At this point, it’s more rational to say they do all of this not despite triggering those outcomes, but because of it. Continuously creating and strengthening enemies is a feature, not a bug. It is what justifies the ongoing greasing of the profitable and power-vesting machine of Endless War.

If there is anyone who actually believes that the point of all of this is a moral crusade to vanquish the evil-doers of ISIS (as the U.S. fights alongside its close Saudi friends), please read Professor As’ad AbuKhalil’s explanation today of how Syria is a multi-tiered proxy war. As the disastrous Libya “intervention” should conclusively and permanently demonstrate, the U.S. does not bomb countries for humanitarian objectives. Humanitarianism is the pretense, not the purpose.

Source

ISIS releases video of captive British photojournalist

September 19, 2014 by Nasheman

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group released a video Thursday of a British freelance photojournalist, John Cantlie, in which he says he is being held captive.

In the video posted on YouTube, Cantlie, wearing an orange jumpsuit, speaks to the camera in the style of a news report and promises to reveal in a series of programs the “truth” about the jihadist group that has seized parts of Iraq and Syria.

There was no immediate threat to his life apparent in the video.

Cantlie, who had contributed to British newspapers including The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph, as well as to Agence France-Presse, said he was captured after travelling to Syria in November 2012.

He had previously been detained along with a Dutch photographer by extremists in Syria in July 2012 but was reportedly released after nine days.

It was not clear when the video was shot, but in it Cantlie referred to recent events including ISIS taking control of large parts of Iraq in June.

Speaking in English with Arabic subtitles, Cantlie says in the 3:21-minute video — titled “Lend Me Your Ears” — that he plans to reveal “the truth behind the systems and motivation of the Islamic State”.

(AFP)

Alan Henning: Al-Qaeda appealed to Isis to release British aid worker following kidnap

September 17, 2014 by Nasheman

Representatives of rival groups held summit in Syrian town to decide fate of captive Briton

– by Tom Harper, The Independent

Al-Qaeda appealed to Isis to release the British hostage Alan Henning because it believed he was an innocent aid worker who was genuinely trying to help suffering Muslims, it can be revealed.

In evidence that the depravity exhibited by Isis is now repelling Muslims of all views and backgrounds, even the terrorist group behind the 11 September attacks on the US in 2001 decided that kidnapping the aid-convoy volunteer was a step too far.

Mr Henning, a taxi driver from Eccles, Salford, was so moved by the plight of Muslims in Syria that he decided to miss last Christmas with his wife and two children and travel 4,000 miles to deliver medical equipment to refugees holed up in the town of Al-Dana. A local commander – or emir – of Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, visited his then-allies in Isis four days after Mr Henning, 47, was captured. The emir confronted the kidnappers, arguing that their actions were “wrong under Islamic law” and “counter-productive”, according to a journalist who interviewed the man immediately after the encounter.

The world has looked on in disbelief in recent weeks as fighters from Isis, also known as Islamic State, have beheaded three Western journalists and aid workers, including a Briton, David Haines. In a video posted online on Saturday night, Isis warned that Mr Henning would be next.

Today, the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, admitted that special forces were struggling to mount a rescue mission because intelligence chiefs did not know exactly where Mr Henning was being held.

Bilal Abdul Kareem, a US film-maker who has reported extensively from Syria, told The Independent that “anybody of any influence” – including al-Qaeda – had appealed to the Sunni militant group when it seized Mr Henning in December, warning that such a move would backfire. He said: “Four days after he was captured, the emir went to Al-Dana and said: ‘Look, what you are doing is wrong. You have no business what you are doing. You have no right to abduct him. You have no reason to detain him just because he is not Muslim’.”

Alan Henning at a refugee camp on the Syrian-Turkish border

Mr Henning was the only non-Muslim in a group of volunteers from a UK-based Islamic charity, which organised a convoy of old ambulances to transport medical supplies to Al-Dana, a few miles from the Turkish border. He was abducted on Boxing Day last year.

Mr Kareem said: “I spoke to the emir from Jabhat al-Nusra after he came back. Initially, he was confident that Henning would be released because that is what Isis was saying. But then Henning was removed from his prison in Al-Dana and never heard of again.”

News of Al-Qaeda’s attempt to save Mr Henning echoes reports that the terror group once led by Osama bin Laden passionately disagrees with the direction taken by Isis, which has quickly taken control of an area the size of Great Britain inside Syria and Iraq.

Professor Peter Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, based at King’s College London, said: “Al-Qaeda has been critical of Isis in recent months. It understands how its behaviour will be perceived by the Western public. Although the two groups’ underlying ideology is still very similar, Al-Qaeda is much more strategic. For example, it is not opposed to beheadings but realises it makes no sense to carry them out in the way that Isis does because this tactic will lose them a lot of friends.”

Dr Afzal Ashraf, a consultant at the Royal United Services Institute, who holds a doctorate in terrorist ideology, said: “The murders of these innocent Western hostages, and the latest threats made against Alan Henning, just go to show how completely incomprehensible Isis’s strategy is. It is absurd and Al-Qaeda realises such behaviour will turn potential recruits away.”

Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, admitted that special forces were struggling to mount a rescue mission because intelligence chiefs did not know exactly where Mr Henning was being held (AFP)

On his internet blog, Mr Kareem provided more details of the discord among Islamist extremists over the abduction of Mr Henning. “Isis said that he was suspected to be a spy,” he wrote. “The Muslims on the convoy asked for proof as they regarded this as a totally ridiculous claim. Isis cited that they could not believe that a white Christian would want to come to Syria at this time, except that he was a spy.

“The Isis commander then showed them Henning’s passport and said that this was the proof, [saying]: ‘There is a secret chip inside. This is so that the intelligence service can continue tracking him.’ One of the other Muslims from the convoy said: ‘All of the passports from the UK are like that!’, showing him his UK passport.

“The other Muslims on the convoy told them that this man had given up Christmas with his family to come to help save the people that Isis said it was trying to save.”

Later, Mr Kareem claimed that Isis was confronted by rival groups, which implored it to release Mr Henning. “Isis said that he was to remain their prisoner and they would ransom him for something. ‘Why?’ they were asked. They said: ‘We will trade him for someone in the UK prison system.’ The other Muslims told him this was not Islamically correct and they had no charge against him.

“One of the aid workers told them that the people rely on these convoys and actions like these would create problems for their efforts in helping the Syrian people. The Isis commander replied: ‘We don’t need convoys – we have Allah’.”

Meanwhile, Mr Haines’s teenage daughter, Bethany, posted a message on Facebook, saying she had been “touched” by the support she had received from the public following his murder.

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